Data and sources in Link-Lives

Limitations in the display of sources

Not all data from the sources is displayed on link-lives.dk. This is due to various circumstances:

For the sake of personal data protection (cf. GDPR), it is only possible to display data on persons born before 1905. This means that in some of the datasets (from 1905 and later), person registrations have been omitted that are found in the original but may not be shown. Examples: If a set of parents in the 1911 census has children born both before and after 1905, only the children born before 1905 will be displayed. And in the church records’ births from 1905 onwards, only the parents’ names are shown – not the children’s. It is therefore also not possible to search the website for persons born after 1904.

In the machine-transcribed censuses of 1890, 1911, 1916, and 1921, the transcription algorithm has provided an assessment for each individual information field of how certain it is of the reading. In a number of cases, the Link-Lives team has assessed that the risk of a misreading was too high for the result to appear in search results and be searchable on the website, and in these cases, we have removed the information from the “Processed data” table. The algorithm’s suggested reading can, however, be seen in the “Original entry” table. Furthermore, you can view the original source by clicking “See original source”.

Censuses

In Denmark, nationwide censuses have been conducted since 1787, and from 1834, the censuses were held approximately every five or ten years. The censuses list the counted persons, household by household, and contain slightly different information depending on when they were made. You will always find the name, age, position in the household, and occupation for individual persons. As of 1845, the censuses normally also contain information about the birthplace of those counted, and as of 1901, the birth date of those counted is provided.

The censuses transcribed in collaboration between volunteers and the National Archives have long been available via the Danish Demographic Database. Of these, the completely transcribed censuses are also available via the Link-Lives search page. This applies to the years 1787, 1801, 1834, 1840, 1845, 1850, 1860, 1880, 1885, and 1901. Additionally, machine-transcribed datasets covering the censuses of 1890, 1911, 1916, and 1921 are found on the search page.

Note that there are no censuses from Southern Jutland in the period 1864-1920.

Read more about censuses on the National Archives’ website and in the Link-Lives Release 2 Guide, section 3.1 (download Link-Lives Release 2 Guide under “Documentation” here).

Parish Records

Since 1646, Danish priests have been ordered to keep church records, where they registered births and their baptisms, betrothals/marriages, and deaths in the parish. Later, confirmands were also registered. From 1812, it became mandatory for priests to register this information in a pre-printed form, which systematized the entry of the registrations. At the same time, the church records were thereafter kept in two fundamentally identical versions, namely the main ministerial book and the counter-ministerial book.

The dataset available on the Link-Lives search page covers the period approx. 1814-1917. For this period, the counter-ministerial books for the entire country (including Southern Jutland) have been indexed by the genealogy firm Ancestry and made available to the National Archives.

Read more about church records on the National Archives’ website and in the Link-Lives Release 2 Guide, section 3.2 (download Link-Lives Release 2 Guide under “Documentation” here).

Burial forms from Copenhagen

The burial protocols on link-lives.dk only cover Copenhagen and contain, among other things, information about the deceased’s name, age, residence, occupation, marital status, date of death, and cause of death. The burial protocols from 1861-1911 have been entered by volunteers at the Copenhagen City Archives.

The dataset available on Link-Lives.dk only covers the period 1861-1911, which was the period transcribed when the project received the dataset in 2021. Not all the transcribed information is displayed. On the other hand, there is a link that points directly to the full entry and an image of the original source on the Copenhagen City Archives’ website.

Police Register Sheets for Copenhagen

Police Registration Cards is a term for the Copenhagen police’s register of the population in Copenhagen in the period 1890-1923. The register was a precursor to the later municipal civil registers and contains information about everyone over the age of 10 who lived in Copenhagen. The registration cards contain, among other things, information about name, birth date, birthplace, address, occupation, marital status, and death date.

Spouses and children are collected on the same registration card. The cards were continuously filled out with changes for the person or family they concerned: children, moves, deaths, and so on. Thus, unlike the censuses, the registration cards do not contain information about a specific point in time. They were instead filled out over a period.

The registration cards 1890-1923 have been entered by volunteers at the Copenhagen City Archives.

The dataset available on the Link-Lives search page covers the period 1890-1923. Not all the transcribed data is displayed. On the other hand, there is a link that points directly to the full entry and an image of the original source on the Copenhagen City Archives’ website.

More sources, richer life courses

Link-Lives is designed so that in the future, it is possible to link other sources with new information from other sources to the already created life courses. This means that the database behind the search page can be expanded continuously as more sources are transcribed.

Read more about the sources and about Link-Lives’ work with them in the Link-Lives Release 2 Guide. Download Link-Lives Release 2 Guide under “Documentation” here.