4.2 The Unions with Denmark and Sweden & the 1814 Constitution

The Unions with Denmark and Sweden & the 1814 Constitution

For more than five centuries, Norway's political fate was bound to its Scandinavian neighbors. Between 1380 and 1905, Norway did not possess a separate, fully sovereign monarch. Yet rather than erasing Norwegian nationhood, these centuries of union—punctuated by the revolutionary constitutional breakthrough of 1814 and a 19th-century cultural awakening—cultivated a deep commitment to national sovereignty, the rule of law, and democratic governance.

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The Kalmar Union and the 400-Year Union with Denmark (Dansketiden)

Following the demographic collapse of the Black Death, the royal dynasties of Scandinavia intermarried, concentrating royal bloodlines:

The Kalmar Union (1397)

In 1397, Queen Margrete I of Denmark united the three separate kingdoms of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden under a single monarch in the Kalmar Union (Kalmarunionen). While the union aimed to present a unified Scandinavian front against German Hanseatic trade dominance, Sweden repeatedly rebelled, permanently withdrawing from the union in 1523 under Gustav Vasa. Norway, however, remained tied to Denmark.

The Protestant Reformation and Loss of Independence (1536–1537)

In 1536–1537, the Danish King Christian III strengthened royal control over Norway through two momentous transformations:

1. The Protestant Reformation (Reformasjonen): Christian III adopted Lutheran Protestantism as the sole official religion. The Catholic Church—Norway's largest landowner and primary cultural institution—was dismantled. Catholic monasteries were closed, church lands and treasures were confiscated by the Danish Crown in Copenhagen, and the last Catholic Archbishop of Nidaros, Olav Engelbrektsson, fled the country.
2. The Norwegian Clause (Norgesparagrafen): In his 1536 coronation charter (håndfestning), Christian III dissolved the Norwegian Council of the Realm (Riksrådet) while his charter proposed reducing Norway to a Danish dependency. Norway lost important autonomous institutions but continued to be treated as a kingdom within the composite monarchy.

Life Under Danish Rule (Dansketiden)

For nearly three centuries, this era—often referred to in national memory as Dansketiden (the Danish period, or the "400-Year Night" by 19th-century romantic poets)—shaped Norwegian society:

• Copenhagen Hegemony: Copenhagen served as the sole political, administrative, judicial, and cultural capital. All senior civil servants, military officers, and bishops (embetsmenn) were appointed by the King in Copenhagen.
• Absolutism (Eneveldet): In 1660, King Frederik III introduced absolute monarchy (eneveldet). The King held supreme, unchecked executive, legislative, and judicial power by divine right.
• Linguistic and Educational Dominance: Danish became the mandatory written language of the Bible, catechisms, church services, court records, and schools. Because Norway had no domestic university until 1811, all aspiring priests, lawyers, and civil servants had to travel to Copenhagen to study at the University of Copenhagen.

Despite political subordination, Norwegian farmers (bønder) maintained an unusual degree of personal freedom compared to Continental peasants: serfdom was never established in Norway, and vast timber exports, silver mining (Kongsberg), ironworks, and coastal fisheries fostered a resilient merchant and farming class.

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The Napoleonic Wars and the Treaty of Kiel (1814)

The geopolitical order of Europe was upended during the Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815). In 1807, fear of a French-Danish alliance prompted the British Royal Navy to bombard Copenhagen and seize the entire Danish fleet (the "Flåteranet"). Outraged, Danish King Frederik VI allied Denmark-Norway with Napoleon Bonaparte.

The British Blockade and Famine

Great Britain responded by imposing a ruthless naval blockade on Norway between 1807 and 1814. Royal Navy warships severed the maritime grain lifeline between Denmark and Norway. Cut off from food imports, Norway suffered catastrophic famine, widespread poverty, and the collapse of timber exports. Norwegians were forced to bake bread from dried tree bark (barkbrød), a suffering immortalized in Henrik Ibsen's renowned poem Terje Vigen.

The Treaty of Kiel (14 January 1814)

While Denmark backed Napoleon, Sweden allied with Great Britain, Russia, and Prussia. Sweden was ruled by Crown Prince Karl Johan (formerly Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, a celebrated French marshal elected by the Swedish parliament as heir to the throne). Following Napoleon's defeat at the Battle of Leipzig in 1813, Karl Johan marched his Swedish army into Denmark.

