Sweden and Norway had been joined together in a union since 1814. From then, they had shared a common monarch, who was the pivotal link in this union of two nations, the last of whom would be King Oscar II of Sweden and Norway, who had been crowned as King of Norway in Nidaros Cathedral on 18 July 1873 (and in Stockholm Cathedral as King of Sweden on 12 May 1873) . This Swedish-born King, who spoke fluent Norwegian, was largely based in Stockholm, although he did make regular visits to the Royal Palace in Christiana (now Oslo) as well as to other parts of Norway. The Norwegians had their own parliament (the Storting) and Constitution (formulated back in 1814 and signed in May of that year). Furthermore, matters relating to foreign affairs were dealt with in Stockholm, where the Foreign Minister was based. This was to be a source of increasing discontent in Norway, for the Norwegians were a proud people with a strong sense of national identity and a Norwegian royal line which stretched back to the 9th century and the reign of King Harald I.

In the 1870’s and early 1880’s the King had repeatedly vetoed constitutional amendments passed by the Storting. Yet, royal visits from Stockholm continued regardless. In 1881 the King established-at the instigation of Christian Holst, who was manager of the Bygdøy royal estate-what was known initially as Oscar II’s Collection, a small group of historic buildings, taken from their original locations around Norway and rebuilt at Bygdøy. This collection was to be the forerunner of what would become known as the Norwegian Folk Museum. Another frequent visitor was Oscar’s eldest son, Crown Prince Gustav of Norway and Sweden. Gustav ventured to Norway in June 1877 during which he included a visit to Tromsø and the following year, he was accompanied on his trip by France’s Prince Imperial (the only son of Napoleon III) during which the royal duo enjoyed a stopover at Osebro.

In February 1882, a Welcome Arch was erected in Carl Johans Gate in Christiana to commemorate the visit of Crown Prince Gustav and his wife, Victoria of Baden. This was Victoria’s first visit as Crown Princess to Norway, the couple having married only five months previously. Several buildings were handsomely decorated with the letters of G and V and there was a huge torchlight parade as the royal couple made their way, in an open carriage, through the capital’s streets, which were thronged by well wishers, to the Royal Palace. On another occasion the Crown Princely couple ventured to the theatre during which they passed through a royal arch lit by electric bulbs-something of a rarity in those days.

The Liberal Party, elected in 1884, led by Johan Sverdrup, was focused on establishing a strong parliamentary system (and some would say a diminution of the royal prerogative powers). The government would also become increasingly concerned with strengthening Norway’s position on the international scene, particularly as the country’s overseas trade became vital to energising the economy. It was argued by those in the business and shipping sector that there were now too few consulates to support this increase in foreign trade. Following their re-election in 1891, the increasingly nationalistic Liberal Party government, now led by Johannes Steen, therefore took the view that Norway should have its own autonomous consular service. They made NOK 50,000 available for this purpose. But a rattled King Oscar (who had also got wind of the possible appointment of an autonomous Norwegian Foreign Minister) was intent on vetoing such attempts by the government and this led to a constitutional crisis. This was only (temporarily) resolved by putting aside the matter of the consular service for the present.

The royal family, who were keen to maintain the union between Norway and Sweden, continued to make their presence felt in Christiana. In October 1893, King Oscar and Crown Prince Gustav made a joint visit during which they opened the Bandak Canal which connects Skien and Dalen in western Telemark. Another attempt, in 1895, in the Storting, to terminate consular cooperation with Sweden and push through a unilateral resolution for the establishment of a Norwegian Consular Service was met by menacing threats and sabre rattling on the part of Sweden (who were militarily superior to Norway). However, despite ongoing political rumblings, events were sufficiently settled to permit King Oscar to travel by train to Christiana in 1897 to mark the 25th anniversary of his accession to the throne of Norway. A service of thanksgiving was held in St Saviour’s Church, while the Stock Exchange, the Military Academy and many other official buildings were festooned with flags, bunting and greenery.

The Crown Prince also continued to make visits. For instance, in May 1898, he paid a visit to Ullensvang. However, another visit, in the spring of 1899, was to prove more eventful and troublesome as Gustav explained in a letter to his father, King Oscar, from the Royal Palace in Christiana. Most unusually, the Crown Prince had been jeered at by a crowd of around two hundred on his return to the palace from a meeting of the Military Society. Gustav was somewhat shaken by this turn of events, but put it down to ‘half drunk’ students. After the Royal Guard had eventually intervened and arrested a couple of demonstrators, the others soon dispersed.

