arkiv.dk Portal to Danish Local and Regional Archives

Overview and History

arkiv.dk is the central online portal providing access to collections held by more than 580 Danish local history and town archives. The portal is operated by Arkibas ApS (Arkibas Ltd.), a company owned collectively by the Danish archives through the Association of Local History Archives (Sammenslutningen af Lokalarkiver). Arkibas ApS was established in 1987, and the first version of the underlying cataloguing software was launched in June 1989. The present version of Arkibas was deployed in November 2014, and the arkiv.dk public portal was launched in February 2015. The project received founding financial support from the A.P. Møller foundations.

Collections and Holdings

The portal provides access to more than 3.2 million catalogue records from local archives across Denmark, with approximately 20,000–25,000 new records added monthly. Holdings include archive records, historical photographs (more than two million, the majority digitized), newspaper clippings, drawings, film and sound recordings, and nearly 10,000 digitized maps and plans. Most material originates from private donors — individuals, societies, companies, or institutions — rather than from mandatory official records.

Notable Materials Related to Journalism and Media

Local newspaper clippings and press cuttings are among the commonly collected materials in the participating archives, making arkiv.dk a resource for researchers tracing local press history and coverage of community events across Denmark.

Access and Usage

All content on arkiv.dk is freely accessible to the public without registration. Users can search across all 580+ archives simultaneously or narrow results to specific archives, time periods, places, or document types. The portal is available in Danish and English. For materials not digitized, contact details for each local archive are provided at arkivvejviser.dk.