A Danish Prince Disobeyed His Own King's Direct Orders — Then Spent Five Weeks Writing a Constitution So He Could Crown Himself
Norway — Constitution Profile
| 📅 Adopted | May 16, 1814 — signed May 17, 1814 |
| 🏛️ Government | Parliamentary Constitutional Monarchy |
| 🌍 Capital | Oslo |
| 🌎 Global Rank | 2nd oldest working constitution in the world, after the United States |
| 📄 Drafting Time | Just five weeks |
| ✏️ Major Revision | 2014 — human rights additions |
Most constitutions get written by a country that already knows it's becoming independent. Norway's came from a man who wasn't even supposed to be claiming the throne in the first place — a Danish prince who looked at a treaty signed by his own king, decided he simply wouldn't follow it, and then had five weeks to convince an entire nation to back him up with an actual government.
His Own King Had Already Signed Norway Away
To understand how unusual Christian Frederik's position was, you have to understand exactly what had just happened to the country he was governing. By the Treaty of Kiel, signed on 14 January 1814, Denmark was forced to cede Norway to Sweden, which had fought alongside the Allies.
Christian Frederik wasn't a distant claimant with some abstract grievance. He was the Danish king's own cousin and the sitting Viceroy of Norway — the very man supposed to oversee Norway's orderly handover to Sweden. The Norwegian Viceroy Prince Christian Frederik was the heir to the Danish throne of his cousin Frederik VI. He disobeyed his liege's orders to appoint commissioners to oversee the transfer of the fortresses to Sweden, and for himself to return to Denmark. Instead, he decided to make himself King of Norway, leading an uprising against the envisaged union with Sweden.
He Forced Every Voter to Swear an Oath Before They Could Even Cast a Ballot
Getting himself crowned wasn't something Christian Frederik could simply declare. He needed Norwegians themselves to back the project, and he built that backing in a way that left no room for ambiguity about which side anyone was on. Immediately before the election, they were obliged to swear an oath. They had to "swear to assert Norway's independence and to venture life and blood for the beloved country." No one could refuse to take this oath.
Every elected representative who would go on to write the constitution had already publicly committed to Norwegian independence before a single word of the document existed. There was no pretense of neutral deliberation — the assembly was built, from its very first step, to produce exactly one outcome.
112 Men Locked Themselves Away and Finished an Entire Constitution in Five Weeks
What happened next moved at a pace that still strikes historians as remarkable, especially for a document this consequential. On April 4, 1814, the Norwegian Constituent Assembly convened at Eidsvoll. Over 112 representatives from around the country gathered to draft a national constitution. Christian Magnus Falsen and Johan Gunder Adler spearheaded its creation.
Five weeks later, against genuinely difficult odds, they had a finished document. On 16 May 1814, after just six weeks of negotiations at Eidsvoll, a constitutive assembly of elected representatives adopted the Norwegian Constitution, which, with a selection of individual rights and elected parliament, was markedly liberal for the time. The following day, the assembly elected Christian Frederik as their new king — exactly the outcome the entire process had been built to deliver from day one.
The Constitution's Loudest Champion Believed in Almost the Opposite of What It Said
The man most associated with writing Norway's liberal new constitution had a personal political philosophy that sat oddly alongside the document he helped produce. He felt a romantic reverence for the constitution. Yet at the same time he favoured a powerful monarchy, and in more recent historical writings he has been christened in ways that highlight this contradiction. Falsen helped build a document praised for distributing power broadly, while personally still wanting a king who held real, substantial authority — a tension that shows up throughout the final text itself.
Farmers Got the Vote — In a Country Almost No One Expected It
One of the most genuinely radical features of the 1814 constitution had nothing to do with the monarchy question at all. The constitution adopted at Eidsvoll provided Norway with one of the world's most liberal voting rights. Among the ground-breaking features of the Norwegian Constitution was that the right to voting included farmers. Or at least, the landlords.
The composition of the assembly itself reflected just how unusual this was for the era. The constitutional national assembly was composed of 112 elected members. This number included no less than 37 farmers. The mere fact that farmers were summoned to the constituent assembly is quite astonishing in an international perspective. Ordinary landowning farmers, not just nobles and merchants, were sitting in the room writing the rules for their own country — a detail that historians studying European constitutions from the same period consistently flag as unusual.
Independence Lasted Only Months — But the Constitution Outlived the War That Ended It
Christian Frederik's bid for full Norwegian sovereignty did not survive contact with Swedish military reality for very long. The young king and Norwegian officials tried to find international backing for their bid for Norway as a sovereign state throughout spring and early summer of 1814. After failing to secure the support of the United Kingdom, war with Sweden became unavoidable.
What followed was a short, largely one-sided conflict that nonetheless ended on surprisingly favorable terms for Norway. The Swedish Campaign against Norway was short and decisive. However, while badly trained and equipped, the Norwegian Army put up a determined fight, holding the Swedes back at Kongsvinger and securing a tactical victory at the battle of Langnes. This enabled the King to avoid an unconditional surrender as he was forced into negotiations with the Swedes, leading to the Convention of Moss.
The Document Survived Because One Man Bargained Hard at the Exact Right Moment
Losing the war should have meant losing the constitution too — Sweden could simply have imposed its own terms on a defeated rival. Instead, Christian Frederik used what little leverage remained to secure something that mattered more to Norwegians than the throne itself. Putting the strategic situation and his own abdication to good use, he persuaded the Swedish crown prince Carl Johan (the former Marshal Bernadotte of France) to let the Norwegians keep their constitution. The Swedish crown prince could have named his terms to Norway, but wanted to appease the Norwegians and avoid a bloody continuation of the war.
Christian Frederik gave up the crown he had just spent a war defending. In exchange, Norway kept the document his assembly had written in five frantic spring weeks — and that single trade is the reason the 1814 constitution is still in force today, rather than becoming a forgotten relic of a failed independence bid.
It Quietly Became the Second-Oldest Working Constitution on Earth
What started as a hurried, war-pressured compromise has, over two centuries, become something genuinely rare in global constitutional history. It is the fourth oldest written single-document national constitution in Europe after the Constitution of Poland, the French constitution of 1791, and the Spanish Constitution of 1812. The document is also the second oldest working national constitution in the world, after the Constitution of the United States.
The Storting it created turned out to carry unusual weight from the very beginning, too. The Eidsvoll constitution of 1814 gave the Storting greater authority than parliamentary bodies had in any other country except the United States. A document written in five weeks by a Danish prince trying to dodge a treaty has, more than two hundred years later, outlasted the war that should have killed it, the union that followed it, and nearly every other constitution drafted in its own era.
Constitution at a Glance
| Detail | Information |
|---|---|
| Treaty of Kiel (Norway Ceded to Sweden) | January 14, 1814 |
| Constituent Assembly Convened | April 10–11, 1814, Eidsvoll |
| Constitution Adopted | May 16, 1814 |
| Constitution Signed | May 17, 1814 — Norwegian Constitution Day |
| Assembly Members | 112 (including 37 farmers) |
| Drafting Period | ~5–6 weeks |
| Swedish-Norwegian War | Summer 1814 |
| Convention of Moss | August 14, 1814 |
| Global Ranking | 2nd oldest working constitution, after the USA |
| Major Revision | 2014 — human rights provisions added |
📥 Read the Constitution of Norway
Read the complete, official English text of the Constitution of the Kingdom of Norway:
👉 Read the Constitution of Norway — Official Storting Website
A prince who ignored his own king's treaty. A constitution finished in five frantic weeks. A throne traded away just to keep the document alive. What part of Norway's story surprised you most? Tell us in the comments below.
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