A Reliable Way To Start Norwegian Genealogy

Hello family historians! Did you just learn that you have Norwegian ancestors? Have you known about your Norwegian ancestors and yet didn’t want to get started on them just yet? Getting started with your Norwegian genealogy records isn’t as complicated as you might expect. It is a simple step by step process just like any research project. Therefore, if you follow the process that I will lay out for you, then you should be just fine. So let’s get started!

Gather What You Already Know

You need to gather every document or story that you know from your family if you haven’t done that already. Your family is a wealth of knowledge. Talk to everyone that might have been involved with knowing your ancestor. Family stories may have changed over time. However, stories still have a grain of truth to them. Therefore, don’t rule anything out until you prove that story is correct with actual documents.

Research All American Records First Before Finding Norwegian Genealogy Records

I’m sure you’ve heard this before, but it’s really important to find ALL American records first before “jumping the pond.” There’s a couple reasons for this. One, it’s easier to find American records then it is Scandinavian records because you know the language and the culture. Two, you need to find the place of last residence in the American records to know where to look in Norway or any Scandinavian country. Once you know their Norwegian town, then you can go to Norway’s Digital Archives to start looking for those records. The two major genealogy sites that you need is Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.org. They will give you the majority of American records. You can also use Findagrave.com and Newspapers.com.

Family Search Wiki Page

When learning about Norwegian towns, I like to go to the Family Search Wiki. This is where I type in the name of the Norwegian town from what I’ve found in the American records. It will likely pull up a Parish name. Parishes in Norway are like Counties in America. You need the Parish name in order to find the farm name that your ancestor lived on. The Parish pages show everything you need to research that parish. It will show church records, census records, farm books, farm names, and where to find each of these in Norway’s Digital Archives. Learn all you can from these Wiki Parish pages. They are a gold mine of information that you need to arm yourself with before diving into the original records on Norway’s Digital Archives.

Norway’s Digital Archives to Find Norwegian Genealogy Records

I’m not going to go into too much detail here because it would make this post way too long. However, there is an awesome video tutorial in Family Search called How to Find Ancestors in Digital Arkivet. It is taught by a native Norwegian professional genealogist. She does an amazing job walking you through the basic steps. In addition, I will do a more detailed post on how to use the Digital Archives as well. Suffice it to say, if you want to find the original records and they’re not on Ancestry.com or FamilySearch.org, then you must learn how to use Norway’s Digital Archives.

Conclusion

Those are the basic steps needed to find your Norwegian genealogy records. I would be happy to help you if these steps still look daunting to you. Please contact me through my email at familygenwork@gmail.com, my Facebook page Savvy Genealogy, or my Instagram account @savvygenealogy. You can also contact me on my website at www.savvygenealogy.com.

In the meantime…good luck and happy hunting

Tiffany

P.S. If you want more Norwegian blog posts then check out these…

• How to Research Scandinavian Names for Genealogy
• How Do I Find Norwegian Place Names
• Norwegian Farm Books-What Are They and How Do I Use Them