50: Norway, Part I

If you'd like to hear this show without ads, there's an ad-free RSS feed available for my Patreon supporters. Go to patreon.com slash Sean Munger, and if you become a patron, I'll let you know how to get the ad-free feed of second decade in your podcatcher of choice. And it'd be great to have the support.

Raised is then once more within the boundaries of Norway, the ancient throne which was occupied by Haken. From which they rule. With wisdom and strength. That the wisdom and power exercised by them, the great kings of our ancient past, will also The prince which we the freemen of Gratitude and appreciation today unanimously have chosen is a wish that every true son of Norway Surely shares with me. God saved. Your seventeenth, eighteen fourteen.

Two hundred and ten years ago in the A time of great environmental change. A time of disaster and miracles, anomalies and mysteries. It was the time when our modern world began to emerge, and a time like almost no other. This podcast is about stories. This is the second decade podcast. My name is Sean Munger. I'm a historian, author, teacher, and podcaster. You can visit the website for this podcast at second. Second decade is spelled out all one word, two D's in the last. Thanks for joining us.

Episode fifty. NORWAY PART ON.

On august thirteenth, nineteen oh five, almost eighty five years after the end of the centurion. decade, a plebiscite was held in the country of Norway, officially proposed by the Storting, that country's parliament. Though little remembered outside of that country, this vote was one of the most remarkable elections ever held in the history of democracy.

As you might expect from a country like Norway, which is generally pretty reserved and polite, the vote was very straightforward and peaceful with no major incidents. But it was remarkable for the lopsided nature of the result. A total of three hundred and seventy one thousand nine hundred and eleven votes were recorded, only men could vote in Norway at that time. Of that number, three hundred sixty eight thousand two hundred and eight or ninety nine point nine five percent were yellow.

The no votes totaled one hundred and eighty four. Outside of the rigged kangaroo votes of communist puppet states and other forms of dictatorship, I'm not aware of any other national election in world history that was that decisive. The question was very simple. the completed dissolution of the Union. Virtually all of the male population of Norway answered with a loud, screaming, neon lit yes. The vote probably wouldn't have been much different if women were allowed to participate.

There was a suffrage movement active in Norway at that time, as there was in many other Western democracies, including the United States, but Norwegian activists for women's suffrage actively campaigned on the yes side. Okay, so we know the answer, but what was the question? What union were the Norwegian people approving the dissolution of? The short answer is the Union with Sweden, but how did two historically quite different and divergent societies come to be the same country again?

The answer to that question is the subject of tonight's episode and the next one. It's a bit more complicated than the story of the plebiscite itself, a lot more complicated in fact.

Revolution was in the air in 1905. At the time of the political events going on in Norway during that summer, right across the Baltic Sea, Another political upheaval was in progress, the Russian Revolution of nineteen oh five, which you might think of as a landing on the much longer staircase leading downward to the Revolution of nineteen seventeen that finally overturned the Tsar.

Indeed, the 1905 Norwegian vote added a new nation to the map of Europe just nine years before that map was to be scrambled forever by the events of the First World War, a conflict that Norway would not take part in. But the timing is significant. World War One swept away the last nineteenth century Europe. That old order, forged in the time of Napoleon, and forged to a large extent during the second decade.

was already decaying by the time those fateful shots were fired at Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in june nineteen fourteen. The independence of Norway from Sweden was arguably the last plank in Napoleonic era politics to fall. That there was still a relic of the Napoleonic Order existing in Europe in the 20th century is actually pretty amazing. It's a testament to the very profound changes that Napoleon brought to the world during his brief time on stage.

In yet another facet of the argument that the second decade and its events were uniquely important in world history. That argument is the main point of this entire podcast and has been since the very The roots of what Norway became in nineteen oh five are rooted directly and very plainly in events that occurred in the second decade, particularly in the year eighteen.

Indeed, you can make an argument that Norway was forged as the modern independent nation that it is today in that year, 1814. But due to an unfortunate accident of temporary European politics that surrounded that moment, it emerged from the wound. Into a kind of suspended animation, a sleeping spell that it finally woke up. In nineteen oh five,

It's telling that Norway celebrates its national holiday on May 17th. That's the date that its constitution was signed, not in 1905, but in 1814. Constitution Day, or Setenda May. The Norwegians call it, is a uniquely jubilant holiday. Children march through the room. Waving Norwegian flags, people cook special holiday dinners. There's a great outpouring of national pride which uniquely manifests itself not in a martial spirit.

Not with troops marching or twenty one gun salutes, but with children, families. In a spirit of community. Norway is a uniquely beautiful and charming country. bit of bias here. I've been there a couple of times. I really love the place. My best friend is It's like no other place in Europe or on Earth really.

Not that many people outside the country know much about Norway's story, and as the curator of this podcast, Norway's Formative History the Eighteen Teens, falls directly into my wheelhouse. So let's move backwards from 1905 back to those tumultuous events surrounding the fall of Napoleon and the ripple effects it had on the map of Europe and the world. Welcome to Norway, Part 1.

