To say it simple - in these records one will find a detailed description of the persons career as a sailor and merchant marine officer. Some times one will find that a sailor is noted as leaving on a ship bound for a foreign port, then there will be no notice for several years, before the ship returns to the home port again. In such cases it is possible to reconstruct the voyage by checking the maritime intelligence column in the local newspapers. Telegrams and rumors about the whereabouts of the ships were printed regularly. Johan Richard Solem was my gggrandfather.
Lets take a look at the above scan first.
Quite a number of Norwegian sailors abandoned their ships to become immigrants. They will not be listed in the Norwegian emigration records, or on any passenger list, so these records can often be valuable as a second choice, after searching passengers lists without any luck. The records are most detailed between 1860 and 1911. To find people in these sources you need to know where they lived, as there were separate records for the different districts. Only a small part of the records has been microfilmed.