Archival Science 3: 205-212, 2003.

205
9 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

Recordkeeping in Local Government in Norway 1950-2000 *

GUDMUND VALDERHAUG
The Norwegian Archive, Library and Museum Authority, Postbox 8145 Dep, N-0033 Oslo,
Norway (E-mail: Gudmund.Valderhaug@abm-utvikling.no)

Abstract. In the Skandinavian countries local government agencies provide a big part of the
puclic services and have a great impact on society. They are seldom considered in archival
research. This paper discusses the practises of municipal recordkeeping in Norway 1950-
2000, focusing on how the administrative, legal and technological factors may have affected
the content and structures of the archives.
Keywords: inter-muncipal archives, local government, municipal recordkeeping, record-
keeping practices

During the last 50 years there have been profound changes in Norwegian
municipal legislation and local adminstistrative organisation. At the same
time, the technological means for document production and distribution have
developed greatly, changing the conditions for record creation and record-
keeping. The main purpose o f this article is to present a study o f the practices
o f municipal recordkeeping over this period, focusing on how these admin-
istrative, legal and technological factors may have affected the content and
structures of the archives. I have limited m y study to some rural municipalities
in Western Norway. There are two reasons for this: This is the area in which
I have been working as an archivist for the last 20 years; l and secondly, the
changes in the archival pratices have been more distinct in the smaller rural
municipalities.
This article also is a contribution to Norwegian archival history, a long
neglected but important subject. Archival history is about exploring w h y and
* This article is part of a study of Norwegian municipal recordkeeping from 1750 an up to
present, which will be published as a part of the National Organisation of Local and Private
Archives' "Programme of Competence". A slightly different and more detailed version of
this article is printed in Norwegian in "Med Clio til Kringsj~. Festskrift til Riksarkivar John
Herstad", Oslo 2002.
1 The main source for this study is the work on arranging and describing historical
municipal archives, as well as drawing up plans and routines for current recordkeeping in
municipal bodies, which have been done by my colleagues and myself at Interkommunalt
arkiv i Hordaland (Inter-municipal Archive in Hordaland County).
206 GUDMUND VALDERHAUG

how archives have been created, maintained, used and preserved. Archival
history presupposes research both on and in archives; on the the archives'
structures and internal relations, and on the form and style of the documents
as well. This can help us to understand the archival documents as products of
their time, of the the social values, bureaucratic norms and legal regulation
that gave them their form and content. The differences between the hand-
written paper documents of the 1950s and the electronic records of today are
obvious to all. What may not be so evident, is that their values as historical
sources may be different as well.

II

Norwegian municipal administration dates back to the 1750s, when the

first school and poor relief commissions were established. After the Local
Government Acts of 1837, local councils ("forrnannskap") were elected in
each parish and in the towns. The formannskap was the main municipal
authority and appointed the other municipal committees such as the school
commissions. During the last 50 years of the 20th century, Norwegian
local government was subject to fundamental structural, administrative and
functional changes.
By 1950 there were 680 rural municipalities in Norway, and more than
half of these had less than 2.500 inhabitants. In less than 50% of the councils
there were employed professional administrative staff, in the others usually
the mayor and committee chairmen took care of the secretariat functions
on apart-time basis. 2 The smaller municipalities were short of resources to
develop the nescessary administrative functions.
In the 1960s a process of municipal amalgamation, was carried out Which
reduced the number of municipalities to 450. During the same decade, there
was introduced new legislation on public administration and public access to
records, as well as education, social services, planning and building control.
This legislation was an integral part of the development of the Norwegian
welfare state, and led to a rapid administrative growth in the local coun-
cils. This growth continued through the 1970s and led to the development
of relative strong, law-prescribed departments for administration, education,
social services and planning and building control in the municipalities.
The next period of change started in the mid-80s. A new political climate
led to demands for reduction in public costs and privatisation of public
services, and a new Local Government Act was passed in 1993. The many

2 InnstillingII fra kommuneinndelingskomiteen(Report II from a governmental committe

on the municipal structure), Oslo 1952, pp. 5-6, 49-60.
 LOCAL GOVERNMENTIN NORWAY 207

regulations of municipal organisation were lifted and the councils became

free to choose their own organisation. This process, which in time coincided
with the introduction of electronic recordkeeping systems, led to great and
frequent organisational changes in the local administrations during the 90s.

