Abstract

History as business – genealogy from hobby to multibillion businesses

During the last decades a new trend has emerged: history has become a commodity at a booming maket. Historical documentaries, podcasts, historical novels, and new historical magazines have become top-sellers. Events like historical markets, festivals and historical role-plays for e.g. Vikings have emerged, and an annual History Fair, has become a huge success. The interest in history is not limited to new forms and new media. An old form like the history museums have on average doubled the number of visitors, durring the last two decades despite a general increase in the average fare. History has thus become popular and sold as goods and traded at markets. In contrast to many of the other sectors where history is produced and circulated like the educational system or universities are formally trained historians not the only or dominant players in this market for history. The hypothesis is that the market for history is a part of a larger identitymarket, where historical products are bought and consumed for identity creation. The empirical case, which will be the core of the paper we be genealogy. Until around 2000, genealogy was a hobby for some minor societies and individuals. Today it has become a huge market where the three largest companies - Ancestry, 23andME, and MyHeritage - have an estimated value of 15 billion USD. In the paper, we will follow the entrepreneurs who saw the market and created the companies, as well as the consumers.