Political developments 1814–45

At the negotiations about a bilateral union with Sweden in the autumn of 1814, following the short war that August between the two countries, the Norwegians insisted on inserting a clause in their new Constitution stating that the business of the state should be conducted ‘in Norwegian’. The phrase ‘the Norwegian language’ (det norske Sprog) is employed several times in the document (§§ 33, 47, 81).

Since nobody at the time had any clear view about what ‘the Norwegian language’ meant, other than denoting the Danish language which they shared with the Danes, it is obvious that this wording was in fact intended to convey the meaning ‘not Swedish’. The laws and everything else pertaining to Norway were not to be written in Swedish, but rather in the written standard used in Norway. At the time this standard was Danish, as it had been for most of the time throughout the long union with Denmark.

However, while Denmark was no longer part of the political picture, Sweden definitely was, and it was obvious to everybody that the Crown Prince of Sweden, Carl Johan, intended to expand and strengthen the union as time went by. It became an important political goal for Norwegians to defend their Constitution, and Parliament refused to make any changes whatsoever to the text agreed upon by Norway and Sweden in November 1814.