Daily Ancestorprestegjeld
A prestegjeld was a Norwegian clerical district: the area served by one parish priest, often made up of several sogn, each with its own church.
One sogn was the main parish (hovedsogn) and the others were annexes. A larger prestegjeld could have a chaplain besides the parish priest, and several prestegjeld formed a deanery, a prosti.
Small villages without a church of their own belonged to a larger parish, so first find which sogn and prestegjeld a farm belonged to, using a gazetteer, and then search those church books. Norway stopped using the prestegjeld as a church division in the early 2000s.
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How to cite this page
Daily Ancestor. "prestegjeld." Dictionary of Old Record Words. https://dailyancestor.com/dictionary/norwegian/prestegjeld. Last checked 2026-10-28.