Nordic Trail - Part 1

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Surnames/tags: Nordic Nordic_Trail

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Contents 1 Welcome to the Nordic Trail - Part 1! 1.1 What you will be doing in this stage of the Nordic Trail 1.1.1 What subjects will be covered 1.2 Sourcing 1.2.1 What about Online Family Trees?

Welcome to the Nordic Trail - Part 1!

What you will be doing in this stage of the Nordic Trail

1. You will have been sent a "Welcome to the Nordic Trail" email from the Membership Coordinator.
2. Choose one Nordic country you would like to learn more about and let the Membership Coordinator know. You will receive an email including the country you chose, a profile name and Wikitree ID. We will check that no one else has already chosen it, then confirm it's yours to work on and allocate you a Trail Guide who specializes in your chosen country.
3. You should add sources for birth, marriage, death and any censuses or household examination/visitation records (Where the clergy visited each home in his parish and wrote down each person living at their home. They usually included the years each person was born.). You are using only the free resources listed on this page. You may also add birth sources for any children listed. At a minimum, your finished profile must have enough information to ensure it does not get incorrectly merged with another profile with a similar name. We encourage you to include as much of the person's life in their biography as you can find in primary, original sources.
4. All location, date or name fields must be in the correct format.
5. Use a "Research Notes" section if there is anything you have not been able to find or where aspects of the biography need further research.
6. When you have finished working on your profile, ask your Trail Guide to review your work. Make any amendments suggested by your Trail Guide before moving on to another profile.
7. After working through at least three 1800-1899 profiles, you may want to move onto Part 2 where you will work on two 1700-1799 period profiles.

What subjects will be covered

• Sources: what sources are available for each country and where to find them.

1. Reliable Danish Sources
2. Reliable Finnish Sources
3. Reliable Icelandic Sources
4. Reliable Norwegian Sources
5. Reliable Swedish Sources

• Nordic Naming Guidelines
• Critical analysis: have I found a fact about the correct person?
• Formatting: The use of headings and lists to make the profile easier to read.

1. Biographies Help Page: This page outlines the required and optional headings for the biography portion of a profile.

• Biography writing.

1. Is there a list of known children? Is it sourced by at least one primary or secondary source?

• How to correctly fill in the profile's data fields.

Project Sweden has good in-depth explanations on names that are applicable to Finnish names as the two countries were united for so long. Frozen patronymics are very rare in Finland though. We will be using what is written in the sources, i.e. Swedish names in most cases as Finnish names began first appearing in churchbooks at the end of the 19th century. If you are in doubt about anything, ask a question in our Google Groups forum, or if you are not a member, ask a question in G2G using the tag Finland. WikiTree policy of using what the people themselves would have used does not apply here as we only have sources for the Swedish names that the clergy used in the church books.

• Linking to other Wikitree profiles in the biography.
• Categories and how to categorize your profiles for the Nordic Project.
• Nordic Project Templates and Stickers, for example how to add the county sticker of your chosen country to a profile (finishing touches).
• Nordic Language Alphabets.
• Using citations for sourcing.
• The use of research notes to leave information for yourself and future researchers.

1. Research Notes Help Page: This page outlines why a "Research Notes" section can be helpful, where to properly place the research notes section, and it introduces "Research Note Boxes."

Sourcing

Sourcing is used to support (or challenge) a family tree, to establish family connections, to help "prove" (or disprove) family lineages, and to record where the information came from. Here is a good article that sums things up: Genealogy Without Sources is Mythology!

Sources are either original or derivative.

A primary source is one that was recorded either at the time of the event or shortly afterwards. Although these sources are generally reliable, they can have errors and you will learn how to evaluate the information contained in them, especially when one source contradicts another. Here are examples of original sources where the information gathered from them is generally considered reliable:

• Birth records.
• Death records.
• Marriage records.
• Family bibles with birth/marriage/death dates.
• Books that cite primary sources. This would Include books that transcribe birth/marriage/death records as well as authored family histories or trees that cite birth/marriage/death records.
• Military records.
• Will and estate records.
• Court records.
• Burial records.
• History books that would have collected information from the subjects themselves.
• Newspaper articles with the publication name, date, and location.
• A proof summary of multiple sources of supporting evidence used to draw a reasonable conclusion.

A secondary source is one that is written after the event or period has passed. Secondary sources can still be reliable if they cite primary sources. They can be useful for clues about where to look for primary sources, or for background information to expand the profile's biography (for example, a history book which covers an occupation and what it was like during the time period we are researching).

Information from derivative sources, unless supported by other sources, should be considered uncertain and marked as such. However, since the community does not enforce a set standard of proof, this is a determination made by the editors of the profile — the Wiki Genealogists who are engaged in finding and evaluating sources of information. See "Disagreements about Certainty" before considering marking information added by someone else as "Uncertain."

Here are examples of derivative sources:

• A link to a personal family tree.
• A family tree found online, including GEDCOMs, LDS ancestral files, World Family Tree, RootsWeb, Geni, Ancestry Member Trees, etc. If the tree cites reliable proofs, find the proofs and cite them.
• Yates Publishing, US and International Marriage Records, 1560-1900, from Ancestry.com.
• Find-A-Grave. Find-A-Grave profiles rarely cite reliable proofs. When they do, find the proofs and cite them.
• Transcriptions of documents (wills, etc.) found online that are not published.
• A discussion in a genealogy forum. If the discussion cites reliable proofs, find the proofs and cite them.
• Books with family trees/family histories that do not cite reliable sources. These books are secondary sources and should be seen as a starting point. Further research is needed to confirm those relationships.
• Edmund West Collection, from Ancestry.com, per their own description, "should be used to find primary sources."

Reliable and unreliable sources vary greatly in reliability. It can be helpful to know why the source was created and by whom when evaluating how reliable a source is. Generally, governmental and church records are reliable.

Always remember that transcriptions may be inaccurate. Every time someone transcribes information from one place to another, there is a risk of human error, especially when the handwriting is difficult to read.

What about Online Family Trees?

A family tree by itself is not a reliable source. A good family tree cites primary sources so you can double check the accuracy of the facts as presented. Cite the primary source used by that family tree rather than the name of the tree itself. An unsourced family tree contains no evidence to confirm what is being presented.

Please do NOT use any of these online family trees types as "sources."

• Ancestry
• Rootsweb
• Geni
• Familysearch: Pedigree Resource Files or User-Submitted Genealogies
• MyHeritage
• Geneanet
• WeRelate