RESEARCH SMARTER: Swedish Archive Gems and FamilySearch Library Quicklinks

 Colette, is live from a Swedish archive! In this episode Colette illustrates how she was led to certain books within the archive. When she opened one of those particular books, she knew why she felt drawn to them. Many members of this particular family were not in FamilySearch. She walks you through the step-by-step process of finding these missing family members in these genealogical books to making them temple ready. While most of us do not have access to archives, we do have access to a new tool available in FamilySearch called Quicklinks. Colette teaches how these "Quicklinks" can be almost as good as personally being in any archive around the world.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Hello, welcome to the Gathering Academy. I am in an archive in Sweden. As you can tell kind of by the look behind me, I'm joining you with koofy hair. The humidity here is definitely different than Utah. And even have some mascara underneath. But if you're joining us on the podcast, I would love for you to see what I have discovered here at this archive. Today in the Gathering Academy, I'm going to talk a little bit about archives, a little bit about our journey here over in Sweden and Denmark and some of my experiences with archives. If you're wondering, isn't it all online? It's not. So join on YouTube if you want to see some of the things that I'm going to be talking about. One of the things that's just really cool when you come to an archive is that you can find unexpected things. And we came just, we came here actually today to meet a cousin. So this is a shout out to the Roots Tech relatives, relatives at Roots Tech. My husband was able to connect with a cousin, Sven, very Swedish. And they messaged back and forth and agreed to meet today. So we met today here at the archive. And they're six cousins, which some people might think, oh, that's far away. But it really was every time we've met relatives, and we've met actually quite a few through the Family Search app. Um we've just had such an amazing experiences with connecting with them. And Sven was no different. He really didn't know much about his family, and he started doing his family search on an Excel spreadsheet, um, or his not family search, but family history on an Excel spreadsheet. And um eventually I asked him how he found Family Search, and he said about six months ago, he was just scrolling around, he said, and he ended up finding it. And um, so anyway, that was really, really cool. So he got we got to share stories about family. Um I was able to show him something I'm gonna show you today um that just was just released recently. It's been around for a little bit for Ireland, but um for Sweden. Uh it just was released and it's also available for a couple other countries. So I want to, if you don't have family from any of those areas, still keep watching um because this will pertain to you um as well. So um anyway, it was just such a good experience. And then I was getting really tired and really hungry, and I just was ready to disengage. And then my husband said, Well, I think we need to go get lunch. He said, Well, let's go. And he took us to this little, it's called More Moore's Boggery, and we had um oh, we had this delicious, it's like it's called smorbrod. It's an open face shrimp sandwich with like hard-boiled egg. So good. So it's with rye bread on the bottom. We had that, and then um Budapest cake, which is like a rolled cake with cream. So delicious. But it was so fun to talk about lives in Sweden and life in the US, and and it wouldn't have happened if we would not have sent a message through the Family Search app. Um, so big shout out to Family Search and the ability to connect us with our living family, not just deceased. So we had that, and then I wanted to come back to the archive and look. And I'm gonna just, I don't want to walk around with my computer. I'm gonna give you a little look. So these are just some of the bookshelves right here behind me. And if I go around, you can kind of see some of the other books. So one of the things that I have discovered from this visit is that um most uh most of the stuff that you need to find your family in Sweden is available either on the National Archives, Reeks Archive It or on Archive Digital. In fact, it was really funny. She pulls up Archive Digital here to pull up some records. Um we were trying to clarify some things on my husband's line and hoping to find maybe some local histories. Not really finding that in Southern Sweden for his family. But I do want to show you two really cool things that were just hidden among um these books. So this one doesn't even pertain to my family, but it's an idea of what you can get. So if you look right here, this means the genealogy of the Pritz family. It's a cool old book. And it was just sitting among these boxes of other, like a lot of it's just typed out information from church records. But this is like this is so cool. Somebody's gone through and typed out this genealogy of this Pritz family. So if you have Pritz family, P-R-Y-T-Z, um trying to see that starts with Klaus, wow, Klaus Pritz, which was born, he had a son born in 1460. Um so this