Good evening. Just a couple of quick announcements before we get into the substance of tonight's show. I have another podcast called Green Screen. This is the environmental movie podcast, where my co-host Cody Klymer and I analyze and discuss popular movies involving the environment or where nature plays a significant role. You may be surprised at some of the movies we choose to do on the show and what qualifies as an environmental movie by our definition.

For example, we've done Star Trek IV, The Voyage Home, Mad Max, Fury Road, The French Connection, King Kong, Lawrence of Arabia, and Cape Fear. On our list of films to cover in the future includes Jaws, Lord of the Rings, the Two Towers, Aliens, Parasite, and the James Bond film The World Is Not Enough. Greenscreen may be of interest to second decade listeners in two specific respects.

First, we recently did a joint episode with the hosts of the History by Hollywood podcast, which I know some of our fans also listen to. The subject is the nineteen eighty eight film Gorillas in the Mist about Diane Fossey, who went to Central Africa to study gorillas in the nineteen sixties. Secondly, I'm tentatively planning a crossover episode between this podcast and Greenscreen.

The subject of that episode will be the twenty sixteen BBC miniseries War and Peace, how it portrays both the environment of Russia and the history of the second decade. You may recall War and Peace got a brief mention way back in episode twenty on the second decade on film episode. I'm not sure exactly when this will be, it's in the initial planning stages, but I hope we can bring it off fairly soon.

Last piece of news, I'm giving a live webinar on Tuesday, December 22nd, 2020, titled How Historical Is Indiana Jones? You can sign up at my website seanmunger dot com. There's a link on the front page there. I'll also drop a link in the show notes and on the webpage for this episode. There will be more webinars coming in the future. They're related to my online classes, which you can see again at my website, seanmunger.com. And now Norway.

Let me say at the outset that although what happened in Norway in 1814 is extremely fascinating, and was on my list of topics I had in mind to cover from the day I first got the idea for this podcast. There is a reason, two reasons actually, why it's taken fifty episodes to get around to doing it. The first reason is that the background of these events is extraordinarily complicated, more so I think than the background of any other single subject I've ever covered on this show.

I don't shy away from topics that are politically complex. The run up to Napoleon's invasion of Russia was definitely a brain breaker, and I recall being bewildered when I started the research for the episode on Shaka and the Zulu. But both of those pale in comparison to the thicket that waits the that awaits the historian when dealing with Scandinavia in the Napoleonic era.

The second reason is that all the best sources of this material are in Norwegian and are hard to find in the English speaking world. I do speak and read a bit of Norwegian, my proficiency is not too far beyond the C spot run level, or Serspot Lupa, as it were. Complex historical analysis is beyond my ability in that language.

Thus, while I did my best with English language sources, I'm still not a hundred percent certain I can do this subject the justice it deserves. Nevertheless, I decided to forge ahead, it's too good a story to ignore.

Norway is an ancient country. I'm not going to mess about with migrations after the end of the last Ice Age or Bronze Age artifacts, but it should be no surprise to you that Norway has been continuously inhabited for thousands of years. The roots of its modern identity arguably go back to seven hundred ninety three, which is about when most historians judge the Viking Age to be underway. Norse seafarers were in that year raiding villages around the coast of the North Sea.

Norway itself was little more than a pile of rocks sticking up out of the water. It's craggy, forbidding, and mountainous, unlike Sweden and Finland, which are largely flat. Farmland in this country is scarce and hard to make productive. To make it living in Norway, you almost have to turn seaward.

Just in case you need a refresher on the geography of Scandinavia, think of a hand holding three socks hanging down, with the socks clinging to each other from static electricity or something, and now think of someone's big toe sticking up toward the socks. The sock on the far left is Norway, the one in the middle is Sweden, the one on the right attached on its eastern side to Russia is Finland. The toe sticking up from mainland Europe is Denmark.

Norway and Sweden share a long, mostly vertical border on Norway's right hand or eastern side and Sweden's left hand or western side. Sweden and Finland also share a long mostly vertical border on Sweden's right hand or eastern side and Finland's left or western side. Denmark does not touch any of these countries, but it almost does, and there are some islands scattered about in the Baltic Sea.

These four countries developed remarkably different societies and identities. Finlands are much more dissimilar from any of the others. In fact, for some purposes, Finland isn't even considered part of Scandinavia, although it is closely related to it. Insofar as language is concerned, Danes, Swedes, and Norwegians can generally understand each other when they're speaking their own languages, which are separate.

I had no idea how this worked until I started learning Norwegian and then saw a movie with Danish subtitles, and I found I recognized enough of the words to be able to follow along. Denmark, Sweden, and Norway have had for many centuries a codependent relationship with one another.

