Missing birth & marriage records

[Ken Peterson]

I am curious as to missing records in genline. It seems that the approximate period of 1860 to 1898 that at a number of parishes the birth and marriage records are not available. 1. Were the churches required to keep these records during that period? 2. Is there some decree that states the records can not be made available to public access, like on genline? 3. Is there some other reason this period of information is not available? Tack så mycket for your insight on the subject. Ken

[Elisabeth Thorsell]

Ken, the regular birth, deaths and marriages for the period of 1860-1900 are usually not available on Genline. Instead you can use the extracts from these records, that were sent in to our Central Bureau of Statistics. This institution is called Statistiska Centralbyrån in Swedish, with the abbreviation SCB.  
 
When you chose a county (län) to look at on Genline, the list of parishes starts with a link to records called -scb. Chose that link and you will find the B, M, and D records for the period, and I think they are all indexed as to parishes in the righthand window.
 
The churches were keeping these records up 1991, when the Tax adminstration took over this function. On the SVAR web site (a subscription site) at www.svar.ra.se you are able to find the SCB records from 1860-1938 (possibly soon 1939), as there is a privacy rule that keeps records 70 years and younger secret.

[Gunnar Håkansson]

Ken, the records do exist, and contain more than the extracts. But, for some reason or other, they are not generally available but in place, as far as I know. Perhaps in Archiv Digital (another subscription site)?

[Jeff Benson]

Gunnar is right about Arkiv Digital having digitized the original parish books for 1861-1897. I went to the Arkiv Digital website (http://www.arkivdigital.se) and did a spot-check of a few parishes chosen at random. All the those parishes I looked at had all birth, marriage and death books available (and more) for years up to 1897. However, the downside is that AD has not yet finished with all parishes in Sweden. You'd best check their website and determine whether the parishes you are interested in are on-line. Or, stick with the SCB extracts on Genline.
 
Jeff