Leif Biberg Kristensen
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Leif Biberg Kristensen

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Signed 6 Mar 2018 | 205,261 contributions | 1,833 thank-yous | 2,159 connections

I am mostly researching pre-1814 genealogy in the Lower Telemark (Grenland) area in Norway, where my core interest lies in the old Solum parish, and with a lot of collateral research in the neighbouring parishes of Holla, Skien, Gjerpen, Porsgrunn, Eidanger, Bamble, and Drangedal. My old «Solumslekt» database has been succeeded here on WikiTree by the Solum, Telemark One Place Study.

As of 1 February 2025 my research database contains 39,868 (up 224 last month) interconnected profiles, of which 37,873 (up 362 last month) have been copied to WikiTree, one profile at a time. These days I am more occupied with categorisation, improvement, and formatting of my previously entered profiles, than with adding new ones.

Leif Biberg Kristensen
Born 1950s.
Ancestors ancestors
[sibling(s) unknown]
[children unknown]
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Profile last modified | Created 6 Mar 2018
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Biography

Norwegian Native
Leif Biberg Kristensen was born in Norway
no
Denne brukeren/brukaren har norsk som morsmål.
en-4
This user can contribute with a near-native level of English.
Descendant
Leif Biberg was featured in a Meet Our Members Post on the WikiTree Blog!

I was born in 1952 in the smallish town of Porsgrunn, Norway. I am now a retired civil servant, having worked for many years with Unix and databases in the IT department of the Norwegian Health and Social Security Insurance administration.

In the years 1987-1990 I studied psychology at the University of Oslo. As my life turned in another direction I never got a degree. But I learned a lot about scientific method, most notably the three basic rules of research: documentation, documentation, and documentation.

When I during those years also worked part-time as a clerk in the aforementioned National H&SS Insurance, I realised that the same rules of course apply for any civil servant or office clerk, whose life without rigorous, structured and readily accessible documentation would be a nightmare. I developed a quickly growing fascination for large electronic information processing systems, which eventually brought me to the IT department. In those days, you didn't need a degree in computer science to get a job in IT. If you knew anyting about computer internals and logic, you'd be dragged into it.

In 1997 I discovered genealogy, which suited both my appetites for doing original research and working with databases. Among the greatest joys in genealogy, in my opinion, is when you are able, through careful research, to refute a poorly substantiated assertion in a published work. In order to do that, you are absolutely required to be able to work with original documents. I was lucky to get an old microfiche reader, and ordered copies of church records from the Norwegian National Archive which I transcribed from end to end. (Today we have them all online, and the microfiche reader went to the garbage dump many years ago.)

I started entering data in a couple of genealogy programs that I'd rather not mention, but soon I became a fan of The Master Genealogist (TMG), which I used until 2005, when finally my old laptop running Windows 2000 broke down. Working professionally with Unix, I've never been very impressed by Windows, and by then I had developed my own replacement database application Yggdrasil in PostgreSQL and PHP, running on my big, fat, powerful Gentoo Linux workstation. This is still my research / production database environment.

In 2002 I opened my own genealogy site "Solumslekt.org". I closed it down in 2019, mostly because of a growing realisation that my own custom software was a dead-end, which I couldn't expect anyone to step up and maintain after me. I am now transferring my data to WikiTree, as this site to a certain degree appears to be focused on quality rather than quantity, and promises to keep the data after I am gone. I have developed a Perl script which extracts data from Yggdrasil and generates a report in the form of a full Wiki biography, complete with inline references. As far as possible it intends to emulate the Family view that I had on Solumslekt. The Wiki format makes it possible to improve on that format with graphical elements such as stickers and tables.

My contributions here on WikiTree are centered around the Solum, Telemark One Place Study, which is a continuation of my old "Solumslekt" web site. I do hope that my data will survive here on WikiTree, and that my meticulous sourcing and cross-linking will protect profiles from being abused by addition of random unsourced or mythical connections.

In the Sources sections of my profiles, you will find embedded links to images of the original documents at the Norwegian Digital Archive ("Digitalarkivet"), thus being able to verify the data for yourself, and even (hopefully) arrive at better conclusions than mine.

Remember kids, the only difference between screwing around and science is writing it down.
-- Adam Savage, Mythbusters

Showcases

Some profiles that i worked a little harder on.

Useful Links

Orphans

Due to the large numbers involved, most profiles created by me will be routinely orphaned. You are welcome to adopt them, but please respect the many years of research behind these profiles, and don't change vital data or add any family members unless they are well documented. Also, I'd love to hear about descendants of my profiles. Please drop me a few words if you're able to connect to one of them.

Finally, I want to mention that I am working in a continuous revision loop on all the profiles that I have created or contributed to. In the table that links Wikitree IDs with the IDs in my own database there is a timestamp field called "updated_at" which will update automatically whenever I generate or regenerate a biography from my WikiBio script. I will always go to work on the profile with the oldest "updated_at" timestamp. I may also set this timestamp manually if there is nothing to do, but so far there have been so many changes in my way of writing profiles, as well as internal Wikitree changes, that I usually recreate each biography (even if I won't necessarily rewrite the entire bio) every time i return to it within a period of (currently) 15-18 months. I will however maintain my right to improve or ultimately revert any changes made by others which do not hold up to my standards, regardless of the profile having been adopted or not.

My long-term goal is to revisit each profile at least every two years. Thus, "my" orphaned profiles will not be totally abandoned as long as I am keeping my senses.

