{"id":2343,"date":"2017-05-17T22:55:50","date_gmt":"2017-05-17T22:55:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/norwegian\/?p=2343"},"modified":"2017-05-17T23:00:06","modified_gmt":"2017-05-17T23:00:06","slug":"this-day-in-norwegian-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/norwegian\/this-day-in-norwegian-history\/","title":{"rendered":"This day in Norwegian history"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_2344\" style=\"width: 360px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright post-item__attachment\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2344\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-2344\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/norwegian\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/14\/2017\/05\/640px-Eidsvoll_riksraad_1814-1-350x235.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"350\" height=\"235\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/norwegian\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/14\/2017\/05\/640px-Eidsvoll_riksraad_1814-1-350x235.jpeg 350w, https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/norwegian\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/14\/2017\/05\/640px-Eidsvoll_riksraad_1814-1.jpeg 640w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-2344\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Oscar Wergeland\u2019s famous painting of the <strong>riksr\u00e5d<\/strong> meeting at Eidsvoll. (Painted in 1885, copyright expired.)<\/p><\/div>\n<p class=\"p1\"><b>Gratulerer med dagen!<\/b> It\u2019s <b>17. mai<\/b> again, <b>Norges<\/b> <b>nasjonaldag<\/b> (Norway\u2019s national day). This time, let\u2019s celebrate by taking a look back at how it all started\u2026<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Many foreigners think that <b>17. mai<\/b> is Norway\u2019s independence day \u2013 which is only partially true\u2026 What is being celebrated is actually Norway\u2019s <b>grunnlovsdag<\/b> (constitution day), the day the nation got its own <b>grunnlov <\/b>(literally &#8220;ground law&#8221;). It\u2019s the day the country got its own driving licence, so to speak \u2013 but was only allowed to take a short ride in the car.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">On May 17<span class=\"s1\"><sup>th<\/sup><\/span> <b>1814<\/b> [attn fyortn] 112 men from various places in Southern Norway solemnly accepted the Constitution in <b>Eidsvoll<\/b>, a bit to the north of Oslo. <b>Eidsvollmennene<\/b> (the Eidsvoll men) had been working on the draft for weeks. <b>Det var et stort \u00f8yeblikk for Norge.<\/b> (It was a great moment for Norway.)<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">For the first time ever, Norwegians had defined for themselves which kind of country they wanted to live in. Compared to other European constitutions in 1814, the Norwegian one was really freedom-loving and ahead of its time. (Still, there were some quirks. People who were younger than 25, not male, and not members of the most &#8220;in&#8221; and wealthy groups, could not vote. Also, for a long time, the <b>grunnlov<\/b> did not allow Jewish people to visit Norway.)<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">So, why did these 112 men all of a sudden decide to sit down and write a constitution? And why wasn\u2019t Norway fully independent? Let\u2019s take the whole story in a few points. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<ul class=\"ul1\">\n<li class=\"li3\">For 400 years, Norway had been in a union with Denmark called <b>Danmark-Norge<\/b>. The capital was in Copenhagen, and many Norwegians had mixed feelings about their king being so far away. But they were mostly too busy farming and fishing to rally for separation.<\/li>\n<li class=\"li3\">It all changed in 1813, when Napoleon \u2013 that crazy French general, remember \u2013 lost his wars against other Europeans. Denmark-Norway was on team Napoleon and lost, too. Sweden was on the other team, and their king Karl Johan really wanted to create a Sweden-Norway instead\u2026<\/li>\n<li class=\"li3\">Afraid of losing contact with Norway across the water, in 1814 Danish king Frederik 6<span class=\"s1\"><sup>th<\/sup><\/span> sent his cousin Christian Frederik to cheer up the Norwegians and do some PR for Copenhagen.<\/li>\n<li class=\"li3\">In early 1814, Sweden and its allies held a meeting in Kiel (Germany) to discuss how to punish Napoleon and his friends. It was decided that Denmark should give Norway to Sweden.<\/li>\n<li class=\"li3\">Prince Christian Frederik was confused. Should he proclaim himself king of Norway, now that the people in Kiel had officially cut the link to Denmark? Instead, he branded himself as Norway\u2019s &#8220;regent&#8221;.<\/li>\n<li class=\"li3\">CF launched a working group that met for some weeks in Eidsvoll to create a <b>grunnlov<\/b>. On May 17<span class=\"s1\"><sup>th<\/sup><\/span> it was accepted. The <b>Eidsvollmenn<\/b> declared independence with Christian Frederik as their king.<\/li>\n<li class=\"li3\"><i>No way!<\/i> Karl Johan thought. A few weeks later, Swedish soldiers invaded Norway. The Norwegians were forced to enter a union with Sweden. Karl Johan was kind enough, though, to let them keep their beloved <b>grunnlov<\/b> \u2013 with a only a few changes, so Norway could be part of\u00a0a union.<\/li>\n<li class=\"li3\">1905. <b>Norge blir helt selvstendig<\/b> (Norway gets fully independent.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<img width=\"350\" height=\"235\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/norwegian\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/14\/2017\/05\/640px-Eidsvoll_riksraad_1814-1-350x235.jpeg\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/norwegian\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/14\/2017\/05\/640px-Eidsvoll_riksraad_1814-1-350x235.jpeg 350w, https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/norwegian\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/14\/2017\/05\/640px-Eidsvoll_riksraad_1814-1.jpeg 640w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px\" \/><p>Gratulerer med dagen! It\u2019s 17. mai again, Norges nasjonaldag (Norway\u2019s national day). This time, let\u2019s celebrate by taking a look back at how it all started\u2026 Many foreigners think that 17. mai is Norway\u2019s independence day \u2013 which is only partially true\u2026 What is being celebrated is actually Norway\u2019s grunnlovsdag (constitution day), the day the&hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"post-item__readmore\"><a class=\"btn btn--md\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/norwegian\/this-day-in-norwegian-history\/\">Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":76,"featured_media":2344,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[274100,503747,8856,8858,503746,503749,503750,8857,503748,386127,503751],"class_list":["post-2343","post","type-post","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-17-mai","tag-christian-frederik","tag-constitution","tag-eidsvoll","tag-eidsvollmennene","tag-frederik-6th","tag-frederik-den-6","tag-grunnlov","tag-karl-johan","tag-may-17th","tag-oscar-wergeland"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/norwegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/norwegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/norwegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/norwegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/76"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/norwegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2343"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/norwegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2343\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2347,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/norwegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2343\/revisions\/2347"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/norwegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/norwegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/norwegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/norwegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}