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. You will see 3 search fields on the left side of the screen, and down below the button ”Sök”. It is easier to use the Advanced Search options. To do this, click on the link Avancerad sökning

3. Make sure the Arkiv:* field is: Lantmäterimyndigheternas arkiv Select this from the drop down list if needed.

4. Choose a Län:* (County) from the drop down list. For example: Södermanland län or Malmöhus län. If you're not sure of the County name see a list at: Counties of Sweden

5. Click on the button Socken/Arkivserie to sort by Socken (parish) instead of Kommun

6. Choose a Socken (parish) from the dropdown list Socken /Arkivserie:*

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


 * Traktnamn is the region name.
 * Årtal från is the year you want to start the search. It must be greater than 1599.
 * Årtal till is the year you want to end the search. It must be less than 1929.
 * Åtgärd is the type of map you want. For help with translation see the Historical Maps of Sweden Word List.

8. Then click on the button Sök

9. You will see a list from the search results 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.

To navigate through this list of search results: You can click on the numbers below to select the right page, or click on Nästa (Next), Sista (Last), Föregående (Previous) or Första (First) to move quickly through the list.