Geography question, easy I hope
A family's marriage and baptism sources are duplicated: a set for Folda, Nordland, Norway and similar for Rorstad, Nordland. Same place? The name changed? The Norway parish map is confusing. According to Google maps, Folda is a little island just off from Rorstad.
Thanks again.
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From the FamilySearch wiki. "Folda clerical district contains parish registers from the parishes Folda or Sørfold, Rørstad chapell and Nordfold in Folda clerical district." http://norwayparishes.com/
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FamilySearch wiki information for Folda/Rørstad. https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en/Folda_Parish,_Nordland,_Norway_Genealogy
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Hi Kathy,
Yes, this one is not too difficult to solve. Yes, they are the same place. Rørstad is a farm in Folda Parish. See link below:
I used norwayparishes.com and could not find it. That is because on this website, you have to use the exact spelling as it is found today. Norwegian has three extra vowels at the end of the alphabet, Æ(æ), Ø(ø), and Å(å). Norgeskart.no will return results for places containing "ø" even when you enter "o", but not norwayparishes.com. However, norgeskart.no does not show parish boundaries, so you need both websites. When I didn't find it on norwayparishes.com, I did a search on norgeskart.no and found it. I then returned to norwayparishes.com, selected Norland county and Rørstad in the Property/Farm Search field, and there it was! It is not on an Island. It is on the mainland as you can see on norgeskart.no. Norwayparishes.com uses a map template, rather than digital data for the map, so farm placement on the map may be off a little.
You can also explore the Wiki on FamilySearch and type in Norway, then select the county, then the parish to find more resources.
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Please allow me to elaborate on the previous answers and over explain in painful detail a few important concepts then finally answer your question.
First of all, like everywhere else, place names in Norway are not unique. Just like you have Utah being both the name of a state and a county in that state, and Salt Lake being a county, city, temple, and lake, you can have one name in Norway that is a farm, a village, an island, a parish, a church, and sometimes more all in the same small area. So the context of where you see a name is very important.
Next some history. Vital records in Norway, from the earliest start of recording them in the 1700s until not too many decades ago were kept by the branch of the Norwegian government that was the church. Vital records are all church records. So you need to know something about church organization through the years.
Early on in Norway, areas of the country were organized in the church units known Prestgjeld and Sogn. Prestegjeld were large geographical areas that were usually, but not always, subdivided into the smaller Sogn. Each Sogn had a church.
If you look in a Norwegian/English dictionary, you will usually find that Prestegjeld is translated as parish and Sogn is translated as parish. Here starts the confusion.
FamilySearch’s website always translates Prestegjeld as Clerical District and Sogn as Parish.
The Norwegian National Archives always translates Prestegjeld as Parish and Sogn as Local Parish.
For that reason, I tend to stick with the terms Prestegjeld and Sogn and will here.
In 1838, Norway created civil municipalities (Norwegian: kommune). Originally these municipalities had boundaries that almost always exactly followed the corresponding prestegjeld boundaries. They also almost always took the name of the prestegjeld. The church continued to keep all the vital records for the municipality. Over the years boundaries would be adjusted and sometimes names would change but that is more information than is needed here.
Third important concept is to know how church records were kept. Each prestegjeld would keep the official parish register known as the Ministerialbok. Early on, this would always cover the entire prestegjeld. Later in history, as populations grew, there would often be a Ministerialbok for each sogn. At some times during history, there would also be kept a copy of the Ministerialbok called the Klokkerbok as a backup in case of fire or other damage to the Ministerialbok. Frequently, the Klokkerbok would be divided into separate volumes for each sogn much sooner than the Ministerialbok was.
When the Church started the extraction/indexing program for Norway, they filmed both the Ministerialbok and the Klokkerbok. The place name used for the indexed records was based on what the book covered. So very often you will see one set of records with the prestegjeld name and a set of duplicate records with the sogn name, just as the Klokkerbok duplicated the Ministerialbok.
Here is the index from Norwegian Digitalarkivet for parish records from Folda prestegjeld for 1865:
As you can see there are three volumes:
1) The Ministerialbok covering the entire prestegjeld.
2) The Klokkerbok covering just Kjerringøy sogn.
3) the Klokkerbok covering just Folda (Rørstad) sogn.
All three of these books were indexed.
