Researching Swedish Roots: Estate Inventories (Bouppteckningar)

Bouppteckningar (estate inventories) are online (for at least some areas in Sweden) on the Arkiv Digital site, which is fee-based. After the recent free weekend from Arkiv Digital, there are quite a few postings from people who hope to get a complete translation. Sadly, we are mostly on our own. It is hard to find someone who will translate those wonderful records for us.

Full translations of the bouppteckningar would overwhelm the helpers and we have few helpers on boards and lists who are able to do this. (If one person gets a total translation, that opens the door to **everyone** getting a total translation.) I am only one person and I have found dozens of bouppteckningar and I'm sure I'll find more. Add the rest of the people with bouppteckningar who would like a translation and think of what our helpers' lives would be like if they tried to help out with complete translations. (I've completely translated only one of mine, although I have a pretty good idea of what the beginning paragraphs say for most of mine.)

The help desk at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City will ***NOT** translate them. They might help out with the paragraph at the beginning which has the genealogical information and some of the column headings, but they can't possibly spend hours trying to read and translate the inventory. They have too many other people needing help to spend all that time with just one patron.

I have collected some links for bouppteckningar. Use the information from those to figure out the basic legal vocabulary and to help you get started.

1) Pono's site: Look at the links on the left side of the page. He has a link to some of his own translations and also has a link to a picture dictionary of items often found in a bouppteckning.

http://tinyurl.com/7fqdexv

2) SweGGate: Dr. Haeffner created a guide to bouppeckningar (Click on his links.) and also has definitions for many bouppteckning words.

http://tinyurl.com/3k9mtd

3) a thread on the Rootsweb Sweden board:

http://tinyurl.com/7qgqjxc

4) a thread on the Sweden Genforum board:

http://tinyurl.com/7hsam7f

5) Ordering a bouppteckning:

This is the site through which we can order a bouppteckning. There is a cost, they say. I have never had to pay a penny, but if you lack details and they need to do research, you will have to pay.