The Crown Prince then issued invitations to members of the Storting to dine with him at the Royal Palace. Around 70 members (whom Gustav would later describe to his father, as being of a left-wing persuasion) returned their invites. Nonetheless, the Crown Prince went ahead with the dinner although he decided not to make the customary toast to the Storting (whilst simultaneously declining Mr Viggo Ullman, the President of the Storting’s, request to toast Gustav’s health). Instead, the Crown Prince limited himself to toasting the health of the King. Yet Gustav also made clear his displeasure at this snub by the Norwegian politicians to those members who did attend the event at the Royal Palace. This protest by the Norwegian politicians had also garnered much criticism in Sweden.

Indeed, by October 1900, Crown Prince Gustav was growing increasingly exasperated by events in Norway. Writing to his tennis partner, Pontus Quarnström, he spoke of his longing to leave Christiana and bemoaned the behaviour of Norwegian politicians, three government ministers having recently resigned. Furthermore, Gustav (who had vice-regal authority) felt that the government were not observing the necessary constitutional niceties, by not consulting him about the appointment of new ministers, in particular a Minister of War. A meeting about the matter had proved ‘unpleasant and difficult’ but the Crown Prince seems to have been equal to the task, warning the offenders that if they stepped on his toes, he would most certainly step on theirs. Despite these feelings, the Crown Prince continued to reach out to the Norwegian people and, in 1901, he was present on the balcony of the Royal Palace during Norway’s National Day, 17 May (the first member of the royal family ever to do so, for the Bernadotte’s had customarily avoided being in Norway at this time) to greet flag-waving Norwegians who had gathered before the palace, as had been the tradition for the past thirty years.

However, at least a war between Norway and Sweden-the thought of which King Oscar had regarded as ‘abhorrent’-was averted and an agreement was made whereby the matter of a separate consular service was to be considered by a joint committee of members from both countries in 1902. In February 1903, Gustav was once again in Christiana and complained to King Oscar of a ‘terrible state of affairs’ with ‘hardly a single person who now wants to support the present Union, and most of them are openly crying out for its dissolution’ rather ‘than remain…as a vassal of Sweden.’ Although ‘calm’, the Crown Prince admitted that he was ‘prepared for anything.’ On this occasion, Gustav was accompanied by his son Prince Wilhelm.

To his younger brother Prince Carl, Gustav wrote about the consular crisis on 22 February, 1903 ‘I think that you know enough both of my opinion and the views and thoughts of [Swedish Prime Minister] Boström to know that neither he nor I want to make any further concessions. I consider the Norwegian proposals to be completely unacceptable, well written to be sure, but very insidious.’ In other words, the chance of an accord on the consular matter seemed slim.

Nevertheless, despite the Crown Prince’s scepticism, a form of agreement was eventually reached and a subsequent communiqué issued by the joint committee, dated 24 March 1903. This proposed that any relations between the consuls (of both Norway and Sweden) and the still unified Foreign Ministry in Stockholm, as well as with the joint diplomatic missions overseas, should be governed by separate but identical laws, which could not be altered or repealed without the consent of the governments of both Norway and Sweden. Meanwhile, in July, King Oscar ventured to Norway to open the Ofoten Railway- the Norwegian section of a railway which carried iron ore to the port of Narvik.

In the spring of 1904, Crown Prince Gustav enjoyed a brief respite when he and his eldest son Prince Gustav Adolf participated in some cross-country skiing at Holmenkollen and watched some downhill ski action from the Royal Box. The political problems were not abating. Building upon the agreement reached the previous year, in May 1904, the Norwegian Government presented proposals for inclusion in the new ‘identical’ legislation. However, Swedish Prime Minister Boström’s government proved somewhat truculent and when the Swedes made their response in November of that year, one of their counter-proposals was that the Swedish foreign minister should have sufficient control over the ‘independent’ or ‘separate’ Norwegian consuls so as to prevent them from exceeding their authority. Norway interpreted this as placing their consuls in a subordinate position, effectively still under Swedish control.

