HistorieLab

What HistorieLab does

HistorieLab (legally known as Nationalt Videncenter for Historie- og Kulturarvsformidling) is a Danish non-profit national knowledge center headquartered in Jelling, Denmark, within the UNESCO World Heritage-listed Jelling Monument area. Founded in 2014 and organizationally embedded within UCL Erhvervsakademi og Professionshøjskole, it develops research-based tools, methods, and teaching materials to enhance history and cultural heritage education in Danish schools and society. Its core products include a free digital source bank (Kildebank) co-developed with Rigsarkivet (the Danish National Archives), structured curriculum-aligned teaching courses for grades 3–9 and upper secondary (gymnasium/STX/HTX), the peer-reviewed RADAR history-didactics journal, immersive camp school (lejrskole) programs at the Jelling site, and the Dannelsesbroen cooperation with Vejle Municipality covering democratic, digital, and cultural education.

The center serves Danish educators, primary and secondary students, teacher-education students at UCL, and municipal partners. Distribution is entirely self-serve and free of charge through historielab.dk, with no registration, subscription, or paid features. Content is published across topics spanning Viking Age daily life, WWII occupation, Holocaust, slavery, epidemics, and sensitive/contested history, with curriculum alignment to Danish national standards (Fælles Mål). Marketing occurs via organic content channels — website blog, email newsletter, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn — alongside conference participation and professional educator networks. International visibility is supported through the Erasmus+ funded MONCHAL 'Contested Histories' research project.

HistorieLab operates on a non-commercial, publicly funded institutional model under UCL. Revenue derives from Danish public-sector education funding, institutional hosting at UCL, and project-based grants (e.g., Erasmus+) rather than product sales. The organization employs approximately 16 named staff — predominantly credentialed academics (PhDs and associate professors) with two designated Faglig ledere (professional leaders), plus communications, administrative, and student-assistant roles. All operations are domestic (Denmark), with ~16 named staff, ~500+ teaching resources in the catalog, and a published 2026-2029 strategic plan guiding forward program development.

Name

HistorieLab

Legal name

HistorieLab

Website

https://historielab.dk

Company type

Private

Founded year

2014

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

11–50 employees

Short description

HistorieLab is a Danish publicly funded national knowledge center, affiliated with UCL Erhvervsakademi og Professionshøjskole, that develops free research-based history and cultural heritage teaching materials, source banks, and the RADAR didactics journal for Danish primary, secondary, and upper-secondary schools.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

History and Cultural Heritage Education Services

NAICS

Libraries and Archives (51921)

SIC

Services-Educational Services (8200)

akta.pro primary industry

Open Educational Resources (OER) & Curriculum Repositories (EDAFACAJ)

Keywords

• History education resources
• Cultural heritage teaching
• Educational source materials
• History didactics research
• Teacher professional development

Headquarters

HQ city

Jelling

HQ country

Denmark

HQ region

Europe

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Services

Cost components

Personnel, Operations, Technology or R&D, Marketing or Sales, Infrastructure

Revenue model

1. Public Funding / Institutional Grants: HistorieLab is a nationally funded knowledge center affiliated with UCL Erhvervsakademi og Professionshøjskole (UCL University College). It operates as a publicly funded institution and provides all educational materials free of charge to teachers and schools. Revenue is derived from institutional funding rather than product sales.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion1 record

Distribution channels3 records

Marketing channels5 records

Core offering

HistorieLab develops and distributes free, research-based teaching materials, primary historical source collections, structured teaching courses, and a peer-reviewed academic journal for Danish history and cultural heritage education. It serves teachers and students across Danish primary, lower secondary, and upper secondary schools, and delivers on-site camp school programs at the UNESCO-listed Jelling Monument area. All offerings are provided at no cost as part of its role as a publicly funded national knowledge center affiliated with UCL Erhvervsakademi og Professionshøjskole.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• RADAR: Historiedidaktisk tidsskrift (History Didactic Journal) - a peer-reviewed journal published by HistorieLab covering research on history teaching and didactics.
• Dannelsesbroen

Products and services

• Kildebank (Source Bank) A free digital archive of primary historical sources organized by themes (e.g., slavery and the West Indies, witchcraft, the Reunion, epidemics, childhood life, WWII), with teaching guides and source-critical exercises for Danish history and social studies classrooms. Developed in collaboration with Rigsarkivet (Danish National Archives) for teachers and students in Danish schools.
• RADAR – Historiedidaktisk Tidsskrift A peer-reviewed academic journal covering research on history teaching methodology, sensitive history, digital literacy, and heritage education. Published by HistorieLab and freely accessible to researchers, teacher educators, and history didactics professionals.
• Lejrskole i Jelling (Camp School at Jelling) An on-site multi-day camp school program delivering immersive, activity-based Viking Age learning experiences (cooking, crafts, rune hunts, warrior training, mythology storytelling) for Danish school groups at the Jelling Monument UNESCO World Heritage area. Delivered by HistorieLab staff and UCL student teachers.
• Undervisningsforløb (Structured Teaching Courses) A library of free structured teaching courses organized by grade level (3-4, 5-6, 7-9, and upper secondary) covering historical events and themes such as sustainability, the Reformation, slavery, contested histories, and Danish literature. Designed for direct classroom use by teachers in Danish schools.
• Veje i Krig (Roads to War) A dedicated WWII educational resource following seven young Danes through the German occupation, covering collaboration, resistance, illegal press, escape assistance, and the Holocaust. Includes source-critical materials, historical themes, and profiles. Co-developed with Rigsarkivet (Danish National Archives) for Danish school use.
• Lærerudvikling (Teacher Professional Development) Professional development programs for Danish history and social studies teachers, including conferences, workshops, and training events (lærerudvikling) on history didactics, source criticism, and pedagogical methods for teaching sensitive and contested history.
• Dannelsesbroen (The Bildung Bridge) A strategic partnership program with Vejle Municipality delivering children's and young people's democratic, digital, and cultural education (Børn og unges demokratiske, digitale og kulturelle dannelse), heritage education at child height (Kulturarv i børnehøjde), and history as a growth engine (Historien som vækstmotor).