Leif Biberg Kristensen 2018-2024

Sources


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Comments: 40

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Hi,

I'm writing to you because you are the Norway coordinator for the Nordic project, of which I am a member. I am filling in my ancestor from Luster and am using GARDS- OG ÆTTESOGE for LUSTER KOMMUNE by Øyane et al. I have gotten the impression from others' remarks that this is a good, generally trustworthy, secondary source. Now I have come to the father of Torgerson-394. His father was born around 1485 according to Øyane. But because I am not pre-1500 certified, I cannot add him. Should/Can I ask you or another pre-1500 certified member of the project to create his profile?

Andrew, I moved your question to the G2G forum: https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/1680081/luster-sf-father-of-torgerson-394-born-about-1485

I think you should go there and fill in some information about this father born about 1485. Like, surely he had a name?

Leif

posted by Leif Biberg Kristensen
My great-great grandparents left Porsgrunn in 1850 for Wisconsin. They were living on the Gunsholt farm as renters I think. Is this in Lardahl? I visited the farm and church in 2014. Siljan?
posted by Anonymous Johnson
edited by Anonymous Johnson
It's probably the Gonsholt farm in Siljan. It's not far from Lardal, but that is on the other side of the county border to Vestfold.

https://www.google.com/maps/@59.2548226,9.7667089,1249m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m2!7m1!2e1?entry=ttu

posted by Leif Biberg Kristensen
edited by Leif Biberg Kristensen
Yes. This is the line I am working on at present.
posted by Anonymous Johnson
Thank you for the improvements you made to profiles of my 4th Great Grandmother Karen Tolvsdatter (1761-1834) and her family.
Thank you for all your recent improvements to my various wikitree pages. Your expert help is much appreciated. Just a note: Lars Thygesen Kjær and Gunhild Gundersdatter are my 3GGP.

Mange takk. Janet

Hello! I really need your help with the Gjerpen records. I have all of this great detailed information on Ole Oversen, but for some reason I cannot locate some of the records on Digitalarkivet. The chronological pages are very hard to read and I can't find the following:

Ole Evensen Borge

  • herfra dpt. 7/8-1729
  • d. 28/8-1775 (bg. 4/9-1775). ”Ole Borge 51 1/2 aar.”

Maria Engebretsdatter fra Espedalen(1)

  • dpt. 25/1-1733
  • bg. 6/5-1775. ”Ole Borges kone 42 aar.”, d.a. Engebret Gulliksen Espedalen.

The records from 1729 and 1733 are the toughest records I have seen to read yet for Gjerpen. They come from this site: https://gamlegjerpen.no/Bygdebok/BorgeV/BorgeV_A.htm

Thank you!!!

Darrell

posted by Darrell Larocque
I've taken the liberty to insert my own biographies for both Ole and Marie. Those are also my ancestors through their daughter Marte. I've left the original bios at the end, below the horizontal line (created by four dashes). I don't mind f you want to keep them, but you should in any case consider whether it's a good idea to copy/paste a large chunk of text from another website, for copyright reasons.

I agree that the first Gjerpen parish register is hard to read, however, it usually improves with practice :) As I regularly have to look up records from Gjerpen in my Solum research, I once and for all entered the entire bulk of BMD records for Gjerpen 1681-1814 into my own source register many years ago. An old transcription existed, which I used to save most of the typing, but I read every record from the book itself and corrected misreadings and omissions along the way. Gard Strøm and I collaborated for a long time, and whenever you see a reference to "Solumslekt" at his pages, it's from my own old web site.

In any case, I always keep a reference to the original page at the Digitalarkivet in my transcripts, so you can look them up there.

As this couple are my family as well as yours, I've registered lots of their ancestors in my own database, dating bach to the early 17th century, and a few beyond that. But as my priority lies with the Solum inhabitants, I've laid that part of my ancestry aside for the present.

regards, Leif

posted by Leif Biberg Kristensen
edited by Leif Biberg Kristensen
Thank you, cousin, I appreciate this very much. I can understand how your focus is on the Solum project and believe me I have a lot of other ancestors and a couple of projects here that need help as well. Normally when I find some source material I go directly to the primary source and just add the links (free links of images always preferred to paid sites) but with these records I was going cross eyed trying to just find the month and day in the early Gjerpen records and so I just added the family list and intended to replace them one by one with the references and links. Now that I see what you did I can use it as a guide to add and/or improve others... but in this case there was no way I could do it without help. I'm not going to change what you did as it's excellent Thank! Thank you again!!!

Darrell

posted by Darrell Larocque
edited by Darrell Larocque
Regarding Larsen-7771 Lars Larsen Aabye-

You know, this goes against everything we have seen in sources that were created decades ago by my cousins Kathleen Bickert Sutherland and Anne Aronson...

HOWEVER...

Your research is extremely well documented and compelling. I would have had no idea that Lars would have issues with his parentage, but the Lars Larsen who married Aaste Hansdatter and had children with her and who died in Brevik in 1840 I agree looks to be the Lars Larsen from Bamble parish.

Now new ground must be explored to try and find my 4th great grandfather Lars Larsen who married Kirstin Larsdatter in Solum in 1810. NOTE: Lars Larsen appears in the 1850 United States Census in Galena, IL as 72 years old, so his birth year of abt. 1778 is still pretty close.

WOW! Also, thank you so much for your work with the records on Digitalarkivet!Thanks to your efforts, you support a free treasure trove of resources for us,

posted by Darrell Larocque
edited by Darrell Larocque

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Categories: Porsgrunn, Telemark, Norway | No | En-4