It so happened that the Crown Prince was again in Christiana in the spring of 1905. One of his final vice-regal acts was the appointment, in March, of a coalition government led by Prime Minister Christian Michelsen. The latter announced in his inaugural address that his government would implement ‘Norway’s constitutional right to its own consular service and assert Norway’s sovereignty as a free, independent kingdom.’ On 29 April, Gustav informed his father that ‘The situation here [in Christiana] is utterly hopeless, and it is impossible to speak a reasonable word to a single person.’ Those politicians the Crown Prince encountered were acting like ‘wild dogs’; although to him personally, they were ‘polite, but ice-cold and there is a lot of hatred …in the air’. He now was firmly of the view that ‘I really cannot do any good here’.

Then, in keeping with Michelsen’s inaugural vow, in May 1905 both chambers of the Storting passed the Consular Act, to establish an independent Norwegian consular service, this to be effective from April 1 1906. On 27 May, King Oscar II refused to ratify the legislation during a cabinet meeting at the Swedish Royal Palace with Norway’s senior politician in Stockholm, Jørgen Løvlandat (also in attendance were Crown Prince Gustav, Norwegian ministers Harald Bothner and Edvard Hagerup Bull, as well as August Sibbern, a civil servant from the Norwegian Cabinet Department). Thereafter, the Norwegian government in Christiana duly resigned.

The crisis deepened when the King was unable to form a new government. In early June, the Prime Minister in Oslo, Christian Michelsen, prepared a statement which he would later make dealing with the current constitutional situation. He posited: It was the monarch’s responsibility to provide Norway with a constitutional government. Since King Oscar had failed to do this, the Norwegian monarchy had now ceased to function. And since it was the King who had bound the union together, these union ties were now broken. On 6 June, Paul Ivar Paulsen, a senior civil servant in the Ministry of Justice in Oslo, travelled to Stockholm on the night train. He had with him the Norwegian government’s final letter of resignation, addressed to the King and signed by Prime Minister Michelsen. The next day, 7 June, Paulsen handed this over to King Oscar II at the Royal Palace, around the same time as the Storting met in plenary session. After listening to the contents of Michelsen’s aforementioned statement, the Norwegian parliament proceeded to pass a resolution to dissolve the union with Sweden. It was then announced that the government ‘until further notice’ would now exercise ‘the authority [previously] granted to the King in accordance with the Constitution of the Kingdom of Norway and applicable laws’. In response, King Oscar sent a telegram to the government in Christiana protesting at this turn of events ‘in the most definite way.’

Meanwhile, the following evening, at Rosendal Castle, where he was currently in residence, Oscar II was joined by his wife and other royal family members to receive a touching tribute from his shocked Swedish subjects, thousands of whom gathered and sang the patriotic song, Ur svenska hjärtans djup [From the Depths of Swedish Hearts]. It was so moving that Queen Sophie and her daughter-in-law Princess Ingeborg (the wife of Prince Carl) could be seen wiping away tears.

In Christiana, on 8 June, top-ranking men in the military were required to pledge their loyalty to an independent Norway. Then early on the morning of 9 June the Union Flag was ‘struck down’ at Akershus Fortress. At 10am a crowd (estimated at between twenty to thirty thousand) gathered at the Fortress to watch the flag of an independent Norway being raised.

It is fair to say that the Swedish royal family (as they now must be regarded) were taken aback by the Norwegian position. It was all something of a ‘bombshell’ according to Prince Carl. His younger brother Eugen would later observe that ‘My old father [King Oscar] felt the blow as an insult that he had a hard time digesting.’ On 14 June, King Oscar himself was quoted in the Swedish press talking of ‘this illegal conduct’ on the part of the Norwegians being as ‘an incurable wound’ and paid tribute to ‘my Swedish people.’ Despite the distress, Crown Prince Gustav, who had been in England attending the wedding of his eldest son, Gustaf Adolf to Princess Margaret of Connaught, a niece of Britain’s King Edward VII, now advocated that the dissolution of the union should take place in a peaceful manner.

Meanwhile, a request was sent on 19 June from the Storting to King Oscar asking that negotiations commence for a final settlement on the dissolved union. The following day, King Oscar attended the State Opening of the Riksdag (Swedish parliament) in Stockholm, the Swedish Prime Minister, Ramstedt (who would soon be replaced by Christian Lundeberg) indicated that diplomatic negotiations, the commencement of which required the approval of the Riksdag, should now go ahead with Norway. All the members of Sweden’s State Council agreed with this proposal and King Oscar (keen to avoid what he regarded as the ‘greater evil’ of war) spoke movingly of the many years he had concerned himself with the ‘welfare of the brotherly people’ [i.e. the Norwegians] and how ‘it is painful to me to contribute to the dissolution of a union, in which I thought I saw the independence, security and happiness of both united kingdoms. If I am nevertheless willing to do this, it is to avoid a greater evil and in the conviction that a union without mutual consent would not bring any real advantage to Sweden.’ It should be stated that in Sweden, as in some other nations, the Storting’s actions were regarded as tantamount to a coup or revolution.

