Nordic Moving In and Moving Out Records

Moving In/Moving Out
Some Scandinavian words for "moving in" and "moving out" are:


 * Danish — Tilgang, Afgang
 * Norwegian — Inflyttde, Utflyttde
 * Swedish — Inflyttning, Utflyttning
 * Icelandic — ínnkomnír, burtvíknír
 * Finnish — muuttaneet, muuttaneet

The parish in which your ancestor lived was his or her official residence, taxing, and registration place. If your ancestor wanted to change that status for any length of time and was doing it legally, he or she was supposed to register in and out with the minister. As the official record keeper of life events, the priest would duly record that change in the church books under the appropriate heading. Such movements generally occurred after confirmation, though it could have happened before. If the family plot of land, whether it was rented, leased, or owned, was not sufficient to support the family, your ancestors may have gone looking for any available work or to get training in a certain field.

The information found in a moving out or moving in record should minimally include the person's name, possibly his or her age, and the name of the new place (generally the parish) he or she was moving to or came from. Depending upon the country and the time period, it might also include the birth date, birth place, residence, parents' names, date of move, where the person came from, where they're moving to, which farm they've moved from or to, the name of the person they worked for previously, whom they are going to work for now, the name of the minister who signed the moving certificate, marital status, when they last had the sacrament, and possibly a physical description.

The young person may have moved in and out several times before marriage or emigration. Sometimes they are gone for quite a few years, then come back to take over the home farm when the parents get too old or come back for a last visit just before they emigrated.

Older people may have turned the farm over to one child or to a relative, then gone to live or visit extensively with another child, or perhaps their own siblings, and then die in that new parish. If a person just goes visiting, even for a long time, they did not have to register out officially, so searches of surrounding parishes might be needed to pick him or her up again.

Occasionally people died in another parish. If they could be identified, word was sent back to the home parish, and an entry was made in those records. In other instances, notations such as "A poor beggar, supposedly from . . ., was buried today" or "A dead female person was found in the forest and no one knows who she is" have been found in the records.

As a normal rule, the moving in and out records would reflect moves to another parish, not within the parish. However, it has been noted that some ministers kept track of that, too. If the place names you are finding in the moving records do not appear in a gazetteer with a parish designation or in the parish listings for that county, spot-check surrounding place names in the gazetteer to see if they also are being listed as small villages and farms. Remember, the minister probably knew the names of villages and farms not only in his parish, but also those in surrounding parishes. If your ancestor moved to one of the places the minister knew the name of, even though it was in the next parish over, he may just have put that small place name in the record rather than the name of the jurisdiction it belonged to.