Description
In the last decades, millions of records that capture aspects of ordinary people in the past centuries have been transcribed, providing us an extraordinarily insight into their lives. By using the transcribed material and by linking it to other sources, we can reconstruct how their lives looked like, and get a deeper understanding of their experiences. The novelty is that the endeavour is possible not only for dozens or hundreds but for thousands and millions of individuals, whose reconstructed life histories will allow us to answer questions we never dared to ask. Who did she marry, and was it her first marriage? How many children did she have, and did everyone survive the childhood? How was their health? Did he climb higher in the social ladder than his father or his brothers? Did they move to the city or the Americas and how did that change after their lives and deaths? What did they die of, and do we find some similar social patterns across generations? In Scandinavian countries, the sources for this type of research are particularly rich as the lives, relationships, events and deaths of individuals were systematically collected by different authorities for different purposes: church books, censuses, military conscriptions records, hospital records, etc. Moreover, genealogists have been eager to contribute to the transcriptions of these sources, making them available for everyone. This seminar will discuss the recent efforts on reconstructing large databases of historical life courses that are taking place in Norway and Denmark. The Historical Population Register of Norway aims to link the Norwegian censuses 1801 onwards with the parish registers from the 18th and 19th centuries, and a great part of this work is carried out from the Norwegian Historical Data Centre at the University of Tromsø, The Arctic University of Norway. The project of the Danish Historical Lifecourse Database is a similar undertaking that is finishing the pilot phase right now focusing on 19th century Copenhagen but aims to create a similar infrastructure for Denmark. Researchers and staff involved in these two projects will discuss the scope, the sources and the methodological challenges of this type of undertaking.| Period | 2016 |
|---|---|
| Event type | Seminar |
| Location | Copenhagen, DenmarkShow on map |