How it works
AI that reads centuries of Danish handwriting
Transkribus uses deep learning models trained on large volumes of historical Danish documents. The AI has learned to interpret the distinctive letterforms of gotisk håndskrift (Gothic cursive), the sharp angles of Fraktur print, and the transitional scripts that bridge old and modern Danish writing. It turns page images into editable, searchable text you can use immediately.
Handles gotisk håndskrift, Fraktur, and latinsk håndskrift across four centuries
300+ public models covering different scripts, periods, and document types
Works with phone photos, flatbed scans, or digitised microfilm
Genealogy & research
The records are online – the handwriting is the hard part
Danish records survive in remarkable depth: parish records (kirkebøger) go back to the 1600s, censuses (folketællinger) start in 1787, and millions of pages are free to view on Arkivalieronline. So your ancestor's record probably exists. The hard part is reading it. Transkribus removes that barrier.
Church records (kirkebøger) – baptisms, confirmations, marriages, burials, and arrival/departure lists
Census records (folketællinger) – household-by-household population counts from 1787 onward
Probate records (skifteprotokoller) – inventories and estate divisions
Military rolls (lægdsruller) – conscription and service records
Court records (tingbøger) – local and regional court proceedings
Tax records (skatteregnskaber) and land registers (jordebøger)
Beyond the demo
Process entire archival collections
The demo above handles a single page. The full Transkribus platform is built for larger-scale work: upload hundreds or thousands of scanned pages, run text recognition in batch, and search across everything you have transcribed. If the public models do not match your particular handwriting well enough, you can train a custom model on your own material.
Batch-process full volumes of kirkebøger or folketællinger at once
Full-text search across all your transcribed documents
Train a custom model tuned to one writer or document series
Export as TXT, DOCX, PDF, TEI-XML, or PAGE XML
What you can transcribe
Typical documents in old Danish handwriting
If you are researching Danish family history or working with Danish archives, you will encounter a wide range of handwritten material spanning roughly four hundred years. The script styles change significantly between periods, but Transkribus handles them all.
Kirkebøger – the backbone of Danish genealogy, recorded by parish priests since the mid-1600s
Folketællinger – Denmark's regular census records, offering snapshots of every household
Skifteprotokoller – probate records listing possessions and heirs at a person's death
Lægdsruller – military enrollment records tracking men eligible for conscription
Tingbøger – court records documenting disputes, property transactions, and local governance
Personal letters, estate inventories, ship logs, and trade guild records
Which script is it?
Can't read your Danish document? Here's what you're probably looking at.
A Danish church book from the 1700s looks nothing like a letter from the 1880s. Knowing which script you have also tells you roughly how old the document is:
Gotisk håndskrift (Gothic cursive) – angular, interconnected letters that look nothing like today's alphabet. Most Danish records from the 1500s to the mid-1800s are written in it.
Fraktur – the "broken" blackletter print in book pages, headings, and pre-printed forms, used in Denmark into the early 1900s
Kancelliskrift (chancery hand) – the formal, flourished script of government and legal documents
Latinsk håndskrift (Latin script) – the modern-style cursive that replaced Gothic writing during the 1800s. If your document looks almost readable, it's probably this.
Church hands – parish priests often mixed Gothic and Latin letters in the same register, which makes kirkebøger especially tricky
The technology
How does Danish handwriting recognition work?
Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR) uses neural networks to convert images of handwriting into machine-readable characters. For historical Danish, this is considerably harder than modern OCR because gotisk håndskrift uses letterforms that differ drastically from today's alphabet. The AI learns from thousands of transcribed examples to recognise each character in context, even when ink has faded, paper has yellowed, or the writer's hand was unsteady.
Deep learning models trained on transcribed Danish archival material
Automatic layout analysis separates columns, marginalia, and text blocks
Contextual language modelling improves accuracy for Danish vocabulary and place names
Handles damaged pages, ink bleed-through, and inconsistent handwriting
AI Models for Danish Handwriting
Browse public models trained on historical Danish documents – Gothic cursive, Fraktur, church records, and more.
Ready to read old Danish handwriting?
Create a free account to process unlimited documents, train custom models, and unlock the full platform. Not ready for an account? Read old handwriting for free first – no signup required.
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200M+Pages processed
500K+Users worldwide
300+Public AI models