Sweden Household Examination Records (Husförhörslängder)

Back to Sweden Portal Page►

As part of the 1686 Church Act, Parliment mandated that Clerical Surveys be kept by the local parish minister.The minister was required to create an evaluation tool, whereby he could determine the literacy and religious knowledge of each of his parishioners. Parishioners could have been required to come to the church and take turns being examined; they might have been required to go to an assigned farmer's house in the district,or the minister might have personally visited each household the parish to do the individual interviewing. The survey was usually done in the fall of the year after the harvest and before the scramble by farm hands and domestic maids to secure employment for the coming year. Information often included age, residence, spouse name, marriage dates, death dates, relationships of each member of the household to the head of the house, information about moves, and remarks about the person’s character.

Sometimes you will find multiple generations in one household. Males are often listed before females. Dates are written in the European or Military style of dating. For example, 10/3 is the 10th of March. Clerical Survey Summaries were done in 1860, 1870, 1880 and 1890. These summaries are going up online.

Clerical survey information should be considered as a secondary source if it conflicts with known birth, marriage and death dates as recorded in the official parish registers.

Format of the Clerical Survey

 * The first surveys were created by each minister in a format he felt was useful for the completion of his examination. The earliest surveys were done using books filled with blank sheets of paper *In these early surveys, the person’s age was often recorded instead of the birth date. If this is the case, remember to subtract the person’s age from the first year listed in that survey book. Most of the books used for recording the survey information spanned a five year or greater time period


 * You find your Swede in the clerical survey under the name of the farm or village where they resided within the parish. If you do not know the name of the farm of residence, then it may be necessary to read the survey one page at a time until you find the desired person. That farm or village name of residence is often given in the other life event records the minister kept such as births or christenings, engagements and marriages, deaths and burials, and moving in and out (innflyttde och utflyttde).  It is good research procedure to find your person in one of the above mentioned records first to get that farm or village name, before doing a page by page search thorugh the survey, unless it is a very small parish.
 * Many times the recorder listed the villages and farms in his parish in the same order in each successive survey book.  That means once you initially locate your person in a survey, they may possibly be within 5-20 pages of that same page number in the next or preceeding survey book - depending upon the positive or negative growth of the parish. If the survey book is not paginated, write down the names of places listed on the pages before and after the one you found your ancestor on. Record the names or district numbers listed across the very top of the page.
 * Swedish parishes were divided into military districts called "rote. (plural = röter)" In the early surveys, sometimes only the number of the rote is listed across the top of the page i.e. First Rote, Second Rote, and so forth.  In the body of the record, the names of the farms or villages may then be given as the minister visited them.  When you begin to search a new time frame survey book, take a few minutes up front to study the pattern of the record so your eyes will truly look at where those place names should be.


 * Some surveys contain an “ortregister” or place listing. The “ortregister” will list, usually alphabetically, the names of the farms and villages in the parish and indicate the page number in the survey where the enumeration of the persons for each farm or village begins. Remember that such a list will be in Swedish alphabet order. Places which begin with a diacritic letter (Å,Ä,Ö) will be listed after "Z" in the place listing.    If the place name has a descriptive or directional name attached to it such as North, South, Upper, Lower, it might be found alphabetized by that.  Or, the minister may have listed all the major villages or farms in the parish, with sub farms or areas belonging to them listed underneath that.
 * With time, pre-printed, "fill in the blank" survey books became available. That means surveys taken in the mid to late nineteenth century will often include marriage dates, spouses’ names, death dates, information relating to moving in or out of the parish, and remarks concerning the character of each person or the consequences for behavior deemed “inappropriate”

Family Structure within the Clerical Survey

 * Clerical surveys provide insight to the genealogist by re-creating the familial unit and indicating the relationship of each household member to the head of the house


 * It is commonplace to discover multi-generational families in residence in the same house. Grandparents, married children and grandchildren frequently are cohabitating in the same dwelling


 * All indicated relationships within the house are to the head of the house (male or female). In-law relationships are referenced with the following terms: svärfar-father-in-law, svärmor-mother-in-law, svåger-brother-in-law, svägerska-sister-in-law, svärson-son-in-law and svärdotter-daughter-in-law.


 * Do not assume a relationship between the head of the house and an adolescent male listed as “gosse” or “pojke” or an adolescent female listed as “flicka” even if they have a patronymic surname which indicates the head of the house could be their father. These terms translate into English simply as “boy” and “girl” respectively. Generally, but not always, these terms apply to someone who has not reached confirmation age. Household servants are indicated with the usage of the terms, “drängen” (male) and “pigan” (female). These terms can be abbreviated to “dräng” and “pig”. *The later term also refers to the marital state of a female.  She could be 100 years old, could have borne 10 children, und will still be listed as  “pigan” if she had never officially married.
 * Because the Swedish society before the mid-20th century was patriarchally-based, the sons in a family will often be enumerated in the survey before any of the daughters, even sons who are younger than their older sisters.

