The International Romani Day will be celebrated on the 8th of April. In the course of this event, the National Library of Finland is proud to release the Zingarica online collection. The material has been digitized within the Minority Languages Project, and it is funded by Kone Foundation.

The Zingarica collection consists the early written manuscripts and prints in various Romani languages, spoken mostly in the Nordic and Baltic countries and former Soviet Union. The collection contains, for example, the handwritten writing of Christfrid Ganander, Undersökning om De så kallade TATTARE eller Zigeuner, Cingari, Bohemiens, Deras härkomst, Lefnadssätt, språk m.m. Samt om, när och hwarest några satt sig ner i Swerige? from the year 1781, Adam Lindh’s ABC book, Aapis liin romane dsibbah, from 1893, notes of Paul Ariste on Romani language and close to 200 monographs in Romani languages, published in former Soviet Union in the 1920s and the 1930s.

The material has been digitized and published in co-operation with the National Library of Sweden, the National Library of Russia, the Estonian Literary Museum, Swedish National Archives and the Archives of the National Board of Antiquity in Finland.

The material is freely available to the public.

Yours &c.,
Jussi-Pekka Hakkarainen

Project Manager
National Library of Finland
Minority Languages Project
jussi-pekka.hakkarainen@helsinki.fi