Second Decade

After being sold out by the great European powers, especially Great Britain, as a sop to Sweden, the people of Norway felt angry and betrayed. The Norwegian nobility had united behind Danish Crown Prince Christian Frederick, who had promised to lead them to independence—but Christian Frederick’s revolution increasingly looked like a long shot, particularly in the face of resistance by Sweden’s regent, former Napoleonic general Jean Bernadotte. Nevertheless, Christian Frederick and his allies forged ahead, hoping to forge a new vision of the Norwegian nation and its sovereignty, even if full independence couldn’t be obtained. The result was Sweden’s last war and one of the most complicated political deals of the Napoleonic era. In this, the concluding part of a two-part series, Dr. Sean Munger continues the story of Norway’s tumultuous founding in the final months of Napoleon and how the political and constitutional ideas surrounding the independence movement came to have a legacy that lasted well into the 20t