A particular kind of online marketing has started to irritate me more and more.

Every now and then I like to stop doing “new research” and simply look at what I’ve already built. In this post, I'll be taking a look under the hood of my genealogy database to share what I've learned.

Discover your family history. Explore the world’s largest collection of free family trees, genealogy records and resources.

Among the records played in our home during my childhood were those of Myron Floren playing polkas. My father told me he was of Norwegian descent. Since I knew nothing about his ancestry, I decided to use him as a case study to show how you can trace your own family's Norwegian line. Treat Myron Floren as a stand-in for the father or grandfather whose ancestry you're trying to find.

Perhaps I am becoming the party pooper of AI genealogy. My interest in AI transcription of old Norwegian handwriting is not because I am opposed to using artificial intelligence in genealogy. Quite the opposite. I use AI myself, and I am quite open about it. I use AI for sourcing and research, and when I need help organizing information. I also use it when writing for my blog.

If you've spent any real time on Digitalarkivet, you've had this moment. You find a census year that lines up perfectly with a gap in your research — say, 1825 or 1845 — you click into the parish you need, and instead of a household list with your ancestor's name on it, you get... numbers. Tallies. Men aged 20-30 in this column, women aged 30-45 in that one, so many farmers, so many day laborers.

Sometimes I can't read the damn thing, honestly. I have never claimed to be an expert at reading Gothic handwriting.

We live in a hurry. Not necessarily because we are busy. Sometimes we are simply accustomed to moving quickly.

Here is what ChatGPT tells me when I ask for a research strategy for a named individual in Norway.

If you've spent any time hunting for ancestors in Digitalarkivet, you know the feeling: you finally find the record, you can just barely make out the priest's handwriting, and then you hit a word you've never seen before. Using AI in Norwegian Genealogy Research can help in situations where terms like Husmann med jord. Legdslem. Inderst. leave you stumped. You know it's important.

Some Saturdays invite us to slow down and wander into forgotten corners of history. Sometimes those corners contain old church books, faded letters, and family stories. Occasionally they contain something altogether stranger.

Nordahl Brue has written something genuinely rare: a "genealogical biography" that functions equally well as a rigorously sourced work of Norwegian social history and as a page-turning family story. Tracing the life of his third-great-grandfather, Nils Trulsen Bru (NTB, 1776–1823) — farmer, fisherman, and one of the early farmer-representatives to the Storting (parliament) during the pivotal years of Norway's 1814 constitution and its aftermath — Brue has produced a book that will reward genealogists of Norwegian descent on almost every page.

I just went through my subscriber list and removed everyone who hadn't opened one of my last 20 emails. If that sounds like a big cut, it was — but I want to explain why I did it, and why I think it's actually the right way to run a free resource like this one.

A while back, I wrote a post comparing several mind mapping apps, and one name kept drawing my attention after I'd finished writing: Obsidian. I realized there is a lot to say about Obsidian for genealogists. I promised myself I'd take a closer look — and once I did, I fell down a rabbit hole I haven't quite climbed out of.

Here are eight things worth checking before you decide an ancestor has vanished.

This has been an exciting week. I published a book.

This morning, Norway woke up without King Harald V.

Norwegian church books are among the most important sources for anyone researching Norwegian ancestors. They contain baptisms, confirmations, marriages, burials and, depending on the period, information about migration, vaccination, religious affiliation and much more.

Scenes from a Life Left Behind is published today

Discover the advantages of using Flickr to share family photos and connect with relatives around the world.

Starting genealogy can be exciting. It can also be rather confusing.

After a summer away from the family tree, the first return to genealogy can feel strangely familiar. The computer is still where it was left. The research notes are waiting. The familiar names appear on the screen, accompanied by the same dates, places, parents and children that we have looked at many times before.

As the Norwegian summer finally arrives — brief as it may be — it feels right to step away from the desk for a while and spend more time outdoors. There are paths to walk, places to visit, and long bright evenings that should not be wasted.

For centuries, Gudbrandsdalen has occupied a special place in Norway’s historical imagination. Its burial mounds, old farmsteads, saga associations, and long-settled valley farms have made it one of the country’s most evocative cultural landscapes. Yet despite this rich historical identity, much of Gudbrandsdalen’s earliest settlement history remained poorly understood until recently. The large-scale archaeological investigations connected with the construction of the new E6 highway have now transformed that picture in dramatic ways (Gundersen, 2016).

In a previous post, we explored why mind maps can be so useful in genealogy research — especially when working through brick walls, organizing DNA matches, tracing migration patterns, or simply trying to hold a complicated investigation together in our heads. But once we decide to start mind mapping, another question quickly follows: What is the best free mind-mapping software for genealogy research?

Genealogy is rarely a straight road. Using mind maps in genealogy research can provide clarity and help you see connections you might otherwise miss.

This final part of the series returns to Camilla Collett, not to restate her arguments, but to consider what they leave behind. It does so through a perspective suggested by her work itself: Camilla Collett and the shape of memory. Throughout the series, her writings have served as a starting point for exploring women’s lives in nineteenth-century Norway.

There’s a certain way of seeing a place that only reveals itself when you slow down. Not through a camera lens, not while rushing from one viewpoint to the next—but when you sit still, pencil in hand, and let the landscape unfold before you.

This is part 4 of a series on Camilla Collett, where we turn to a quieter but no less significant aspect of her writing: the fate of women’s private words. The story of many private writings lost to history forms an important backdrop to understanding her legacy.

What must be true before you attach parents? If you're looking for guidance, a-simple-norwegian-genealogy-proof-checklist can help ensure you cover all the essentials.

This is part 3 of a series on Camilla Collett and women’s lives in nineteenth-century Norway, where we look at the structure of public life and the ways in which women were excluded from its most visible forms.

When most people think about Norwegian-American history, they begin with the voyage of the Restauration in 1825. That sailing has long been treated as the starting point of Norwegian emigration to the United States. Yet the story of Norwegians in America before 1825 reaches much further back. Long before organized migration began, individual Norwegians had already crossed the Atlantic through Dutch trade, labor, and colonial networks (Logeland, 2025).

Expectation, Constraint, and the Limits of Choice

In 1880, the Norwegian historian Ludvig Daae published Nordmænds Udvandringer til Holland og England i nyere Tid, a work modest in scope yet significant in its implications. His purpose was to illuminate a largely overlooked aspect of Norwegian history: the forgotten Norwegian emigration to Holland and England that took place during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Daae, 1880). The title may seem curious at first glance.

The Pygmalion trap in genealogy offers a powerful way to understand a common but often overlooked problem in family history research: the tendency to shape our ancestry into something more ideal than the evidence supports.

Private Writings, Lost Histories, and What Your Ancestors Could Not Say

In genealogical work, few sources are as valuable—or as frequently misunderstood—as parish records. In some cases, the records reveal Witnesses Not Fathers in critical roles that researchers can easily overlook. In recent years, large-scale transcription projects have made these materials more accessible than ever before. That is a welcome development. Yet with convenience comes a quiet risk: the temptation to trust the transcription without consulting the original.

There are voices in history that speak loudly in their own time—and then fall strangely quiet in the generations that follow. Camilla Collett is not one of them. Her words have never truly gone silent; they have simply waited for readers willing to listen carefully.

My friend and long time reader, Nord Brue has written a forthcoming biography of his Tipp tipp oldefar Nils Trulsen Bru (NTB).  One fascinating part of the story involves a farm lease from 1807 that played a role in Nils Trulsen Bru's life. Nord is an American lawyer who has researched Norwegian archives with the assistance of Professor Nils Olav Østrem…