Norwegian Farm Books-What are they and How do I use them for Genealogy?

Hello everyone! Today we are talking about Norwegian farm books. What is that you ask? Let me tell you! These resources are exclusive to Norway. No other Scandinavian country attempted this that I know of. It’s a book of local history using church records, census, probate, tax records, and interviews with local residents to get a detailed history of that geographical area. The books focus on the farms and who lived on those farms, who married into that farm, and who was born to that family on that farm. It’s an amazing source for genealogy! I highly recommend if you have Norwegian ancestors, then check out these farm books. You don’t have to be fluent in the language to get what you need genealogically speaking.

What you do need is a place name because that’s how you search in these books. You can’t search by a person’s name, you search by a place name. Most books have a place and person index in the back of the books to help you out. The Family History Library in Utah has taken a great effort to put the information from the physical book onto FamilySearch.org.

How to Find a Farm Book

The easiest way that I know of is to start with FamilySearch.org/Wiki. You find your parish that you’re working with. For example, let’s work with Aas Parish in Akershus County. The page looks like this on the Wiki…

In the left hand side in the blue box is the content list of this page. Number 5 lists farm books. Let’s see what it says…

This shows you that FamilySearch has already scanned the information from the physical book onto it’s website. You can click on the link and it will take you to a place where you can type in your ancestor’s name and find them by name or you can browse through the people list. Like this…

Once you find your ancestor, it should look like this…

This format helps you see a pedigree chart in English without having to learn Norwegian and someone did the work for you of putting it into a pedigree. So this is great, right! Now you have not only your ancestor, but you have other generations to add to your family tree. However, notice that this doesn’t give you a whole lot of information past their names, birth and death dates. It does give some children information, but it doesn’t show in this screenshot. That’s ok! It’s a start and you’ll take it! Now all you have to do is verify the information by finding their church records and you’re set.

Physical Farm Books

So this way is great and I would definitely start here if there’s a digitized farm book. However, not all farm books are online. So how do you find a physical copy. Well, Norway doesn’t sell books outside of the country. The only way I know to get one is to travel to Norway or go to the Family History Library and make copies of the pages that you need. For example, this is what an original page looks like from a physical farm book…

This is from Jelsa Parish and notice how it’s all in Norwegian. The bold words are the farm name and years and people’s names living on that farm during those years. So the book will start off giving information about the head of the farm, the person in charge of working the land, and then give information on the farm. It will give details about who bought and sold portions of the land to others and dimensions of the property. It will show who married whom. Then the alphabetical list shows the children and their information from this couple. Then the next bold name is the next generation who owned the property and their family. This goes on for hundreds of years!

I know this is a lot of information to take in, but there’s help. If you need more tutorials on how to use farm books, then check out here. In addition, FamilySearch has many more articles explaining more about these books here. Please check them out because I can’t write all of the information in this article because it would be way too long! And I didn’t want to make too many more articles about farm books. However, I may change my mind and add more to this topic in future articles.

Summary

Norwegian farm books are important for genealogy because they give you generations of genealogical information that you may or may not have. This information still needs to be verified with church and census records, but the information is needed to move to another generation. Besides, someone already did the legwork for you. All you need to do is check their work. That works for me!

So please take the time to learn more about these books. There are other online places to find them, but it’s not complete and not every parish has a farm book. So go ahead and Google it and see what you find for your place name. It’s worth the effort and the adventure!

Good luck and happy hunting!

Tiffany