In the late fourteenth century to counter the commercial power of the Hanseatic League, which controlled sea trade in northern European seas, the three countries entered into a kind of union, the Kalmar Union, which was kind of messy, but fortunately doesn't concern us. In fifteen twenty three, Sweden packed her bags and checked out of the Kalmar Union, leaving Norway and Denmark as one country, sort of. They were more like an unequal partnership, with Denmark being the senior partner.

A series of wars involving Sweden happened in the seventeenth century. Sweden tangled with Russia in the early eighteenth century, called the Great Northern War, which I admit I vo virtually nothing about. But what you need to know is that Denmark and Norway were still attached to one another when the little Corsican upstart, Napoleon, began his epic rampage across Europe, beginning in the seventeen nineties.

I'm skipping over a vast amount of history here, including how these countries became largely Protestant. That happened in 1537, and it was part of the process of how Norway became the junior partner, culturally and politically subordinate to the Danish elite that largely decided the country's affairs. I've done barely more than a skim of the history of this period, as it falls outside our main focus.

The 1790s saw the beginning of the French Revolutionary Wars. The other countries of Europe were profoundly terrified and destabilized by what was going on in France, particularly the redefinition of national sovereignty as coming from the people, from the bottom up. rather than the top-down notion of having allegiance to a king. I'll talk more about that later in the episode.

The British, who had been enemies of France for centuries, were especially incensed at these radical goings on. Basically in this period, if France wanted something, Britain almost by definition wanted the opposite. Things didn't get better when Napoleon took over France in a military coup in 1799. In fact, it got worse.

As the nineteenth century got started, Britain was doing its best to organize the other countries of Europe to make life hard for France, both on the battlefield and in the field of commerce and economics. In warfare, Napoleon tended to do very well on land, not so much on water, the British just the reverse. This is going to entangle Scandinavia, as we'll see.

The goal of the British, who didn't have much of a land army to speak of, was to strangle France economically. Britain used her naval power to great effect, mainly by stopping any ships bound for France, regardless of what countries these ships belonged to. Incidentally, this was one of the seeds of conflict between Britain and the United States that became the War of 1812. Go back to episode 15 for a primer on that one.

The minor naval and maritime commercial powers of Europe, minor in comparison at least, were Sweden, Prussia, Russia, and the double-sized gift pack country of Denmark-Norway. They weren't too keen on having their own ships constantly intercepted and boarded by the British, who tended to seize their cargoes, and these countries also carried on significant trade with France that they saw, rightfully so, as completely legitimate.

The Scandinavians, especially Sweden, also traded with the British, especially for timber. So in 1800, these four countries entered into an agreement, not really an alliance, though it could look a bit like that from a certain point of view. The Second League of Armed Neutrality was designed as a mutual aid society to prevent interference by the British.

The Russian Tsar, Paul I was the person who really came up with it. If you're wondering why it was the second such agreement, the first was formed in seventeen eighty to try to freeze out Britain during the American Revolution. In any event, not known for their sensitivity or subtlety about anything where Napoleon was concerned, the British interpreted the Second League as a de facto alliance of these countries in favor of France.

Concerned that the Russians would shut off their access to Scandinavian timber, the British decided they had to act. It wasn't a total overtreaction. If the Second League really had been an alliance or led to one, the combined fleets of Russia, Sweden, and Denmark-Norway could have been a credible threat to British naval interests. The Brits decided they had to prevent this from happening, and that the risks were worth it.

On april second, eighteen oh one, the British Navy, commanded by Lord Nelson, appeared in the waters off the Danish capital of Copenhagen. Hilarity ensued, that is, if you find cannonballs hilarious, I won't go into the details on this battle because it's all background, but suffice it to say after one day of battle, the crown prince of Denmark Norway, Frederick, was negotiating a truce with Lord Nelson, whose main object, for the Danes at least, is

was to keep Copenhagen from being perforated by more British cannonballs. Frederick, by the way, was the de facto ruler of Denmark-Norway. He was regent for his father, Christian VII, who was insane. Things were already changing. Even before the battle, Tsar Paul I of Russia was assassinated. His absence shifted the political winds coming from Russia. The second League of Armed Neutrality pretty much fell apart.

In eighteen oh five, one of the greatest naval battles in history, Trafalgar, occurred off the coast of Spain. This battle made driftwood out of what remained of Napoleon's navy. Lord Nelson was again the hero, but at quite a cost. A French sniper pumped a lead slug into his spine, and Nelson's lifeless body, embalmed in brandy, was given a hero's funeral at Saint Paul's Cathedral in january eighteen oh six.

Trafalgar was hugely significant. Napoleon had conquered most of Europe and was allied with most of the rest, but without a navy he couldn't really enforce his will outside of continental Europe. In eighteen oh six he instituted the Continental System, a Europe wide embargo on trading with Britain, and most of the rest of the Napoleonic Wars was about whether countries would or would not go along with it.

