Assessing the Educational Elite: Evaluating the Danish and Norwegian High School Yearbook Tradition

We evaluate Scandinavian graduate biographies – compiled by members of the educational elite – for their value as historical sources. These biographies, published in Denmark and Norway from the early nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, offer detailed individual-level data on education, careers and social mobility. While frequently used for tracing individual life histories, their broader utility as systematic historical data has remained underexplored. Applying source criticism, we evaluate their meaningfulness, authenticity, representativeness and credibility. We find that these biographies are largely reliable, with high response rates and minimal discrepancies when cross-checked with independent sources. However, editorial bias is evident in select cases, particularly in the post-war treatment of Nazi-affiliated graduates. Despite these limitations, the biographies represent a valuable dataset for studies on education, elite formation and economic development. Their digitisation will further enhance their potential for quantitative historical research.