You cannot set your navigation for a cadastral lot number if you come to Denmark to see your ancestor's farm or house, so in this post I demonstrate how to find today's address from the lot number.
First, go to OIS (Offentlige InformationsServer, the public information server) at http://www.ois.dk. This is a database with real property information from databases maintained by Danish authorities. You have five ways of searching for a property, each represented by an icon in the left-hand menu called Vælg søgning (choose search). The fields in the middle section called Søg ejendom (search for real property) change based on your choice of search method. The right-hand section starts with the terms of use stating that you cannot publish or pass on information from the database unless you are the owner of the property which the information regards (or unless you have obtained permission to do so).
For four of these search methods, you need to know which municipality the place belongs to today. To find the name of the municipality, go to the Danish Wikipedia and search for the name of the parish, for instance Rørup Sogn. All Danish parishes have been described following the same pattern, so although this is in Danish, you should be able to find the name of the municipality. The entry for Rørup Sogn says "Rørup Sogn er et sogn i Assens Provsti (Fyens Stift). Sognet ligger i Assens Kommune (Region Syddanmark). Indtil kommunalreformen i 2007 lå det i Aarup Kommune (Fyns Amt) og indtil kommunalreformen i 1970 lå det i Vends Herred (Odense Amt). I Rørup Sogn ligger Rørup Kirke." The second sentence ("Sognet ligger i ...") is relevant in this context, because it translates to The parish lies in Assens Municipality (Region of Southern Denmark).1
Ownership information is publicly available in Denmark, but you cannot search for a person's name and be directed to their real property. The search starts with the property, not the owner. The five search methods are described below.
Search by Municipality and Address
Let's find my house by searching by kommune (municipality) and adresse (address). I live at the address Rulkedalen 9 in Odense Kommune. Type the details in the middle section. Always start typing in the top field, otherwise it does not work. When you start typing, a list of options appears. You must select the relevant option, otherwise it does not work. After selecting Odense Kommune and Rulkedalen, click Søg (search). A list of properties at the chosen street appears. Choose Rulkedalen 9 to see my property.
The information in the right-hand pane depends on your selection in the left-hand pane. The first section in the right-hand pane shows general data about the property: Address, property area, lot number, property number, main property number in case the property is a sub-lot of another property, and use of the property (in my case, beboelsesejendom, which means residential property). Then follows sections detailing the ownership, name of the owner(s) and skødedato (date of the deed).
In the left-hand pane, click the small plus sign next to BBR-Grund - Rulkedalen 9 to expand the list. That brings out a list of matrikler (cadastral lots) and bygninger (buildings). Click the plus sign next to bygning 1 to see details about the building. The first section in the right-hand pane now shows information about the building, including opførelsesår (year of construction). Further down in the section Arealer (sizes), you can see that it is measures 145 square meters. In the section Materialer (materials), you can see that the ydervæg (outer wall) is made of mursten (bricks) and that tagdækningen (the roof) is made of cementsten (concrete roof tiles).
Old farms often have more buildings, so if you look at your ancestor's farm, click your way through the buildings via the menu in left-hand pane.
Search by Postal Code and Address
If you know the postal code, you do not need to look up the municipality. Choose the green icon in the left-hand menu to search by postnummer (postal code) and address. All Danish postal codes are four digits. My postal code is 5260. Type from top down and remember to select the relevant option in the list. If you know the address and town, but you do not know the postal code, you can find it by searching for the address and town at Google Maps.
Search by Cadastral Lot Number
Click the orange menu icon named Via matrikelnummer (by cadastral lot number). First type and choose kommune (municipality), then ejerlav (property area, in my case Stenløse By, Stenløse) and last type and choose matrikelnummer (lot number). In a previous post, I demonstrated how to find the cadastral lot number from a census record. I found that Anders Madsen bought lot number 4a in Dreslette. The name of the ejerlav was identified as Dreslette By, Dreslette. By means town, but not all towns have their own ejerlav. The second part of the ejerlav (in this case Dreslette) is the name of the parish, however, the list of options which appears as you type in the field for ejerlav only include ejerlav beginning with the letters you have written; it does not list all ejerlav containing your search string. Therefore you must know the name of the ejerlav to use this search method.
You are welcome to search for Anders Madsen's property to see if you can identify the year of construction; just for practice.
Search by Property Number
The search method allows you to search by ejendomsnummer (property number). I have never before used this search option and I did not know the number of my property (545270) before I wrote this post. I now found that going back to an entry which you have previously identified, can most easily be done by searching by property number, because you skip the step of choosing the house number. Again, remember to choose the relevant entry from the list of options displayed when you start typing into the fields, otherwise an error message will appear when you click the search button (have you guessed that this annoys me?)
Search via a Map
This option of searching Via kort (via a map) can come in handy if you know the lot number and ejerlav, but the lot number does not appear in the list of options when searching by lot number. If you have typed all the details correctly and chosen the relevant options in the lists and the relevant lot number is not in the list, then that lot no longer exists as a separate lot. To search via the map, you must have an idea of where the lot was.
If you have found your ancestor's property in a historical map, you can use OIS to search by map and find the place, even if the lot number is no longer in use. Lot numbers were assigned consecutively, so if a lot is called 4g, you should think that there would also be a lot named 4f, but that lot may have been implemented into another lot and thus that number is not in use today - and at OIS you cannot search for lot numbers which are no longer in use.
In a later post, I will demonstrate how to find digitized Danish historical maps online. They are a real treat to genealogists.
Source references:
- Wikipedia (https://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%B8rup_Sogn : accessed 6 April 2019), "Rørup Sogn," rev. 01:46, 26 March 2016.
- The image at the top of the post: Map of the parishes in the Odense Municipality image by Erik Frohne, license CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14660743. My home parish, Stenløse, is highlighted.
