Saturday 25 August 2001

Pic of the day: Monarchy, Daggerfall style. (Sentinel, actually.) It doeth look a bit medieval, now doeth it not?

State of the monarchy

The great news today is the royal wedding, in which the crown prince Haakon Magnus of Norway is married to Mette-Marit Tjessem Høiby, a raver chick and single mother. Think postmodern fairy tale. Depending on a lot of things, this could also spell the end of the monarchy in this country. I'm not sure whether that is a good thing or bad. And of course, within their lifetime there may be no Norway left to be king of. Again, for good or for bad.

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Norway is an old nation and a new one. It existed more than a thousand years ago, from the end of the Viking age onward. But its borders were quite different from now. At that time, several different population groups lived around here, with different dialects, customs and gods. Nations were forged through conquests in battle and bed. It was kind of random who came to be part of which nation. Norway was not, and is not, ethnically homogenous. Toward the later Middle Ages, Norway became part of a union, and later in practice became a province of Denmark. The current name, Norge, does not even mean Norway, but Nord-riget, the northern (part of the) kingdom. Another legacy from the Danish years.

Norway was resurrected by national romanticists in the late 18th century. At first this was purely theoretical and literary, but the Napoleonic wars changed all that. Being on the losing side, Denmark had to hand over all of Norway to Sweden. (Parts had been lost before, and are still part of Sweden.) A group of activists hurried to draw up a Norwegian constitution (largely based on the French and American) and declared Norway independent. In reality, Norway was in no shape for independence. It had only the most rudimentary of civic institutions, and no military. The independence did only last days. But the constitution remained, and the Swedes seems to have found this useful. Rather than rule Norway as a part of Sweden, they allowed the gradual building of a political and economic infrastructure. In 1905, Norway declared formal independence. An almost unanimous vote in the referendum convinced the rather peaceful Swedish people that it was not worth fighting a war over.

The constitution was still based on the concept of monarchy, unlike the French and American. An important reason was the romantic attitude that had spawned it. The poets looked back to the Viking age, which they glorified (even though they did not know much about it ... they had the Icelandic sagas, the rest was mainly free fantasy). In the Viking age, there had been kings. So, monarchy it was. In 1905, we humbly asked the Danish king for a prince to be our king, and the wish was granted for old times sake. So started our modern monarchy, and it has lasted for three generations so far. The first king, taking the name Haakon, spoke Danish all his life. But Olav was a very Norwegian king. The current monarch, Harald, is actually born in Norway.

The monarchy is purely formal, and the king has no real power except what may derive from his personal moral standing. This was established during the 1880es (most particularly 1884, if I recall correctly) where there was a conflict between the Storting (our parliament) and the king, who at the time was Swedish. To curtail the Swedish influence, the king was stripped of much of his power. It has sadly never come back. Sadly, because we have lost the distribution of power between the legislative, executive and judiciary branches of government. The legislative has all power, and uses it rather capriciously. We could need a stabilizing influence in the form of a monarch with a perspective longer than 4 years.

There are certain signs that the crown prince Haakon is slowly dipping his hand in the murky waters of politics. He has still mostly stuck with consensus issues, but his support for multiculturalism has not gone unnoticed. And his marriage to a single mother and former raver chick from the drug milieu is a pretty strong statement on what way he wants society to go. He wants a modern Norway, free from the haughty and unrealistic nationalism of the past. A nation which includes the fringe groups. To the wedding in the cathedral were invited not only various dignitaries, but also a number of whores and substance addicts. The question is whether this change is possible without giving up the unifying function of our monarchy.

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"The Norwegian royalty" said a commentators some months ago, when Haakon and Mette-Marit moved in together, "has become more common than many common people". That's pretty exact, and that's why I am not sure about the future of the monarchy. There comes a point, and it is now, where many of his loyal subjects realize that they could have done just as well if they were king or queen.

I personally think the monarchy can survive this wedding. But I doubt it can survive their divorce. And, them being ordinary people, that is very much a possibility.

But before then we may be members of the European union, and ruled by a Federal President. If that turns out to be an Emperor instead, I hope one of my American friends has a spare bed for me. There are some monarchies we don't want back.