What this means, is that the marriage and birth records you are seeing are duplicates for events that took place in Rørstad parish, Folda clerical district, Nordland county, Norway, to use FamilySearch’s terminology. You will have to check the original records through the Norwegian archive’s site to see which farm the family was living at. Here is a link to the where you can see these:
https://media.digitalarkivet.no/kb/browse?clerical_parishes[]=1845P&start_year=1865&end_year=1865&text=
The archives have pages that explain some of the changes in parishes through the years. The page for Nordland is here:
https://www.arkivverket.no/slektsgranskning/historikk-for-prestegjeld-og-sogn/prestegjeld-og-sogn-i-nordland
Reading through that, it looks like Folda had a pretty complicated history of boundary changes through the years. It appears that the prestegjeld was called Folda from early on, but the sogn was variously called Folda or Rørstad. The church for that sogn was called Rørstad church because it was located near Rørstad farm in the area that later became Rørstad village. The original church was closed in 1880 and a new one built in an easier to reach location. It is right here:
https://www.norgeskart.no/#!?project=norgeskart&layers=1002&zoom=15&lat=7497088.46&lon=509582.28&markerLat=7497088.46463717&markerLon=509582.27910625644&panel=search
Here is some information about the church: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rørstad_Church
Since records were recorded in the sogn where then event took place, not necessarily in the sogn the family lived, it can be hard to know sometimes which sogn a farm is located in based on the parish records. For this reason, I usually, if the sogn is recorded in the parish record at all, record events place names like this:
Birth place: Farm, Prestgjeld/Kommune, County, Norway
Christening place: Sogn/Church, Prestegjeld/Kommune, County, Norway
for example:
Birth place: Haukenes, Folda, Nordland, Norway
Christening place: Rørstad Kirke, Folda, Nordland, Norway
The short answer to your question would have been: Yes, these are duplicate records of the same event. One uses the then current clerical district name and one uses the then current parish name.
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Thank you, you did not over explain. I see why birthplace and christening place vary.
How do you tell if it is a farm name? For example, a birthplace has been entered on a person's page as Flado. Or Fladø. And there is a possibly matching person with the additional name of Fladøen. Does this indicate a connection?
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When I wonder if a place is a farm or parish I go to this website. It is a database of both parishes and farms. The man who originally collected this information went from place to place gathering place names. It was a noble work. https://www.dokpro.uio.no/rygh_ng/rygh_form.html
Remember, less is more in your search. I go directly to parish or farm, not county etc. Type just one letter at a time to see what the search engine finds. It won't find it if you spell it incorrectly. That brings up spelling, be broad minded and know the alphabet.
Also, there are subfarms and may not be listed.
I would certainly consider there could be a connection between two people who have such similar words (places?) as Fladø and Fladøen. More info would be needed to make a good connection. I don't know about this, but I did a google search for Fladøen and it gave, "flat island". I don't rely on google translate a lot but it's always worth a try.
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Another great tool would be the FamilySearch wiki for Norway. Maybe you are already aware? https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en/Norway_Genealogy If you choose a parish, you can then see the farms for that location.
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Fladø and Fladøen are the same name in different form. Modern Norwegian spelling for this would be Flatøy or Flatøya.
Searching norgeskart.no will help identify the correct spelling.
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@jmartinekenes jmartinekenes I appreciate your helpful information. I'm a beginner at Norway research.
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Not the correct spelling. Just the current "official" map spelling. I'm sure you could walk onto some of these farms and be told how wrong the map is.
When it comes to place names, there are so many variants through the years, not to mention the Bokmål, Nynorsk, and local dialect forms that the concept of "correct" goes out the window pretty quickly!
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Kathy, regarding your question, "How do you tell if it is a farm name?" This is pretty straight forward.
If you are looking at FamlySearch indexed records, these typically do not include any farm names as place names, just the clerical district or parish name.
If you are looking at the actual scanned microfilm, since one book is for just one parish, they never include the parish name in the record, just the farm name.
If you are looking at a birth place in Family Tree and wondering if the first word is a parish or a farm, most of the time if there are three names it will be a parish or community and if there are four it will be the farm if the place name as been entered correctly. For example, Stord, Hordaland, Norway has just the community/parish while Digernes, Stord, Hordaland, Norway includes the farm.
Unfortunately, there are thousands of farms in Norway which were entered into the standardized place name database without the parish/community so if someone just picks the current standard to enter in Family Tree, the place name will be wrong. This is slowly being corrected.
In any one area you might be working in, there are only so many parishes and it won't take you long to get familiar with them. You might want to make it a standard practice whenever you are looking at a new area in Norway to go to the http://norwayparishes.com site, put in the county, municipality/kommune/prestegjeld/clerical-district, and the just click on Parish drop down menu and see what sogn/parishes/local-parishes are in the area
Just a note about last names. When looking at names in Norway, you will see four types of last name.