is a really earlier one, but look at all of the pages. Pages and pages. So I'm gonna take this, I'm gonna take a peek and see if they're in family search. Another one that I pulled off the shelf because it was in this box. So most of there's a bunch of books in boxes, and this one says Horne Olson Lundbergs on top of it, which is her genealogy. And look at this coolest thing. This book, I don't know about you, but even this this isn't even my family, but I'm so excited about. So I thought I'm just gonna go into family search and see what I can find because there's a page right in the beginning. Look at this, even like, look, this is an archive. There's a little picture in there. I think there's some other ones in here that I saw. Trying to think. Maybe that was the only one that I saw. Oh no, there's a couple more right here on this page. Um, but it starts out with Karin Olsen's information. And so I went into family search. So I'm gonna do a little share here. Share screen. Alright, we'll see if we can find it, because I as always I have lots of windows open. So let's see. Is this Karen? Nope. Where's Karen? Maybe she's gonna see all my different searches that I've been doing. Let's see. Oh, probably right, nope, not there either. Oh, probably right here. Here she is. Okay, let me leave this cancel. So I am going to go to my recents and Karen. There she is. Karen Olsen. So I just went into family search and I typed um her name in and look at this. These or her ordinances have been shared. So look at this. This man, Anthony Johnson, shared them back in 2024, but her um baptism was just done in 2025 in Hermesillo, Mexico. So if you don't have an endowment to do because it's shared with the temple, go take Karin to the temple. Um, and she's ready to be sealed to her parents. Let's see what's going on with them. I think her dad's ready to be oh, his endowment's ready. You have somebody in your family that wants to help, Ola, um, because they've been shared for a couple of years. So I don't know if Anthony, how closely he's related to the family, Bankta. Her mom also needs endowments. So there you've got a whole family. If you have some people you want to get together with. So I came into Karim and on her page. Let me see if I can share this to you. So I'm gonna unshare the screen for just a second. See if I can unshare, stop sharing so you can see this one. Alright, so down here at the bottom you can see five kids. So when I came on to family search, guess what? There were only two kids. So when I scroll down, oops, I gotta share share with you again. Let me get back to the share mode. Uh, share screen. I'll have to share screen. And we're gonna share screen, and we're gonna go back here wherever they were at. I'm so glad you guys are joining me and not like this is just raw live. I was like, how am I gonna do this? Here we go. While I'm traveling. Uh it's hard. My husband actually is in the car taking a nap. So I thought this is a quiet time. I can get a quick little share with you. So I had a couple of children in here, and actually, it looks like I don't know if you've ever had this happen, but the dates got messed up. So I added Gunnar August and see how um it says 1912 here, but it says 0191. Have you ever had that happen? What you do is go to the person, and what happened when I typed it, it didn't register. It registered as 8 December 0191, which won't allow the work to be done. So I will just click here and then do a space, and then I'm going to click on that 1912, and now it's standardized. So that will fix that. So I was able to add Gooner, and so because you saw all of these little boxes, um well, this one now it's fixed, so it won't do that message anymore, but um, in a second, it might take a second for it to register. So we're good there. Um, I was able to add, oh, pair of Torbjorn has did a weird thing too. See, look, it's 1909, but when you're right here, it says 2023. Every once in a while it's a little glitchy. So we're gonna go in and we're gonna click on the pencil, and I'm just going to click here, and then I can click on the 1909, and now it will be good to go. So he is, it shows green, ready to be reserved. And this is another thing people wonder sometimes what happened with that. So it was green because it thought that it was after the 110-year time period, and that shows up as green. But if it's before that and you're not related, then it goes back to those little boxes that says you must be related. So, but because they're all these little dotted boxes, that means that it's ready and waiting for somebody to reserve. So maybe one of you is related that I'm doing this for. Um, I did send a little message. Um, you can go to a person on here. So I went here. Actually, let me go to um one of the, I think Carl Berger, Eric Berger was already in there. Nope. Let's see, mute. Nope, I must have added him too. Um, let's go to the mom. I'll show you what I do. So I I added three more kids, and the family's in the process. So I'm so excited. She's already been baptized. So if you go to the person and you click on um ordinances, that's where you can see this name of the person, and you can click on that and you can send a chat. So I actually sent him a chat with a couple of these. I'll