
''Nordisk familjebok'' (, "Nordic Family Book") is a
Swedish
Swedish or ' may refer to:
Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically:
* Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland
** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...
encyclopedia that was published in print from between 1876 and 1993,
and that is now fully available in digital form via
Project Runeberg at
Linköping University. Despite their considerable age and relative obsolescence, the public domain editions of the encyclopedia remain important reference works in Finland, especially on
Finnish Wikipedia.
History
First edition

''Nordisk familjebok'' began when
Halmstad publisher hired an editor, linguist , in 1874 to publish a six-volume encyclopedia. Linder drew up a plan for the work, designed the editorial team and created a large circle of experts and literary figures, who submitted article proposals and wrote and reviewed them. Under Linder's direction, the articles were then edited to make them as formal, consistent and accurate as possible. Much attention was paid to Nordic subjects, mainly Swedish and Finnish, where sources and models were often lacking, so extensive and time-consuming pioneering work had to be done. As a result, the earlier plan for the scope and publication period of the work was soon abandoned.
The first edition of ''Nordisk familjebok'' was published in 20 volumes between 1876 and 1899, and is known as the "Idun edition" because it bears a picture of
Idun, the
Norse mythologic goddess of spring and rejuvenation, on its cover.
This was published over almost a quarter of a century, and particularly the first ten volumes contain material which are not seen in later editions. A good example of this is found in the end of the
Berlin
Berlin is Capital of Germany, the capital and largest city of Germany, both by area and List of cities in Germany by population, by population. Its more than 3.85 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European U ...
article (which is included in the second volume, from 187