Dates and Places

 * The dates found in the clerical survey are, as a rule, expressed by using the European or Military style of dating. The number of the day is listed in fractional format over the number of the month. For example, the date 10 March will be written as 10/3 or the tenth day of the third month. If unsure about a date, look for a date with a day higher than 12. For example, a date written as 12/23 obviously has to be December 23rd because there are only 12 months in a year.


 * Dates listed in the clerical survey should be regarded as secondary information. If they conflict with dates found in the birth, marriage or death book, which were kept by the minister, accept the dates found in the church books as accurate. Information from the church books is considered to be primary source.


 * Places listed in the clerical survey record are generally the names of the parishes (socken, församling) where the indicated life event took place. However, the minister may have written a farm name or village instead of the parish. If you do a “Place Search” using the Family History Library Catalog and draw a blank, or, do not find your place name in the Swedish parish list in the wiki, you have either misspelled the name or the place is not a parish. You may need to refer to the Swedish gazetteer, Svensk Ortförteckning, (FHL 948.5 E8sv 1965) in order to get a correct spelling for the farm or village and to also identify the parish to which it belongs.


 * The following abbreviations may be listed under the column for birth place and each term’s English translation follows: Do = ditto, Ibidem or Ibid. = same as above, Här = here (in this parish), Förs., Församling = in this parish, Loco = in this same parish, sometimes also indicating in the same village or farm area where they are currently listed.

Tips for working in the Clerical Survey

 * The information found in the clerical survey came from an oral interview between the minister and the person being interviewed. Therefore, the information is regarded as a secondary source and as such, is questionable. The minister may have previously copied the dates of birth or marriage and relevant places from the preceeding survey book.  Check all dates closely, as transcription errors do occur.  Only by following every person in each survey will you pick up such an error.
 * Remember to look at each name on the page of the survey where your ancestor(s) is/are listed. Multi-generational families are common and it may be that the persons enumerated before and after your ancestor(s) have a relationship to him/her.
 * If the persons you are tracing in the survey do not appear in the next sequential survey, they have died, moved out of the parish or moved to a different farm or village in the parish. Keep looking!
 * If the name of the person you are researching in the survey has been crossed out or lined through it can mean: the person died, moved, or was transferred to the “new” (the next time-sequential) book. *If there are dots (...........) underlining a crossed-out name, this means the person has returned and is still there.


 * Do not skip surveys. Each survey needs to be studied and examined. If you skip surveys because you think that it is not important to look at each, you may miss crucial information which can impact the success of your research.


 * It is often the case, that a father will eventually turn the running of the farm over to a son or son-in-law. The father does this with the understanding that he and his wife may remain on the farm for as long as they desire. In the survey the term “Inhyses” precedes the name of a parent who has relinquished the running of the farm to another relative. The term could also apply to someone not related, who was renting a room, or part of a room in the house.
 * Look at the full page where your ancestor(s) is located. Often, the father, mother, or widowed grandmother are "moved" to the bottom of the survey page.
 * In Sweden there are "mother" parishes, and annex parishes. Sometimes, the births, marriages and deaths for the mother parish and the annex parish(es) belonging to it are recorded in the same book.  Once in a while, the clerical survey's for both the mother parish and the annex parish(es) are together in the same book.  As a general rule, however, a SEPARATE clerical survey book is generally kept for each individual parish, whether it is the mother parish or the annex parish.  Be very careful and make sure exactly which survey book you are researching in, or you may not find the people who truly should be there.  Searching the Family History Library Catalog www.familysearch.org &gt;Library Catalog under the names of the individual parishes will give you the proper time periods and Swedish archival book number for each parish.  Also, bringing the individual parish up in the Genline datbase will give you a listing of the survey books and the time periods they cover.

Key Vocabulary Terms and Symbols used in Clerical Surveys

 * Bonde - farmer
 * Barn - child
 * Dräng - farm hand
 * Dömd - sentenced
 * Hemmansägaren - homeowner
 * Hustru - wife *Infra - look below
 * Nedan - look below
 * Oäkta - illegitimate
 * Piga - maid(en) (unmarried female)
 * Rusthållare - farmer supporting a cavalry soldier
 * Sjuk - sick
 * Soldat - soldier
 * Supra - look above
 * Torpare renting farmer

Life events

 * Födde - birth
 * Vigde - marriage
 * Döde - death
 * + - death
 * Gift - marriage
 * Vigsel - marriage
 * Dop - christning
 * Nöddop - emergency christening

You may also find terms for sensory impairment used in the clerical survey:


 * Blind - Blind
 * Döv - Deaf
 * Dövstum - Dumb
 * Krympling - Crippled
 * Ofärdig - Lame
 * Svagsint - Feeble-minded
 * Sinnesjuk - Insane
 * Bräcklig - Frail
 * Svaghet - Physical weakness
 * Sick - Sick
 * Okunnig - Unlearned

A more complete list of Swedish genealogical terms and their "English" translation may be found at and downloaded from www.familysearch.org &gt;research helps or by returning to the Swedish portal page and clicking on "word list.".