National Archives of Iceland
New website for historical sources on land and real estate
3rd April 2025
The new website of the National Archives of Iceland on land and real estate was opened today, on the 143rd anniversary of the museum’s founding. The website contains original sources on landmarks, real estate valuations, land assessments and maps of lakes. Many of the data have been published previously on the museum’s older website, but not with the access offered here.
The website, which is available on the site jardir.skjalasafn.is, provides a digital reconstruction of important and popular sources on land and property that cover the period 1804–1998.
Landmark books from 1882–1998, land estimates from 1804–1850, real estate estimates from 1916–1918 and maps of tundra from 1916–1930 are published. recipes for landmark books are also published on the web and it is planned to publish recipes from other sources as they become available.
Landmarks are marked divisions between two farms, for example by fence, stream or other landmarks. Landmarks were registered and officially confirmed in Landmarksbækur.
Land assessment is a public record of land and its value. It describes the land, its quality and the benefits that could follow.
Asset measurement is a public record of the value of a property.
Tune maps are official drawings of the area of the fields and gardens, showing the area and dimensions of the fields and gardens.
The new website provides several ways to access the sources.
You can view a web-page, zoom in to a specific place in the country and if there are data related to the place, you can click on the place and view the sources.
You can view originals, photos of documents or books in digital format.
Part of the sources are available in a recipe and the text appears alongside the digital reconstruction to facilitate reading of handwritten documents. For the time being, recipes from landmark books are published.
Finally, a simple word search can be done, searching in all lists (names of sources containing place names) and written data.
The Centre for Digital Arts and Humanities has been working on the issue of web-based database Sögulega og mann- og bæjatalinu in recent years in collaboration with the National Archives, the National Library and the Árnastofnun Agency. The National Archives is a member of the Centre and contributes a large part of the data to the historical census of people and towns. The database links names of people and towns between censuses from 1703 to 1920.
The geographical web is the first step in the National Archives’ re-engineering of the museum’s web-based dissemination of cultural heritage and the dissemination of original sources through a web-based viewing, as much of the material in the museum is related to location in one way or another.