Storskifte Historical Maps of Sweden

Sweden Historical Maps of Sweden  Storskifte Historical Maps of Sweden



The Storskifte was the first land reform in Sweden. The purpose was to streamline the farm production. Up until this time, the farm lands had evolved under a system of fairness which meant that farmers were compensated for having good productive or poor land. In some cases, smaller farms had good productive soil and farms with poor soil were granted larger areas. In other cases, long skinny lots were created that had equal amounts of good and poor soil. Each farm also had their own “portion of use” of the village, its meadows, and fences.

This structure created problems over time that were challenging for the farmer to manage. The Storskifte consolidated the smaller pieces of land into larger fields for better management. The Storkifte law of 1757 limited each farm to a maximum of 4 strips per enclosed field or meadow. The process of Storskifte created about 40,000 maps that have been scanned and are available through the lantmäteriet website. For those villages that were never mapped in the äldre geometrisk kartor, the maps for the Storskifte might be the first map of the village. The maps for the Storskifte were created between the 1750's and 1820.

How to find Storskifte Historical Maps
1. Go to the Historiska kartor section of the Lantmäteriet website (Firefox - Jan. 2019) at: Historiska kartor.

2. The Historiska kartor (Historical Maps) window opens. In the upper right hand corner, click on the link English

3. The English version of this website opens. It will be easier to use the Advanced Search options. To do this, click on the link Advanced Search

4. The Advanced Search window opens. Select the Archive you want to investigate from the drop down list. Usually this will be the Regional Archive

5. Choose the County from the drop down list. If you're not sure of the County name see a list at: Counties of Sweden

6. If you know the Municipality, click on the button Municipality and select which Municipality. If you know the Parish, click on the button Parish and select which Parish.

7. If you wish to see a list of all the maps available for your search, then skip this step. Otherwise fill in one or more of these last four fields to limit the number of maps.


 * Select the Region Name.
 * Select the year you want to start the search. It must be greater than 1599.
 * Select the year you want to end the search. It must be less than 1929.
 * Select the type of map you want. For help with translation see the Historical Maps of Sweden Word List.

8. Then click on the button Search

9. The Search Results window opens. You will see a list with 3 columns.


 * The first column is a link to the map itself. Click on that link to see the map.
 * The middle column is the type of map Not all the items are maps, some are documents. And some documents have maps. For help with translation see the Historical Maps of Sweden Word List.
 * The last column is the year when the map or document was made.