Another Heraldic Website to Know

As part my on-going effort to keep you informed of websites of heraldic interest and on-line armorials and so on, I recently saw a short item (dated two years ago!  Well, I can’t keep up with everything!) about The National Archives of Finland updating its Europeana Heraldica database.  That article can be found at http://www.arkisto.fi/news/775/151/The-National-Archives-updates-the-Europeana-Heraldica-database

The Europeana Heraldica database is a compilation of the municipal coats of arms of Finland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, and other states – both historical and in official use currently.  It includes more than 2,200 civic coats of arms (cities, provinces, regions) and over 1,000 wax and paper seals. The oldest seal is from 1309 and the most recent from 2009, so there’s a good range of examples to look up.

All of the arms can be searched by keywords categorized in terms of heraldic concepts, including the division of the shield, the colors of the coat of arms, and so on.  For example, the keyword "lion" returns 40 coats of arms from four countries. Coats of arms can also be searched as a text search according to the name of the possessor.

The database can be searched in 13 languages, so no one has the excuse of being unable to read Finnish (or Italian, or Dutch, or Polish, or …).

Anyway, I thought it an interesting website, and wanted to share it with you.  The English-language entry page for the database can be found on-line at http://extranet.narc.fi/heraldica/?kieli=en

Enjoy!