Nordic Account Books

Account Books
The account books were a record of income and expenditures kept by businesses, government agencies, churches, and other organizations. These records can contain information that can supplement the information you already have about an individual, or perhaps provide information to identify relatives.

These records are called:
 * Danish, Norwegian, and Icelandic: Regnskab
 * Swedish: Räkenskap and kyrkoräkenskap for church accounts
 * Finnish: Asiakastili and kirkolasko or kirkontilit for church accounts

Church Accounts
In Norway an earlier set of parish accounts predating the parish registers called kirkestoler were also kept. For some time periods and some countries, the minister kept track of incoming funds and their disbursement. Your ancestor may have had to pay when a child was christened, when they married, or when someone was buried. Occasionally the actual name of that person is recorded. If the actual birth, marriage, and or death records are destroyed for some reason and only a few miscellaneous records exist, it may be possible to put together family information using what is found in the account books.

As a rule, unless there has been records destruction or a person wants to dig deep and find background information specific to the parish and time period to add to the family information, these types of records are not the best or most feasible to search.