Finnish assistance

chelseakarafrost1

Is there anywhere that I can go to sit down with a Finnish specialist to get some questions answered?

Norm Baker

I do Finnish research and you can ask here in the Nordic Community. If you are in Salt Lake City sometime, we have Finnish specialists at the Family History Library on the B1 floor.

Is there some specific question you need help with?

chelseakarafrost1

Oh perfect. That's great to know. I'm just down in Bluffdale so I've been stopping by the Riverton FamilySearch library occasionally but no one is Finnish-specific there. I'll have to make a date to go to the SLC library one of these days. Can I just show up during their open hours or are there appointments that are preferred?

Basically I'm newer to family history but my grandma is a convert from Finland and no one in my family is working on her line, so I decided to tackle it. 😄 I uncovered a motherlode of names from one of my lines on Geni.com, so I've been transferring their info over to FamilySearch, but when it comes to transferring the sources, I'm not completely positive about inputting the information FamilySearch wants me to put in (like finding the specific date and knowing exactly what kind of record it is) because of the language. I figured that sitting down with someone looking over my shoulder and orienting me a little more in person to the records and websites they're on would be ideal. It'd be very easy if all I had to do was copy the citation from Geni but I wanted to be a little more responsible...

Norm Baker

It isn't really possible to make an appointment at the Salt Lake City Family History Library but you can schedule an on-line consultation through this link: https://www.familysearch.org/en/family-history-library/online-consultations.

If you just come into the Library there is almost always someone who can help you with any Scandinavian country (or any place else, really).

I am usually at the Library on Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 10am to 5:30pm. Or, I could go in on another day if you wanted to make arrangements to meet there.

In the meantime, you could watch a couple of past webinars that the Library has produced about Finnish research:

https://www.familysearch.org/en/help/helpcenter/lessons/finland-an-introduction-to-finnish-church-record-online-resources

https://www.familysearch.org/en/help/helpcenter/lessons/finland-a-case-study-using-hiski-and-digitized-online-church-records

Concerning the language of the records, up until about 1870ish, the records are written in Swedish but you usually need to have some Finnish vocabulary to get to the records. After 1870(ish), most of the records then are written in Finnish. This is a very useful Finnish word list in the Family Search Wiki (if you haven't already discovered it): https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Finnish_Genealogical_Word_List.

This is the Swedish word list here: https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Swedish_Genealogical_Word_List.

And, of course, you are always welcome to ask more questions on this Nordic Community site.

chelseakarafrost1

Hi again and thank you! I took a quick look at those videos and I'm excited to watch them all the way through. I'm planning to come by the downtown library on Wednesday, probably around 10:30am, so hopefully I'll run into you!

Norm Baker

I will be watching for you!