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All vital records in Denmark—births, baptisms, confirmations, marriages, deaths, and burials—are registed in parish registers (or church books). Unlike, for example, in England where a national civil registration began in 1837, there has never been a national registration of persons, and all vital records have always been recorded locally in each parish or by each religious community. In the Danish State Church entries are recorded by the local vicar with assistance from the parish clerk, and are therefore seperate for each of the about 2200 parishes.
 The Early Parish Registers  The system of parish registration of birth, baptisms, marriages, deaths, and burials began in Hjortkær Parish towards the end of the 1500s. The earliest preserved parish register from a city is Holmens Parish, Copenhagen, which began in 1619. Only a minority of parishes have registers that go back that far, as many registers before 1814 have been lost due to fires, rodents, inadequate storage facilities or carelessness.The entries in the early parish registers are often disappointingly sparse. A record may, for example, give a date of a baptism and the name of child and father but leave out, for the family historian, vital information such as a date of birth or name of the mother. The style of entries varies, however, from parish to parish and over time in the same parish. All parish reigisters have handwritten entries, which in some cases are very difficult to read. Especially in earlier times, the parish registers are far from straightforward, so it is nessessary for the researcher to have a basic knowledge of old Danish handwriting.
Standardized entries after 1814 Research at the Danish Archives The parish registers, containing all vital records, are stored at the Provincial Archives concerning the specific area that they serve. These are available for study up to appr. 1950 on microfilm or in orginal.
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Rank
Aabenraa
Vital Records 
