You're looking through your family history and you see that you have
this second great grandfather named Alf Hansen. The line on him says
he came from Norway, but fills in no details. Alf was born in the
1800s and came to the United States a little after the Civil War, so
he obviously didn't catch a ride on SAS (the Scandinavian airline).
He must have come on a ship. But how? From where? And most
importantly, how can you find out?
A good place to begin would be this excellent site on Norwegian
emigration. The focus is on the ships themselves, rather than the
names of the passengers, but that hasn't stopped the website's
developers from producing an excellent tutorial on the history of
emigration from Norway, the ports involved, and how you can use
Norwegian, U.S., and Canadian resources to track your ancestors and
their voyages across the Atlantic.
Not only is the site in English (even though it is hosted on a
Norwegian server), it includes an excellent line-by-line translation
and explanation of a typical Norwegian emigration form. This will
allow you to use the Norwegian emigration lists (through the Family
History Library or its Family History Centers), even if you don't
have a full familiarity with the Norwegian language.
The centerpiece of the site is the annual index to ships departing
from Norway. Accessible by year, this index gives the name of the
ship, its type, and the dates it departed Norway and arrived at its
ultimate destination. A few of these listings are linked to
descriptions of the ship and one of its voyages, while fewer still
are linked to online transcriptions of the passenger lists.
You will also find helpful links to email-based discussion groups of
both Norway and Passenger Ships.
If you have Norwegian ancestors and you haven't yet visited the SS&A
Emigration Ships website, you've been missing out on one of the best
resources for Norwegian emigrant genealogy on the Internet.
Resources:
The Solem, Swiggum and
Austheim Ship Index
Online
Resources for Genealogical Research in Norway