Napoleon's invasions of Spain in eighteen oh eight and eventually his war with Russia in eighteen twelve were in large measure about whether or not he could force these countries to join the continental system. Trafalgar changed the strategic situation too. It effectively eliminated the French navy as a major factor in the Napoleonic Wars, but it also meant that the largest navy in Europe, except for Britain's, belonged to Crown Prince Frederick of Denmark, Norway.

Since the Danes already had no love loss for the British, the white Whigs in London started to get their knickers in a bunch over the possibility that Bonaparte might pressure Frederick to give his navy over to France. If that failed, there were rumors that Napoleon was planning to invade Denmark Norway, specifically so he could get his mitts on Frederick's navy.

However the scenario might have played out, by eighteen oh seven the British were again very uneasy at Denmark having a significant navy that might be used against them somehow. In july eighteen oh seven, the British sent Denmark an ultimatum demanding that they turn their fleet over to them, hopefully offering to return it once the war with Napoleon was over. Napoleon in the meantime, who also wanted crown prince Frederick to side with him, took a more direct approach.

He instructed Talleyrand, the French foreign minister, to warn Denmark Norway that if they didn't join the alliance against Britain, Denmark would be invaded by a French army under the command of Marshal Jean Bernadotte. A fellow who's gonna figure prominently in our story going forward. Apologies for my terrible French pronunciations. The Danes declined both of these ultimatums. Now it was a question of who would sack Denmark first, Britain or France.

The British this time put their backs into it. In august eighteen oh seven they began the bombardment of Copenhagen from the sea, and also sent land forces to occupy the city. As a result, hundreds of congreve rockets raining down on Copenhagen, these are the same weapons referred to as Rockets Red Glare and the Star Spangled Banner.

Over one thousand buildings in Denmark's capital burnt down on the night of september fourth and fifth, eighteen oh seven. The Danes gave up and surrendered their navy to the British. The two attacks on Copenhagen deeply alienated Denmark Norway from Britain. There was controversy in the British Parliament about the eighteen oh seven attack, with the opposition party saying that the attack turned Denmark Norway from a potential ally into a resolute enemy.

The ruling government of the Duke of Portland didn't really care. They'd already made enough enemies while fighting Napoleon, so what did one more matter? Denmark Norway remained at war with Great Britain for seven years. What chance did this country have against the mighty British Navy? Well, for their part, the Danes actually managed to do pretty well.

Knowing they couldn't best the Brits in a big ship engagement, the Danes started building small maneuverable gunboats. That gives this conflict its name, the gunboat war. The Danes managed to do surprisingly well in this war. Not that they were going to march on London and run the Danish flag up over Westminster, it wasn't like that.

But against the world's greatest naval power, the little the little Danish gunboats had a number of engagements that managed to annoy the British more or less constantly. The British were forced to deploy their ships blockading the west coast of Norway. This blockade turns out to be important in our story. Denmark and Norway are not contiguous. Norway is one of the socks, remember, Denmark is the toe sticking up toward it.

During the blockade, communication between Denmark and Norway was minimized. Now cut off from Copenhagen, in order to take care of its own affairs, a provisional government had to be set up in Christiania, now Oslo. Its leader was Christian August, a Danish prince, who became Governor General of Norway in eighteen oh nine. Christian August wasn't around for very long, he had a massive stroke and fell off his horse in may eighteen ten.

But the establishment of a provisional Norwegian government capable of running Norway's affairs independently of Denmark was an important step toward independence.

So, back to the broader story. Now that Denmark-Norway was at war with Britain, it was ostensibly an ally of Napoleon. That was how it worked, right? The enemy of my enemy is my ally or something. Denmark Norway did make an alliance with France, signed at Fontainebleau, one of Napoleon's palaces on Halloween eighteen oh seven. The Danes were reluctant, but Frederick felt he didn't have much choice.

A clause of this treaty obligated Denmark-Norway to participate with Napoleon and Napoleon's new temporary BFF, Tsar Alexander of Russia, in a war against Sweden. As it happened, war broke out between Russia and Sweden in february eighteen oh eight, mainly over Finland, which had been a point of contention between the two countries for a long time.

Recognizing that this was a good time to pile onto Sweden while she was fighting Russia, Crown Prince Frederick pulled the trigger and declared war on Sweden in march eighteen oh eight. ostensibly to get back territory that Denmark Norway had lost to Sweden in the seventeenth century. This war didn't end up going so well for Denmark Norway. The country's army was stretched thin, having to fight Sweden on one side while defending against constant British attacks on the other.

There were shortages of food, ammunition, and warm clothes. If you're fighting a war in Scandinavia in the winter or early spring, you'd better have warm clothes. Diseases were also a problem, especially dysentery and typhus. We don't need to go into all that happened in this war, or anything that happened, really. I told you this whole situation was incredibly complicated.

