Genealogy of the Russian North

Find the village your family came from.

We've spent years turning handwritten 19th- and early 20th-century parish registers from Karelia and the Russian North into a searchable archive. Search it below — if your ancestors are already in it, we'll help you build the rest of the tree.

What's new in the archive

See full history →

How it works

01
Search with what you remember

Family stories are rarely exact. A surname, a village, a year that's only approximately right — that's enough to start.

02
We check the original documents

Every record in our index comes from a parish register we've personally read and transcribed — never guessed by a machine.

03
We reconstruct your tree

Request a full investigation and we'll trace confirmed family connections across generations, citing the original archival document for every claim.

Why this costs less than traditional research

Genealogical research in Russian archives is usually slow and expensive because someone has to leaf through thousands of handwritten pages by hand for every single client. We've already digitized large parts of the Russian North's archives, and we keep expanding every week — so your research builds on work that's already done, instead of starting from zero.

Request a full investigation

Even if the search above found nothing yet — send us what you know. We're adding new archives constantly.