A new methodology for probabilistic seismic hazard assessment is outlined and applied to parts of the northern European intraplate. The purpose is to gain more experience of the applicability of the technique to low-seismicity areas, where probabilistic seismic hazard assessment is often difficult because of a sparseness of data. The new technique is free from the subjective judgement involved in identifying seismogenic source zones, when specific active faults have not been mapped and where the causes of seismicity are not fully understood, and it takes into account the incompleteness of available earthquake catalogues and the error of earthquake magnitudes. Two cases are presented, in which seismic hazard is estimated for a specified site and a seismic hazard map is generated for a larger region. It was found that the methodology is very advantageous for investigating regions of low and moderate seismicity.