Photographs and copies of materials

You can take photos of public documents stored in the National Archives. 

You can also take photographs of most of our restricted materials for your own use if you have a valid access right to the material.

Please remember that images of restricted materials may not be shared with other people or distributed online, for example. 

Do not use flash or otherwise disturb other customers when photographing. Remember to keep your camera silent.

You can also order copies of our materials via our  information request service. Information requests are subject to a fee in accordance with the National Archives price list.

Please note that you cannot copy digital materials from the National Archives’ customer computers to your own storage medium. The use of USB memory cards and sticks is technically prevented to ensure information security. 

You can photograph materials, including most restricted materials, by taking individual photographs of the customer computer screen. Materials that you are not allowed to photograph at all are listed below in the Materials that you are not allowed to photograph section. 

You can also order copies of restricted digital materials. Place your order in Astia or contact our registry office. Our services are subject to a fee in accordance with the National Archives price list.

Materials that you are not allowed to photograph

  • Church registers younger than a hundred years and vehicle register data included in the archive of the Finnish Vehicle Administration (subseries of the Bd and Ta series). You can photograph data from other personal data files, such as census lists, that are less than a hundred years old for your own use, provided you do not photograph the data file as a whole.
  • Archive materials transferred to the National Archives’ Astia service based on the archive cooperation agreements between the National Archives and various Russian archives. No copies are available of these.
  • Archive materials transferred to the National Archives’ Astia service based on an archive cooperation agreement between the National Archives and the National Archive of Sweden (tax rolls of Tornio and Kemi Lapland from 1702–1809).
  • Documents contained in private archives, the photography of which is expressly prohibited in the handover agreement.
  • •    Copyrighted document.