Riksarkivet Not Accessible from United States

For years, historians and family researchers in the United States have used the Digital Research Room of Riksarkivet, the Swedish National Archives. The online portal provides access to a vast collection of parish registers, censuses, estate inventories, and other primary records essential to tracing Swedish ancestry.

Sometime in late 2025 — likely November or December — that access abruptly disappeared for American users.

Instead of the familiar search interface, visitors encountered a simple and frustrating browser notice: “This site can’t be reached.” The outage quickly became a topic of conversation across genealogy forums and social media groups, where researchers began comparing notes and asking the same question: What happened to Riksarkivet?

I contacted the archives directly by email to ask whether they were aware of the problem and if access from the United States might soon be restored. A representative confirmed that the digital publishing team knows about the issue. However, no timetable has been provided. Software engineers are working on a solution, but the archives could not say when American users will again have direct access.

In the meantime, researchers have been sharing a workaround.

Several U.S.–based genealogists report that the site can still be reached by using a virtual private network (VPN) or a browser extension that changes the user’s apparent geographic location. By connecting through another country — commonly Denmark, Norway, or Finland — the digital research room becomes accessible again.

Setting up the workaround is straightforward: create an account with a VPN provider, activate the connection, select a Nordic country as the server location, and then visit the Riksarkivet website. Under those conditions, the database loads normally.

Numerous services offer this capability, including ExpressVPN, NordVPN, IPVanish, and Proton VPN among others. Some free versions are available, though they often have limited features or slower connections. Many researchers instead opt for low-cost monthly subscription.

For now, the VPN solution has allowed researchers to continue their work, but it is clearly a temporary measure. Researchers on both sides of the Atlantic are hoping the technical team at Riksarkivet will soon restore normal international access to one of the most important resources for Swedish family history.