In 2007 alone, The Generations Network has introduced four international sites, bringing the tally of Ancestry sites to eight. The Ancestry suite of sites now includes Ancestry.com in the United States, Ancestry.co.uk in the United Kingdom, Ancestry.ca in Canada, Ancestry.com.au in Australia, Ancestry.de in Germany, Ancestry.it in Italy, Ancestry.fr in France and Ancestry.se in Sweden. As with other sister-sites, Ancestry.se offers Swedish-language tree building tools and lets users tap into the world-wide Ancestry community -- the largest global community of individuals searching for their family roots -- as well as an ever-expanding collection of local historical records.
"Sweden's Ancestry.se site increases the strength of our global family history network to help people discover their roots as well as family living all over the world," said Tim Sullivan, CEO of The Generations Network. "When you combine the fact that Sweden is one of the most Internet friendly nations with the strong ancestral cultural connections that exist between the United States and Scandinavia, we believe there will be enormous opportunity for unprecedented family history collaboration."
For almost 4 million Americans of Swedish descent, the new Swedish records also make Ancestry.com an ideal location to discover their roots. Included in these records are more than 1.7 million names in Swedish emigration records, online for the first time. These various emigration records were created in Sweden and cover the major exodus between 1846 and 1930, when about 20 percent of the Swedish population immigrated to North America.
Users will also find more than 36 million names in Swedish parish records on Ancestry.com. The records, covering more than four centuries of historical data from 81 parishes in the county of Varmland, provide interesting details such as names, dates and places of birth, and marriage and death information.
"Around the world we see a rising interest in tracing one's roots. We look forward to providing user-friendly Ancestry tools and comprehensive record collections to the people of Sweden and of Scandinavian descent," said Josh Hanna, Senior Vice President, Europe and Australia, The Generations Network. "We plan to expand our Swedish collection beyond parish and emigration records. As we've done throughout Europe and North America, we will work closely with various Swedish archives to bring as many available records online as possible."