show you. I clicked on the chat and it should show it right here. I sent him a message and I just said I'm in Lund. I found this huge genealogy book. I showed him a picture, and he may not be very closely related, he may have just added some information, but that's how I wanted to spread because I'm not gonna have time to be able to add all of the information on this in this book. But I'm going to go through and add while my husband's asleep, and when I finish here, um add as much as I can because she's in the process. So it's another one of those little things where even if you're not related, you have the ability to help somebody else and add names, names to the tree. All right, the second thing I want to share with you is um a very brand new thing for Sweden, but it's also been available, and this will actually help you. I think a lot of you. Um so I'm going to type in. These are some quick links. Family Search. We're gonna go, so there's family search.org, but there's family search library. You go to the Family Search Library, that's its own website. Oops, I went to the wrong thing. Family Search Library. And I want the website. Let's go here. Here we go. So you've got the library and it's its own website. It um has everything to do with what's specifically in the library, but it also has some links to some outside places. We talked about the maps on a previous podcast. I want to highlight today this box right here. It's on the bottom right, it's genealogical websites. A lot of these are only accessible for free within the library, but all of the links will take you to that actual website. So here we go to genealogical websites, and these are quick links. So if you're in a family search center or if you're at the Family Search Library downtown, when you click on these, let's do North America, it will show you all of these are free websites when you're in a center or in the library. And then there's even more um additional websites right here. So all of these are clickable and it will take you to that outside source. Um then we're going to go to I'm gonna show you the fun. Okay, I'll show you the original. Originally, if you've got family in the British Isles, and I know Tia does, they have this link, comprehensive England quick links, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. So let's just go to Scotland for Tia. And if you come on here, this is so cool. So you've got all of these quick links to get to old maps, to get to censuses, church records, nonconformist, all of these different places without having to search around. It's a little bit more streamlined, easier to access than um just going to the wiki. I always talk about using the research wiki, but this is um this is amazing. So you have that for those countries, but it just got released for Sweden. So we're gonna scroll down here to Nordic Europe. And this is a great place for you to go to see what records are available for your area of the world, what websites um that Family Search has connected with. Um and so here you can see here's all the general, the main ones that we kind of use. Here's online maps, and then Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland. But notice that Sweden now has the comprehensive quick links. So I'm hoping, um I just found out about this today while I've been on this trip, that this was created. I'm hoping this will happen for every country. But this is the Sweden Comprehensive Quick Links, and um it gives all of the websites. So Archive Digital, we've talked about that. This is where you access the Swedish um websites. In fact, what's really funny is when I came here, we talked to a genealogist here at the the archive here in Lund, and she pulls up Archive Digital and she pulls up Reeks Archivit. Those are two things that I can use from home. Um, we were hoping to find more, and it would probably take some more digging, but really the majority of the things that I need to find from Sweden, I can find right here. Um, so I can click on any of these, and you can see by the red that I've already clicked on some of them just to test them out. But you can see Family Search is free right here. Uh Reeks Archived is free, Arq Digital is paid. Um, it's but if you've got Swedish ancestry, it's worth every penny. It's about$15 a month. It also has links to Swedish newspapers in Sweden and also in the United States. This is always for me one of the things I'm like, okay, how do I get to those newspapers? And here's the link. We've also got dictionaries and words lists. We also have some other resources that are right here. And then here's Rigsar Kivit Contact Us, the Sweden Archives and Libraries, and then the locations. So you can see how really, really helpful this is. Um, so go test it out, try it out, but also come to the library webpage so that you can see what some of the quick links are for the area of the world that you're researching in. All right, uh, let me stop sharing screen. Okay, I'll tell you a couple other things about um archives. So, yes, everything is not online. Um one thing to always remember if you're going to travel somewhere, look at the times of when the archive is open because um they an experience we had yesterday. I wasn't intending to go to an archive. We went