Many
web sites on Norwegian research link to the Norwegian Digitalarkivet site - http://arkivverket.no/arkivverket/Digitalarkivet. This is a wonderful tool for anyone having Norwegian relatives as many of the Norwegian records have been digitized and a good portion of those have been indexed. A listing – as of November 1, 2013 - of their records is on the left.
When you use lik and you enter Severs, the system finds only those who have Severs in that field. When you use børjar på and enter Johan, the system finds all names starting with Johan, including Johannesdatter, Johanesdatter, Johanesd, etc. It will bring all the variations up in a second screen and allow you to choose the ones you want to use. When you use inneheld and enter anne, you will also get Johannes as well as anne and Joanne.
Each search will display a set of found matches and how many were found. So you might see one Hoanne mixed in with the Joannes – it might be a taker, transcriber, or indexer error and it might be your person! But if you use the comparators and the wildcards correctly, you will know it’s there!
If you do a country-wide search, you will get the count of how many were found in each Fylke – and by clicking on the blue number, each parish. Click anywhere else on this link and you will be taken straight into the census for this parish / municipality .
A last note - many Fylkes also had separate counts made and some are indexed. And sometimes a prestegjeld/sokn – a parish or equivalent – performed a census. Some of these are also indexed. How to find these is based in how to find what records are digitized and which are indexed for a particular area – and we’ll cover that in another blog.
The
Digitalarkivet site has parish, property, court, census, and other records
available. This post will concentrate on Census Searches. And future
posts will look at the other records.
The
site has an English translation at the top site, but as you drill down, the
English version disappears or becomes Norwegian and knowing the Norwegian terms
used in the searches is very important. Indexed records are searchable
using one of three methods of searching:
·
Simple
or Quick Search
·
Full
Search
·
Detailed
Search
As for most searches, the best place to start is by searching the census records that are available. Norwegian country-wide censuses – Folketellinger og manntall – are available for 1664-1666, 1701, 1801, 1865, 1875, 1885, 1891, 1900, and 1910. However, the 1664-1666, 1701, some of the 1865, 1885, and 1891 censuses are only digitized and not indexed. We’ll cover using them in a future post.
It’s
easy to find information that is indexed – but it is also easy to miss
information that is in the archives. This is because of both the way the
index searches work and the default settings – and most of the instructions are
only in Norwegian. Learning how to use these will make searching much
easier and productive.
Simple or Quick
Search
You can always try
the simple search:
However, if you
search for someone like Lars Larson, you will be completely overwhelmed by the
results. And if you search for Sever Nelson or Sever Nelsen, you will get
nothing – though there are nine indexed records available. Very few names
will result in only 5 or 6 “hits”, and probably none from where you think you
the person lived.
Full Search
The next level of
search is by record type. Since we’re doing censuses, you would click on
one of the indexed censuses, say 1801:
If you miss that
last note in the “Useful tips!”, you will be sorry! But it doesn’t work
in English – only Norwegian. In English, the link goes to the main home
page and won’t give tips. In Norwegian, it tells you how to use all the
“special” search features. Learn how to use Google Translate!
Wildcards are
supported. This is very important. Here’s why. As with any
index, we have three levels of error creeping in – what the original taker
“heard”, what the transcriber read, and then the indexers interpretation of
what the transcriber wrote. Between these, you get what I call the
“spelling” issue: –sen and –son (seldom used in Norway, but it is present, especially if
recently immigrated from Denmark
or Sweden) will be mixed or matched, and have an added “s” sometimes. Both may be abbreviated as “s” or even left off. So Seversen might be Severson, Severssen, Severs or Sever. It also can really affect any name that normally ends in an “s’ such as Ols and Nels. Ols’ son becomes Olsen, Olssen, Olss, and Ols. And the same is true of Datter: Ols’ daughter becomes Ols, Olsd, Olssd, Olsdt, Olssdt, Olsdtr, Olssdtr, Olsdat, Olssdat, Olsdatr, Olssdatr, Olsdatter, Olssdatter, Olsdotter, and Olssdotter – and even a few more I’ve seen. So the search for Karen Johannesdatter will miss the Karen Johaned that might be there.
