Finding living relatives in Norway
Some of you may have read my article How to find living persons in Norway I realize this article needs a little addendum.
I just saw a posting on a genealogy forum where a lady asked for help to find living relatives in Norway. At the time of this writing, we are in late May. She is planning her trip for August this year. The trip will take place approximately three months from now.
This lady was lucky and got several good leads. You may not be that lucky.
Finding living relatives in Norway may be a time-consuming and laborious task. While I am always happy to help, I have on a couple of occasions politely turned down requests for help to find living relatives, as I could see it would be a hopeless task because my reader had very little information about the family and the timeframe I had was just too short. Believe me, before I made this “policy change” I spent countless hours chasing down distant relatives that often ended up in persons with no descendants. It can be like chasing wild geese.
In general, we can say that the less you know and the earlier your ancestor left Norway, The harder and more time-consuming it may be to find living relatives.
Timeframe
This means that you have to do the work well ahead of the planned travel. You can not to go to Norway, go into an archive, and expect to have your ancestry laid out for you in minutes. Neither is it a good idea to visit the hamlet where you believe your ancestor originated and start knocking on doors. Remember, some farm names appear in several places all over the country. Also, a person who claimed to come from a place in e.g. “the Lillehammer area”, may have used this expression very loosely.
I would say that you should have definite proof of your ancestor’s identity and his birthplace at least 12 months ahead of your planned trip to Norway. This will give you or whoever is helping you ample time to do a thorough search for living relatives.
The process
The search involves an archival search in various sources such as church-, probate-, and census records. After 1930 a lot of sources are closed due to reasons of privacy. This is where we need to be a little creative. I am usually cautious about family trees found on the internet as they often lack sources and has proven to have lots of errors. These trees may still be usefull as they sometime include information that is otherwise unavailable to us.
The process of finding living relatives also involves looking at gravestones because we can find information about people who lived past 1930. See my article Find a grave in Norway.
Furthermore, we may have to spend time communicating with historical societies, museums, libraries, and also in relevant fora, be it on Facebook or elsewhere. While general genealogy fora may be helpfull, finding a forum that discusses the particular area you are looking for may prove to give you the best results.
A DNA test might break down a brickwall and help speed things up. These test take some time to order, receive and process. You also need time to make contact with possible matches. This has to be taken into consideration.
I hope this little article helps you plan ahead and increases you chances of finding living relatives in Norway. This being said, if your trip is in less than 12 months, don’t let this discourage you from trying. You may be lucky.
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