The country’s Constitution was once the standard-bearer for the world. Today, many other countries have much fairer systems for electing their leaders and passing laws.
In the spring of 1814, 25 years after the ratification of America’s Constitution, a group of 112 Norwegian men—civil servants, lawyers, military officials, business leaders, theologians, and even a sailor—gathered in Eidsvoll, a rural village 40 miles north of Oslo. For five weeks, while meeting at the manor home of the businessman Carsten Anker, the men debated and drafted what is today the world’s second-oldest written constitution.
Like America’s Founders, Norway’s independence leaders were in a precarious situation. Norway had been part of Denmark for more than 400 years, but after Denmark’s defeat in the Napoleonic Wars, the victorious powers, led by Great Britain, decided to transfer the territory to Sweden. This triggered a wave of nationalism in Norway. Unwilling to be traded away “like a herd of cattle,” as one observer at the time put it, Norwegians asserted their independence and elected the constitutional assembly that met at Eidsvoll.
Inspired by the ideals of the Enlightenment and the promise of self-government, Norway’s founders viewed the American experience as a path to follow. A few decades earlier, the Americans had done what the Norwegians now aspired to do: become independent from a foreign power. The Norwegian press had spread news of the American experiment, casting George Washington and Benjamin Franklin as heroes. Although the press didn’t always get the story right (it described the American president as a “monarch,” reported that Washington had been “appointed dictator of the United States for four years,” and referred to the vice president as a “viceroy”), many of the men at Eidsvoll were quite familiar with the workings of the American system. Christian Magnus Falsen, a prominent independence advocate who took a leading role in the constitution-writing process, even christened his son George Benjamin, after Washington and Franklin. Falsen was deeply influenced by Madison and Jefferson, too, later declaring that parts of the Norwegian constitution were based “nearly exclusively” on the American example.
Source: The Atlantic