On 14 January 1814, Frederik VI was forced to sign the Treaty of Kiel (Kielertraktaten):

• Denmark ceded the entire Kingdom of Norway to the King of Sweden.
• Crucially, Denmark kept Norway's historic Atlantic territories: Greenland, Iceland, and the Faroe Islands (Iceland later became independent in 1944; Greenland and the Faroe Islands remain within the Danish realm).

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The Miraculous Year: Eidsvoll and the 1814 Constitution

When news of the Treaty of Kiel reached Norway, public outrage was immense. Norwegians refused to accept that a foreign king could trade an entire people like livestock without their consultation.

The Danish viceroy in Norway, Prince Christian Frederik (cousin of the Danish King), placed himself at the head of a Norwegian independence movement. Rather than claiming the Norwegian throne by divine right, he was persuaded to summon a constitutional assembly based on the principle of popular sovereignty.

The Constitutional Assembly at Eidsvoll

On 10 April 1814, 112 elected delegates gathered at the manor house of Eidsvoll Verk, north of Christiania (Oslo). The assembly consisted of:

• 57 civil servants (embetsmenn — lawyers, priests, judges, officers)
• 37 independent farmers (bønder)
• 18 merchants and burghers (borgere)
• (Note: Northern Norway was unrepresented because severe winter conditions and immense distances prevented delegates from arriving before the assembly concluded).

The assembly split into two ideological factions:

1. The Independence Party (Selvstendighetspartiet): Led by jurist Christian Magnus Falsen (known as the "Father of the Constitution"), this majority faction demanded immediate, unconditional national independence under King Christian Frederik.
2. The Union Party (Unionspartiet): Led by Count Herman Wedel Jarlsberg, this pragmatic minority believed that an independent Norway could not withstand a Swedish military invasion and favored a negotiated union with Sweden that preserved Norwegian domestic autonomy.

Signing the Constitution on 17 May 1814

Working at astonishing speed, the delegates drafted a complete constitutional charter. On 17 May 1814, the Norwegian Constitution (Kongeriket Norges Grunnlov) was adopted, and Christian Frederik was elected King of Norway. This date is celebrated today as Norway's National Day (Syttende mai).

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The Swedish War and the Convention of Moss

Sweden's Crown Prince Karl Johan refused to accept the Eidsvoll declaration. In late July 1814, Swedish veteran troops invaded southeastern Norway. After two weeks of fighting—the Swedish-Norwegian War of 1814—both sides recognized the military and political realities:

• Norwegian forces had mounted spirited resistance at Kongsvinger and Langnes, but were outmatched by battle-hardened Swedish units.
• Karl Johan wanted to avoid a protracted, bloody guerrilla war in the rugged Norwegian terrain and desired a peaceful union before European powers intervened.

The Convention of Moss (14 August 1814)

On 14 August 1814, the two nations signed the Convention of Moss (Mossekonvensjonen), establishing a historic peace:

1. King Christian Frederik agreed to abdicate the Norwegian throne and return to Denmark.
2. In return, Crown Prince Karl Johan and the King of Sweden accepted the Norwegian Constitution of 17 May 1814, agreeing that Norway would enter the union as an autonomous kingdom with its own parliament, laws, and armed forces.

On 4 November 1814, an extraordinary Storting amended the constitution only to the extent necessary to accommodate a personal union (personalunion) under Swedish King Karl XIII (the Novembergrunnloven).

Under this union, Norway was not a Swedish province. Norway remained a self-governing constitutional state with its own capital (Christiania), its own parliament (Stortinget), its own taxes, treasury, legal courts, army, and bank (Norges Bank, established in 1816). The two countries shared only two things: the monarch and foreign policy (administered by the Swedish Foreign Ministry in Stockholm).

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The 19th Century: National Awakening and Parliamentarism

The 19th century witnessed profound nation-building across Norwegian society:

Romantic Nationalism (Nasjonalromantikken)

Between 1840 and 1870, artists, writers, and scholars sought to define the authentic soul of Norway (folkesjelen), drawing inspiration from the dramatic landscape and rural peasant culture:

• Fairy Tales: Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe gathered traditional folk legends and fairy tales (Norske Folkeeventyr), creating iconic cultural tales of trolls, Ashlad (Askeladden), and Nordic folklore.
• Music and Art: Composer Edvard Grieg incorporated traditional folk fiddle melodies into classical masterpieces; painters Adolph Tidemand and Hans Gude celebrated traditional rural rituals in works such as Brudeferden i Hardanger (The Bridal Party in Hardanger).
• Literature: Playwright Henrik Ibsen (Peer Gynt, Et dukkehjem) and novelist Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson placed Norwegian literature on the world stage.

