Norway, Death Registers, 1928-1945

General collection information

This collection contains death registries from Norway between 1928 and 1945. Most of the records in this collection are handwritten in standardized ledgers, but newer records may be typed. Records in this collection are accessible to the general public after 80 years.

Using the collection

Records in the collection may include the following information:

• Person’s name
• Sex
• Marital status
• Residence
• Date of birth
• Whether a person’s parents were legally married at the time of their birth
• Date of death
• Place of death
• Parish

If you don’t speak Norwegian, knowing a few common words can aid in your search:

• Navn is Norwegian for “name.”
• Udvandreren is Norwegian for “emigrant.”
• Født is Norwegian for “born.”
• Alder is Norwegian for “age.”
• Hjemstad is Norwegian for “home” and usually refers to current residence, not birthplace.
• Kjønn is Norwegian for “sex.”
• Kjønn is Norwegian for “sex.”
• Sogn is Norwegian for “parish.”

In Norway, the burial date may vary significantly from the date of death. Burial usually occurs within two weeks of death. But if the death occurred in winter, the burial may have had to wait weeks or months until the ground thawed.

With some exceptions (non-Lutherans and members of the military), most burials in Norway occur in local churchyards. You can use the records in this collection to determine your family member’s parish, and then use the parish to find their gravesite. Keep in mind, depending on the need for cemetery space, graves in Norway may be reused after 20 years.

Collection in context

Civil registration was introduced in Norway in 1876 with the establishment of the Central Bureau of Statistics (Statistisk Sentralbyrå), now known as Statistics Norway. These statistics were kept on a national level and are not usually available to the public. In 1915 the Registers of Vital Statistics (Folkeregisteret) was founded. The Folkeregisteret was voluntary until 1946, when registration began to be enforced. Because there was no separation of church and state in Norway until 2017, vital records were kept by individual parishes in the Church of Norway, rather than by the state. However, if you find your ancestor in this collection, that doesn't necessarily mean they belonged to the Church of Norway. Until 1930, the church also kept records for non-members who lived within the parish boundaries.

Bibliography

Eidhammer, Martin Roe. “Fnd a Grave in Norway.” Martin Roe Blog. Last Modified June 20, 2019.https://martinroe.com/blog/find-a-grave-in-norway-2/.

Digital Arkivet. “Parish Registers.”Last Modified 2021. https://www.arkivverket.no/en/find-your-ancestors/parish-registers.

Statistics Norway. “Historical Statistics.” Last modified November 26, 2020.https://www.ssb.no/a/en/histstat/.