Dorte Kofoed
Dorte Kofoed has written the book Gå på rov i dit familietræ, which is the first volume in the series Forgotten Danes. It is a book about everything from fascinating DNA-test to the more traditional genealogy with church records.
Genealogy research is therapeutic in many ways and can provide greater understanding of one's family. What has poverty meant in the family? What has a premature death meant for later generations, and why did several brothers end up in a mental hospital?
Dorte loves genealogy, and it's the best hobby she's ever had. She uses everything from her grandmother's old letters to cozy lunches with unknown relatives. As she says: "relatives are friends you have not yet met." For example she has helped her Swedish relative Alf to find his unknown and deceased grandfather through DNA.
Dorte's best trip was to the great great grandfather's America
Dorte looks for family stories in everything from church records, censuses and midwife records. The results of genealogy research can also turn into a destination where you visit brand new family members. It did for Dorte.
For the past 10 years, she has found family members around the world. In 2017, Dorte traveled to the wooden cabin that her great great grandfather moved to in Utah in 1882. It is a 12 sqm house. It was a time travel of 150 years back in time where she came close to their incredible lives.
Dorte has learned even more about her family by traveling to the United States. Today she got to know 25-30 family members over there. And had it not been for the corona, she would have gathered them on Bornholm last year.
One thing is to read about your ancestors in church books, letters and see photographs. But experiencing their house and country yielded something completely different. It has been a huge shift to move from a poor Bornholm fishing village to the wild west. Genealogy can open up a whole new world. At least it did for Dorte.
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