SEARCH TIPS FOR THE DANISH CENSUS SITE

The first nation-wide census of Denmark was in 1787. All members of the household were listed along with their position in the household, occupation and the place where they lived, such as a farm name. The next census was 1801, then 1834. From 1840 on, the census was taken at either five or ten year intervals. In 1845, the census began to list the birthplace of each person, making the information even more useful. Census records are an essential tool for making sure that you are finding all the family members and for tracing ancestors through moves to different parishes. Fortunately, a group of volunteers has been working on transcribing the census and the database has been placed online by the Danish National Archives, in the Danish Demographic Database. Access to the database is free. There is still quite a bit which is not in the database. You can search by county, region or parish to find out what is in the database now. It is essential to learn how to type Danish characters on your keyboard to search the census and record your results correctly. The transcriptions are not linked to images, but images from some years are available at arkivalieronline.dk.

There is an English version of the census site, and a Danish version. The Danish version seems to be a bit more reliable, but it's certainly fine to use the English version while you're learning. If you find that you are getting a lot of error messages, then try the Danish version.

When you search the census site, it will be easiest if you have some idea of where your ancestor was from, unless you are searching for a very unusual name. The links above take you to the version of the site where you can search one Amt (county) at a time. Another version lets you search in several counties at once. But because so many Danish names are similar, it will probably be best to limit your search geographically as much as possible.

To search, using the regular English version, select the Amt that you are interested in. After you have done that, a list of regions (herred) will appear below, as well as a list of parishes (sogn). It's not necessary to know the region, but if you do know it, you can limit your search more. If you know the parish, you can select that from the list, without having to know the region. Don't worry about the KIP no box, and I'd usually leave the place name box empty too. (If you want to see who lived at a particular place in a particular census, it will probably work to fill in the place name box, and then enter %sen for the last name.) Under "Information on Individual" select the way that you'd like to search by name. You have a choice of "contains", "=" or "starts with". Then enter the person's name. The way that you enter the name is the most important part of getting good results here. The search engine will search exactly for what you put in. So if you put in "Mary" and the woman you are looking for is listed as "Marie", you will not find her. It's not unusual for the same name to be spelled differently in different records, so you need to try to think of different versions of the name for your search. Using wild card characters will help a lot here. Use % to replace several characters, and _ to replace a single character. For example, variations of the name "Larsen" are "Lassen", "Laursen", and sometimes even "Lauritzsen". To find all these variations with one search, type "La%en" . The name should be input as first name last name-- Niels Nielsen, rather than Nielsen, Niels. Remember that sometimes Danes used the name of the place they were from for a last name. One ancestors of mine is listed in most censuses as Kirstine Marie Laursdatter, but in 1834 she was listed Kirstene Marie Søegaard. Søegaard was the name of the place where her father was born. (An example of wild card characters for Kirstine's name would be "K%ne Mari_ La&datter-- Kirstine can be spelled Kirstine, Kristine, Kjerstine.) After you have entered the name, I'd leave most fields below blank, except for the birthplace, if you are fairly sure you know it. Remember it must be spelled with the correct Danish characters. Entering the age frequently seems to cause an error message. If you are searching for a particular census year only, of course it's a good idea to select the year. In general the less information you can put in the form, the more likely you are to find the right person; however, you may get too many results if you don't limit by age or geography.

Here's a sample census entry, with English translations in italics:

1787 census:

Ringkøbing, Skodborg, Bøvling, Bøufling, , Klitsgaard, 1. Familie, FT 1787
(county, region, parish, place name, address, household number, year of census (Folketelling)
Der vises flg. felter: Navn, Alder, Civilstand, Stilling i husstanden, Erhverv , Fødested
(These fields are shown: Name, Age, Marital Status, Position in household, occupations, birthplace-- only listed starting 1845.)
Niels Nielsen, 46, gift, Mand, Bonde og Gaardbeboer, (for a more detailed description of old terms for farmers, click here.
(Niels Nielsen, 46, married, husband, farmer.)
Ingeborg Christensdatter, 35, gift, Kone, ,
(Ingeborg Christensdatter, 35, married, wife)
Mette Marie Nielsdatter, 10, ugift, deres Børn,
(Mette Marie Nielsdatter, 10, unmarried, their child.)
Anne Marie Nielsdatter, 7, ugift, deres Børn,
(Anne Marie Nielsdatter, 10, unmarried, their child.)
Christen Nielsen, 6, ugift, deres Børn,
(Christen Nielsen, 10, unmarried, their child.)

Here's another sample:

Skanderborg, Hjelmslev, Fruering, Wirring, , Hus, 36, , FT-1850
(County, Region, Parish, Place name, Address [Hus=House, #36] Census year 1850)
Der vises flg. felter: Navn, Alder, Civilstand, Stilling i husstanden, Erhverv , Fødested
(Name, Age, Marital status, Position in household, Occupation , Birth place)
Søren Pedersen, 45, Gift, , Daglejer, Trandberg
(Søren Pedersen, 45, Married, Day Laborer, born in Trandberg parish)
Ane Magrethe Baltzersdatter, 44, Gift, , Hans kone, Maarslet
(Ane Margrethe Baltzersdatter, 44, married, his wife, born in Maarslet parish)
Peder Sørensen, 9, Ugift, , Deres barn, Her i sognet
(Peder Sørensen, 9, unmarried, their child, born here in the parish [Fruering])
Mette Kirstine Sørensen, 7, Ugift, , Deres barn, Her i sognet
(Mette Kirstine Sørensen, 7, unmarried, their child, born here in the parish [Fruering])
Ane Marie Sørensen, 3, Ugift, , Deres barn, Her i sognet
(Ane Marie Sørensen, 3, unmarried, their child, born here in the parish [Fruering])
(Notice that the mother uses the old style -datter at the end of her name, but the girls use -sen at the end of theirs. They are still named after their father's first name however.)

(The above text by Paula Goodfellow)

Old terms describing farmers: Bonde means someone on the land, working the land as livelihood - either a freehold or a copyhold perpetual leasehold farm. A bonde was/is a farmer or a peasant. He was not a servant or serf, but copy hold peasants did become a de facto servant or a serf at the time of the "stavnsbånd" (adscription/absolutism) that was introduced in 1733 and was abolished in stages from 1788. The "stavnsbånd" meant that peasant between the ages of 14 - 36 -- later amended to ages of 4 - 40 --- living on copyhold/leasehold farms on the big landowner's land (most, in most of rural Denmark -- except Bornholm, where freehold ownership was the norm - did) The reason for the introduction of the 'stavnsbånd' was that the big landholder had difficulty in keeping the younger generation on the farms and because the military was conscripted from the peasant farmers.
A freehold farmer/peasant was not obligated to an estate owner. It should be noted that because of the peasants having to stay on their copy-hold farm that the big estate owners took advantage of this and had cheap labour at hand - on demand. That made these bound to their birth area men de facto serfs up to the age of 40 - because they had no other way to feed their families. It was never easy to be a copyhold farmer on a big estate.It should also be noted that not all areas of Denmark suffered equally bad from the 'stavnsbånd' times - and one could also buy ones way out -- if one could find the money.

And life in the times before the 'stavnsbånd' was far from easy for the copy hold farmer/peasant on the big estates --

You can read a bit about the 'stavnsbånd' in wikipedia.

A 'bonde' is basically a farmer on either freehold or copyhold/leased land.

Gaardbeboer (gårdbeboer) is an occupier of a farm.
Gårdmand is owner-occupier of a freehold farm or a leasehold farm.
Gårdejer - basically the same - ejer implies owner

Thanks to Cai Andersen for this clarification.