Norway Matrikkel

A Matrikkel is a public record, index to Land areas or real estate (Grunneiendommer) in Norway. In rural Norway it is a record or a list of farm properties. The farms are usually listed in topographic order and include a farm number (gårdsnummer), and Division number (bruksnummer). These indexes include: *The name of the farm and the land that belonged to each farm, name of owner or farmer, the value of the property *A Mortgage bond (Panteobligasjon), and increase in value of the property *A set value in inheritance cases *A set public tax, based on the value of the property.

In Norway the properties are divided by communities (kommunevis) with a number of farms and subfarms in each "kommune". Each farm has a farm number (Gårdsnummer [gnr.]); and each subfarm (bruk [bnr.]) a subfarm number. The farm numbers are unique within each "kommune" while subfarm numbers (bruksnumrene) start over again for each farm. A Matrikkel can also include a lease number (festenummer [fnr.]) used in sub communities and a section number (seksjonsnummer) (snr.). To make sure there is only one number for each property in all of Norway, a community number (kommunenummer) is listed in front of the matrikkel number. For Example: Farm number 200, subfarm number 243, section number 14 in Grimstad community, which is community number 0904. When new land was given a marikkel number it is called matrukulering, and this will be recorded in the land record book (grunnboksbladet) by the land surveyors for the land courts.

Some land records/property records (Jordebøker) for Norway were in existence from as early as the 1100s. More properties were listed from the 1400-1500s, especially 1590 to about 1660 but they do not include all the privately own property. Rules on how these records should be kept varied from time to time. Below you will see an index of some of the terms used in the 1723 matrikkel and which parishes was included in each jurisdiction. As the population grew these jurisdictions changed. As a result a parish could be in a different jurisdiction in a later matrikkel. Following are links to matrikkels in Norway:


 * Matriklar og jordebøker - a searchable site at Digitalarkivet.
 * Matrikkelforarbeidet 1723
 * The digitized pages of the 1838 Matrikkelen.
 * Gårdsmatrikkelen for 1838 - This is a searchable database for the counties of Hedmark, Buskerud, Telemark and Troms.
 * Gårdsmatrikkelen for 1886 - This is a searchable database for all of Norway.
 * rhd.uit.no - searchable files for 1838 and 1886 can also be downloaded as Excel files. They are organized by county
 * Mattrikkelutkastet av 1950 - Here you can drill down through the jurisdictional hierarchy from county to parish to farm and see the owners and tax liability in 1950.