The Denmark list at Roots Web is primarily intended to help descendants of Danish emigrants to get started in Danish genealogy. It is not intended to do for them what they could and should be doing for themselves. It is intended to help them establish a "foothold" in Denmark and to give advice as to methods for proceeding both backward and forward in time. However, postings to the list may be very broad in scope, including nearly anything involving Denmark and Danish descendants anywhere. Topics may include travel, humor, costs, history, geography, language, mythology, etc.

Postings to the list are usually in English as that is the language spoken by most descendants of Danish emigrants. Where it suits anyone's purpose, there is no reason a posting cannot be in Danish. But postings in English should be in good English! Remember that the subscribers to the list who are able to provide the most help learned English as a second language. Excellent though their English may be, there is no excuse for burdening them with misspellings, bad grammar, omitted words, wrong words, improper punctuation, and improper capitalization. Please read through that which you have written and correct mistakes before hitting the 'send' button.

One of the problems in genealogy is the deciphering of abbreviations in old records. There is not much that can be done about the fact that our ancestors abbreviated but we don't have to encumber the present with our own abbreviations. For the benefit of Danes and older Americans, please spell out the names of American States.

The postings which are most likely to result in a successful outcome are those which provide the most information. Tell everything you know and how you came to know it.

The postings which are least likely to result in a successful outcome are those which say something like "I am researching the surname Jensen; I would like to be contacted by others researching the same surname." Only in very unusual cases can a search by surname have any meaning in Denmark -- and then only for names not ending in -sen. Through most of the 1800s and earlier, the vast majority of Danes did not have surnames. Their last names were patronyms which changed from generation to generation. For a more detailed explanation on patronyms see the links page "Starting Research".

Again, welcome to the Denmark List!
Rock Johnson

If you did not find this site through Rootsweb, you're still welcome to the join the email list. To subscribe to the Denmark List, send a message to [email protected] that contains (in the body of the message) the command "subscribe" (without the quotes) and no additional text. To unsubscribe, do the same thing only using the word "unsubscribe" (again without the quotes)

The photo at the top of the page is the village of Ferring in Ringkøbing. By Paula Goodfellow, 2004.