When Christmas comes, we often think of what has been. Our parents and grandparents. How is our family in Norway doing? We might have been in touch with cousins over there for a long time, but suddenly we lost touch.

But there are ways of finding family. Here we will give you a few suggestions. Why not try Facebook. Write the name of your relative and if it is a relatively common name, add the name of the town if you know it. Very many Norwegians are on Facebook, especially the older generations. Or try a page dedicated to a geographical area: Like Du vet du er fra Notodden (You know you are from Notodden) or Bilder og historier fra gamle Steinkjer (Pictures and stories from Steinkjer in the old days). Ask if anybody knows your relative. You can write in English; Facebook automatically translates for the Norwegian readers. And with that information you can get in touch with them.

Another method is to use an online telephone catalogue (white pages) called 1881.no. Write their full name in the search field. If there is more than one person with the name, add a geographical location. The matches include name, telephone number and address. If you click on Mer info (More information) a map and a satellite photo of the address appears.

Do you think the person might have died? There is a page called Minnesider:  vareminnesider.no (memorial pages). Click on the flag icon to select the English language. Most undertakers in Norway render this service to their customers. There is one page for each person registered, with the death notice, and sometimes pictures of the deceased and tributes from relatives and friends. Not all elements are shown for every person, but in most cases you will find at least some information. This service was started about 2010.

And lastly, the National Library of Norway has scanned most newspapers in Norway. (And you can of course find people in digitized farm books too, on the same website.) In the search field, write the full name inside quotation marks. An example: “Henrik Olsen Uv” makes you search for those three names in that order. No matches, try “Henrik O. Uv” or “Henrik Uv”. It might take some effort and creative searching, but our experience is that you can find a lot of information about other relatives, they are mostly listed under the deceased. In addition to articles, newspapers contain death and wedding announcements, obituaries, and commemoration of birthdays and anniversaries (especially in local papers).

Would you like to learn more about Norwegian genealogy research, read our book Exploring Norwegian Genealogy. Or learn from Liv and Margaret’s videos on YouTube.