TEL AVIV, Israel & LEHI, Utah--(BUSINESS WIRE)--MyHeritage, the leading global service for discovering your past and empowering your future, announced today the publication of an extensive collection of Norway Church Records. MyHeritage digitized this collection in partnership with the National Archives of Norway (Arkivverket). This addition doubles the number of Norwegian historical records on MyHeritage and brings the total size of MyHeritage’s historical record database to 12.6 billion.
The Norway Church Records (1815–1938) collection consists of 42.2 million birth & baptism, marriage, and death & burial records documented by Norway’s Evangelical Lutheran Church, which kept vital records on behalf of the government. The collection includes an index of transcribed records and digital images of the original church documents. The images have been available through the National Archives of Norway for several years, but were not searchable by name. This marks the first time that Norway Church Records have been widely indexed and made available online.
The records in this collection date back to 1815 and cover a critical period in Norway’s history, beginning just one year after its secession from Denmark. This important collection helps overcome the significant gaps in Norwegian censuses taken from 1801 to 1865. Five censuses were collected in Norway during those years, but they did not record names of individuals, making the church records the definitive source for genealogical data during that period. Due to Norwegian privacy laws, the birth & baptism records released in this collection extend until 1919 (inclusive), the marriage records extend until 1937 (inclusive), and the death & burial records extend until 1938 (inclusive).
With the release of this collection, MyHeritage now offers 80 million historical records from Norway. As the market leader for Scandinavian family history research, MyHeritage also offers 157 million historical records from neighboring Sweden, and 107 million records from Denmark. MyHeritage is the only major genealogy company to provide its services and full customer support in all three Scandinavian languages, as well as in Finnish, and offers the greatest opportunity for new family history discoveries for anyone with Scandinavian origins. Not only is MyHeritage the genealogy market leader in Norway, but its popularity is so high that one in every five Norwegians is a registered user of MyHeritage.
“The Norway Church Records are an essential resource for exploring Norwegian heritage, and significantly enhance the Norwegian historical records available on MyHeritage,” said Russ Wilding, Chief Content Officer of MyHeritage. “In addition to the people of Norway, millions of individuals of Norwegian descent living in other countries will now benefit from this collection and make new breakthroughs in their family history research.”
The Norway Church Records are available on MyHeritage’s search engine for historical records. Searching the collection is free. A subscription is required to view the full records and to access Record Matches.
Search the new Norway Church Records.
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MyHeritage is the leading global discovery platform for exploring family history. With billions of historical records and family tree profiles, and with sophisticated matching technologies that work across all its assets, MyHeritage allows users to discover their past and empower their future. Since 2020, MyHeritage is home to the world’s best technologies for enhancing and colorizing historical photos. MyHeritage is the most popular family history service in Europe. www.myheritage.com