How to Find Norwegian Church Records Like a Pro

Written by Tiffany on February 15, 2023. Posted in Norway.

Finding Norwegian church records when they’re not on Ancestry.com or FamilySearch.org can be challenging if you don’t know where to look. I will show you my way of finding those records using the Norwegian Digital Archives website.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I love using Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.org for most of my genealogy research. However, when I’m working with Norwegian church records, I love using the Norwegian Digital Archives. So let me show you how I do it using my ancestor, Johanna Krogh, as our example. We’ll be looking only at birth records in this article, but this applies to all church records.

Find Place Name for Norwegian Church Records

The first step I always take is to find the place name of your Norwegian ancestor. This is usually the last residence that your ancestor lived before coming to America. So, you can find this when you search for American records. This is a key piece of information before you can ever start looking at Norwegian records.

Norway Digital Archives

Next, once you find that place name in an American record, you can now look on the Norwegian Digital Archives website. This is the official Norwegian site so if you’re ever looking for an original document for a Norwegian ancestor, then start here. There are other fabulous Norwegian websites; however, most of the information that you want will be found at the Digital Archives.

Now, let’s take a look at Johanna’s birth record for our example. I will explain one way of how to get Norwegian birth records on the Norwegian website.

Birth Record Search for Norwegian Church Records

First, go to the home page and find the menu in the top right corner and the symbol with the three stacked lines next to it. Then click on that and then click on scanned archives. If everything is in Norwegian, then go to the top right corner, find the world symbol and that’s where you can change it to English. You do this for any page that’s in Norwegian on this website.

Scroll down until you find Parish Registry in a blue heading. Then click on Browse in parish registry Norway in a brown heading. Again change this page to English if it’s in Norwegian. Then on the left hand column find the County heading. I would type in Rogaland. Then in the next heading underneath it says Parish. I would then type in Vikedal. That’s it. Then just hit search on the very bottom and it will pull up all records for Vikedal Parish.

There were 24 results. Johanna was born in 1894. Scroll down to the Vikedal parish registry for 1884-1907. That’s where her birth document should be because of her birth year. The abbreviations next to the years mean what records are included in this collection. You can hover your mouse over each abbreviation and it will tell you in English what it is. I know that the abbreviation “dp” means births and baptism in Norwegian. So I know that I will find birth records for these years in this register. Then click on Content. Select the 1894 button in the Born and Baptized section.

Original Norwegian Birth Record

From here on out there is no more English. You’ll have to find her name and find her parent’s names in Norwegian. All of the column headings are in Norwegian. You’ll have to look at each page and each name until you find her. You just need to look at the names right now. I know most of the language is still confusing. So just look for her name and then we will fill in the rest. Her Norwegian birth record looks like this.

When I first searched for her birth record, I didn’t find it in the year 1894. I searched the whole year and even into 1895, but still no luck. Then I searched the 1893 section and found her record on 20 June 1893. I know because her father is Johannes Kolbensen and it was found in Vikedal. So to explain the columns that we see I’m going to put them in a table.

Entry Number	7
Birth Date	20/6 or 20 June
Christening Date	23/7 or 23 July
Child’s Full Name	Karen Johanna
Parent’s Names and Occupation	Crofter Johannes Kolbensen and wife Gjertrud Sjursdatter
Residence or Farm Name	Stølsmark
Father’s Birth Year	1832
Mother’s Birth Year	1847
Witnesses	A list of people’s names and residences from the surrounding areas
Legitimate or Illegitimate	Legitimate
Notes	one

This is a typical birth record from 1814 and after. Once Norway had an official registry, then these columns became standard. Before 1814, the ministers could choose how to format the information. Some would put the entire thing in paragraph form while others made up their own columns.

Last Thoughts on Norwegian Church Records

So, this is how genealogists find Norwegian birth records. I would highly recommend practicing the steps again and again to help you get familiar with this website.

If you need more help, then please contact me on my website, my Facebook page “Savvy Genealogy”, or my Instagram account @savvygenealogy

So for now have a great week and happy hunting!

Tiffany

P.S. Don’t forget to sign up for a free list of all of my favorite websites that I use for my genealogy research.

If you want to learn more about Swedish and Danish birth records then click on the links below.