The Norwegian Constitution is the oldest functioning constitution in Europe. Its bicentenary in 2014 has inspired the analyses in this volume, where contributors focus on the Constitution as a text to explore new ways of analyzing democratic development.
This volume examines the framing of the Norwegian Constitution, its transformations, and its interpretations during the last two centuries. The textual focus enables new understandings of the framers’ negotiations and decisions on a democratic micro level and opens new international and historical contexts to understanding the Norwegian Constitution.
By synthesizing knowledge from different realms – law, social sciences, and the humanities – Writing Democracy provides a model for examining the distinct textual qualities of constitutional documents.
Contents
Introduction: The Norwegian Constitution as a text
Karen Gammelgaard and Eirik Holmøyvik
PART I: EMBARKING ON THE MATTER
Chapter 1. The Thing that Invented Norway
William B. Warner, Eirik Holmøyvik, and Mona Ringvej
Chapter 2. The changing meaning of “constitution” in Norwegian constitutional history
Eirik Holmøyvik
Chapter 3. The many textual identities of constitutions
Dag Michalsen
PART II: TRANSNATIONAL CONVERSATIONS
Chapter 4. The Norwegian Constitution and the Rhetoric of Political Poetry
Ulrich Schmid
Chapter 5. Constitution as a Transnational Genre: Norway 1814 and the Habsburg Empire 1848–1849
Karen Gammelgaard
Chapter 6. Discursive patterns in the Italian and Norwegian Constitutions
Jacqueline Visconti
PART III: HISTORICAL TRANSFORMATIONS
Chapter 7. Timing the Constitutional Moment: Time and Language in the Norwegian Constitution
Helge Jordheim
Chapter 8. The Norwegian Constitution and its multiple codes: Expressions of historical and political change
Inger-Johanne Sand
Chapter 9. Norwegian parliamentary discourse 2004–2012 on the Norwegian Constitution’s language form
Yordanka Madzharova Bruteig
PART IV: FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION
Chapter 10. The evolution of a public opinion text culture in Denmark-Norway 1770–1799
Kjell Lars Berge
Chapter 11. To speak what the hour demands: Framing the future of public speech at Eidsvold in 1814
Mona Ringvej
Chapter 12. Scholarly texts’ influence on the 2004 revision of the Norwegian Constitution’s Article 100
Ragnvald Kalleberg
Appendixes
Appendix I: Constitution for Kongeriget Norge
Appendix II: The Constitution of the Kingdom of Norway
Series: Time and the World: Interdisciplinary Studies in Cultural Transformations, Berghahn Books, New York | Oxford.
Series Editor: Helge Jordheim, University of Oslo.
Time is moving faster; the world is getting smaller. Behind these popular slogans are actual cultural processes, on global and local scales, that require investigation. Time and the World draws on research in a wide range of fields, such as cultural history, anthropology, sociology, literary studies, sociolinguistics, and law, and sets out to discuss different cultures as sites of transformation in a global context. The series offers interdisciplinary analyses of cultural aspects of globalization in various historical and geographical contexts, across time and space.