But one important thing that happened during it relating to the war between Russia and Sweden was that Sweden had a change of government. Basically, Sweden lost Finland to Russia. In March eighteen oh nine, a cabal of Swedish generals fomented a coup and arrested the Swedish king, Gustav IV Adolf, gotta love these names. In his place, Charles XIII was named regent and eventually elected king by the assembly of Swedish nobles who controlled that sort of thing.

But Charles was sixty years old and sick. Worse than that he had no kids. No dynasty would succeed him. The hunt was on, therefore, for a new king, hold that thought, it becomes important later. In December eighteen oh nine, a peace treaty was concluded between Denmark, Norway and Sweden.

Basically, it reestablished the status quo, so that was one task scratched off the list. But Denmark Norway was still at war with Great Britain. Several naval battles continued to occur in eighteen eleven and eighteen twelve. And in the meantime, the lineup for the next big showdown in the north was starting to come together: Napoleon versus Alexander, France versus Russia.

If you're not thoroughly confused yet, you will be soon enough. Trust me, I'm doing my best to make this material comprehensible. As I said at the top of the episode, there's a reason why I waited fifty episodes to tackle this subject. Before we get to the fallout of the cage match between France and Russia, let me pick up one thread I mentioned just before the break.

Remember when the king of Sweden, Charles XIII, was overthrown by his generals, but his wick wouldn't light anymore and everyone was worried that there wasn't going to be a dynasty after that? Well, Sweden solved that little problem with an ingenious solution. They offered the crown to none other than a French general, Marshal Jean Bernadotte, that French commander who had threatened to invade Denmark-Norway.

After some political wrangling with Sweden, Bernadotte was made crown prince of Sweden in august eighteen ten and formally adopted by Charles XIII as his heir. Napoleon tried to get Bernadotte to agree that Sweden under his rule would never go to war with France, but Bernadotte couldn't, wouldn't, give that assurance.

Bernadot, who took over as de facto head of the Swedish government pretty much immediately, was popular in Sweden, because the Swedes expected that, as a hard nosed former Napoleonic general, he would get the territory of Finland back for Sweden. They expected this, but given the political and military realities in eighteen ten, delivering on this promise would prove a lot harder than it looked.

Bernadotte, however, had an idea for a consolation prize in his back pocket. If he couldn't get Finland back for Sweden, he'd get them another piece of prime territory instead, namely Norway. The plot to detach Norway from Denmark and paste it onto Sweden was apparently in the wind from the beginning of Bernadotte's time in the captain's chair of Sweden.

Napoleon's war against Russia scrambled everything in Europe. If you want to know about that subject, go back and listen to episodes 10, 11, and 12 of this podcast, which I think are some of my best, if I say so myself. I won't recap all that happened. Suffice it to say that Bonaparte failed, and his army dwindled away in the disastrous retreat from Moscow in the late fall of eighteen twelve, leaving him greatly weakened but not counted out entirely.

In march eighteen thirteen, Crown Prince Bernadotte of Sweden declared war on France. Sweden's relationship with France had been souring for some time. Napoleon seized some Swedish territory to secure his rear in advance of his invasion of Russia, and the Swedes were understandably butthurt over this. Bernadotte's participation in what was becoming the sixth coalition against Napoleon, however, came with a price tag. What did he want? Norway.

The deal was that Britain and Russia, now bosom buddies in their quest to ban Bonaparte, would throw their support behind an effort by Sweden to take possession of Norway. Prussia, another key member of the coalition, was a little cool on this plan, but eventually agreed to it. Norway was being used as a bargaining chip in the complicated game of Napoleonic European politics.

The biggest battle of the Napoleonic Wars occurred on october sixteenth, eighteen thirteen, the Battle of Leipzig, or as it's sometimes called the Battle of Nations. This was the largest military engagement in European history until the First World War. The battle was a major defeat for Napoleon and the next major milestone on the road to his eventual downfall.

Swedish troops under the command of Bernadotte played a key role in this engagement. In fact, Bernadot was the first of the sovereigns of the Sixth Coalition Allies to enter the city of Leipzig. This also emboldened him. He'd helped win the war for the Allies. What did he want? Norway. On a plate. When did he want it? Now. It was the perfect time to move. Denmark Norway was bankrupt.

Still nominally an ally of France, Denmark Norway was increasingly isolated as Sixth Coalition troops cleared northern Germany of French forces in the late fall of eighteen thirteen. A short but decisive war followed. In december eighteen thirteen, Bernadot's army, composed of Swedes and Russians, turned on the forces of Denmark Norway.

A battle occurred at Bornhoft in Schleswig Holstein on december seventh, eighteen thirteen. Schleswig Holstein is part of the northern Germany that forms sort of a chicken neck connecting to Denmark. The Swedes won this battle. Another battle occurred three days later at Sehestid, not far away. Although the Danish army technically prevailed, it was only a minor hiccup in Crown Prince Bernadotte's campaign to subdue Denmark.

