The Union of Sweden and Norway
Norway was transferred from one crown to another in January 1814 as payment for a war it had not chosen, declared its independence in April, and spent the next ninety-one years in a union it had never agreed to enter. Denmark had backed Napoleon and lost; at Kiel it ceded Norway to the king of Sweden, keeping Iceland, the Faroes and Greenland, which is why those are not Norwegian today. The Swedish crown prince who collected the prize was Jean Bernadotte, a French marshal elected heir to the Swedish throne four years earlier and by then fighting against his former emperor. Norwegians declined to be transferred. An assembly at Eidsvoll wrote a constitution in six weeks and adopted it on 17 May 1814, electing the Danish viceroy king of an independent Norway. It was among the most liberal constitutions in Europe, with a wide franchise by the standards of the day and no hereditary nobility, and it is still in force. Sweden invaded in July, the campaign lasted about two weeks, and the Convention of Moss ended it on terms that were a defeat with unusual consequences: Norway entered the union, and kept the Eidsvoll constitution, its own parliament, its own laws and its own army. What it did not keep was a foreign policy, which was run from Stockholm by the Swedish foreign minister, and that single reservation is what the union eventually broke on. The arrangement was a personal union of two kingdoms rather than one state, and the Congress of Vienna recognised it later that year. Nineteenth-century Norwegian politics is largely the history of narrowing what Stockholm decided: parliamentary government was forced on the king in 1884, and the demand for a separate consular service grew as Norwegian shipping became one of the largest merchant fleets in the world and found Swedish consuls representing it. The Storting passed a consular law in 1905, the king refused it, the Norwegian government resigned, and the Storting declared that a king who could not appoint a government had ceased to function as king of Norway. A plebiscite returned 368,208 votes for dissolution and 184 against. Sweden mobilised, negotiated at Karlstad instead, and recognised the separation in October. Norway then offered its throne to a Danish prince, who insisted on a referendum before accepting and reigned as Haakon VII. It is among the very few dissolutions of a union in European history settled without a war.
- Year: 1814 CE
- Category: Political
