Help Understanding a Birth Place in Norway

pinkskies

I have a question about my 2x great-grandpa’s birthplace in Norway.

On his Naturalization papers (1922) he states he was born 1880 in Kongsvinger, Norway.

A cousin in Norway who is a lot more familiar with the family stated he was born and baptized in Austmarka. And went to school there.

I think the church record says he was born in Vinger, Hedmark?

https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:683Z-LNWV

So, which is the correct one? If I were to write where he was born as specific as possible with this information, how would that look?

Would it be: Austmarka, Vinger, Hedmark, Norway?

If I’m understanding this, Vinger turned into Kongsvinger? If that correct, what’s with Austmarka? When I look on google maps, it goes to somewhere on the west. I know the Austmarka our cousin refers to is next to Lake Møkkeren.

I’m a bit lost when trying to understand places in Norway and the correct format of writing them. If anyone knows of a good video or website that explains it, shoot it my way.

Norm Baker

Your cousin is correct. If you look at the original record for your ancestor, Sigvard, you will see written in under the dates of the birth and christening, 13 April and 13 June, the parish where the birth and christening actually took place - "Østmarken (aka Austmarka)". In addition, the farm both the parents live on is "Gylterud" (which is also listed as a place in Østmarken/Austmarka. See this page in the FamilySearch Wiki: https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Austmarka_%28%C3%98stmark%29_Parish%2C_Hedmark%2C_Norway_Genealogy ).

I am attaching an image with the parish name (Østmarken) and the farm name (Gylterud) highlighted:

Vinger and Østmark/Austmarka are both part of the Vinger Prestegjeld/District (see this article on Norway Prestegjeld: https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Norwegian_Prestegjeld ) but the birth actually took place in Østmark/Austmarka on Gylterud farm.

If this was my family, I would put the place-of-birth as (starting with the smallest place and the going to the largest-ie farm > parish > county > country) Gylterud, Østmark (or Austmarka), Hedmark, Norway.

You could write the birth place as "Gylterud, Østmark (or Austmarka), Vinger, Hedmark, Norway" as long as people understand that Vinger, in this instance, is the "prestegjeld/district" and not the parish. The simplest and least confusing thing would be to just leave the Vinger out.

If you look at the Hedmark County map in the FamilySearch Wiki, you will see the parishes of Vinger and Østmark (in brown near the southern tip the county). See that map here: https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Hedmark_County%2C_Norway_Genealogy .

Gordon Collett

Couple of things about place names to start with. First off names change and boundaries change and you often need to study a bit of history to figure out what is going on with the names. Secondly, where someone says they are from depends a lot on the situation. If I'm from Podunk, Utah, just outside of Salt Lake City, and I'm off somewhere and someone asks me where I'm from, do I say Podunk, a tiny place they will have never heard of, or Salt Lake City because it's close enough, or Utah because that's all the person is interested in, or the Rocky Mountain West? So when people or records report where someone is from, it might or might not be very precise.

To start learning about place names, google has very good articles about every past and present municipality in Norway. Here is the one for Vinger: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinger_%28municipality%29 . To quote it:

The prestegjeld of Vinger was established as a municipality on 1 January 1838… On 7 February 1855, the town of Kongsvinger (population: 472) was separated from Vinger municipality to become a separate urban municipality….

In 1864, the southern part of the municipality … was separated from Vinger to form the new municipality of Eidskog. … On 1 January 1876 a part of Vinger adjacent to the town of Kongsvinger containing 209 inhabitants was transferred to Kongsvinger…. On 1 January 1964, the municipality of Vinger was merged with the neighboring municipality of Brandval and the town of Kongsvinger which created a new Kongsvinger Municipality…

Pre-1838 there were no municipalities, just large parishes (prestegjeld) which were ecclesiastical divisions. It was in 1838 that these were given civil jurisdictions as municipalities. In all cases I have seen, the new municipalities had identical boundaries to the parishes. The parishes, but not the municipalities, were divided into one or more sub-parishes called sogn. Each sogn would have a church. Vinger parish containted Vinger, Austmarka, and Eidskog sub-parishes.

Sometimes things get confusing because the Norwegian words prestegjeld and sogn both translate to English as parish. Family Search therefore calls a prestegjeld a clerical district and a sogn a parish while the Norwegian Archives calls a prestegjeld a parish and a sogn a local parish.

For recording a place name, there isn't really a set standard. Some people use a four place system of:

Farm, Municipality, County, Country

Some use a five place:

Farm, Sogn, Municipality, County, Country,

You could even use a six place:

Farm, Sogn, Prestegjeld, Municipality, County, Country

In general it is best to use the place name as it was at the time of the event. This makes it possible to find records. A few rebels use the current place name.

Looking at the original of the record you posted, it shows that both his mother and father were living at Gylterud in Vinger. (The priest didn't cross the t. There is no place call Gyllerud in Vinger.) These are church records, so it gives the parish. This book, as you can tell by the citation, covers the entire parish or prestegjeld of Vinger. Sometimes that is all you get. However, in this case, if you look under the birth and christening date, you see Austmarka (spelled here Østmarken) so you do know which sub-parish he lived in and which church he was christened at.

Personally I would enter his information as:

• Birth: Gyllerud, Vinger, Hedmark, Norway (meaning Gyllerud farm, Vinger municipality)
• Christening Austmarka Kirke, Vinger, Hedmark, Norway. (meaning Austmarka Kirke, Vinger municipality)

I like to stick with the civil designations rather than ecclesiastical ones or mixing ecclesiastical and civil.

Here's information about the church: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austmarka_Church

Looking at the map, it appears Gylterud no longer exists as a named farm, but it was in this general area:

https://www.norgeskart.no/#!?project=norgeskart&layers=1002&zoom=13&lat=6661111.23&lon=352185.85&markerLat=6661111.227371354&markerLon=352185.85242740985&p=searchOptionsPanel&showSelection=false&sok=gylterud,%20kongsvinger

The original farm consisted of these sub-sections:

and your great-great-grandfather could have been born at any one of these sub-sections. You can see some of these names on the map. You can find these lists of property at https://www.dokpro.uio.no/cgi-bin/stad/matr50

Gordon Collett

Sorry, I don't have a good reference for you. I just got all this from a couple of decades rooting in the records and searching in maps.

Gordon Collett

To clarify just a bit more, here is what I mean by not liking to mix civil place names and ecclesiastical place names.

This is the full strictly civil place name:

Gylterud, Vinger, Hedmark, Norway

That is, Gylterud farm/gård, Vinger municipality/kommune, Hedmark county/fylke, Norway

This is the full strictly ecclesiastical place name:

Gylterud, Austmarka, Vinger, Vinger og Oda, Hamar, Norway.

Gylterud farm/gård, Austmarka local-parish/parish/sogn, Vinger parish/clerical-district/prestegjeld, Vinger og Odal deanery/prosti, Hamar diocese/bispedømme, Norway.

I don't object to people putting the sogn (aka local-parish aka parish) in the middle of the civil name and would not take it out, but many of the older parish registers cover the entire prestegjeld and do not tell which sogn a person was christened in and even if it does, it only tells you which church an event took place in but not whether the people involved lived in that sogn. Generally a prestegjeld only had one priest and he would rotate between churches each week. If you had to get your child christened, you would go to the church the priest was at that week, not necessarily your "home" church, that is the church in your sogn.

Since the municipality and prestegjeld (aka parish aka clerical district) nearly always have the same name at least until the mid 1900s, it is still very easy to find the parish records using the municipality name.

pinkskies

This is all such great information! I will be able to go through it better all in a couple of day, but want to acknowledge these comments. I appreciate it!