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October 1 2004
1905: Prologue to Dissolution On 7 June 1905 Norway unilaterally dissolved her ninety-one-year union with Sweden by declaring the union monarch no longer the king of Norway. The action by the Norwegian Storting (Parliament) climaxed a near century-long struggle between the two nations on the Scandinavian peninsula which had been initiated in 1814 as a result of the developments toward the end of the Napoleonic wars.
TERJE I. LEIREN
SEATTLE, WA - The Swedish Crown Prince, Carl Johan, formerly Jean Baptiste Bernadotte, a French Marshall under Napoleon, had aided in the Battle of Leipzig against his former ruler and shortly thereafter turned his armies north to put pressure on the Danish ally of the French emperor. With the signing of the Treaty of Kiel on 14 January 1814, Carl Johan succeeded in forcing the Danish monarchy to cede Norway to Sweden, thereby fulfilling a policy which Sweden had pursued for decades prior to the election of Bernadotte as heir to the Swedish throne. Norwegians objected to the transfer and, under the leadership of Christian Fredrik, Denmark's Crown Prince, declared their independence. To demonstrate their sincerity and emphasize their separation from Denmark, a constitution was subsequently written and signed on 17 May 1814. Norway was, however, unsuccessful in her attempts to persuade the allies, particularly Britain, to support her action.
During the first two weeks of August, a brief war was fought, but Swedish superiority in forces and in arms, convinced the Norwegians that their cause was hopeless. In signing the Convention of Moss on 14 August 1814 ending hostilities, the Norwegians acknowledged their defeat, but retained their constitution and made no mention of the Treaty of Kiel. On 4 November 1814, a special Storting agreed to a revised constitution and elected or acknowledged Carl XIII of Sweden to be king of Norway.
The official character of the Union was subsequently established on 6 August 1815 with the promulgation of the Act of Union (Riksakten); each country maintained a separate constitution and the Union was, in reality, a personal union under one king with royal control over foreign affairs. Norway remained a separate country with control over its internal affairs.
While in reality, Norway was forced into the Union with Sweden, a great amount of independent national authority was retained. While cooperating in several areas, Swedes always felt they had legitimately conquered Norway while Norwegians grew increasingly obstreperous as the nineteenth century progressed. Finding each other often at odds over the precise nature of the Union, crises arose and were resolved, but the seeds of conflict were never uprooted and continued to germinate in the years leading up to 1905.
The first decades of the Union, according to Norwegian historian Magnus Jensen, revealed numerous hints of dissatisfaction by Norwegians. Among the first actions of Norway's Storting was a bill to eliminate titles of nobility. The bill was passed in 1815 and again in 1818. Each time the King vetoed it. When it was passed a third time in 1821, Kind Carl XIV Johan allowed it to become law. Although it affected almost no one in Norway, the new law was in reality a cannon shot across the bow of Sweden's ship of state signifying Norway's insistence that she was more egalitarian and democratic that her class conscious Swedish neighbor.
 | | The Eidsvold building May 19, 1814 painted by Peder Balkes |
In 1830, amidst the echoes of the 1830 revolution on the continent that were reaching the Norwegian valleys, Jonas Anton Hielm, a lawyer and Storting member, proposed that Stortinget send an address to the king noting that, in accordance with the Constitution, diplomatic questions relating to Norway alone should be treaty only in Norwegian council and union matters in a Union council. Hielm did not get sufficient support to carry the proposal through to conclusion, but Norwegian politicians were beginning to focus on union issues and Norway's place in the Union with Sweden. Eager to retain the loyalty of his Norwegian subjects, Carl Johan, in separate resolutions of 11 April 1835 and 23 January 1836, acknowledged that Norwegian should be present when decisions affecting their interests were decided. As a result of these resolutions, and the subsequent decision that allowed the Norwegian merchant flag to be flown on Norwegian ships in all seas in 1838, Carl Johan's popularity in Norway reached its apex.
Nationalism in Norway in the years of the mid-nineteenth century manifested itself, to a great extent, in non-political ways, such as revivals of cultural and intellectual life. Folklore and folk music inspired a national fascination with “bonde kulturen,” and the quaint primitive aspects of Norwegian rural life and customs. Leading intellectuals denied the existence of an anti-Union party and only in the stirrings of marginal labor unrest, led by Marcus Thrane, was there a hint of dissatisfaction with established authority.
The Union of Norway and Sweden had become stabilized and generally remained so until the emergence of the Liberal Party (Venstre) agitating for an expansion of the electorate and an increased role for Stortinget in what would become a marked constitutional struggle between the Norwegian parliament and the monarchy. By the 1880s, the Union had again become the primary force in Norwegian political life. There it would remain until final resolution in 1905.
Just as Norway adopted ministerial responsibility in 1884 and increased the constitutional authority of the legislative branch, Sweden, too, moved in that direction, although with less immediate success. Ironically, as a result of this, relations between the union partners were further strained when Sweden, in 1885, placed the foreign ministry more directly under the control of the Swedish parliament (Riksdag). Prior to the change, diplomatic Matters were prepared by officials responsible to the Union monarch.
After the spring of 1885, however, all diplomatic matters were to be prepared by Swedish officials primarily responsible to the Swedish foreign minister. To Norwegians, it was a further indication that Norway was dependent on Sweden in its relations with foreign powers. The change also increased Norwegian skepticism of ever achieving equality in the Union, certainly not without a separate foreign minister. Norwegian nationalists, especially the more radical, focused their agitation against the Union and Norwegian leaders they considered too docile.
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Author: Dr. Terje Leiren
Source: Norwegian American Foundation
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