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To say that "foreigners" won't find it useful is like saying someone from Europe wouldn't find the U. S. National Archives useful. The language is just something to figure out, as are the way records are kept in Norway as opposed to the U.S., and understanding the Norwegian naming patters. But believe me, if your family is in Norway, there's a wealth of information there. Using them, I was able to take some of the line I was researching back 11 generations in Norway.
I, too am at a dead end with Norway. I was surprised to find out that a Smith relative was born in Norway, when I always thought he was English. I've had people tell me that there are Smiths in Norway, and just a few weeks ago I had a young man at my desk from Norway who said he had never heard of one. What to do?
One random person from Norway is not exactly the defining representative of the nation. Especially being young, he may be less experienced and knowledgeable.
There are Smiths in Norway - there's 270 Smith results when I search the 1801 Norway Census and 561 on the 1865 census.
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Originally Posted by cmptrwlt
I search my last name (under 150 with that name in Norway). The results were rather limited. I got some information about the my parents' farm, though. For foreigners I doubt Digitalarkivet will be that useful.
This foreigner has found literally dozens of records from them. Perhaps you're just not looking in the right places? It is not an easy site to navigate or search if you don't know what exactly you're looking for or how to find it. Many of the parish records ( Digitalarkivet - Skannede kirkebøker ) are not indexed and require manually flipping through images of the records, you can not always just plug a name into a search field and have everything pop up for you like you can with some of the census records on there. Some other records can be found in the "Digital Inn": WebMeta - which are records indexed by volunteers, I think. You have to go through each one and see what regions and types of records they have indexed to see if they are relevant to your searches.
If all you've done is put your last name into a search field, you are not using the site to it's full capability and there might actually be much more for you to find.
I, too am at a dead end with Norway. I was surprised to find out that a Smith relative was born in Norway, when I always thought he was English. I've had people tell me that there are Smiths in Norway, and just a few weeks ago I had a young man at my desk from Norway who said he had never heard of one. What to do?
Did he ever use the name Smith in Norway, or was that just used in the USA? There are/were Smiths in Norway, but many Norwegians adopted the name in the USA as well (the Norwegian word for smith is the related "smed").
I search my last name (under 150 with that name in Norway). The results were rather limited. I got some information about the my parents' farm, though. For foreigners I doubt Digitalarkivet will be that useful.
It's pretty useful, particularly since the parish registers have been added - you can fill in quite a few of the blanks from between censuses. The toughest part about the parish registers isn't the language, it's the writing. Learning less than 50 Norwegian words and having a Norwegian/English (or Danish/English) dictionary will get any American a good 80% of the way to figuring out things from the parish registers.
Perhaps they've improved the site (as far as translations go), but back when I was doing the Norwegian research, I found the language on the site itself the biggest hindrance. I think only the first screen had an English version. The language in the records was not as hard to deal with, but just in using the website. It was intimidating to me back then.
Try some of forums. I gotten good responses, at least on American ancestors.
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