Private archives are a resource that should not be neglected by a genealogist. They can provide lots of useful information on diverse subjects. Here I present some of the finnish private archives which may be useful in genealogical research. A full database of Finnish private archives that receive state support or are maintained by official archive institution is available at http://www.narc.fi/cgi-bin/db2www/yarek.mac/input.
Archive of the Central Organisation of Finnish Trade Unions (SAK)
SAK is the oldest employee confederation in Finland. Founded in 1907, it has looked after the interests of employees for a century. The archive was founded in 1976, it's purpose is to support the study of the trade unions. Archive contains various documents related to the history of the trade unions in Finland.
People's Archive (Kansan Arkisto)
People's Archive is an archive of the labour movement. It works in cooperation with other private and official archives recording labour movement history.
Worker's Archive (Työväen Arkisto)
Worker's Archive is also a labour movement archive that was originally based for the Social Democratic party of Finland in 1906.
Central Archives of the Finnish Business Records (Suomen Elinkeinoelämän Keskusarkisto, ELKA)
The central archives of Finnish Business Records maintain records of finnish business and related associations.
Finnish Sport Archive (Suomen Urheiluarkisto)
Finnish sport archive is maintained by Finnish Sport Museum foundation. It contains documents of sport associations, sportsmen and sport leaders. The eldest documents date back to 1850's.
Urho Kekkonen's Archive
This archive contains archives related to former Finnish president Urho Kekkonen and his colleagues. It contains some private collections, diaries and mail correspondence. Material that is older than 25 years is freely usable, for other material concerning Finnish internal politics a permission is needed as parts of the material are under foreign Ministry's secrecy requirements.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Military records
Finnish military records are mostly located in two archives: in the War Archive and in the National Archive. Some of the archive material is accessible on internet too.
National Archive's Militaria Collection contains documents on military personel from 18th century until the beginning of the Finnish autonomy period (approximately 1812). Military records of the National Archive are available also in provincial archives as microfilms.
The other archive containing finnish military records is War Archive. It was created on 1918 and contains archive material beginning from the year 1812 until nowadays. Most of the material is produced by the Ministry of Defence, Defence Forces and the National Border Guard, but in addition it contains material from donated and purchased private collections.
War archive also maintains a database of the fallen Finnish soldiers during the second world war (1939-1945). The database can be freely accessed on the internet in http://kronos.narc.fi/menehtyneet/ This database contains over 95 000 persons that can be searched by surname, first name, date of birth or death, home town, etc.
Monday, December 21, 2009
Finnish surnames
In 1920 it became obligatory for all the Finnish citizens to have a surname. If one did not have a surname, it had to be invented or a priest ordered a surname.
There is no common base for all Finnish surnames. In eastern Finland real surnames were used already in the beginning 13th century. Some of the eastern names have basis in the very old finnish pagan names, some come from Greek-Catholic names and some are western based Catholic names. The surnames began to diversify when the number of persons with the same surname started grow. This generated a lot of names where the beginning of the name is the same, but the ending has changed.
In western Finland the common way was to use firstname + name of the house as an additional name. Especially in written sources the name of the house is often written after the first name, but this does not mean that this name would have been used as surnames are used nowadays. The patronymic form first name + father's name + (daughter/son) was commonly used.
In addition to this east-west separation of names there are names attached to the social class and professions. Notably soldiers and priests have their typical surnames. For example after 1690 when a man began his military service he was commonly given a Swedish, German or Latin based names which he used during his time in the military.
There is no common base for all Finnish surnames. In eastern Finland real surnames were used already in the beginning 13th century. Some of the eastern names have basis in the very old finnish pagan names, some come from Greek-Catholic names and some are western based Catholic names. The surnames began to diversify when the number of persons with the same surname started grow. This generated a lot of names where the beginning of the name is the same, but the ending has changed.
In western Finland the common way was to use firstname + name of the house as an additional name. Especially in written sources the name of the house is often written after the first name, but this does not mean that this name would have been used as surnames are used nowadays. The patronymic form first name + father's name + (daughter/son) was commonly used.
In addition to this east-west separation of names there are names attached to the social class and professions. Notably soldiers and priests have their typical surnames. For example after 1690 when a man began his military service he was commonly given a Swedish, German or Latin based names which he used during his time in the military.
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