We all come from somewhere, some still live in the same place, while others have moved and may not have seen their hometown for a while. Whether you’ve moved or not, times have changed and it can be quite surprising to look at old photos from 10, 20, 50 or 100 years ago.
Thanks to the internet, we are always just a few clicks away from being able to step into the time machine and see what certain places looked like in the past.
1. Historical maps from Finn.no
If you’re not familiar with the historical maps from Finn.no, you’re in for a real treat. The marketplace service that is probably better known for buying and selling has a little treasure for us genealogists, the map service.
If you look at an area in their map service from afar, you won’t notice it, but if you zoom in closer to the ground, an extra menu item called “Historical” appears. Here you can view old satellite images, aerial photographs and historical maps for the area you are currently viewing.
How about using the service to get an overview of exactly where the old family farm was located?
2. Historypin
Historypin is based on Google Streetview. This Google service allows you to see many of the world’s streets from a human perspective (as opposed to a bird’s eye view). Here, older images are superimposed on the same image from Google Streetview so that you can fade in and out of the historical image and the newer one from Google Streetview.
3. Google streetview
When we mention that Historypin uses images from Google streetview, it is of course also worth mentioning that Google streetview can be a useful service for seeing what something looked like in the old days.
You may not get the oldest photos through the service, but a few months or 2-3 years back in time is also historically exciting.
Some streets have now also been photographed by Google at intervals of several years. This gives you the opportunity to choose whether you want to see the street as it looked in 2010 or 2014, for example.
4. Flashback.no
The Norwegian Forest and Landscape Institute is behind this service, which may not be familiar to many people. Unfortunately, flash is used to present the images, which means that if you’re using an iPhone or iPad, you’ll have to move to a PC to get any benefit from it.
Tilbakeblikk.no shows photos taken in exactly the same place every few years, ranging from a few years to tens of years. The service is divided up into counties, but even though there are only a few images from each county, it’s great fun to see how landscapes, buildings and people have changed.
