MyHeritage Released New Norwegian Record Collection



MyHeritage announced the addition of a new Norwegian historical record collection – Norway Church Records, 1815-1938. The records in this collection were digitized in collaboration with the National Archives of Norway (Akivverket), and consist of 42.2 million indexed record and high quality scans of the original documents.

The records include births & baptisms, marriages, and deaths & burials. This release is the first time the collection’s images are fully indexed and searchable – making it easier than ever to research your Norwegian ancestors. The addition doubles the number of Norwegian historical records on MyHeritage and brings the total number of historical records on MyHeritage to 12.6 billion.

The years covered by the collection were significant in Norway’s history. In 1814, Norway seceded from Denmark, and with it, a new identity began to emerge.

Interestingly, the Norwegian government did take five censuses from 1801 to 1865. Those censuses did not include the names of individuals, and therefore would not be very useful to genealogists. This doesn’t mean that information was lost, though.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church has been the state church in Norway since 1536, and its pastors acted on behalf of the government to collect and preserve vital records. This is fortunate, because it means that the Church’s records have become the definitive source for genealogical data during the the period of 1801 through 1865.

The record keeping practices in Norway were established in the early 1800s. Duplicate copies of the church books were made. One copy was kept by the pastor, and the other by the bell ringer (klokkeren). The two were to compare and cross-check their books twice a year. The books were kept in separate locations so that if one was lost or destroyed by fire the records would still be available in the second book.

Related Articles at FamilyTree.com:

Census 1891 for Norway

MyHeritage Added Norwegian Census Records

Norway Genealogy

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