1) Patronymics: the children use as their last names the father's first name appended with -sen, -ssen, -son, -sson, -szen, -søn, -ssøn or some other variant of the Norwegian word for son for the boys or -datter for the girls. (Used from very early on to the early 1900s.)
Example:
Father: Ole Hansson
Son: Anders Olsson
Daughter: Brita Olsdatter
2) Fixed Patronymics: the children use as their last names the father's last name which at some point generations past was a patronymic. (Earliest I have seen has been around 1810 in cities. Anyone with a patronymic who did not pick a different type of name often ended up with this kind of name when required by law to adopt a permanent last name in the early 1900s.)
Example:
Father: Ole Hansson
Son: Anders Hansson
Daughter: Brita Hanson
3) Family Names: the children use as their last names the father's last name which has been the same for generations. These are most like surnames as used in the US. (From early on, mainly among the wealthy and upper class.)
Example:
Father: Ole Hagerup
Son: Anders Hagerup
Daughter: Brita Hagerup
4) Farm Names: the entire family used as their last name the name of their current farm. Used in conjunction with their patronymic. Use of farm names and how they were viewed varied depending on the part of the country. In rural Western Norway they were used primarily by the farm owners and were viewed as a mark of their social status. (From early on. When Norwegians were required to pick a set last name, those who had a traditional farm name for their family usually picked it.)
Example:
Family lived at Flatøy farm -
Father: Ole Hansson Flatøy
Son: Anders Olsson Flatøy
Daughter: Brita Olsdatter Flatøy
Family moves to the nearby Kråkåsen farm and changes to:
Father: Ole Hansson Kråkåsen
Son: Anders Olsson Kråkåsen
Daughter Brita Olsdatter Kråkåsen
Some records will use the farm name, some will not. So Ole Hansson born at Flatøy and Ole Hansson Flatøy could well be the same person if all other information agrees.
However, this use of farm names does add an extra wrinkle in assembling Norwegian families.
Hans Olsson Flatøy and Ole Olsson Flatøy, both living at Flatøy, might be brothers or they could very well not be related at all, it could be that their fathers were two completely different Ole's and it's just coincidence they both live at Flatøy farm.
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"Correct spelling" is relative to time, place and circumstances. As the objective is generally to locate the right place, it is helpful to use the current "official" spelling. Without it, it can be difficult to locate the "correct" place.
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I agree completely. That is why my current general practice if a family had and used a farm name is to use the spelling found in the birth record which will have how the priest happened to spell it that day for the last name and the current map spelling as the place name.
For example:
Name: Jens Olsson Wigenæs
Birthplace: Vikanes, Stord, Hordaland, Norway
If the name is spelled differently for each child, I'd probably take a majority vote and use the most common spelling in their birth records for all of them.
This does, however, bring up a feature of Family Tree that shows the brilliance of its programmers. Unfortunately, being able to completely use the feature is not yet possible for a lot of places. I'll just mention it here for Kathy.
Each place in the FamilySearch places database ( https://www.familysearch.org/research/places/?pagenum=1&pagesize=20 ) includes the latitude and longitude of that place. Each place has one main name, which is what we see as the "standardized" place name in Family Tree. However, each entry also has a list of Alternate Names that can be as long as necessary. Also, each place can have as many historical time periods with the correct name for that time period as needed.
When a place in the database has a full compliment of alternate names, I can use any of them as the place name in Family Tree and it will link properly to the standardized version.
For example, the farm Børkjeland which is currently in Vindafjord, Rogaland, Norway ( https://www.familysearch.org/research/places/?focusedId=11036657&includeIsParent=true&pagenum=1&pagesize=100&primaryText=Fjelberg,%20Hordaland,%20Norway&reqParents=552308&reqParentsLabel=Municipality&reqParentsType=201&searchTypeaheadInputText=Search%20Within:Fjelberg,%20Hordaland,%20Norway ) is listed with the alternate names of Bircheland, Birkeland, and Birksland. I can also see in the database that in 1865 boundaries were changed and it was then moved from the community of Fjelberg to Sveio. In 1902 it moved to Vikebygd, then in 1964 landed in Ølen. In 2002 the entire community of Ølen was moved from Hordaland to Rogaland county. Then as a final move, Ølen was merged with Vindafjord community.
So on a map today, I have to look for Børkjeland, Vindafjord, Rogaland, Norway. But it would be completely wrong to enter that name for a birthplace in 1840 and very misleading. People would go to look for more records in Vindafjord and never be able to find a single one. They would have to go to Fjelberg which doesn't exist anymore.