to the archive in or to the island of Bornholm, which is part of Denmark. We took a ferry yesterday and um I said, let's just go check out the archive. I'm so excited we get there. They're only open on Monday. Four hours on Monday. That was it. So I was able to peek through the window and I saw all the books, and I was just so sad because I thought this would have been so fun. Um, but that's lesson number one. Um, when we went to Wales, it was open two days a week to the public for the small local archive. Um, this archive actually is open until nine o'clock tonight, today only. Other days they're closed at four, I believe. So they have varying hours, so you always need to check and see when the archives are available. One of the great blessings about having AI right now is you don't have to know the language. You can use um Google Translate. I use Gemini and I took pictures in some of the books because I know a lot, but I don't know all of the words. And so I was able to take a picture and then read. So I actually learned a little bit about um the priest's farm that he would have here in Sweden and how it was set up and where the people lived, and I was able to do that just by taking a picture and then having it translated. So you have your own little year and thumbum in your pocket that you can take with you. So don't let the language intimidate you. Um, they're generally very quiet places. Um, hardly anybody's in here. Um, another surprise that we had is that their computers, unlike when I go to the Family Search Library, we have access to the internet. They only have access to the National Archives and Archive Digital. Those two things are available here. So I can access their Wi-Fi for free. A lot of them have free Wi-Fi. Um, they also have you put your bag and generally a coat. They let me keep my coat on. So I was glad because it's uh it's rainy and cold outside today. Um, they have you put your bag in a little locker and then you get a key. So I have the little key in my pocket. I'll show you. It's just on the little that's where I'm at. And so you put your stuff in there. So they let you bring in your phone so you can take some pictures, um, a pencil, or just a regular pencil, no pens, um, no bags, and your computer. You can bring those in to look at things. Um what I've also learned is that there's a lot of um periodicals, so of areas um of like little societies have written little histories, done little genealogy reports. So you can find that in those archives, and that's what I was hoping to find more of is more of more books like this one, Car Nelson. Um, but this is like a gem. If you're related to Car Nelson, this is like amazing. I mean, look how thick this is. Don't you just wish that was yours? Um, but there's also all of these other ones where people have typed out in the old days or photocopied, and it could speed things up. So as you know from if you watched the podcast about um on Thinning of the Vale, about um, I think it was episode 37, 38, but we talked about going to Wales and the boxes of documents. So there are original documents that you can see. Um, if you're a beginning researcher, your best bet is just to make sure you really sourced your tree, make sure you verify every connection. That's what my husband was having me help him with last night was verify the connections with the actual christening records and the Swedish records from generation to generation, starting with the known pioneer that went to Utah. Um, because there weren't original records, there were dates, but there was no proof. And we finally got to his ancestor in the early 1700s that there's no proof that the parents are connected. In fact, it's from a neighboring parish, and so we don't know where that came from. And we have no proof that that really is true. Um and it'll probably take a lot more digging and maybe going to some land records. There weren't a lot of probate records. Um, that's another thing I want to talk about is that sometimes we think that, oh, there's gotta be records, and not necessarily. A lot of our ancestors were poor. Um, and then you get to a certain point where you're getting closer to the Middle Ages where records were really only kept for the elite, um, for the landowners, the the merchants. Um that doesn't mean it's not there and you shouldn't give up looking, but that's where you can go to the Family Search Research Wiki and get a lot of good information. Um so that's my short little bit um about researching in Sweden and some quick tips on how to um have those links that are available through the Family Search Library. Um to the land of your ancestors, there's nothing like it. It's it really is a spiritual experience. Um, my husband and I both have family from the southern part of Sweden, and we were able to go. Actually, this I'll tell you the one last little story and then go and practice. Um so he remembers last time we were here that they said that there was a history of Sodra Melby, which is the parish where his family came from, and it was for sale um in a little um thrift shop and then they closed down. Well we found it in a bakery and so we bought that book. So thanks for joining me and we'll tell you more about what we find in that book later. Bye-bye.