III

Records are administrative tools, and administrative products as well. The

quality of the archives, what kind of information which has been considered
worth archiving and the way the records have been filed and kept, has been
changing with time and place. This is clearly illustrated by the development
in municipal record creation and recordkeeping during these 50 years,
In the 1950s the municipal councils, the committees appointed b y the
councils and administrative units like schools, were functioning as separate
archive creators. They kept their own minute books, diaries, copy-books and
record files. This is a common feature in rural municipal archives until the
1960s. 3
At the same time, we can register great variations in the recordkeeping
practices between municipalities of different sizes and with varying admin-
istrative resources. In the smaller municipalities, where the mayor and
committee chairmen served as a part-time secretaries, we often find the results
of what may be called a "spontaneous recordkeeping". A good example of
this is the municipality of Masfjorden, some 70 km north of Bergen on
the west coast. Here the mayor took care of the secretariat functions. The
council's files from the 1950s were arranged iin three parallel systems: 4 the
main part were arranged by meeting, so that the documents that were delt
with in one meeting were kept together. A smaller part of the files, consisting
of documents that were not discussed in any meeting, were kept in chrono-
logical order. Finally the documents on cases which were active for a longer
period and discussed at several meetings, were kept in an alfabetic system.
Put together, the files of the council did not make up more than 2,5 linear
meters. Such recordkeeping systems are usually person-dependent, made to
suit the mayor's immediate needs to recover the documents, and may change
when a new mayor is elected.
In municipalities which had resources to employ administrative staff, it
was common to use the record classification systems constructed by the
Norwegian Local Councils Association from the beginning of the 1950s. This
was the case in the municipality of Ullensvang, which had a professional
3 This is demonstrated by the electronic catalogues for the archives of the local councils in
Sogn og Fjordane county on the Intemet, see www.sffarkiv.no.
4 Interkommunalt arkiv i Hordaland: Arkivkatalog for Masfjorden kommune, 1998.
208 GUDMUNDVALDERHAUG

council secretary. 5 Still, the volume of the files were about the same as in
Masfjorden.
We also find differences regarding what information was considered worth
documenting. In the smaller councils, usually only the origin and the result of
the proceedings were archived, that is the incoming letter, the minutes, and a
copy of the outgoing letter. 6 The mode of treatment was mainly oral: the letter
was read aloud by the mayor and discussed in the meeting before a decision
was made.
In some of the larger municipalities with stronger administration units this
was different. In the municipality of Voss, 7 usually proposals was produced,
duplicated and sent to the members of the council before the meeting. The
records from these larger councils tend to be more voluminous and give more
detailed information about why a certain decision was made and how it was
followed up.
The reforms in the 60s made a profound impact on the municipal archives.
On the organisational level, there were established administrative units for
general administration, school administration, social services, planning and
building control. These new administrative bodies were given secretary func-
tions for one or several committees. Each of them established one correspond-
ence register and one record filing system for all the procedures that were
dealt with by the body and committees, and kept separate minutes for each
committee. The functions as record creators were moved from the committees
to the administrative units, from "archival laymen" to professional staff.
One important result of this was that the differences in recordkeeping prac-
tises between larger and smaller municipalities rather quickly disappeared,
together with the "homemade" archival systems of the mayors and committee
chairmen. At the beginning of the 1970s, practically all municipal coun-
cils used similar recordkeeping systems: a correspondence register and the
classification system created by the national association of municipalities.
The differences in what was considered worth archiving also disappeared.
The new public administration legislation established that all parties in a
case had the right to information. Decisions made by public bodies should
be supported by written documents and subject to complaint. This led to
a considerable growth in the amount of documents that were produced and
archived.

