Finding your Norwegian ancestors

First, find the parish and the farm

Norwegian records are kept by parish, and within the parish people are identified by their farm. Start at home: find the name and birthplace of the first family member who left Norway.

Names need care. Most people used a patronymic: Peder Johnsen was the son of John, and his sister was Johnsdatter. The farm name was more an address than a surname, and it changed when the family moved: if Ole Olsen Li moved from the farm Li to the farm Dal, he became Ole Olsen Dal. In America, many patronymics were changed, often to forms like Peterson, so two Petersons are not necessarily related; members of one family sometimes used different surnames.

Parish registers (kirkebøker)

Norwegian ministers kept records of baptisms, marriages and burials from the mid-1600s. The oldest surviving register is from Andebu, dated 1623. Registers became more frequent and detailed from about 1720, and printed standard forms came in 1812, revised in 1820 and 1877.

The parish clerk usually kept a second register (klokkerbok) with similar information: if the minister's book is lost, check the clerk's. The registers are in Norwegian, in Gothic-style handwriting that is often hard to read.

Free on Digitalarkivet

Digitalarkivet, run by the National Archives of Norway since 2003, is free. It holds censuses, population lists, church books, land and probate records. Parish registers from before the 1930s that have been deposited with the regional state archives are scanned and online.

The National Archives was called Arkivverket until it was renamed Nasjonalarkivet on 1 January 2026; you will see both names.

FamilySearch has free indexes of Norwegian church records, and Ancestry and MyHeritage have Norwegian collections. Indexes can contain errors: always compare them with the scanned page.

Censuses: whole households, farm by farm

The censuses of 1801, 1865, 1875, 1891, 1900 and 1910 are online, and the 1920 census can be searched by name on Digitalarkivet. Census records are closed for 100 years under the Statistics Act of 1989.

From 1865, the birthplace in the census points you to the parish where the baptism should be.

Recent records and copies

Parish registers are closed until they are 60 years old, and in some cases 80 or 100 years. The original books usually stay with the local church until 80 years after the last entry, then go to the state archive.

The National Archives holds birth, marriage and death records and can send you a transcript if you contact it. If the parish register has not yet been deposited, ask the local parish office; for deaths, the registers of the probate court or local magistrate.

Write my letter in Norwegian

Police emigrant lists

From the 1860s the police in Norwegian ports kept emigrant protocols (emigrantprotokoller). The National Archives has indexed them: about 700,000 entries of emigrants leaving Norwegian ports up to 1930, with name, age, destination, residence, place of birth and shipping line. Families travelling together are listed with each member's relationship to the head.

• Oslo (then Kristiania): from 1867, for example protocol no. 2, 1867 to 1869
• Bergen: from 1874, for example emigrants to America, 1874 to 1885
• Trondheim from 1867, Kristiansand from 1873, Kristiansund from 1882, Ålesund from 1852, Stavanger (protocol and passport register) from 1903

The residence and birthplace in the protocol lead you straight to the parish. Then check the moving-out list in the parish register.

Bygdebøker. Many municipalities commissioned local history books (bygdebøker) that trace the families of each farm, sometimes back to the first written records. Not all of Norway is covered, and there is no equivalent for the cities. The National Library holds a complete collection, but its digitised books published up to 2005 open only from Norwegian internet addresses, and genealogy is not accepted as a reason for access from abroad.

Norwegian emigration in numbers

Statistics Norway counts 754,561 overseas emigrants in the 80 years from 1836 to 1915. Between 1860 and 1910, Ireland was the only European country with more emigrants relative to its population. The peak came in 1882, with 28,804 departures, about 15 for every 1,000 inhabitants.

Sums of the yearly figures in Statistics Norway, Statistical Yearbook 2000, table 51 (after NOS VII.25, Utvandringsstatistikk).

Where they came from changed over time. From 1836 to 1865, Telemark, Sogn og Fjordane and Oppland had the highest emigration rates, with Sogn, Valdres and Hallingdal hit hardest in 1856 to 1865. From 1866 to 1915, Oppland, Vest-Agder and Rogaland lost the most people relative to their size.

Sources