Mapping and Analysing Remigration Based upon Norwegian Farm- and Genealogical History Projects

Abstract

In this article I attempt to utilise the vast efforts invested in a particularly Norwegian genre of local history, namely the farm and genealogy books (bygdebok, plural bygdebøker), to analyse aspects of migration, especially remigration from North America, in a micro-historical perspective. Such books, of which a rather large corpus exists, contain detailed longitudinal data on people and holdings within a limited region, usually a rural municipality or parish. Consulting two works from this bygdebok genre as primary sources, I identify and analyse those people who re-migrated to Norway after having been in North America prior to the commission of the 1910 census.