5 Interkommunalt arkiv i Hordaland: Arkivkatalog for Ullensvang herad, 2001.

6 This is the case in both Masfjorden and Ullensvang.
7 Interkommunalt arkiv i Hordaland: Arkivkatalog for Voss, unpublished manuscript.
 LOCALGOVERNMENTIN NORWAY 209

IV

The 70s and 80s witnessed the establishment of the first inter-municipal
archives ("IKAs") 8 in Norway. This was archival institutions set up by a
number of local councils, usually in the same county, to serve the councils'
need for arrangement and description of older archives. These institutions
rather quickly turned their attention to the field of record creation. The IKA
in Hordaland developed "recordkeeping planning" as a method to control the
creation and distribution of records, to secure that the necessary documenta-
tion was archived and unnecessary documents destroyed, and to establish
good recordkeeping practices in the administrations.9 This strong focus on
the record creation phase was characteristic for the new municipal archival
institutions.
Doing this, the municipal archivists left the traditional passive, receiving
role that still was dominant in the state archives at this time, and "took care
of the archives before they were created" by develping plans and routines for
the record creation process.
The introduction of electronic recordkeeping systems in the late 80s did
not change the archival medium, as the correspondence registers and outgoing
correspondence were still produced on paper. This was due to regulations
in the national standard for electronic recordkeeping systems, NOARK, l~
developed by the National Archives. This gives a detailed description of data-
base structures, data formats and procedures for exporting data. If a public
body uses systems which do not meet these requirements, it will have to
produce at least part of the records on paper. This was the case for most
systems until til the turn of the century.
But the electronic systems had other consequences. The Local Goverment
Act of 1993 made it possible for each municipality to choose its own organ-
isation, and to dissolve the administrative units prescribed by the previous
legislation. Combined with the possibilites created by ICT, this led to new
administrative and recordkeeping structures in local government. The muni-
cipality of Masforden in 1998 established a "central archive", one common
paper-based file system and electronic recordkeeping system for the adminis-
trative bodies. 11 This meant that the predominat one-to-one relation between
the record creating body and the archive was broken. The local council now
had one recordkeeping system, with several adminitrative units acting as
8 The IKAs ("interkommualtarkiv") were a great success. By the time of writing, they are
established in all but two counties.
9 An early introduction to the "recordkeeping planning" is G. Valderhaug: "Arkivplan-
legging",publishedin Arkivjournalenno. 2/1988.
10 See www.iiksarkivet.nofor details on NOARK.
11 Interkommunaltarkiv i Hordaland:Arkivplanfor Masfjordenkommune, 1998.
210 GUDMUNDVALDERHAUG

creators. A couple of the adminitrative units had a special recordkeeping

system of their own as well, designed for special tasks (such as social
services, which due to the protection of privacy legislation must be kept
in seperate systems). Thus, these administrative units functioned as record
creators for two (or more) recordkeping systems.
This new recordkeeping structure could not have been possible without
ICT. While the paper-based systems presupposed one archive in each admin-
istrative body, the new technology removed these physical boundaries. Today,
recordkeeping structures similar to Masfjorden are common in Norwegian
municipalities.

