In cooperation with the Department of Slavic Languages, Swedish Archive Information (SVAR) has scanned the entire Novgorod Occupation Archives 1611-1617, approx. 30,000 pages, and it is now available at SVAR's website http://www.svar.ra.se

Based on the appearance of the documents, the archives are divided into two series. Series I consists of books (141 items). These are mostly fair copies intended for central filing in Moscow. Here we will find such things as account books from state institutions, such as taverns, the public sauna, the mill, the law court and the Mint, as well as provision accounts, confiscation books and land grant books. A large group consists of inspection books upon which the taxation of the people was based.

Series II consists of rolls (368 items) of various lengths. If the documents in Series I are the finished product, Series II is the raw material for the books. Here we will find protocols from inspections and examinations of peasants, drafts of accounts and contracts of sale, etc. Series II also contains an extensive correspondence between the Novgorod authorities and bailiffs and under-secretaries travelling around the province. There are also a large number of petitions from the people to the authorities concerning a wide range of issues. It is thus in Series II that we will find the most information about the everyday life of the people.


The Swedish general Jakob De la Gardie had the archives removed from Novgorod after the conclusion of peace in 1617. The documents were of great value as reference material before the delimitation had been carried out and the peace had been properly regulated, and before a Swedish administration had been established in the newly conquered territories. The collection eventually ended up at the National Archives in Stockholm, where it was forgotten. Not until 1839 were the archives rediscovered. Since the end of the Second World War, they have been more and more widely used in research thanks to Sergej Dmitrievsky's typewritten catalogue from 1964. Today the bibliography comprises just over 80 titles, almost exclusively articles. A large monograph on Novogorod during the Time of Troubles was published in 2008, and much of the source material was collected from the Occupation Archives. Adrian Selin "Novgorodskoe obshchestvo v epokhu Smuty", Sankt Peterburg.

The work to create a comprehensive and systematic catalogue of the Occupation Archives was completed in 2009. The first part, which covers Series I, came out in 2005, and the second and concluding part came out in 2009. The second part covers Series II, which, because of its low availability, so far has only been used to a lesser extent by the scholars. (Elisabeth Löfstrand, Laila Nordquist "Accounts of an Occupied City. Catalogue of the Novgorod Occupation Archives". Part 1-2.)

The first part of the catalogue is also available in Russian translation and has been published on CD in Russia (Velikii Novgorod). There are also plans for a Russian translation of the second part.
Pdf versions can be downloaded here:
Accounts of an Occupied City. Part 1 (pdf)
Accounts of an Occupied City. Part 2 (pdf)

(svensk version)