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Hallelujahs, Damnations, or Norway's Reformation as Lengthy Process

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

K. E. Christopherson
K. E. Christopherson
Affiliation:
professor of religion inPacific Lutheran University, Tacoma, Washington.
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Extract

Though one of the most Protestant nations (approximately 96 percent belong to the state Lutheran church), Norway seemingly had neither cause nor opportunity to write the history of her Reformation. For her the modern writing of history began only in the early nineteenth century, triggered by the nationalism of the Napoleonic era and the July Revolution of 1830. Lacking the Reformation era's religious polemicism, Norway produced no church historians, such as those in other countries who helped found modern historiography in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. There was not even a printing press in Norway until 1643. But in 1811 Norway's first university, the present University of Oslo, was founded and soon became a center for historical research and writing. Far more important, on May 17, 1814, Norwegian representatives signed their constitution, making their land a constitutional monarchy. Precipitated by the 1814 Treaty of Kiel, which tore Norway from over four centuries of royal union with Denmark, a Napoleonic “loser,” and forced her into another ninety–year royal union with victorious Sweden, this constitution, as the only one from the revolutionary era to survive the Metternichian system, became the symbol of one of the most fervent and long-lasting displays of nationalism in modern times. This nationalism is the most important key toward understanding the writing Norwegian historians have done, or not done, about their Reformation.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 48 , Issue 3 , September 1979 , pp. 279 - 289
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1979

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