The changing legal conditions for local government in Norway over the last
50 years, have impelled a development towards integration and amalgamation
of different municipal services. At the same time the municipal bodies have
been changed into professional organisations, and a new technonoly for docu-
ment production and distribution has been developed. These changes have led
to new archival structures.
In most municipalities we can during this period observe a development
from a decentralised, spontaneous and accidental to a centralised, profes-
sional and instruction-bound record creation. There are two central elements
which characterize this development.
The limits for what has been considered necessary to document in an
archive have been moved. In the 1950s the procedures were dealt with in
a council meeting and only part of these was recorded on paper. Very often
only the origin and the result of an issue were archived (i.e. the incoming
letter, the minutes and sometimes a copy of the outgoing letter). In the 1970s
this became quite different, as the new legal regulations on public admin-
istration and freedom of information required that all the proceedings were
recorded on paper and archived. Still, there are indications that this started
some years earlier and that the reasons for this were the growth in admin-
istrative resources and the copying techniques that became common in the
60s. A comprehensive research on municipal archives from the 50s to the 70s
will probably give more apprehension of how these factors influenced this
development, l 2
That new techonolgies can influence the extent of what is archived, can
be observed in the new electronic recordkeeping systems. When it becomes

12 This will be done in my final research report.

 LOCAL GOVERNMENTINNORWAY 211

possible to record information that previously not was recorded, this very
often is done.
One archival theorist who has discussed these questions is Eric Ketelaar.
He has introduced the concept of archivalisation, to describe "the conscious
or unconscious choice (determined by social and cultural factors) to consider
something worth archiving". 13 He maintains that knowledge about these are
necessary to understand archives and see trough and behind the documents,
to find the messages they carry.
Ketelaar obviously has an important point. A researcher who is using
municipal archives from the 1950s need to know that there were different
levels for archiving in different local councils. When documentation that will
be found in the archives from one municipality is missing in the archives
from another, the reason for this may be different levels of archivalisation
and not that records are destroyed or lost. Knowledge about the changing
conditions for what has been archived will have to affect the use of the records
as historical sources.
In virtually all municipalities we may register a reduction in the number
of archives (fonds) during the last 50 years. In smaller rural communities in
the 50s, each municipal committee functioned as a record creator, usually
with the chairman taking care of the archive. In the 1960s administrative
bodies were established in these smaller municipalities to prepare and carry
out decisions, in most cases on behalf of several committees. From this time
most Norwegian local councils were divided into five departments: educa-
tion, social services, engineering, treasury and bookkeeping, and the mayor's
office. These administrations registered and kept the records, integrating them
into one archive (fonds). The relations between records and creator in this
period may be seen as a multiple or single relationship, between one archive
fronds) and many creators (the committees) or one creator (the administrative
body).
During the 1990s, the new electronic tools changed this. After an inter-
mediate solution with one electronic recordkeeping system and paper-based
archives (fonds) in each department, most local councils have now established
a recordkeeping department, keeping both electronic and paper-based records
and serving all the municipal administrative units.
The relation between records and creators is clearly a muliple one, one
recordkeeping system is created by a number of admistrative units. Some
of these units may have their own recordkeeping system in addition to this
joint system. The social services department will use the joint recordkeeping
system for common administrative tasks, such as planning, budget and staff

13 Eric Ketelaar, "Tacit Narratives: The Meanings of Archives", Archival Science 1 (2001):
143-150.
212 GUDMUNDVALDERHAUG

matters, but the prosedures concerning the social clients will be recorded in a
seperate recordkeeping system designed for this purpuse. 14 Thus, one office
may have creator relationships to two (or more) recordkeeping systems, being
the only creator for one system and co-creator for the other.
During the last 50 years we have witnessed a fundamental change in the
recordcreating structures in local government: from the "traditional" one-to-
one-relationship described by Muller, Feith and Fruin, to the many-to-many-
relationship which can be seen today. The principle of provenance has been
the basic rule for arranging and describing archives for the last hundred years.
An archive shall be kept according to its provenance and never be mixed with
other archives. The internal relations in an archive shall be respected as well,
following the principle of the original order. The strength of the principle of
provenance has been that it has made it possible to preserve archives (more
or less) according to their original administrative context. The recent changes
in the archives' provenance, from simple to more complex relations, makes it
necessary to rethink the methods for archival description.

~4 The main reason for this is legal regulations for safeguarding of privacy.