The parties involved, including Britain, who, as you recall, was still at war with Denmark, Norway, the gunboat war, the parties involved moved to negotiations, which took place in Kiel, in northern Germany. The Treaty of Kiel signed in january eighteen fourteen was pretty much a mess. In fact, there were several interrelated treaties that attempted to settle various bits of outstanding business between these various countries.

If I went into great detail on all of this, not only would this episode be six hours long, but you'd get a terrible headache. I'll spare you and boil it down to the essence. The major part of the treaty, and the most important part for our purposes, is that Sweden got control of Norway. This provision came with a couple of important caveats. It was what was referred to in international law as a personal union.

This meant that the countries would have the same monarch, but would retain their own separate borders, laws, and local administrations. It's not like, for example, Norway became sort of a state or province of Sweden. Essentially, they were separate countries under the same king.

This concept exists only in monarchies, and it had happened before. Norway and Sweden had been in personal union from 1319 to 1343, and again briefly in the 14th century, so there was precedent for this kind of arrangement. Naturally, the Treaty of Kiel ended the war between Denmark and Great Britain.

Denmark in fact was required to declare war on its former ally France, though in january eighteen fourteen it was presumed that Napoleon was on the run, and only the final stages of his defeat remained still to accomplish. Under the treaty, Denmark got to keep certain other possessions, including Greenland, the Faroe Islands, and Iceland.

There was also a lot of stuff about the occupation of certain forts, the return of prisoners of war, and various other incidents of a peace treaty, logistical stuff, but quite important. Letters went back and forth among various crowned heads and diplomats. Bernadotte gave sort of an Academy Award style acceptance speech, thanking Britain, Prussia, and Austria for making it all possible, and Russia for helping to secure the peace.

The King of Denmark wrote a terse letter officially absolving the people of Norway from fealty to him. There was, however, the touchy matter of actually communicating to the people of Norway that they were now, you know, officially Swedes. On january twenty sixth, eighteen fourteen, an item appeared in the Norwegian newspaper of record, Tedin, proclaiming peace, peace in the North.

The article talked up the treaty, but didn't clearly state that Norway had been ceded to Sweden. The Norwegians, however, were smart enough to read between the lines. At the annual marketplace event in Christiania in February, everybody was talking about it. Here is where Prince Christian Frederick comes into our story. Better known as Christian VIII of Denmark, he didn't become that until eighteen thirty nine. In the second decade he was still just a crown prince.

He's not to be confused with Frederick, the Crown Prince of Denmark-Norway, who we already talked about. Christian Frederick was, at least at first, your standard issue Scandinavian nobility of the late 18th and early 19th century. Born in Copenhagen, married to a Swedish princess, whom he divorced in eighteen ten after she started doing the horizontal rumba with her singing teacher.

Christian Frederick was tall, dark, and handsome. He was well educated at court and particularly interested in natural sciences. Christian Frederick did marry again in eighteen fifteen, but he had numerous children out of wedlock, for whom he provided handsomely. Rumor has it that one of these illegitimate children was fairy tale author Hans Christian Anderson, but there's no actual evidence to support that.

Christian Frederick was appointed the Danish Royal Governor of Norway in eighteen thirteen. He arrived in Christiania in may eighteen thirteen, less than a year before the Treaty of Kiel went into effect. There's some evidence that his thinking was moving in favor of an independent Norway at the time he arrived, even before the treaty.

But when news of the hated treaty and the betrayal by the Allied powers that handed Norway to Sweden on a silver platter, Christian Frederick saw his opening, and a chance to become a king in his own right. To be sure, the provisions of the Treaty of Kiel were not a surprise to Christian Frederick. He'd apparently been informed of the status of the negotiations via secret letter in december eighteen thirteen.

Clearly his political aims were coalescing at that point. Once the cat was out of the bag, though, events moved quickly in January and february eighteen fourteen. At the beginning of eighteen fourteen, Norway was in a financial crisis. Norway had no bank of its own. As the value of currency crashed in the wake of Napoleon's defeat, or near defeat, Christian Frederick gave the order to issue banknotes stamped with the Norwegian coat of arms, mainly to keep the government solvent.

But this too was another step toward an independent Norway. These so called prince notes are collector's items today. Unfortunately, the Prince Notes didn't really stabilize the economic situation. Inflation was out of control in Norway. What was more, no one was really in charge. The King of Denmark had washed his hands of Norway, and the limits of Swedish control, even assuming they could be enforced, were pretty nebulous.

The diplomats sitting at the peace table in Kiel, which so far as I know did not include a single Norwegian, clearly hadn't thought through how this whole thing would work. In late January, Christian Frederick made a tour of Norway to take the temperature of the people and to see if the time was right for a formal independence bid. He found plenty of outrage among the nobles and ordinary people over the union with Sweden.

The feeling was that Norway had been sold out by the Allies, especially Britain, to her arch enemy, Sweden. On january thirtieth, eighteen fourteen, while still on tour, Christian Frederick convened an impromptu council of advisors. It's not clear exactly who, though Karsten Anchor, Christian Frederick's close friend who we'll talk about, may have been among them.

