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TORA - mapping historical places

TORA consist of a geocoded register of historical settlement units in Sweden, and a linked open data service that connect historical sources and databases on the basis of geocoded settlements.

Updates

2020-09-10: Site created.

Partners and data sources

• Large-scale maps from the 17th century. About 15,000 geometrical maps from c. 1630-1700. The Swedish National Archives.
• Medieval written sources and 16th century cadastres (jordeböcker). All settlements identified and described in the standard work [Det medeltida Sverige (DMS)] (https://riksarkivet.se/utgivning-dms). The Swedish National Archives, [Medieval Sweden] (https://riksarkivet.se/medieval-sweden-dms).
• The illustrated topographical survey of Sweden – [Suecia antiqua et hodierna (Sweden past and present)] (https://suecia.kb.se). About 1,000 draughts, drawings and engravings of settlement in Sweden from the second half of the 17th century. [The National Library of Sweden] (https://www.kb.se).
• The database of manors in Sweden. About 3,500 manors in Sweden matched with spatial coordinates. [Svenska herrgårdar] (https://www.svenskaherrgardar.se).
• Place names and name evidences. Selection of data from the standard work [Sveriges ortnamn] (https://www.isof.se/om-oss/publikationer/digitaliserade-publikationer/sveriges-ortnamn-som-pdf.html). The Institute for Language and Folklore, [Department of Onomastics, Uppsala] (https://www.isof.se/om-oss/kontakt/namnarkivet-i-uppsala.html).

Services

TORA uses [Entryscape] (https://entryscape.com/en/) linked open data plattform by MetaSolutions, and [GeoServer] (http://geoserver.org) for geodata.

• TORA-map (demo): [https://toramaptest.riksarkivet.se] (https://toramaptest.riksarkivet.se)
• TORA-search (demo): https://data.riksarkivet.se/tora
• TORA-LOD, SPARQL Endpoint: https://tora.entryscape.net/snorql/
• Entrystore API: [https://entrystore.org/api/] (https://entrystore.org/api/)

Financiers

TORA has been established within a research project 2015-2019, funded by Kungl. Vitterhetsakademien and Riksbankens Jubileumsfond,and is maintained by the Swedish National Archives](https://riksarkivet.se).

Publications

Karsvall, Olof & Borin, Lars (2018). SDHK meets NER: Linking place names with medieval charters and historical maps. CEUR Workshop Proceedings, vol. 2084. Proceedings of the Digital Humanities in the Nordic Countries 3rd Conference Helsinki, Finland, March 7–9, 2018 (eds. Mäkelä E, Tolonen M & Tuominen J), University of Helsinki, Faculty of Arts, pp 38–55.

Karsvall, Olof (2019). Historical Settlement Units as Linked Open Data. [CEUR Workshop Proceedings, vol. 2364] (http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2364/24_paper.pdf). Proceedings of the Digital Humanities in the Nordic Countries 4th Conference Copenhagen, Denmark, March 5–8, 2019 (red. Navarretta C, Agirrezabal M & Maegaard B), University of Copenhagen, Faculty of Humanities, pp 259–269.

Lovén, Christian (2019). Referensverket Det medeltida Sverige - en lägesrapport. [Bebyggelsehistorisk tidskrift. 2019 (77)] (http://media.bebyggelsehistoria.org/pdf/BHT77_2019.pdf), pp. 85-96.

Documentation

To be added

Contact

We are looking for collaborations with individual researchers, research groups and institutions who deals with historical sources of various kind, or who work with settlement history, historical geography, place names, archeology, community planning, etc.

olof.karsvall [at] riksarkivet.se