Do you have Danish roots? If so, you may have used the free Danish National Archives website, Arkivalieronline, to search for your family.

I belong to several Scandinavian Facebook groups and, lately, there have been some conversations about the “new and improved” website of the Danish National Archives, but that the new site is another example of why not to fix something that wasn’t broken in the first place.

With most of the site description in Danish, I can’t verify details of changes on the new site. I have read that not all the same records are back up online yet, that there are some new records and that the site is slow to load and difficult to use.

I tried searching one of the baptismal registers in Copenhagen and found when I had opened one volume and then tried to open a second one, the second volume wouldn’t open at all. I had to close the search and start over again to open the second volume. Yes, trying to turn from one page to another was very, very slow. When the records are unindexed, such as these, and the site is so slow, it is very frustrating that a search takes so long.

A recommendation has been made, until the new, improved Arkivalieronline has the bugs worked out of it, to instead use DanishFamilySearch, not to be confused with Danish records on FamilySearch.org.

DanishFamilySearch is a free website that contains many Danish records. Click on the “Overview” button to search church, census, school and military listings and records.

Along with DanishFamilySearch, FamilySearch.org also has a large collection of Danish records, including many baptisms that are indexed and searchable by name.

For more Danish research links, click on my Research Toolbox in the top right and scroll down to Danish Genealogy Resources for more links.

Let’s hope that the Danish National Archives works out the bugs on its website, as it is a fabulous resource when working properly.