The Historical Farm and People Registry database (Sögulegt mann- og bæjatal, SMB) was created by linking personal and farm names across censuses from 1703 to 1920. The project was carried out by Pétur Húni Björnsson at ad libitum ehf.
SMB was available in beta version from 2022 but was released in its first official version in January 2025 in collaboration with the Icelandic Electronic Research Infrastructure (IREI).
In the town census section, you can search for town names in all censuses from 1703 to 1920.
In the census section of the Registry, it is possible to search for personal names in individual censuses or in all censuses from 1703 to 1920 simultaneously. It is also possible to search by gender, marital status, or a person’s status on a farm as recorded in the censuses.
SMB is a research infrastructure that supports projects working with historical data related to individual people and locations.
Examples of projects that use SMB include:
- Kvennaspor: Revealing and Illuminating Women in Iceland’s Historical Landscape, led by Emily Lethbridge at the Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies and funded by the Icelandic Research Fund in 2023. This project uses SMB as a research infrastructure to connect the data it is based on.
- Archive Arnamagnæana, led by Þórunn Sigurðardóttir at the Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies. The project received a grant of 200 million ISK from the A.P. Møller og Hustru Chastine Mc-Kinney Møllers Fond til almene Formaal in 2023. See more in a news report from the Árni Magnússon Institute. In this project, SMB serves as a meta-infrastructure, meaning it is used to build a specialised research infrastructure for medieval Icelandic charters. The project also utilises Transkribus for automated reading of handwritten documents, and Icelandic models for Transkribus were developed within MSHL.
The Icelandic Institute of Computer Science conducted a pilot project for MSHL on automatic matching of personal names between censuses. The results of the project are summarised in the report Automatic Processing of Icelandic Historical Farm & People Registry 1703 to 1920, which was published in September 2024. The results of the project were used to improve the coverage of personal names in the database.
Technical report from the Icelandic Institute of Computer Science:
News and events:
- Sögulegt mann- og bæjatal. Interview with Pétur Huni Björnsson in Hugvarpur, the Podcast of the School of Humanities at the University of Iceland, March 21, 2025.
- Að smala köttum. Um smíði og hagnýtingu Sögulegs mann- og bæjatals, presentation at Þjóðskjalasafn, November 14, 2024.
- Historical Farm and People Registry – Turning static list entries into network nodes, poster at the DHNB conference, May 30, 2024.
- Historical Farm and People Registry in Iceland – Turning static list entries into network nodes, presentation at Friday Frontiers at DARIAH, April 5, 2024.
- Manntalsgögn, tengdir gagnabankar og sögulegar rannsóknir, February 29, 2024.
- Symposium on CDHA projects, May 22, 2023.
- Workshop on SMB, March 28, 2023.
The project was funded by the Infrastructure Fund.
