The Swedish-Norwegian Union Crisis: A History with Documents

This is history as it was being written. Karl Nordlund composed his account in 1905, as the political crisis unfolded, giving this work an immediacy no later historian can match. He traces the fracture of the Swedish-Norwegian union, formed in 1814 but always unequal, through the specific events that drove the two kingdoms apart. Sweden controlled foreign affairs while Norway chafed under subordinate status. When Norway established its own consulates and challenged Swedish dominance, the union began to collapse. Nordlund documents the failed negotiations, the mounting Norwegian nationalism, and the constitutional crisis that forced King Oscar II's impossible choice. The narrative builds to October 1905, when the union dissolved and Prince Carl of Denmark became Haakon VII. Beyond the political narrative, Nordlund includes key documents, treaties, diplomatic correspondence, parliamentary records, that let readers examine the evidence themselves. This is not retrospective analysis but a witness account of nationhood being redrawn.