Three kinds of court records are kept in Norway: probate, land, and civil court records. The probate and land records are explained in the “Probate Records” and “Land and Property” sections of this outline. The civil court records are discussed here and are referred to simply as court records.

Most court records start sometime in the 1600s, and they record both criminal and civil action. Before the probate law was passed in 1687, many probate records were part of the general court records. Within court records you will find several different types of cases:

• Cases regarding allodial land rights (independently and privately owned land), where several generations of a family may be listed
• Paternity suits, including fines levied against parents of illegitimate children, and instruction about the church discipline in such matters
• Inheritance cases
• Criminal cases such as theft and murder
  

Court records offer helpful information about how your ancestors lived. This can be of great importance if you wish to have a better understanding of the times and lives of your ancestors. However, court records do require a great amount of time to search because they do not have indexes.

Many Norwegian court records are available on microfilm. More are deposited in the regional archives in Norway. Those located at the Family History Library are listed in the Locality section of the catalog are under these headings:

NORWAY - COURT RECORDSNORWAY, [COUNTY] - COURT RECORDSNORWAY, [COUNTY], [PARISH] - COURT RECORDS

Return to top of page

Previous Document   Next Document

©1998, 2006 by Intellectual Reserve, Inc. All rights reserved. Printed in the USA. No part of this document may be reprinted, posted on-line, or reproduced in any form for any purpose without the prior written permission of the copyright holder. FamilySearch is a trademark of Intellectual Reserve, Inc.
[FamilySearch^TM: Research Guidance
Version of Data: 4/3/2006]