Quantifiable outcome

• Hundreds of free teaching resources covering grades 3-9 and upper secondary across history, social studies, and Danish language

Named customers4 records

Segments4 records

Ideal customer profiles3 records

Technology focussed No

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Feature4 records

Partnerships

Five partnerships are on record, tiered core and minor.

• Rigsarkivet (Danish National Archives)coreStrategic or Co-development PartnerHistorieLab collaborates extensively with Rigsarkivet on the Kildebank (Source Bank) initiative, providing historical source materials to educators. Materials developed with Rigsarkivet include 'Veje i krig' (Roads to War), 'Aargang 0', 'Spadeslaget', 'Kildekritiske øvelser', and mini/maxibooks for source criticism exercises. The partnership provides authentic archival sources for classroom use.
• UCL Erhvervsakademi og ProfessionshøjskolecoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerHistorieLab is organizationally embedded within UCL Erhvervsakademi og Professionshøjskole's Jelling campus. UCL provides institutional hosting, staffing, and academic oversight. Student teachers at UCL's teacher education program (Læreruddannelsen i Jelling) develop educational materials through HistorieLab as part of their training.
• Vejle Kommune (Vejle Municipality)coreStrategic or Co-development PartnerDannelsesbroen (The Bildung Bridge) is a flagship partnership between HistorieLab and Vejle Municipality. This initiative focuses on children's and young people's democratic, digital, and cultural education (Børn og unges demokratiske, digitale og kulturelle dannelse), as well as heritage education at child height (Kulturarv i børnehøjde) and history as a growth engine (Historien som vækstmotor).
• Erasmus+ / MONCHAL Project (Contested Histories)minorStrategic or Co-development PartnerHistorieLab contributes to the Erasmus+ funded project 'Contested Histories' — specifically the MONCHAL sub-project — investigating how teachers handle emotional reactions when teaching sensitive and contested history topics. Research findings are published in the RADAR journal and inform teaching guidelines.
• Kongernes Jelling (The Kings of Jelling)minorStrategic or Co-development PartnerHistorieLab collaborates with Kongernes Jelling (the official visitor experience organization at the Jelling World Heritage site) to deliver nature-connection and cultural heritage experiences for schools and daycare centers at the Jelling Monument area. Activities include guided exploration of the monument area and Anesmindegårdens have.

Scale indicators3 records

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights5 records

Direct peers

• Alinea: Denmark's largest educational publisher producing curriculum-aligned teaching materials across primary and secondary grades, including history. Directly competes for teacher attention and adoption, but with a commercial, paid-content model versus HistorieLab's free offering.
• Center for Historieformidling (Aarhus Universitet): Danish university-based research center focused on history communication, public history, and history didactics. Operates an overlapping research-and-outreach model anchored in academic staff, similar to HistorieLab's UCL affiliation.
• EuroClio — European Association of History Educators: Pan-European association dedicated to improving history education through teacher networks, research, and curricular resources. Directly comparable mission to HistorieLab at a continental scale, including shared work on contested/sensitive history.

Others

• Skoletjenesten (Danish School Service): National Danish coordinating body linking schools with museums, archives, and cultural institutions for educational visits. Overlaps with HistorieLab's mission of bridging cultural-heritage institutions into classroom learning and is a potential distributor or partner.
• Rigsarkivet (Danish National Archives): HistorieLab's principal content partner; also an independent provider of educational programming built on primary archival sources. Sits in the ecosystem as upstream supplier of the source material that powers Kildebank, and as a parallel educational-content producer.

Broad incumbents

• Khan Academy: Global OER platform with a freemium model covering history alongside other subjects. Illustrative of the broader OER competitive landscape and the scalability frontier that HistorieLab's WordPress-based stack would need to approach to defend market position.
• Gyldendal Uddannelse: Educational division of the major Danish publisher Gyldendal, producing textbooks and digital learning content across subjects including history. A broad incumbent serving the same Danish schools with overlapping curriculum content but a paid, diversified catalog.
• Nationalmuseet (National Museum of Denmark): Denmark's national cultural-history museum with a large education and school-programs division. Overlaps with HistorieLab on heritage education, source-based learning, and Viking-era content, but on a much larger institutional scale with paid school visits.

Regional players

• Historiska museet (Swedish History Museum): Sweden's central history museum with school programs and Viking-era exhibitions, functionally similar to a combined Nationalmuseet-plus-HistorieLab offering. Comparable Nordic-heritage education model operating in a different national market.
• Norgeshistorie (Norgeshistorisk Institutt): Norwegian national digital history education portal offering free curriculum-aligned content to Norwegian schools. Direct functional analog of HistorieLab at the Norwegian level, with the same free-OER model and national reach.

Market position

Strengths4 records

Weaknesses4 records

Competitive moat5 records

Key risks6 records

Key highlights7 records

Customer concentration

• YouTubeyoutube.com/@historielab7325
• Facebookfacebook.com/historielab
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/historielab

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles2 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about HistorieLab