Free Access to Swedish Records on 21 and 22 March

Considering that Berwick was a major port for hundreds of years, it's fairly likely that some of the sailors would have been Swedish, whether on Swedish ships or on ships from Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia participating in the Baltic Trade.

Perhaps some of those sailors decided to drop anchor and stay in Berwick, Tweedmouth or Spittal or were stranded when their ship sailed off without them.

Perhaps one of them was your ancestor.

Also, many Scots (including one of my ancestors) went to fight as mercenaries for the King of Sweden, so perhaps they married and had a family there.

To celebrate Genealogy Day in Sweden, which is on 21 March, ArkivDigital is offering free access to Swedish records in their collection at the weekend.
Sweden is one hour ahead of us so the free period is from 11pm on 20 March to 11pm on 22 March.

You'll need to register and download the ArkivDigital program.

There's also a useful guide to Swedish Genealogical records.
If this helps you to widen your family history, please let us know.

Free access to Irish Newspaper Archives - if you're quick !

According to Irish Genealogy News, there's free access to the Irish Newspaper Archives until 11am on Thursday 17th April.

A lot of people came from Ireland to work in Berwick-upon-Tweed and Northumberland, so if the Irish were in your ancestry (as they were in mine) or appear in your family stories, they might have been in the newspapers.

I've tried it out but haven't yet found anything relevant.
If you get stuck, there's a video tour when you login.

Login information needed:

User: freebie16
Password: freebie16

Thanks also to Canada's Anglo-Celtic Connections where I first saw it.

Post a comment below, if you find anything interesting, please.