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An Inspiring Model from the Periphery: The Transnational Circulation of the Norwegian 1814 Constitution
Ruth Hemstad
Few publications travelled from Norway to the broader literary world. Among those that did, and circulating Europe-wide, is the country’s legal founding document, its constitution of 1814, thus connecting the politically re-established autonomous state to broader European political currents. The transnational print history of the Norwegian constitution reveals the heightened interest in all things constitutional in the wake of the American and French revolutions as well as the emergent transnational and transmedial character of the public sphere and print culture. Although coming from the periphery, from the ‘distant rocky country’ of Norway,
1 The Austrian newspaper Die Presse referred in 1848 to Norway in this way and as ‘the only democracy in Europe’ in a series of articles on the Norwegian constitution. Quoted after K. Gammelgaard, ‘Constitutions as a Transnational Genre. Norway 1814 and the Habsburg Empire 1848‒1849’, in K. Gammelgaard and E. Holmøyvik (eds), Writing Democracy: The Norwegian Constitution 1814‒2014 (New York, Oxford, 2014), p. 96. the Eidsvold constitution, regularly referred to as the most democratic constitution of the time, became a point of reference in the European constitutional discourse during the first half of the nineteenth century.
The Norwegian constitution was a result of a combination of external and internal constellations during a few hectic months in 1814. During this remarkable year in Norwegian history Norway was transformed from a subordinated province within the Dano-Norwegian dual monarchy at the beginning of the year to an autonomous part of the Swedish-Norwegian personal union at the end of it. The Treaty of Kiel, concluded on 14 January 1814, transferred Norway from the Danish to the Swedish king – like a herd of cattle, as it was said ‒ stirring national protests in Norway.
2 R. Hemstad, Propagandakrig. Kampen om Norge i Norden og Europa 1812‒1814 (Oslo, 2014). While the Swedish Crown Prince Charles John and the Swedish army were still occupied with the ongoing Napoleonic Wars on the continent, the Norwegians, led by the Danish successor to the crown, Prince Christian Frederik, seized the moment and gave itself a constitution at Eidsvold Manor and elected Christian Frederik king of Norway on 17 May. During the summer, however, Charles John returned to Sweden and attacked Norway. After a short war, a Convention was agreed on in August, based on the acceptance of the new constitution. By 4 November the Swedish King Charles XIII was elected as Norwegian king, and the constitution was slightly revised. It was to become a national bulwark against Swedish efforts to strengthen the union, which was eventually dissolved in 1905. In this context the translations and publications of the Norwegian constitution directed at a foreign readership played a specific role, and it became an argument in a transnational war of opinion around 1814.
The wide transnational circulation of the revolutionary constitution from the Northern periphery, originating in a country hardly known to an international readership until the early nineteenth century, helped to place Norway on the European political and cultural map. The printed and published Eidsvold constitution – still in force today as the oldest one in Europe – became the most famous and broadly distributed Norwegian print of all during most of the century. The aim of this chapter is to examine the variety of translations and international publications of the Norwegian constitution from the beginning; the first full version of 17 May 1814 and the slightly revised one of 4 November the same year, and throughout the century until 1905, by applying a bibliographical book historical approach. This entails identifying and examining closely all recorded instances of translations, editions and transnational distribution of the Norwegian constitution; the whole text or parts of it, as well as central interrelated publications, seen as parts of intertextual political discourse.
3 On this approach used in the transnational debate on the ‘Norwegian question’ around 1814, see R. Hemstad, Propagandakrig; R. Hemstad (ed.), ‘Like a Herd of Cattle’. Parliamentary and Public Debates Regarding the Cession of Norway, 1813‒1814 (Oslo, 2014). By focusing on the transnational dimension, understood as the ‘dynamics and movements between, within, across, or above particular nations and cultures’,
4 W. Boutcher, ‘Intertraffic: Transnational Literatures and Languages in Late Renaissance England and Europe’, in M. McLean and S. Barker (eds), International Exchange in the Early Modern Book World (Leiden, Boston, 2016), pp. 353–73, at p. 353. new light may be shed on interconnections between Norwegian and European print cultures and the crucial role of translations.
The key to understanding the broad dissemination and transnational impact of this constitutional text is the flow of translations and reprints of it in a variety of formats and in different contexts. Like several other constitutional documents at this time, it was a very well-travelled text, and the many translations provided access to broader reading communities. James Brophy underlines that the ‘scale and scope of transnational print circuits quickened in the late eighteenth century’, with translation playing an increasingly larger role in mediating cultural transfer.
5 J. M. Brophy, ‘The Second Wave: Franco-German Translation and the Transfer of Political Knowledge 1815–1850’, Archiv für Geschichte des Buchwesens, 71 (2016), pp. 83, 94. The impact of translation and transfer thus deserves greater emphasis in the study of transnational discourse and transmission of political knowledge during the ‘age of democratic revolution’. In the expanding world of popular print, different forms of print are of relevance and should be included in measuring the ‘acquisition of political competencies’ in citizenship and participatory politics
6 Ibid., pp. 86, 94. and in examining and understanding the broadening of political engagement and literary citizenship.
By mapping the transnational circuits of the printed Norwegian constitution and tracing its appearances in different textual and political contexts, this chapter demonstrates how political ideas, also when coming from the periphery and in the form of a legal text, could travel far and wide, across boundaries and time.
7 This chapter expands on and further develops, within the framework of print history, previous research conducted as part of the 200-year anniversary of the Norwegian constitution in 2014, at the National Library of Norway and the University of Oslo, of which one result is the retrospective 1814 Bibliography: Literature From and About 1812‒1814 (<www.nb.no/bibliografi/1814>), developed in close cooperation with librarians at the National Library. The transnational exchange and reception of this key text reveal close entanglements and interconnections between centre and periphery; between European and Norwegian political and constitutional discourses in the nineteenth century. Copious new translations of the Norwegian constitution in several European countries and cities, especially until the 1850s, reflect political currents, an emerging political literacy and an expanding public and politicised sphere. The transnational print culture at the time offered a plethora of genres and formats directed at different segments of the population, thus contributing to the wide transmission of the Norwegian constitution. It served as an inspiring model and a political argument in ongoing political discourses in several countries and regions, not least in the German-speaking sphere but also in Great Britain.