And of course there
are so many ways to spell some names – Christian, Kristian, Cristian, Cristin,
Kristan, Nils, Nels, Niels, Eric, Erik, Erich, . . .
Enter the
wildcards. Since the recorded/transcribed/indexed spelling may be
something different than what you have, you can use the wild cards in your
search:
·
“?” means any one letter. ?arl will give both of Karl, Carl, Jarl and Barl .
·
“*” means an unknown set of letters. *ristian will find Christian and Khristian. Wen*e will find Wenke , wenche, Wencke , and wennicke.
·
“[x]” - if you have a character or characters inside the brackets, it means than this letter may or may not be there. An[n]e finds both Ane and Anne. [ck]arl will find Carl and Karl, but not for Jarl or Barl.
You can mix as many
as you want of these . Think of what the last name search for
[ck][h]r[ei]st[iaoe]n* would find!
In the search
above, you have the opportunity to narrow the search in many other ways.
I recommend only the names to start with – you never know what other
information that you have might not be accurate or accurately
taken/transcribed/indexed. If you get too many results, work your way
down. But it is better to get too many and work down than none.
What you find in the general search will give you clues on limiting the
search such as the:
Geography - Fylke – equivalent to states or
regions
Family Position - this is hard to use
unless you are fluent. Note that most takers used their own words
Marital Status – not really useful as you’ll see
when you start seeing results
Occupation – see family position
Year of Birth – this can be useful, but most of the censuses have age and then the indexer interpreted a birth year. Also, many times the person giving the information only knew “about how old”.
This will
work for many of the more recent censuses, but for the 1875 and before, you can
be lucky or not find anything and stuff is really there. If you don’t
find something, go to the next level.
Detailed Search
There’s a third way
to search – and it brings many advantages. To perform this search, from
the main page, click on the word Censuses rather than on the specific
year. A new search form comes up – only there’s no English translation for
it. Along the top are listed the census years. Pick one you are
interested in – here I picked 1865:
You will get two boxes. The left side is Databaseveljaren – where do you want to look. You can specify a specific Fylke, and if you do you can select a Kommune – another word for parish. You can also specify what documents you want to search – Kjeldekategori, and the Underketegori if you pick census – folketeljingar og manntal. Tidsperiode is not used for censuses. If you have no idea where in Norway to look, select Alle omrade for Fylke – all – and the census year.
The right side is Dokumentasjon – what do you want to search for. The top line says you can search all databases at once – click here (Trykk her) and it takes you back to the other search. Don’t use that and instead, you can start fine tuning a search using the next line.
You can choose
between the variables which are searchable:
·
Førenamn First Name
·
Etternavn Last
Name
·
Fødselsår Birth Year – see comments above
·
Fødestad Birth Place – don’t restrict unless you know
·
Yrke Occupation - don’t restrict unless you know
·
Gardsnavn Farm Name they are living on – this is useful – see below
You will search for
one item at a time, and then search the resulting list by the next item.
For example, find all the Christians, then find all who are Larsens.
I’ve had very limited success using birth year, birth place, and occupation. There are too many variables and it’s too hard to set the search to get around these. Most of the censuses have age and then interpret the birth year. Add this to the fact that it’s often not accurately reported, this is seldom helpful. I’ve had better luck with farm name when I hit a large number of results and attempt to use that to narrow the results down. I’ve also used farm name when I didn’t find other people I expected to be with the one I searched for. This can bring up the entire listing for a specific farm once you know what farm a specific person is living on.
But the real power here is the way it compares. Wildcards still work plus you get partials and exacts. You can now choose between lik – equal, børjar på – starts with, and inneheld - within.
Have Fun and Good
Luck,
Tony
Tony
and Teri Hjelmstad
Researching
English, Scottish, Norwegian, German, Danish, and Dutch families
Hjelmstad, Inc.
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Suggestions
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A German Digital Church Book Portal is now online. The entire website is in German. I suggest you read EOGN for a nice overview of
the site. Remember that you
can always use Google Translate to get a rough translation of non-English
language websites and documents.
What about the 
Last and not least on the international front, there
is a Historic Map Site that has 8000 historical maps of Norway from the
Norwegian national mapping Authority. The historic
collection is accessible here. Again, you can use
Google Translate to help you navigate this collection.
Are
you researching 
