What does socken mean?

In Swedish records, socken means parish: the area served by one church, and the unit the Swedish church records were kept by.

Swedish: socken
In English: parish
Also seen as: socknen, socknar, kyrksocken, församling
Group: Places

The priest baptizes a child in a country church in the 1800s.

Definition

A socken (parish) is a geographical area served by a church¹. Before 1862 all parishes in Sweden were called socken. After 1862 the church parish is called församling¹. The word socken was also used for the secular parish, an area for local government¹. In the church sense, the socken covers the same area as the församling³.

In the records

Swedish church records were kept parish by parish. The household examination record lists everyone who belonged to the parish³, and the church archives are arranged by county and parish². To find a person in the records, you must know in which parish he or she was born⁴. Inside the parish, the household examination record is arranged by village, farm and croft⁵.

What it meant

Everyone was written in the book of the parish where they lived³. The church kept the population register until 1 July 1991, so the priest was also the local registrar⁶. When a person moved, the old parish's moving-out record says where to, and the new parish's moving-in record gives the village and often the page in the household examination record⁵.

Do not confuse with

A by (village) is a part of the parish, not the parish itself⁵. A församling is both the people who belong to the church and the area they live in³; in older records, socken and församling usually mean the same place¹.

husförhörslängd – The household examination record – the priest's book of everyone in the parish, household by household, which priests had to keep from 1686.
Guide: How to Read Swedish Household Examination Records

Sources

Sources in English

Hans Högman, Genealogy terms S–Ö – hhogman.se
Riksarkivet (the Swedish National Archives), Genealogy – sok.riksarkivet.se

Sources in Swedish

These pages are in Swedish.

Skatteverket (the Swedish Tax Agency), Ordförklaringar, Sveriges församlingar genom tiderna (in Swedish) – skatteverket.se
Riksarkivet, Om släkt- och personforskning (in Swedish) – sok.riksarkivet.se
Riksarkivet, Kyrkoarkiv (in Swedish) – sok.riksarkivet.se
Skatteverket, Folkbokföringens historia (in Swedish) – skatteverket.se

Facts checked against sources, November 2026.