The Language Conflict: Bokmål vs. Nynorsk

Centuries of Danish rule had left Norway without a distinct national written language. In the mid-19th century, two parallel language reform movements emerged:

• Nynorsk (Landsmål): Linguist Ivar Aasen traveled to isolated rural valleys across Western and Central Norway, systematically studying spoken peasant dialects that preserved grammatical structures of Old Norse. He synthesized these dialects into a new written standard named Landsmål (today's Nynorsk).
• Bokmål (Riksmål): Educator Knud Knudsen championed a gradual norwegianization of the existing Danish written language to reflect the spoken pronunciation of the Norwegian educated urban class (today's Bokmål).
• In 1885, the Storting enacted the Equality Resolution (Jamstillingsvedtaket), giving both written standards equal legal and official standing in public administration and schools.

The Introduction of Parliamentarism (1884)

Throughout the 19th century, conservative cabinets appointed by the shared monarch repeatedly clashed with the democratically elected Storting. Led by liberal leader Johan Sverdrup, the parliamentary opposition organized Norway's first political parties: Venstre (the Liberals, founded in 1884) and Høyre (the Conservatives, founded in 1884).

In 1884, after a historic court of impeachment (Riksrett) convicted the King's conservative cabinet of constitutional defiance, King Oscar II was forced to appoint Johan Sverdrup as Prime Minister. This milestone established parliamentarism (parlamentarismen): the fundamental constitutional principle that the government must have the confidence of the parliamentary majority (the Storting) to govern, effectively transferring real political power from the King to the elected representatives of the people.

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The Peaceful Dissolution of the Union in 1905

By the beginning of the 20th century, Norway had grown into a modern maritime nation with the third-largest merchant fleet in the world. However, Norway had no independent foreign diplomatic representation; its trade and shipping interests were represented abroad by Swedish consuls who often favored Swedish commercial interests.

The Consular Crisis (Konsulatsaken)

The Storting passed legislation establishing an independent Norwegian Consular Service (det norske konsulatvesen). When King Oscar II vetoed the legislation and refused to sanction the law, the Norwegian government led by Prime Minister Christian Michelsen tendered its resignation on 27 May 1905. The King stated that he was unable to find an alternative Norwegian ministry, refusing to accept their resignation.

The 7 June 1905 Declaration

Christian Michelsen masterminded an audacious constitutional maneuver. On 7 June 1905, the Storting passed a unanimous resolution:

Since the King had declared himself incapable of forming a government for Norway, he had ceased to function as King of Norway. And because the King was no longer functioning as head of state, the personal union with Sweden under a common monarch was ipso facto dissolved.

The August 1905 Referendum

Sweden refused to accept Norway's unilateral declaration without proof of popular mandate. On 13 August 1905, Norway conducted a nationwide referendum (folkeavstemning):

• 368,208 citizens voted for dissolution.
• Only 184 voted against.
• Although women did not yet possess national voting rights (granted in 1913), female activists organized a parallel national petition, gathering over 250,000 women's signatures supporting dissolution.

The Karlstad Negotiations and a New Monarch

Tensions ran high as both nations mobilized military forces along the border. However, cooler heads prevailed. In September 1905, representatives met in Karlstad, Sweden, reaching a peaceful treaty that dismantled border fortifications and recognized Norway's full independence without bloodshed.

In November 1905, a second referendum overwhelmingly chose a constitutional monarchy over a republic. The Storting invited Prince Carl of Denmark to become the sovereign. Prince Carl accepted on the condition of popular approval, took the ancient Old Norse royal name Haakon VII, and named his two-year-old son Alexander Crown Prince Olav. On 25 November 1905, King Haakon VII arrived in Christiania, proclaiming his enduring royal motto: "Alt for Norge" (All for Norway).

Applying the concepts

Compare three dates: 1814 established a constitution; 1884 marks the parliamentary breakthrough; 1905 ended the Swedish union. A learner who says universal democracy arrived fully formed in 1814 misses later expansion of participation. Women gained full parliamentary voting rights in 1913. Democratic development is a process of changing institutions and removing exclusions.

Remember

• Norway entered a dynastic union with Denmark in 1380 and the Kalmar Union in 1397; Danish royal control strengthened after the Reformation.
• Following Denmark-Norway's alliance with Napoleon, the 1814 Treaty of Kiel forced Denmark to cede Norway to the King of Sweden.
• The Constitution was adopted at Eidsvoll on 17 May 1814, introducing popular sovereignty and separation of powers alongside exclusions later removed.

Official sources

Checked 18 October 2026: Official history lessons.