This is where the wonderful feature of Family Tree comes in. When I enter Birkeland as the place name, I see all the options that this could mean:
So I can enter the correct historical spelling and correct historical community, having it linked to the current modern spelling and correct historical community:
and still, because these are all just different labels for the same latitude and longitude dot on the globe, see exactly where this place is on the timeline map just outside the town of Vikebygd in Vindafjord, Rogaland:
Unfortunately, it is going to take a long time to complete the Places database and get every spot on the globe entered correctly and completely for all times through history. But that is FamilySearch's goal.
If there are places we are working in a lot and we would like to be able to enter them correctly in Family Tree, we can submit requests to have them added to the database by going to that database and using the Suggest a New Place link:
or by going to the FamilySearch Places group here in these Community boards and posting a request ( https://community.familysearch.org/s/group/0F93A000000DIHfSAO/familysearch-places?language=en_US ):
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Here are some final comments that actually do eventually circle back to the original question:
I’ll freely admit that my fascination with learning new things about Norway goes overboard at times. But after only briefly reading through the history of Folden prestegjeld on the Norwegian archives site and getting entirely confused, I’ve wanted to get back to it and tease out what actually went on there. When doing such, my main sources are the archives, a work titled Historisk oversikt over endringer i kommune- og fylkesinndelingen by Dag Juvkam and published by the Norwegian Statistical Bureau, and Wikipedia.
These can be found at these links:
https://www.arkivverket.no/slektsgranskning/historikk-for-prestegjeld-og-sogn
https://www.ssb.no/a/publikasjoner/pdf/rapp_9913/rapp_9913.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folden
From a civil standpoint, things are a bit complicated:
In 1838, when civil boundaries were established, Folden community was created from Folden clerical district.
In 1887, Folden was split into Nordfold-Kjerringøy community and Sørfold community.
In 1897, a small part of Nordfold was shifted into Sørfold.
In 1964, a portion of Sørfold and portion of Kjerringøy community were merged with Bodin community to form a larger Bodin community.
In 1984, a portion of Sørfold was merged into Bodø.
So the current community of Sørfold is only a portion of the original Folden community and clerical district.
As stated above, in 1897, a small part of Nordfold was moved to Sørfold.
In 1906, Nordfold-Kjerringøy community was split into two separate communities, Nordfold and Kjerringøy.
In 1964, Nordford (the part not moved to Sørfold in 1897), Kjerringøy, Leiranger, Stegien, and part of Hamarøy was merged to form one community and took the name Steigen.
So the current community of Steigen contains part of the original Folden community.
Kerringøy existed as a community until 1964 when part was moved to Bodin and part was moved to Steigen.
In 1968, all of Bodin was merged into Bodø.
When looking at a modern map, to get a sense of where Folden was, look at Sørfold, the southern part of Steigen, and the northern part of Bodø.
The clerical boundaries have actually been a lot more stable. I’m going to use the terms Prestegjeld and Sogn here for clarity. If I am understanding and translating it all correctly, the following changes occurred during the years.
Originally, Folda was a sogn under Salten prestegjeld. In 1770, Folda was turned into a prestgjeld containing two sogn, Rørstad and Kjerringøy.
Shortly after 1880, Rørstad was divided so that Folda prestegjeld now contained Sørfold, Rørstad, Nordfold, and Kjerringøy sogn.
In 1887 Kjerringøy was turned into a separate prestegjeld.
In 1977 Nordfold sogn was moved to Steigen prestegjeld so that Folda prestegjeld consisted of just Rørstad sogn and Sørfold sogn. At the same time, the name of Folda prestegjeld was changed to Sørfold prestegjeld. At some point, the name of Rørstad sogn was changed to Folda sogn.
This explains the current appearance of the Norway Parishes Map. It shows four sogn: Nordfold, Folda, Kjerringøy, and Sørfold:
Looking at this, allowing for border adjustments, the original Folda prestgjeld would have covered roughly the area here shown as Nordfold, Folda, Sørfold, and Kjerringøy
and the original Rørstad sogn would have covered the area here shown as Nordfold, Folda, and Sørfold, unless I have misunderstood something.
Figuring out this geography is important because it helps you know where the actual farms you are looking for may have been located. This is particularly important for your question since you won’t find the proper Rørstad on any map since it was never the name of a community and is no longer the name of a parish. The people whose birth and marriage records you were looking at could have lived anywhere in Rørstad parish.
By the way, even though I said these were my final comments, if you would like to post a link to the records you were looking at, I'd be happy to take a look at the microfilm, determine the farm, and show you where that farm is on the map.
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