In 2004 there was a double homicide in a Swedish town called Linköping, a small amount of DNA was found at the scene. Despite a largescale investigation, this murder would go unsolved for 16 years. In 2020 a Swedish genealogist was hired by the Swedish police and through an American commercial DNA database he was able to find the man that had gone unfound for so long. This was made possible through a change of Swedish laws in connection with the European Union’s Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a regulation that protect the integrity of the personal data of Europeans. We have investigated how the evolution of these two legal frameworks coincides with each other, making this rather paradoxical situation possible. We have also investigated how this rather invasive technology is viewed by Swedish genealogists. These websites with their immense databases, and the technological developments in DNA technology, have changed genealogy. But they have also changed the genealogist, the foremost user of the archives today. We wanted to find out how.The investigation was conducted on three analytical levels: the legal/political, the medial and the individual level. On the legal/political level the material consists of legal texts, transcribed protocols from the Swedish Riksdag, but also two different reports on the legal status of using genetic genealogy as a method of criminal investigation. On the medial level the material consists of commercials for genealogy databases, documentaries and talk shows concerning the investigation of the murder in Linköping. On the individual level the material consists of surveys and interviews with genealogists. Follow us as we alongside police and genetic genealogists follow the bloodlines running through the archives. This is a two years master's thesis in Archival science.

The purpose of this study is to understand what future role archive institutions have for genealogists as a result of genetic ancestry testing. To answer the purpose of this study, three additional research questions have been given. The research questions are as follows (1) what type of information genealogists search for when using genetic ancestry testing (2) what kind of information genealogists are able to retrieve by performing a genetic ancestry test (3) how the archive institutions perceive genealogists who perform genetic ancestry testing. Three different methods have been used to retrieve relevant source material. The methods used are netnography, introspective action research and interviews. The source material has been retrieved by analysing three different discussion forums, interviewing representatives of archive institutions as well as performing genetic ancestry testing ourselves. The theories used in the analyses is based on the theoretical framework established by Martin Saar that involves three dimensions of genealogy, and a secondary framework based on Lisa M. Givens and Donald O. Case’s particular understanding of information behaviour, as well as information seeking. The results of the study have enabled us to conclude three different future scenarios on how the archive institution’s role for genealogists will change. The first conclusion is that the DNA-services will slowly phase out the primary role archives play for the genealogists today. Instead, the commercial DNA-services will become the primary source of information. The second conclusion is that the definition of “value” in regard to the material generated by a genealogist will change, and their research will in the future be seen as valuable by the archive institutions. The third and final conclusion is that the archive institutions will begin to facilitate information and knowledge regarding different aspects of genetic ancestry testing, due to demand of archival users. This is a two-year master’s thesis in Archival Science.