The archive for St. Jørgen’s Hospital
The archive contains documentation about most aspects of the running of the hospital, from financial accounts to patient records. Most of what is preserved dates from after the city fire of 1702.
The archive for Lungegård Hospital
In addition to accounts records and documents relating to the running of the hospital, there is a considerable amount of documentation about patients, mainly in the form of application records, admission and discharge records, and medical records.
The archive for Pleiestiftelsen
In addition to accounting, administrative and patient records, the archive contains inventory lists, animal testing records, library records and weather observation records. Read more
The archive for the Chief Medical Officer
A large part of the archive comprises the many reports sent to the Chief Medical Officer from the different district medical officers in Norway. They would report annually on the number of people who were affected byh leprosy in their district.
UNESCO Memory of the World
UNESCO’s Memory of the World programme was established in 1992. It focuses on texts, collections and archives that have a significance that transcends time, space and cultural context. As of May 2023, 494 archives, documents and other collections from a range of different countries and peoples are represented on the list. The Leprosy Archives in Bergen is one of those collections, and was the second Norwegian entry in the register, after Henrik Ibsen’s manuscript for ‘A Doll’s House’. Other Norwegian records and documents on the list are Sophus Tromholt’s photo collection, Thor Heyerdal’s archives, the Castberg Child Laws and the archives from Roald Amundsen’s South Pole expedition, 1910–1912.
The main aim of the programme is to contribute to the preservation of documentary heritage, to encourage universal access to the archives, and to raise awareness of the world’s documentary heritage as an important part of our common cultural heritage. The primary focus is on democratising the archives by securing access to them. Parts of the leprosy archives can be accessed on the Digital Archives website. You will also find examples of what these archives contain and the stories they tell on our own website.
Correspondence journals and copybooks
Journals and copybooks are key documents that tell us about the letters and communication to and from the hospitals. Such records are found in all of the archives.
Accounting records
The accounting documents not only tell us about the activities of the hospitals’ and those associated with it, about income and expenses, but also about how they chose to use the funds at their disposal.
School records
Numerous children and young people lived in the leprosy hospitals, and the records preserved from the Pleiestiftelsen and Lungegård hospitals show that they had their own schools for children.