Theologians, 1720 - 1955

The material has been collected within the framework of the Academic Project at the Department of Social Research (ISF). For a more detailed description of this project, publication list etc. reference is made to the collection binders on biographical data archives in Norway, which were prepared by the Committee for Social Science Data Processing in 1969.

- The material includes biographical data for approx. 5652 theologians with official examinations between 1720 and 1955. The main person responsible for data collection was Tore Lindbekk. Otherwise see separate PDF documentation.

- Problems that have been discovered:
This data was originally recorded in EDB's childhood. They have also gone through many correction / cleaning processes. One problem with the original names that were registered was that the technology of the time did not provide an adequate handling of Nordic characters, æ, ø and å. If you look at the name file today, you will therefore find seemingly strange sorting sequences. For example, a name like "Østgård" will be written as "Stgrd" because Ø and Å have apparently disappeared in the conversion processes. But they are in the material as not visible characters and will come sorted first in a sequence, Østgård comes in front of Anker. All such naming problems in these files are corrected at discretion, but we can therefore not guarantee that it is always completely correct.

- In general, we have assumed that where the name is registered with 3 stars (***) it is because the correct name of the person has not been found. This material goes all the way back to official exams taken in 1720, often with a strangely short period of study and most of the priests were recruited from abroad / Denmark.

- Sometimes there are small data discrepancies between the name file and the finished data file. The years of birth, student year and official examination year are used to check the matching of names into the data file. Here it can be difficult to decide what is correct. In the final version, we have included the sequence identification for both files so that those who are particularly interested can check for themselves. Examples of this type of problem are shown below:

- Data file - Names file
- 2891 Aksel Kvam 1931 - T04471 1932
- 2936 Amund Frysa 1931 - T04516 1932
- 2946 P J Myklebust 1931 - T04526 1932

- There are also a number of problems that occur on seemingly unsystematic duplicates, these are mostly to be considered as pure registration errors or also corrections where the corrected record has not been deleted. For example, for the exam year 1762, will you find a duplicate for 522/523 Bjerregård? Nilsen. For the same year, there are two people who are missing names. It seems as if one Bjerregård Nilsen has data belonging to another. Since one rarely uses names analytically, it is likely to be recommended that one only uses data as they are; tabular overviews will not be affected by errors in naming people. The same type of problem is also found in 1862 for 3 units in the data file which probably only represents 2 real people named Bruun.

- There are also a number of people in the data who are missing names, it is difficult to find any systematics here. At the same time, there are vintages where there are people in the name file who cannot be found in the data. For example, for the exam year 1926 we find a person in the name file who is not in the data file, although he can later be located as a priest in the Norwegian church. For 1927 there are 2 extra, for 1929 4 extra, for 1930 1, for 1932 as many as 10 people in the name file who do not seem to be in the data file. Also later, there are some that for various unknown reasons do not seem to be included in the data file.

- With today's Google opportunities, new cases of doubt can also arise. Harald Kaldor is a relatively rare name. He graduated in 1919, but is in the name file with the year of birth 1875. In that case, he was 38 years old when he started studying, which deviates a lot and creates suspicion of error. However, he is easy (?) To locate on the internet (https://digitaltmuseum.no/011012780851/presten-harald-olsen-kaldor-pa-ski-med-prestekjole-fruen-bak-vinter-utenfor) and there we find year of birth 1882.

- Data worked through and restored in 2019