IN 1905, NORWAY had won independence and her own foreign policy but the first Foreign Minister, Jørgen Løvland, declared through his lion's skin that ‘we will not have a foreign policy’. It was, to be kind, a sophistic attempt to declare that Norway was going to pursue a strict policy of neutrality and concentrate the external relations on foreign trade and shipping. Indeed, Prime Minister William Pitt the younger had emphasized that British policy is British trade. But for Norway it was national independence resting on pacifism and isolationism, a self-imposed neutralization more like that of Switzerland, a peace policy without alliances, a European policy based on international law, arbitration and international agreements, isolated from the international chess games. The great national poet, Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, echoed the Foreign Minister in confirming that ‘the aim of the Norwegians is to get a Foreign Ministry without foreign policy’. Not a very sustainable position.

Independent Norway began a foreign policy journey that over the next hundred years would take her through several stages of international commitment, influenced and defined by European and global challenges. The first and easy decision, 1904–14, was the determination to stay free of any alliances and it was followed by a strict neutrality policy during World War I. But opening to a system of collective security, with England as the main player, was introduced after the war in 1918 and continued as a close war alliance against Germany during 1940–45. An optimistic bridge-building policy was then attempted with the Soviet Union but it only lasted until 1949; Stalin invaded Czechoslovakia, Norway joined NATO and the cold war alliance against the Soviet Union. The Berlin Wall built in 1961 fell in 1989 and a new perspective and focus on Europe together with development and humanitarian assistance entered Norwegian foreign policy.

During the nineteenth century, England had kept an eye on Russian territorial ambitions in Norway and had been in favour of the union with Sweden as a protective measure. Weakened Russian power after the war with Japan in 1905 and a new Anglo-Russian rapprochement undermined the Swedish union policy in the European balance of power.