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Swedish Census Search

Folkräkningar is a very useful tool for finding people in Sweden in 1880, 1890, 1900 and 1910 - these are the fully indexed censuses. The index for 1860 only covers Jämtland county. The index for 1870 covers Västerbotten and Norrbotten. The census for 1930 is in the process of being indexed.

• Visit Folkräkningar - link goes to English version.

Folkräkningar is a secondary source, because the lists are excerpts from the household records kept in the parishes and sent in every ten years to the Central Bureau of Statistics. Information from the continuosly kept household records (primary source) was copied by hand into the special forms for the purpose. Once you have found the people you are looking for, you should follow the leads to consult the records from the parish. (more about that later)

Folkräkningar first page

You will notice that while choosing English gives you the framework of the site in English, all the informational content is in untranslated Swedish. The top tabs and the "Select extended search" menu are basically paths to other search types.

The basic Census search form should be easy to understand, and the link to Search tips gives information in English about the truncations and wildcards you can use.

A basic search

The search form comes with all the census years checked. However, it is usually best to start your search with all years but one unchecked. Then, of course, it depends on what you already know about the person.

Search for Johanna Magnusdotter, born 1851

A search for Johanna Magnusdotter, born in 1851, returns 11 hits from 7 different counties, presented in a list with links to further information about each Johanna.

Notably, you get to see the whole household: if there is a husband and children, or if she is unmarried and serving in a family. If you are looking for a married couple that emigrated from Sweden together, but you have no idea from which area they came, the name combination of husband and wife may be enough to tell you which is the right Johanna.

If you know that Johanna lived in Skaraborg county in 1880 and choose Skaraborg in the County menu the number of hits to check up on is reduced to two. If you know that she was born in Tengene parish there is just a single hit. The more you know about Johanna, the easier it will be to find her.

Now, Johanna Magnusdotter is a moderately unusual name. If we search for Anna Andersdotter, born 1851 in the 1880 census we get 454 hits, which is a bit much to check up on - for Anna Andersdotter you even get two hits in a small parish like Tengene. So with the very common names it will be hard to find the right person without more detailed information like the birth parish and/or the home parish, or the name of a partner.

On the other hand, with the more uncommon names you may get lucky even if you are not sure of the birth year, but have to enter a range of years like 1850-1852.

The information you get

The information you get in the 1880 census for Johanna Magnusdotter, born in Tengene in 1851 is:

Magnusdotter, Johanna

Census 1880

Name: Magnusdotter, Johanna

Home parish: Flo <--- THIS parish

Place of residence: Svensgård <--- and THIS village/farm is where you will find her in 1880.

Deanery: Wäne

County: Skaraborg

Birth year: 1851

Birth parish: Tengene Skaraborgs län <--- THIS is where her birth record should be

Marital status: Gift (married)

Gender: Kvinna (woman)

Family status: h. (=hustru =wife)

Family status code: Mor/fru (mother/wife)

Family no: 1

Page: 24 - refers to the page in the census

Row: 37 - refers to the row on that page

Created by: Riksarkivet SVAR-Svensk arkivinformation

About the household: Persons in the household

Fam. no 1

Thun, Fredrik, b. 1850 in Flo Skaraborgs län, Arbetskarl (workman)

Magnusdotter, Johanna, b. 1851 in Tengene Skaraborgs län

Alma Teresia, b. 1876 in Flo Skaraborgs län

Johan Alfred, b. 1880 in Flo Skaraborgs län

There is usually a digitized image of the list, which may be useful if you suspect a mistranscription (rare, but it happens).

What to do with it

Once you have discovered that there is only one Johanna Magnusdotter born in Tengene in 1851, one thing you can do is extend the search to 1880, 1890, 1900 and 1910, to follow her along, very roughly. This is also good when you have a small number of suspects for somebody who emigrated in 1882 - if they appear in the later censuses, it is obviously not the right person.

But what you want to do is to look up her birth record from the info about year and parish, and to look up the family in the household record that covers 1880. The birth record will be the source for her parents and full birth date. The household record will usually give further detail about the family. Particularly, before you can be sure that you have found the correct emigrant, you should make sure that the person really did emigrate; it will be duly noted in the household record.

• A shortcut for birth-marriage-death events 1860-1947 is SCB births, marriages, deaths for this period.
• Profile for Johanna Magnusdotter (under construction)

Searching for a child

You may have noticed that children living with their parents are in the database without a surname.

So if you are looking for the birth and family of Carl Ivar Thune, born 11 July 1887 in Skaraborgs Lan, Sweden, living in Spokane in 1942,^[1] you will not find him in Folkräkningar with the surname Thune, or Tun or any variant.

To find children, you need to open the "More Options" part of the search form and enter the surname for a parent.

Particularly in the case of emigrants you also will do well to use some asterisks to catch spelling variants. Using *arl to catch both Carl and Karl is always wise (spellings did vary from census to census). For Carl Ivar Thune a search for *arl Ivar, born 1887 with Father's last name t*un* does the trick: he is found in the censuses for 1890 and 1900, but not in 1910. You get no other hits, and you can see that he is resident in Skaraborgs län. (He is the son of our example, Johanna Magnusdotter and he did emigrate).

Sources

1. ↑ "United States World War II Draft Registration Cards, 1942," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QVJT-FCGM : 13 October 2017), Carl Ivar Thune, 1942; citing NARA microfilm publication M1936, M1937, M1939, M1951, M1962, M1964, M1986, M2090, and M2097 (Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.).