The crown prince floated among them the idea of proclaiming an independent Norway and establishing himself as its king. With the support of the people in the countryside he thought he could pull it off. This impromptu cabinet was all in agreement.

Likely, Christian Frederick's mind was already made up at this point. There was, however, a delicate dance that would have to be done involving the legitimacy of royal claims. He was, after all, heir to the throne of Denmark, he didn't want to jeopardize that position. And the legitimacy of monarchs was ostensibly one of the principles that the enemies of Napoleon claimed to hold sacred.

So it wasn't as simple as Christian Frederick fomenting a coup in Norway and taking over the country for himself, though some paraphrases of this history do put it like that, or something like that. Indeed, it seems like there was some tension between the idea of an independent Norway, or at least a Norway not in union with Sweden, and the idea of Danish Crown Prince Christian Frederick being the right guy to champion that cause. But no one else was really stepping up to the plate.

On February 2nd, the news of the cession of Norway to Sweden was finally announced in Norway. Not as if anyone was surprised. The outrage machine had already been stoked. It was almost anticlimactic, except to the extent it increased sentiment behind a bid for Norwegian independence.

Prince Bernadotte, the ruler of Sweden, wasn't too happy with this sudden flare up of insolence. I mean, how dare the Norwegians publicly resent their sellout to a foreign power as part of a peace treaty in which they weren't even consulted? Curious that Neville Chamberlain seems to have skipped this chapter in history class.

Anyway, on February 8th, Bernadot threatened to invade Norway to enforce the terms of the Treaty of Kiel. But as sort of a sop to the Norwegians, he made some vague noises about convening a constitutional convention. Yeah, right, I'm sure that's going to do the trick. Bernadotte, to be sure, was distracted by the next phase of the war against Napoleon, the invasion of France in early eighteen fourteen, which would eventually see Bonaparte packed off to exile on the island of Elba.

Crown Prince Christian Frederick was still on his triumphant tour of Norway. He reached Trondheim on the fjords of the central coast, but at that time was fairly remote from Christiania and the bulk of Norway's population. Anti Swedish sentiment was pretty strong in this part of the country.

Trondheim and its environs were in that part of Norway that had briefly belonged to Sweden in the seventeenth century, but which revolted against Swedish rule. You weren't going to find a lot of supporters of Sweden in this part of Norway. It was at the start of Christian Frederick's trip back toward Christiania that he officially summoned a roster of the most important people in Norway, the notables they're usually called, for a special meeting.

The notables included government ministers, military officers, intelligentsia, nobles, the exact kind of people who would probably form Norway's government if such a thing were to come to pass. This was really the next logical step after Christian Frederick's impromptu kitchen cabinet meeting of January 30th. This rogues gallery of semi celebrities was summoned to the estate of Karsten Anchor, called Einzwal Manor in Akers, a sleepy little town about thirty miles northwest of Christiania.

Anker was Christian Frederick's closest friend and the chief architect of his bid for Norwegian independence. Anker's Manor, the site of the meeting of notables, is now a national monument in Norway. Anker, already sixty six in early eighteen fourteen, was one of Norway's prominent citizens.

Throughout his professional life he bridged the worlds of government and business, often negotiating in favor of Norwegian commercial interests, particularly involving timber, and he eventually owned an ironworks in Norway. Idesval, on whose grounds the Constitution meetings took place in eighteen fourteen. Anker's government service took him to Stockholm, London, and Copenhagen, where he met Christian Frederick.

Anker was also a member of the Royal Society in London, an association of gentlemen scientists and naturalists. Surely Christian Frederick's own interest in the natural and scientific worlds messed with Anker's. But my own guess, since I haven't read the Norwegian language biographies of Anker, I suspect that Anker had a political agenda long before he met Christian Frederick. Eidesval Manor, which Anker bought in 1800, is an attractive whitewashed manor house with a red tile roof.

At the time of its construction in seventeen seventy, it was the largest wooden building in Norway. It's exactly the kind of place where you could imagine white wigged gentlemen negotiating Norwegian independence at the beginning of the nineteenth century, by candlelight, scratching declarations with quill pens. On february sixteenth, eighteen fourteen, the notables came together at Idesval Manor.

While the analogy isn't a perfect graft, the meeting of notables is to Norwegian history a little bit like the meeting of the Second Continental Congress of the American colonies was to the United States, the cradle of independence and self government.

It was a foregone conclusion that the prominent people meeting here would decide on independence. But how that would be done and what form it would take was very much open to question, as the men met in these candlelit parlors on that winter day in the second decade. There was conflict between Christian Frederick's vision of an independent Norway and the Norway envisioned by Karsten Anker and the other notables.

