Historical Population Register

The long-term goal is a national Norwegian population register for the time period since 1800 and where possible even earlier. The short-term goal is an expanding population register covering an increasing number of representative regions during this period by linking information in currently transcribed and additional computerized sources.

As the forefront of population research also historically moves from the use of crosssectional sources to longitudinal registers, the data structure of our source material must be reorganized in order to serve us and our major international partners in comparative research.

For a host of research questions in the humanities, social sciences and medicine a longitudinal structure opens up possibilities in three new ways: 1) The period before 1960 will be opened up for longitudinal research on a national scale. 2) The analysis of recent social and other population phenomena can be based on data with a longer time horizon. 3) It is of crucial importance to be able to follow individuals, kinship and genetic networks over extended time periods.

Wiki-page for the project.

The project is managed by the Norwegian Historical Data Centre at the University of Tromsø with the following partners:

The National and Regional Archives of Norway (Arkivverket)
Statistics Norway
The University of Oslo
Norwegian Computing Center
The Norwegian Institute of Local History
BSS-database (Busetnadsoge)
The Norwegian Institute of Public Health
The Demographic Database at Umeå University
The Historical Sample of the Netherland
The Minnesota Population Center

Dr Kåre Bævre launched the register idea at the annual meeting of the Norwegian Demographic Society in 2006 Last ned presentasjon

The application to the Norwegian Research Council can be found here: download

For å press release in Norwegian: Historisk befolkningsregister for Norge

Line Eikvil, Lars Holden, Kåre Bævre: Automatiske metoder som hjelp til transkribering av historiske kilder. Last ned notat fra Norsk regnesentral oppdatert oktober 2010

References:

Rapport fra HBRs forprosjekt
Lars Holden: Status for Historisk befolkningsregisters wiki
George Alter, Kees Mandemakers & Myron P. Gutmann: Defining and Distributing Longitudinal Historical Data in a General Way Through an Intermediate Structure Download article from Social Research 2009/3 page 78-114
Hans Henrik Bull: Data and Methods. Download chapter 3 from dissertation Marriage decisions in a peasant society. University of Oslo 2006 page 25-34
Elisabeth Engberg: 1900-talsmaterial. Rapport från ett utvecklingsprojekt vid Demografiska databasen i samarbete med Landsarkivet Härnösand och Statistiska Centralbyrån. Umeå 2007 download
Eli Fure: Interactive Record Linkage: The Cumulative Construction of Life Courses. Demographic Research Volume 3, article 11 published 12 December 2000 download
Gunnar Thorvaldsen: Nasjonalt historisk befolkningsregister. Kort presentasjon av prosjektet.
Gunnar Thorvaldsen: Fra folketellinger og kirkebøker til norsk befolkningsregister. Last ned artikkel i Heimen 2008 side 341-359

Further record linkage references


Home	Historical Population Registers
	The Norwegian Research Council has funded the planning of a historical population for Norway. This will extend the modern population register backwards in time from 1964. The parts older than ca 1910 will be open to the public, while the newer parts will be available only for bona fide researchers, and usually only as anonymized versions. The long-term goal is a national Norwegian population register for the time period since 1800 and where possible even earlier. The short-term goal is an expanding population register covering an increasing number of representative regions during this period by linking information in currently transcribed and additional computerized sources. As the forefront of population research also historically moves from the use of crosssectional sources to longitudinal registers, the data structure of our source material must be reorganized in order to serve us and our major international partners in comparative research. For a host of research questions in the humanities, social sciences and medicine a longitudinal structure opens up possibilities in three new ways: 1) The period before 1960 will be opened up for longitudinal research on a national scale. 2) The analysis of recent social and other population phenomena can be based on data with a longer time horizon. 3) It is of crucial importance to be able to follow individuals, kinship and genetic networks over extended time periods. Wiki-page for the project. The project is managed by the Norwegian Historical Data Centre at the University of Tromsø with the following partners: The National and Regional Archives of Norway (Arkivverket) Statistics Norway The University of Oslo Norwegian Computing Center The Norwegian Institute of Local History BSS-database (Busetnadsoge) The Norwegian Institute of Public Health The Demographic Database at Umeå University The Historical Sample of the Netherland The Minnesota Population Center Dr Kåre Bævre launched the register idea at the annual meeting of the Norwegian Demographic Society in 2006 Last ned presentasjon The application to the Norwegian Research Council can be found here: download For å press release in Norwegian: Historisk befolkningsregister for Norge Line Eikvil, Lars Holden, Kåre Bævre: Automatiske metoder som hjelp til transkribering av historiske kilder. Last ned notat fra Norsk regnesentral oppdatert oktober 2010 References: Rapport fra HBRs forprosjekt Lars Holden: Status for Historisk befolkningsregisters wiki George Alter, Kees Mandemakers & Myron P. Gutmann: Defining and Distributing Longitudinal Historical Data in a General Way Through an Intermediate Structure Download article from Social Research 2009/3 page 78-114 Hans Henrik Bull: Data and Methods. Download chapter 3 from dissertation Marriage decisions in a peasant society. University of Oslo 2006 page 25-34 Elisabeth Engberg: 1900-talsmaterial. Rapport från ett utvecklingsprojekt vid Demografiska databasen i samarbete med Landsarkivet Härnösand och Statistiska Centralbyrån. Umeå 2007 download Eli Fure: Interactive Record Linkage: The Cumulative Construction of Life Courses. Demographic Research Volume 3, article 11 published 12 December 2000 download Gunnar Thorvaldsen: Nasjonalt historisk befolkningsregister. Kort presentasjon av prosjektet. Gunnar Thorvaldsen: Fra folketellinger og kirkebøker til norsk befolkningsregister. Last ned artikkel i Heimen 2008 side 341-359 Further record linkage references
	Norwegian Historical Data Centre (NHDC) Faculty of Humanities, Social Sciences and Teaching University of Tromsø, N-9037 Tromsø, NORWAY E-mail: rhd-web@sv.uit.no Updated: 31 May 2011

Historical Population Registers