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.

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.

Obtaining an extract of parish register

It is possible to obtain extracts from parish registers for genealogical study directly from the local parishes in Finland. Parish register extracts are usually available from 1850 until nowadays, so they are a good place to start your genealogy research as it is sufficient to know your grandparents name, place of living and birthdate. Before 1850 the parish records are in church archives which can then be accessed through HisKi database online. See my previous posting about how to use Hiski.



So, the first thing to do is to find out the first name, surname and birthdate of the ancestor you are looking for. Then you need to look for the web pages of the parish. Luckily most of the parishes nowadays have some kind of web pages online. Best way is to google name of the place/city together with the word "seurakunta", which means parish in finnish, and then search for page for contacts ("yhteystiedot"). For example "Vaasa seurakunta". There you can look for an contact email address and send a request of an extract from the parish register by email.

Some parishes also have ready made web forms that you can just fill in to do the request (for example Turku and Helsinki). It is good also to request the receiver to forward the email to person responsible of parish register extracts in case you happen to contact the wrong person.

In your request you must also mention what do you want to have marked on the extract. This could be for example the names, birth dates and places of the parents of the person for whom you are requesting the extract for. You must also state that the reason for the request is family research.

Parish register extracts cost usually something between 5 and 25 euros, this varies depending on the parish and the work needed to find the requested information. Payment options for foreigners ofcourse vary also depending on the parish in question.