Christian Frederick had been floating the idea that he would proclaim himself King of Norway. This was based, at least legally speaking, on the notion that the King of Denmark couldn't voluntarily abrogate his inheritance, which included Norway, and to which Christian Frederick, as you recall, was the heir presumptive. But this vision was based on a theory of sovereignty that was, by eighteen fourteen, already becoming outdated.

The reason why the French Revolution was so important in world history, and I alluded to this earlier, was because it changed the nature of how people think about sovereignty and consequently how they define themselves as citizens of a nation. Before the French Revolution of 1789, nations, particularly in Europe, were usually defined by reference to the monarch who ruled them.

What is France? France is the nation ruled by the King of France. Who is French? Anyone who owes allegiance to the King of France. It's sort of a top down definition of state and sovereignty. I mentioned this concept in episode 26, The Queenston Hostages. in reference to how Great Britain defined its citizens, and why the British were so reluctant to admit that people born in Ireland under British rule and who eventually moved to America were no longer British citizens.

The French Revolution changed this idea of sovereignty. After 1789, what was France? It was no longer the nation ruled by the King of France. It was instead the nation of the French people. Who is French? Obviously that's a harder question. It gets murky around the edges, involving culture, politics, and identity. But answering the question this way necessarily implies that the definition of who is French has to do with the people you're talking about, not the ruler they're subjects of.

It's a bottom up definition, not top down. See the difference? This is exactly the idea that the enemies of Napoleon were trying so hard to stamp out. Napoleon was an emperor, but he still embodied the popular sovereignty idea of the French Revolution. He ruled the nation of France and got his legitimacy from the people of France, not from a royal bloodline. This was exactly the idea that came into play at Eidsvoll Manor as the Norwegian notables were debating independence.

In the view of Karsten Anker and the other notables, Christian Frederick could not be the head of the state of Norway simply because the King of Denmark had dropped Norway, and he, Christian Frederick, decided to pick it up. It wasn't because of his, Christian Frederick's claim on the Danish throne. Indeed, he could only get to be King of Norway if he claimed legitimacy through the Norwegian people. In other words, he would have to be elected.

The compromise that emerged from the meeting of notables at Idsval on february sixteenth, eighteen fourteen was historic, and it clearly planted the seeds for the modern constitutional monarchy of Norway that would come to its own in nineteen oh five. The assembly affirmed the principle that popular sovereignty would have to be the basis of Norway's government.

If anything had been given up by the cession of Norway to Sweden, it was that sovereignty had been abandoned by the Danish king and lodged in the people of Norway. The assembly advised Christian Frederick that the limit of his claim, at least right now, was as regent of Norway, and he would have to be backed up by somebody representing the people.

There would be a Norwegian constituent assembly, a legislature, and they would elect the head of state, and most notably there would be a constitution. The commitment to independence was backed up by a people's oath. Candidates for election to the National Assembly would have to take an oath that they would, if necessary, defend Norwegian independence with their lives. The enshrinement of popular sovereignty as the basis of Norway's government was the true revolution in Norway.

It cast aside the old divine right of kings and brought the language and ideas of the French Revolution, itself derivative in many ways of the American Revolution, to this ancient land of the Norse. This is all well and good, said And the nation building that went on in Idesval Manor, both on february sixteenth and in the drafting of the Constitution that would occur there in April and May, was an important, perhaps the most important step in the process of Norway's emergence as a modern nation.

But as a practical matter, one of the major powers would have to step up to defend this independence, or at least to counterbalance the inevitable reaction of Sweden. Christian Frederick and Karsten Anker had one specific power in mind: Great Britain, the very country that sold them out in the first place. Shortly after the meeting of notables, Anker was dispatched to London to try to negotiate with the British for official support against Sweden in favour of Norwegian independence.

Our foremost need, Christian Frederick wrote to Anker, is peace with England. If, God forbid, our hope of English support is thwarted, you must make it clear to the minister what will be the consequences of leaving an undeserving people to misery. Our first obligation will then be the most bloody revenge upon Sweden and her friends.

But you must never lose the hope that England will realize the injustice that is being done to us and voice it until the last moment, as well as our constant wish for peace. End quote. It was clear that actually making Norwegian independence a reality was going to be an uphill struggle.

It would prove to be a conflict between the high ideals of popular sovereignty and self-determination on the one hand, and the gritty realities of European politics on the other. It is to that story that we'll turn in part two of this series. If you like this podcast, please do me a favor, leave a star rating and a review. If you have social media or talk to other history buffs, give me a little bit of a little bit of a little decade and mention.

Listen to my other podcast, Green Screen, which is available. Major pod catchers. Those of you who like the environmental aspects of this show will probably be a good idea. Enjoy green screen. You can visit my website at Shawnmunger.com. And see the online courses that are available now. I try to offer free webinars once a month. Our theme music for this podcast is called The Long Road Ahead. By Kevin McLeod Attack dot. Used under Creative Commons 3.5.

This podcast was written and recorded by me, Sean Munger.