Project Runeberg () is a digital cultural archive initiative that publishes free electronic versions of books significant to the culture and history of the

Nordic countries The Nordic countries (also known as the Nordics or ''Norden''; ) are a geographical and cultural region in Northern Europe, as well as the Arctic Ocean, Arctic and Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic oceans. It includes the sovereign states of Denm ...

. Patterned after

Project Gutenberg Project Gutenberg (PG) is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, as well as to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks." It was founded in 1971 by American writer Michael S. Hart and is the oldest digital li ...

, it was founded by Lars Aronsson and colleagues at

Linköping University Linköping University (LiU; ) is a public university, public research university based in Linköping, Sweden. Originally established in 1969, it was granted full university status in 1975 and is one of Sweden's largest academic institutions. T ...

and began archiving Nordic-language literature in December 1992. As of 2015 it had accomplished digitization to provide graphical facsimiles of old works such as the '' Nordisk familjebok'', and had accomplished, in whole or in part, the text extractions and copyediting of these as well as esteemed Latin works and English translations from Nordic authors, and sheet music and other texts of cultural interest.

Nature and history

Project Runeberg is a digital cultural archive initiative patterned after the English-language cultural initiative,

; it was founded by Lars Aronsson and colleagues at

, especially within the university group Lysator (see below), with the aim of publishing free electronic versions of books significant to the culture and history of the

.Ingemar Breithel, Ed., 2015, "Posten: Projekt Runeberg" 'in Swedish''; Engl., "Entry: Project Runeberg" at ''

Nationalencyklopedin (; "The National Encyclopedia" in English), abbreviated NE, is a comprehensive contemporary Swedish-language encyclopedia with several hundred thousand articles. It is available both online and via a printed version. History The project was ...

'' (online encyclopedia), se

retrieved 22 April 2015. Marcus Boldemann, 2003, ""Kultur: Ugglan" hoar gratis på nätet" 'in Swedish''; Engl., Culture: "'The owl' hoots for free online" ''

Dagens Nyheter (, ), abbreviated ''DN'', is a daily newspaper in Sweden. It is published in Stockholm and aspires to full national and international coverage, and is widely considered Sweden's newspaper of record A newspaper of record is a major nationa ...

'' (online), 23 April 2003, se

Retrieved 22 April 2015. The Project began archiving its first Nordic-language literature pieces (parts of the '' The Tales of Ensign Stål, Fänrik Ståls Sägner'', of Nordic dictionaries and of a Bible from 1917) in December 1992.

Name

In its naming, a moniker similar to "Gutenberg" was desired. The Project was thereby given the name of

Finland Finland, officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It borders Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of Bothnia to the west and the Gulf of Finland to the south, ...

's national poet Johan Ludvig Runeberg, and so contained a further allusion based on the meanings of its component parts — ''

Rune Runes are the letters in a set of related alphabets, known as runic rows, runic alphabets or futharks (also, see '' futhark'' vs ''runic alphabet''), native to the Germanic peoples. Runes were primarily used to represent a sound value (a ...

'' (letter in Runic script) and '' berg'' (mountain) — so that in most Nordic languages it can be translated loosely as "mountain of letters".

Achievements

The Project began archiving Nordic-language literature in December 1992. As of 2015 it had accomplished digitization to provide graphical facsimiles of old works such as the '' Nordisk familjebok'', and had accomplished, in whole or in part, the text extractions and copyediting of these as well as esteemed Latin works and English translations from Nordic authors – e.g., Carl August Hagberg's interpretations of Shakespeare's plays – and sheet music and other texts of cultural interest.

Technology

By 2001, technology – image scanning and

optical character recognition Optical character recognition or optical character reader (OCR) is the electronics, electronic or machine, mechanical conversion of images of typed, handwritten or printed text into machine-encoded text, whether from a scanned document, a photo ...

techniques – had improved enough to allow full digitization and text extraction of important target texts, e.g., of both print editions of the '' Nordisk familjebok'' (45,000 pages). Project Runeberg is hosted by an academic computer group, Lysator, at

, in

Linköping Linköping ( , ) is a city in southern Sweden, with around 167,000 inhabitants as of 2024. It is the seat of Linköping Municipality and the capital of Östergötland County. Linköping is also the episcopal see of the Diocese of Linköping (Chu ...

in southern

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and north, and Finland to the east. At , Sweden is the largest Nordic count ...

References

External links