I can't seem to navigate Riksarkivet. After I go to the start page, how do I check for my ancestor?

Tippetts Nancy Lyn Burdett1

During consultation, I was taken to docs within Riksarkivet that I can't find on my own. I think I'm just missing a step or two, but can't figure out what I'm failing to do. How do I access parish registers?

Norm Baker

This is what I do when I want to look at the parish records:

I am going to begin by suggesting that you start from this page instead of the start page for Riksarkivet: https://sok.riksarkivet.se/digitala-forskarsalen . It should come up in English, but if it doesn't, then click on "Other Languages" in the upper-right hand side of the page and select English.

In the middle of the page, in gold under "Digitised collections", click on "Church archives".

In the box under "Search archive/parish", enter the name of the parish you want to look at. It is necessary to use the diacritics (ä, å, or ö) to get to the correct parish records. For example, if you want to view Höganäs parish records, you won't get any results if you enter Hoganas.

If there is more than one parish by that name, then you will want to enter the correct County name as well. I usually just enter the parish and if I get more than one result, then I figure out what County to look in.

Using Höganäs as an example, after entering the parish name into the box, click "Search".

Then click on "Höganäs kirkoarkiv".

This will bring up a list of the church books that you can look at. It is in Swedish (even though we have selected English for the language) so you will need to know the Swedish words for the types of documents you want to look at. If you want to look at births in 1865, then click on the green "Image" box (on the right hand side of the page) that includes births for that year. You can click on the blue link on the left side of the page, but then you will still have to click on the green "Image" box on the right side. I usually "right click" on the green "Image" box and then select "open link in new tab". That way I can come back to this "Type of Document" list simply by clicking on the tab for this page.

Next, click on the new tab that you have created.

In the upper left corner of the new tab, you will see the word "Innehålle". Click on that word and it will open to "+ Höganäs". Click the "+" and you will see "+ Födelse och dop". Again, click on the "+" and you will see a list of years "1862-1886". Click on 1865 and you will get a list of the births in Höganäs beginning January 1865.

Then you can look page-by-page if you don't know the exact date, or, if you know the date, you can find the date you want to look at to find the record.

If you have any other questions, please feel free to ask.