This vignette documents the structure and quirks of data from Norway’s Central Coordinating Register for Legal Entities (Enhetsregisteret). Understanding these details prevents misinterpretation in research.
Organization numbers
Every Norwegian legal entity receives a unique 9-digit organization number (organisasjonsnummer) upon registration. The number uses modulus-11 check digit validation:
library(tidybrreg)
brreg_validate(c("923609016", "984851006", "123456789"))
#> [1] TRUE TRUE FALSENumbers starting with 8 are assigned to sub-entities (underenheter), numbers starting with 9 to main entities (enheter). Historical numbers starting with other digits exist but are no longer assigned.
Three registries, one API
The brreg API exposes three distinct registries:
Enheter (main entities): The legal entity itself — the company, association, or government body that holds rights, obligations, and is the unit of taxation.
Underenheter (sub-entities): Physical locations or
operational units belonging to a main entity. A company with offices in
Oslo and Bergen has one enhet and two underenheter. Sub-entities have
their own organization numbers and are linked to their parent via
overordnetEnhet.
Roller (roles): Board members, officers, auditors, accountants, and shareholders registered for each entity. Roles link persons (by name + birth date) or entities (by organization number) to entities.
Legal forms
The organisasjonsform field classifies entities. Common
codes:
legal_forms[legal_forms$code %in% c("AS", "ASA", "ENK", "NUF", "DA", "ANS", "SA", "STI"), ]
#> # A tibble: 8 × 4
#> code name_no expired name_en
#> <chr> <chr> <chr> <chr>
#> 1 ANS Ansvarlig selskap med solidarisk ansvar NA General partnership (jo…
#> 2 AS Aksjeselskap NA Private limited company
#> 3 ASA Allmennaksjeselskap NA Public limited company
#> 4 DA Ansvarlig selskap med delt ansvar NA General partnership (sh…
#> 5 ENK Enkeltpersonforetak NA Sole proprietorship
#> 6 NUF Norskregistrert utenlandsk foretak NA Norwegian-registered fo…
#> 7 SA Samvirkeforetak NA Cooperative
#> 8 STI Stiftelse NA FoundationKey distinctions for research:
- AS (Private limited company): ~300K entities. Minimum NOK 30,000 share capital. Board optional for small AS.
- ASA (Public limited company): ~220 entities. Listed or intending to list. Gender quota on boards (≥40% each gender since 2008).
- ENK (Sole proprietorship): ~400K entities. No board, no separate legal personality. Often zero employees.
- NUF (Norwegian-registered foreign entity): Branch offices of foreign companies. Limited data available.
NACE industry codes
The naeringskode1 field uses the Standard Industrial
Classification (SN2007, based on NACE Rev. 2). The brreg API switched to
SN2025 (NACE Rev. 2.1) in September 2025. Remapping between the two
across a panel is handled by brreg_harmonize_nace() in the
tidybrregpanel package.
# Translate NACE codes to English descriptions
brreg_entity("923609016") |> brreg_label(code = "nace_1")
#> nace_1 = "Extraction of crude petroleum"
#> nace_1_code = "06.100"
# Or fetch the full dictionary
nace <- get_brreg_dic("nace")
nace[nace$code == "06.100", ]Up to three NACE codes may be registered per entity
(nace_1, nace_2, nace_3). The
primary code (nace_1) determines industry
classification.
Employee counts
The antallAnsatte field reports registered employees.
Important caveats:
- Source: NAV’s Aa-register (employer/employee register), updated ~10th of each month.
- Since September 2023, entities with 0–4 employees show
NA(previously showed exact count). This meansNAis ambiguous: the entity may have 0–4 employees or the field may genuinely be missing. -
harRegistrertAntallAnsatte(logical) distinguishes “has a count registered” from “no count registered.” - ENK (sole proprietorships) typically show
NAregardless of actual employment.
Addresses
Each entity may have two addresses:
- forretningsadresse (business address): Legal registered address. Norwegian entities must have a Norwegian business address.
- postadresse (postal address): Mailing address. May be a PO box or abroad.
Sub-entities use beliggenhetsadresse (location address) instead of forretningsadresse.
Each address contains: adresse (street lines),
postnummer (postal code), poststed (city),
kommune (municipality name), kommunenummer
(4-digit municipality code), land (country),
landkode (ISO country code).
Municipality codes and the 2020 reform
Norway reduced municipalities from 428 to 356 on January 1, 2020
(with further changes in 2024 reverting some mergers). Historical data
contains old codes that no longer exist. Remapping across the reform is
handled by brreg_harmonize_kommune() in the tidybrregpanel
package.
Dates
Key date fields and their meaning:
| Column | API field | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
founding_date |
stiftelsesdato |
Date the entity was founded/incorporated |
registration_date |
registreringsdatoEnhetsregisteret |
Date of registration in the central register |
articles_date |
vedtektsdato |
Date of latest articles of association |
bankruptcy_date |
konkursdato |
Date bankruptcy was opened |
liquidation_date |
underAvviklingDato |
Date voluntary liquidation began |
deletion_date |
slettedato |
Date the entity was deleted from the register |
registration_date is more reliable than
founding_date for determining when an entity entered the
register — some entities have founding dates predating the electronic
register.
Dates arrive as ISO YYYY-MM-DD from the Enhetsregisteret
API and as DD.MM.YYYY from the Fullmakt service; both parse
to Date. Instants (update-feed timestamps,
Last-Modified headers) are POSIXct in UTC
regardless of the session time zone.
Deleted entities
A deleted entity stays retrievable. The register answers either HTTP
410 or, for most deletions, HTTP 200 with
respons_klasse = "SlettetEnhet" and
slettedato. brreg_entity() sets
deleted = TRUE and deletion_date in both cases
and signals a tidybrreg_warning_deleted; the per-entity
endpoints (roles, konsern, signatur) return their typed empty tibble
with http_status = 410L.
The bulk download is JSON
brreg_download() reads the JSON variant of the bulk
endpoints (/enheter/lastned,
/underenheter/lastned, /roller/totalbestand),
the same representation the single-entity lookups and the update feeds
use. A bulk row therefore carries exactly the fields and nesting of
brreg_entity(): share capital (capital_*), the
articles of association text, the full annotation array
(annotations) and the name history
(historiske_navn) as list-columns of tibbles. BRREG also
publishes a CSV variant with its own flattening (one column per address
field, a presence flag in place of the annotations, no name history);
the package does not read it, so every path through the package agrees
on every field and dictionary-typed column (dates, integers, the numeric
capital_* fields, logicals) has the same type whichever
path produced it.
CDC update stream
The change data capture endpoints track modifications to the register:
-
Enheter/Underenheter:
/oppdateringer/{type}returns change events with type (Ny/Endring/Sletting) and optional field-level RFC 6902 patches (since September 2025). -
Roller:
/oppdateringer/rollerreturns CloudEvents indicating which entities had role changes (no field detail — fetch the entity’s roles separately).
Field-level patches provide only new values, not old values; the raw
JSON pointer of each patch is kept in the path column of
brreg_update_fields(). For before/after comparisons, diff
two snapshots with brreg_events() from the tidybrregpanel
package.
Data update schedule
The brreg bulk files are regenerated nightly. The
Last-Modified HTTP header on the download response
indicates when the file was last regenerated (typically between 02:00
and 06:00 CET). The CDC stream is near-real-time during business
hours.
Data license
All data from Enhetsregisteret is freely available under the Norwegian Licence for Open Government Data (NLOD 2.0). No API key is required. There is no formal rate limit, but the package applies a 5 requests/second throttle as courtesy.