Norway Marriages - What else you can try
|
This page will give you additional guidance and resources to find marriage information for your ancestor. Use this page after first completing the marriage section of the Norway Guided Research page.
Additional Online Resources
[hide]
Additional Databases and Online Resources
- 1600s-1800s: Norway Marriages at Ancestry ($)
- 1600s-1900s: Norway Parish Registers and Censuses at the Norway Digital Archives
- 1600s-1900s: Norway Parish Registers (Northern Norway) at the Norwegian Historical Data Centre
- 1812-1938: Norway, Church Records (in Norwegian) at Ancestry ($)
- 1815-1938: Norway Church Records at MyHeritage ($)
Substitute Records
[hide]
Additional Records with Marriage Information
Substitute records may contain information about more than one event and are used when records for an event are not available. Records that are used to substitute for marriage events may not have been created at the time of the marriage. The accuracy of the record is contingent upon when the information was recorded. Search for information in multiple substitute records to confirm the accuracy of these records.
| Use these additional records to locate marriage information about your ancestor: | ||
| Why to search the records | ||
| Marriage entries list full names of both husband and wife, date and place of marriage, and often the names of witnesses. | ||
| May include whether married, widowed, or divorced. In the cases of female deaths, may include the name and occupation of the husband. | ||
| Census records can help identify all family members. You can estimate the marriage date of the parents from the age of the first child. | ||
| Probate records function similarly to wills. Probates may not give a marriage date for the deceased, but it will give the name of surviving spouse and children. | ||
| Farm books often give vital information about those who lived on a particular farm in Norway. | ||
Improve Searching
[hide]
Tips for finding marriages
Success with finding marriage records in online databases depends on a few key points:
- Your ancestor's name may misspelled. Try the following search tactics:
- Try searching for the husband instead of the wife, or vice versa.
- Try different spelling variations of the first and last name of your ancestor (e.g. Christian, Kristian).
- Try a given name search (leave out the last names).
- The use of patronymics was largely discontinued after the mid 1800s, changing the way people held surnames. See this article for more information.
- Women began adopting their husband's surname in documents in the late 1800s/early 1900s.
- Expand the date range of the search.
- Try searching with the county name or in surrounding parishes.
Why the Record may not Exist
[hide]
Known Record Gaps
Records Start
Beginning about 1500, usually much later, churches in Norway required their clergy to keep marriage records. Early records may have been lost or damaged.
Records Destroyed
Any known record loss will be mentioned on the parish page. Locate your parish by navigating to the parish page starting here.