However, the King decided to appoint Crown Prince Gustav as Regent throughout the period of negotiations. Oscar admitted in a message his people on 7 August that having consulted with his doctors ‘I must now….seek rest and refreshing air… in order to, with God’s help, regain health and strength after the tiring time for body and soul which has been a consequence of the worries which during have followed me for the past few months…’ Of course, the worries over the situation with Norway had actually dogged his reign for decades. Although he did not realise it, Oscar only had a short time to live and he would die in Stockholm in December 1907, at the age of 78.

Meanwhile, on 13 August, the decision of the Storting of 7 June was backed by a referendum in Norway (held at the insistence of Sweden’s Riksdag) which resulted in 368,392 votes in favour of dissolution of the Union, and only 184 against. Negotiations between the delegations from Norway and Sweden took place in the Masonic Lodge in Karlstad from 31 August and lasted till 23 September, when a conditional agreement was reached. The main sticking point was border fortifications between the two nations. In the end several forts were demolished and a neutral zone established which could not be used for military purposes. Any further disputes would be solved by international arbitration. The Karlstad agreement was ratified by the Storting on 9 October; as well as by an extraordinary sitting of the Riksdag on 13 October.

Oscar II now formally recognised Norway as an independent state and, on 26 October, he abdicated from the Norwegian throne on behalf of both himself and his successors. The latter words are particularly important, as when the Storting unilaterally dissolved the union with Sweden, it also made an offer (sometimes referred to as the “Bernadotte proposal”) to King Oscar to nominate a prince of the House of Bernadotte to be the new King of an independent Norway. King Oscar wisely demurred fearing that the independence and impartiality of a new monarch in Norway with such close links to him and the House of Bernadotte might be constantly called into question. However, another (Swedish) source quotes him as having been ‘insulted’ by this offer and raging, “Sooner will they carry me to the Riddarholmen Church [at that time the final resting place of Swedish monarchs] than I consent to one of my family going to Norway [as king].” Yet Oscar also sent a final and conciliatory message to his ‘brothers’ in Norway: ‘To those who faithfully served me in Norway during my 30-year reign and who still have some love for their former king, I send my heartfelt thanks and my sincere good wishes in farewell.’

Yet the Bernadotte’s were still involved in one last act regarding the future of Norway. On 14 November Crown Prince Gustav of Sweden arrived in Copenhagen. He had been sent as an emissary to make it clear that, despite the recent dissolution of union with Norway, Sweden had no objections to Prince Carl of Denmark’s (the second born son of Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark) imminent elevation as King of Norway.

Gustav-now King Gustav V of Sweden-returned to Christiana by train from Stockholm for a three-day visit on 28 November 1917 to attend a meeting of the three Scandinavian monarchs. Not only was this Gustav’s first visit since becoming King of Sweden in 1907, it was also the first since the break-up of the Union in 1905. Gustav was now hosted by the Danish-born King Haakon VII in the city and at the Royal Palace he knew so well from his days as Crown Prince of Norway. Haakon’s older brother, King Christian X of Denmark, completed the trio. Gustav hoped that this current visit would demonstrate that the dissolution between Norway and Sweden did not stand in the way of any rapprochement between the two countries. The Swedish king was not disappointed by his reception, as crowds lined the streets to welcome the visiting monarch and his Danish counterpart. Two aeroplanes flew overhead briefly spooking the horses. Local hotels were filled by the curious, many of whom had travelled from western Norway. At the Royal Palace the press reported that the trio of kings feasted on lamb, chicken, ice cream and petit fours.

And today relations between the Royal Houses of Norway and Sweden remain extremely close. Sweden’s King has just celebrated his Golden Jubilee and his daughter, Crown Princess Victoria is a popular monarch-in-waiting. Meanwhile, King Harald of Norway, the mother of whom was a Swedish Princess, has reigned for over thirty years. He is the first Norwegian-born monarch of Norway since the Union with Sweden was dissolved in 1905 and he is due to be succeeded, in due course, by his Norwegian-born son Crown Prince Haakon and his Norwegian-born granddaughter, Princess Ingrid Alexandra, both of whose mothers were commoners.