Historical Population Register for Norway

1. Source transcription Even if 6 million pre-CPR census records have been transcribed, much transcription work needs to be completed: Historical Population Register for Norway We are currently building a national Historical Population Register (HPR) for Norway based on mainly censuses and church books. The register aims to include as many as possible of the 9.7 million people who were born in or immigrated to Norway between 1735 and 1964. The latter year marks the introduction of the national Central Population Register (CPR). • Partners • Statistics Norway • The National and Regional Archives • The Norwegian Institute of Public Health • The Norwegian Computing Center • The Norwegian Institute of Local History • The BSS-database (Busetnadsoge) • The University of Oslo • The University of Stavanger • The University of Bergen • Computers in Genealogy (DIS-Norway) • Demographic Database, Umeå University • Historical Sample of the Netherlands • Minnesota Population Center The complete count censuses from 1801, 1865, 1875, 1900 and 1910 are available as text and encoded versions. These censuses together with baptism, wedding and burial information from the church books, emigration lists etc. are built upon in order to create retrospective longitudinal population registers at the local and national levels. Our national population register will cover the period from the first nominative complete count census in 1801 until the Central Population Registry was started in 1964. Some local data from the 18th century will be included. Norwegian Historical Data Centre - University of Tromsø Gunnar.Thorvaldsen@uit.no http://www.rhd.uit.no/nhdc/hpr.html

2. Methodologically, we have benefited from the longitudinal databases with continuous historical population registers kept in Sweden and the Netherlands as well as the encoding of censuses in Norway and the US. Software for rational transcription and linking of the sources will be key factors for building the HPR. It will be linked internally and to the CPR with automatic record linkage software. The linking is supplemented with genealogical wiki-systems, where the laws about statistics and privacy protection do not restrict public access to the registry - for the last 80 to 100 years. With the help of existing name standardization tables, record linkage software and online, wiki-based help from genealogists for periods with open sources, we can trace also the mobile population groups and those whose characteristics may be inconsistently noted in the source material. Sample local and nationally linked datasets are already available as relational databases and in files compatible with standard statistical software. We are transferring data sets into the Intermediate Data Structure sponsored by our partners in the European Historical Samples Network, financed by the European Science Foundation. •Modern, contemporary population registries are updated in real time so that migration and vital events are mirrored in the database as they are reported. •The continuous updating of historical population registers must not be interpreted literally. There may be underreporting of events, especially of co-habitation, illegal immigration and short-distance mobility. Over time and with the help of local historians and genealogists the quality of the HPR will be enhanced. •We have recently concentrated on building the register for the first two decades of the 19th century in order to identify, study and celebrate the population that became independent on 17th May 1814. • The registers are used by historians, social scientists, health researchers, name researchers, in education and by genealogists. Characteristics of a population registry • •It is longitudinal, maintaining a continuously updated overview of the population in an administrative geographic area. • •Records about migrants are linked together when they move inside the administrative area, and also when they cross administrative borders. • •The population registry is often based on census records and reports about vital events, linking these together at the individual level. • • The composition and whereabouts of the population are documented more or less continuously. Complete count censuses • The figure shows when the persons present in the censuses were born and died, thus defining when they can be identified there by record linkage. Death and survival data are from cohort mortality tables, emigration statistics and subsequent censuses. The diagram should be read vertically to see what part of the population can be linked between censuses. More than half a million people present in 1900 and more than a million in 1910 can be found in the 1960 census and thus in the current Central Population Register (CPR).