The Norwegian constitution is a relatively short legal text, consisting of 110/112 articles. The print history of the Norwegian constitution includes publications meant for a Norwegian – and Swedish – readership as well as a broader international audience. The translated published constitution, distributed immediately after it was framed and adopted in May 1814, was an argument towards the outside world, a declaration of Norwegian independence. Alongside providing translations of the Norwegian constitution, a main task for the framers of the constitution and later for the Norwegian authorities was to distribute the written and printed constitution to the Norwegian population. During the Norwegian-Swedish union (1814‒1905), a rather loose state construction, it remained not only the legal foundation of the state and a bulwark of Norwegian independence and autonomy but also the main national symbol. The ‘extraordinary symbolic power’ of the constitution was strengthened by the annual celebration of it since early nineteenth century on Constitution Day 17 May
1 W. B. Warner et al., ‘The Thing That Invented Norway’, Writing Democracy, p. 36. and by the extensive printing and distribution of the constitution directed at a popular readership. During the period 1814‒1905 around sixty publications and editions were published in Norwegian
2 Norwegian written language during the first half of the nineteenth century was in effect Danish, inherited from the centuries of Danish rule of Norway. in all kinds of formats, ranging from miniatures as early as the 1830s to pictures on postcards, folios and posters.
3 Some of the editions are caused by amendments to the constitution. Among the most popular versions from the 1830s onward was the constitution printed on a single sheet, which glazed and framed hang in ordinary people’s living rooms. This popular dissemination and the strong position of the constitution among the Norwegian people attracted foreign interest and was emphasised in several travel accounts.
4 See below on Laing and Latham’s accounts. Before 1905 the Norwegian constitution was also published in several Swedish translations, as separate prints and in Swedish newspapers in 1814, later primarily as part of collections of Swedish and Norwegian fundamental laws.
Until recently a proper overview of Norwegian editions as well as the number of translations has been lacking. Most of these documents are now included in the online 1814 Bibliography, comprising literature from and about the period 1812‒14, as well as in the national catalogue at the National Library of Norway.
5 The numbers referred to in this chapter are based on the 1814 Bibliography and additional research literature (see enclosed bibliography): <www.nb.no/bibliografi/1814>. The bibliography comprises more than 4,000 references to books and articles in books and journals. Most of the publications mentioned in this chapter can be found in this database, many of them accessible in digitalised versions. The national print history of the constitution is not the topic of this chapter. Rather, it will study the translations and publications of the Norwegian constitution directed at a foreign readership during the period 1814 to 1905 with an emphasis on the years 1814 to 1850. The number of translations almost equals the number of Norwegian editions.
So far, around sixty translations, including different editions, of the Norwegian constitution have been identified for the period 1814–1905. Additionally, there were several translations into Swedish; at least twelve publications, some of them with many editions. The international circulation of the Norwegian constitution was most prominent during the first half of the nineteenth century, with forty translations in the first thirty-five years after its proclamation. The constitution – or parts of it – is translated into nine different languages, including English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Czech, Hebrew, Danish and Swedish during this period, later also into Polish and Esperanto. The publication of translations saw certain peaks depending on shifting political contexts. The first of these is around the year of its adoption, in 1814, the next one in the 1840s and the third around 1905. Of the sixty translations up until 1905, the main languages are German (twenty-nine editions) and French (fourteen editions). Three of the French translations were published in Sweden using the international diplomatic language of the time. Out of eighteen translations from 1840 to 1850, as many as fifteen were translations in different German publications.
There are only six translations in English, three of which, including a second edition, are of the May constitution published in 1814 and 1816. The next one, and the first English translation of the November constitution, was published as part of a travel account in 1840. In 1895 an English translation was published in Chicago; another one in London in 1905.
As early as in 1820 the Norwegian constitution was translated into Italian, published as a separate print in Naples connected to the current constitutionalisation processes there.
6 Constituzione di Norvegia del 1814 sotto Carlo XIII. Trad. in italiano da Angelo Lanzellotto (Napoli, 1820). During the last half of the century it was translated into Spanish and Danish, and a Hebrew translation was published in Norway in 1904.
The published translations of the constitutional texts appeared in multiple formats and genres as part of a transnational discourse and targeting a broader readership. The present overview of translations thus includes publication of the constitution as a separate print, as a pamphlet or booklet, sometimes comparing different constitutions article by article, with or without editorial comments or explanations. In several instances the Norwegian Constitution – the whole text or parts of it – was translated and included in different kinds of publications. A new mode of publication from the early nineteenth century was the edited collection of constitutions, containing printed European or ‘Modern’ constitutions. Translations of the constitutions could also, as mentioned, be part of travel accounts, a genre that ‘famously served as a medium for political reflection’ where politics and history often intersected.
7 J. Brophy, ‘The Second Wave’, pp. 89‒90. Other genres were political essays and treatises on constitutional law. Translations are also found – although not systematically collected in the overview – as parts of periodical literature and in encyclopaedias, both important genres and media for transmitting political and societal knowledge across national and linguistic borders. In addition, there were translations of the constitution in several newspapers as part of political reportage, of which are recorded translations in German and Swedish newspapers in 1814 and in a Czech newspaper in 1848.
8 A Czech translation was printed in the Prague weekly Kwěty a plody 5 August 1848 (Gammelgaard, ‘Constitutions as a Transnational Genre’, p. 96).In the following sections I will examine some of the translations of the Norwegian constitution, focusing on the years around 1814, the 1840s and briefly the period around 1905. Whereas the first and third of these periods are characterised by published translations as part of more or less official diplomatic efforts, the second is part of a transnational constitutional discourse, which will be further discussed below.