The Scandinavian History Podcast

Over a few generations starting in the mid-1800s, millions of Scandinavians left their homes to seek new lives across the Atlantic. Why did they do it? Where did they go? And what did the people who stayed behind think about it all?

Scandinavia had always been a poor, agrarian region on the margins of European civilization. But within a few decades in the late 1800s, things happened fast. Industrialization hit Denmark, Norway and Sweden like a tidal wave, changing the Scandinavian economy and society forever.

For as long as anyone could remember, Scandinavian peasants had lived and farmed together in tightly knit village communities. But in the 1800s, sweeping land reforms not only revolutionized agriculture, but reshaped Scandinavian society completely.

Christian IX was born far from the Danish throne, but was eventually placed on it. The timing of his elevation was unfortunate, and his struggles didn’t end just because the war of 1864 did. He spent most of his long reign fighting against Danish politicians–and the times.

The war between Denmark and the duchies hadn’t solved the question of who should govern Slesvig. Tension between Danes and Germans kept growing, and too many people on both sides started to think that only another war could settle the issue.

In March 1848, the new Danish government wanted a radical break from the previous way the Unitary State had been governed. But the politicians in Slesvig and Holstein weren’t onboard. They reacted by breaking with Copenhagen, declaring their own government. War was inevitable.

In 1848, Denmark faced uncertainty after king Christian VIII’s sudden death, just as political unrest started to spread across Europe. Would the inexperienced, and–frankly–incompetent, new king Frederik VII be able to handle the situation? Or would Denmark be swept up in the revolutionary chaos on the continent?

During the Golden Age, pressure mounted for political reforms in Denmark. The absolute monarchy was threatened by liberalism and nationalism, and the king feared that the smallest political reforms would start a process that would bring the whole kingdom down.

After the disasters of the Napoleonic Wars, state bankruptcy and losing Norway, Denmark was in bad shape. But even though the future looked bleak, a Golden Age was actually waiting right around the corner. Its writers and thinkers would shape Danish society for generations.

In 1818, Bernadotte became king of Sweden and Norway under the name Karl Johan. He was eager to develop his kingdoms economically and socially, but when his new subjects displayed dissatisfaction with his rule, the old revolutionary reverted to classic royal reactionary tactics.

In the fall of 1814, Norway had lost the war against Sweden. The defeat had come as an unpleasant surprise to many Norwegians, who had believed the rousing patriotic speeches about liberty or death. Even those who accepted that they’d have to enter into a union with Sweden were determined to give the Swedes as little influence over Norway as possible.

In the first half of 1814, Bernadotte had been busy wrapping up the war on the continent. But as summer arrived, the Swedes turned their full attention to Norway. Stockholm demanded that the Norwegians scrap their new constitution, ditch their new king and submit to Sweden. When the Norwegians refused, the Swedes threatened war.

During a few intense spring weeks in 1814, 112 representatives of the Norwegian people came together at Eidsvoll to draw up a constitution for Norway. They hoped the country would be an independent kingdom, but at the same time rumors of a Swedish invasion were swirling in the background.

The Napoleonic Wars strained the Danish-Norwegian union bringing starvation, unrest and a crisis of legitimacy. Even worse, Sweden exploited the fact that Copenhagen had sided with the losing French, and forced king Frederik VI to hand over Norway to Sweden. But the Norwegians didn’t want to join a new union with Sweden, and saw an opportunity.

After the death of Karl August, only five months after he had been elected crown prince, the Swedes needed to find another heir to the throne. The main candidate was yet another Danish prince, but there were those who had other ideas.

King Gustav IV Adolf was blamed for the loss of Finland, and even before the war against Russia ended, he was ousted in a coup. His uncle Karl was given the crown, but everyone knew this wasn’t a long term solution. Karl was old and childless, so the search for a new crown prince started immediately.

When peace returned in 1809, the population of Finland found themselves to be the newest subjects of the Russian emperor. In the years that followed, they reshaped their political and economic lives, turning away from Sweden but at the same time resisting Russification.

The Franco-Russian treaty at Tilsit in 1807 spelled trouble for Sweden as well as for Denmark. Just like the Danes, the Swedes underestimated the threat of the new alliance, and soon found themselves fighting yet another war against Russia in Finland.

The years following the French Revolution were plagued by seemingly endless wars. But the governments in both Copenhagen and Stockholm preferred to stay out of the fighting, instead making money trading with all sides. It worked for a while, but eventually the fires of war reached Scandinavia as well.

The French revolution was a cataclysmic event that changed the world forever, both politically and culturally. Even though it was far away, Scandinavia did not remain untouched by these continental developements. And perhaps that's only fair, since a dramatic Nordic event allegedly contributed to the revolution in the first place.

His war against Russia had shown Gustav III that the Swedish aristocracy was a real threat to his reign. He thought he could eliminate the threat by forcing a new set of laws through the riksdag, strengthening the crown and limiting the power of the nobility. But instead of rolling over and capitulating, the aristocrats decided to fight back.

A few years after his coup, the opposition against Gustav III was growing. In an attempt to improve his popularity–and to reclaim some of the land lost in the War of the Hats–he decided to start a war against Russia. Unfortunately for the king, he wasn’t allowed to start wars, but Gustav wasn’t going to let minor details like that stop him.

King Adolf Fredrik and queen Louisa Ulrika never managed to wrest power away from the Riksdag during the Age of Liberty. But Louisa Ulrika had high hopes that their son, Gustav, would follow in their footsteps and reassert royal authority–despite the best efforts of the politicians to train him to be a docile and powerless monarch.

If your system of government puts all the power in the hands of one man, you’d better hope the man holding all that power knows what he’s doing. If he doesn’t, things can quickly turn ugly. Unless, of course, there’s someone else standing in the wings discreetly guiding the power-holding hand to avoid disaster.

The Age of Liberty wasn’t only corruption, palace intrigues and failed wars. Thanks to a policy encouraging science and industry, significant progress was made, and some of the discoveries and inventions from those days are still with us today.