The Gothic syllabus

Here is a study on the Gothic handwriting found in older Norwegian Church records.

Reading old handwritten records can be hard. Some time ago I realized that I needed to get better at this. One of the big obstacles is the Gothic lettering that was used up until the late 1800s.

I ventured into a little study of Gothic writing and shared my experience in a number of articles here on the blog. While I am still far from an expert, I see that spending a little time with the Gothic letters and practice, I am little by little getting better at reading this handwriting.

As I am planning to share with you some sources that require reading the actual scanned records, I invite you to join me in the study of Gothic handwriting.

• How to read Gothic handwriting – 1 A little bit on the background of Gothic lettering.
• Gothic handwriting – 2 The Gothic alphabet as it is found in the records.
• How to read Gothic handwriting – 3  Grouping letters together and looking at differences and similarities.
• How to read Gothic handwriting – 4 – Letters to Words Putting the letters together to words often found in records.
• How to read Gothic handwriting – 5 Some Things to observe when reading handwritten records.

I followed up with two articles on specific letters

• The Gothic letters “i” and “j”
• Gothic letters h, s and f

I hope this inspires you to take a look at the Gothic lettering. The only way to get better at reading these records is to practice. If you are part of genealogy discussion groups, it can be valuable to follow the postings that ask for help transcribing records. I learn a lot from reading these.