A new year is awaiting...

With 2010 well behind us, a new year - 2011 - is awaiting. Exciting! First of all I would like to wish you all a Happy New Year! On the first day of the new year, it seems fitting to make a few reflections about the old year and what we can expect of the new year, with a special focus on my blog.

In 2010 I wrote as many as 175 blog articles, which means that I on average wrote one article every second day, far more than I had planned in advance. I would have been happy with 1 or 2 articles a week. Family life, my work at the Lovdata Foundation, committee work (the Norwegian Genealogical Society), my website and other hobbies are all factors that set limitations on my work with this blog. But I think it is great fun to work on it, and obviously the blog won over my website Hoelseth.com during 2010. I still have many pages that have to be moved from my old Geocities website to my "new" domain. But one day... I guess one of my new year's resolutions would be to find a better balance between working on my blog and my website.

The blog articles are very different in content and form. Now and then I find the time to write "in depth" articles, dealing more fully with a newsworthy topic, like for instance the royal wedding in Stockholm in June 2010 or the publishing of Bernadotteättlingar - The Bernadotte Descendants. Other times I restrict myself to write a few lines about a news item, as when the wedding date for Prince William and Kate Middleton was made public. And there are times I just post a link to other articles that I hope the readers will find interesting as well, as for instance Ted Sorensen's obituary in The Daily Telegraph. Because of my other commitments, it is not always possible to write "news articles" as often as I could wish, which explains why my less "news-breaking" ("timeless") blog articles seems to dominate. My photo articles are good examples of this. There will probably be more "timeless" articles in the future, like photos from Østmarka in Oslo or from the many cemeteries I visit from time to time.

I feel that I have found a nice balance between the various forms of articles on my blog. Another matter is how relevant or successful my blog is, but I will leave comments on this to my readers. I was pleased, however, when the number of page views passed 30.000 just before Christmas. It is interesting to note that most of the blog readers come from the United States (10.067 page views as of today), while Norway come second with 2.568, and Canada closely behind with 2.501 page views.

So, which articles were most popular during 2010? Here is the list:

1. 25.07.2010: Countess Ruth of Rosenborg has died (942 page views)
2. 16.11.2010: UK: Prince William of Wales and Kate Middleton engaged to marry (658)
3. 05.08.2010: Prince Carlos Hugo of Bourbon-Parma seriously ill (450)
4. 05.07.2010: Prenuptial agreement between Crown Princess Victoria and Daniel Westling (353)
5. 24.08.2010: Bernadotteättlingar - The Bernadotte Descendants (330)
6. 17.11.2010: More on Kate Middleton's ancestry (328)
7. 13.11.2010: William A. Reitwiesner (1954-2010) (284)
8. 07.08.2010: Royal twins expected in Denmark (266)
9. 21.12.2010: UK: Zara Phillips and Mike Tindall engaged to be married (229)
10. 16.09.2010: Prince Friedrich Wilhelm of Hohenzollern has died (217)

I am a bit surprised that the sad news of the death of Countess Ruth of Rosenborg still tops the list, as it was for the most part just a translation of a very short Politiken/Ritzau article. That there is a great interest in the British royal family is less surprising. Ted Rosvall's genealogy publication Bernadotteättlingar - The Bernadotte Descendants deserves all the attention it has got, but I thought the follow-up article in September would have got more "hits". So, which articles have been most fun to work with? Difficult to say. From Gegerfelt to Shetelig and Countess Aagot von Ostheim, née Midling are two possibilities. The latter will get a follow-up later on, I promise! Genealogy is one of my greatest interests, which explains my many photo articles from the cemeteries I have visited. It is difficult to top the pride and happiness I felt when I posted the news of my daughter Sigrid's birth on 17 July 2010, though. What a great joy she has brought to our lives!

Concerning royalty, there are many events to look forward to in 2011. Crown Princess Mary of Denmark will give birth to twins some time in January. And two major royal weddings will take place - Prince William of Wales will marry Kate Middleton on 29 April, while Prince Albert II of Monaco will formalize his relationship with Charlène Wittstock in July. The wedding dates for the latter seem to have changed once again, though. The civil ceremony will according to the official website now take place on 1 July 2011, while the happy couple will get God's blessings the day after.

Most pages of 2011 are still blank. It is up to us all to fill them out and make the best of it!

Updated on Saturday 1 january 2011 at 19.30 (statistics corrected!).

Postscript 4 January 2011: The numbers of page views mentioned above are from the period of August 2009 until 1 January 2011. Corrected on 8 January 2012 at 21.50 (I started my blog in August 2009, so it is irrelevant that Blogspot.com could offer page views statistics from May 2009. It is a bit strange that I wrote "from the period of May 2010...", though, but worse mistakes can be made, I guess...)