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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;svessien, post: 4185390, member: 15481&quot;][ATTACH=full]1075686[/ATTACH]</p><p><i>Christian V, 1670-99, 4 Mark 1699</i></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1075663[/ATTACH]</p><p><i>Frederik IV of Denmark, &quot;Ryttermark&quot;, 1723. Kongsberg mint.</i></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>After having been a force to be reckoned with in the age of the Vikings, the Norwegians went quietly into history for several hundred years. First the Hanseatic states dominated. Then came the Danish rule for centuries. The Danish kings did little more than to keep the Norwegian people down. Few got education, and if they did, they suddenly became very Danish. The Danish kings did well to suck the silver out of the mines of Kongsberg (Kongsberg=Kings hill) and laying claims to all timber that was being produced in the &quot;kings forrest&quot;. Black market trade of timber with the Dutch was rampant along the Norwegian west coast, my homeland.</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1075687[/ATTACH]</p><p><i>Christian VII, 1766-1808, 1/3 speciedaler</i></p><p><br /></p><p>Norwegians knew little about their history, because national pride was not useful for the Danish kings. However, in 1711 an Icelandic writer named Tormod Torfæus came with a 3500 page work called Historia Rerum Norvegicarum. Suddenly people heard about the Norwegian vikings and kings of old again. Along with the inherited increasing madness of the Danish kings generation for generation, the nation started to come back to life. As Denmark chose the wrong side in the Napoleonic wars, they lost the grip on Norway. It was time for Norway to become..... Swedish</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1075664[/ATTACH]</p><p><i>Carl XIV Johan of Sweden, half speciedaler size &quot;Kastepenning&quot; (&quot;throw penny&quot;) issued for the crowning in 1818. Kongsberg mint.</i></p><p><i><br /></i></p><p>Times were changing though. Following the defeat of Napoleon&#039;s troops at the Battle of Leipzig in October 1813, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Kiel" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Kiel" rel="nofollow">Treaty of Kiel</a> of January 1814 ceded Norway to Sweden. In response, the Crown Prince of Denmark-Norway, Christian Frederik, the resident viceroy in Norway, founded a Norwegian independence movement. The most likely goal of the young Crown Prince was reunification with Denmark. His initiative was successful, and a national assembly at Eidsvoll was called. The assembled representatives were elected by the congregations of the state church throughout Norway, and by military units. They convened at the Eidsvoll manor on 10 April. During five weeks of the spring of 1814, the constitution was written. The constitution was ratified by the assembly on 16 May, and signed the following day, the latter date now celebrated as the Norwegian Constitution Day.</p><p><br /></p><p>This constitution would be the tool that would break the foreign kings&#039; clasp around Norway. During the next 90 years, the newly founded parliament (Stortinget) would make one law after the other that would fragment the power of the Swedish king. Norway was becoming unruly, but still peaceful. During the 1870s, parliamentarism was introduced, utterly weakening the Swedish king Oscar II. Now it was up to the parliament to veto laws. In 1905 they decided to declare Norway a sovereign nation. Scrounging for a king of their own, the Norwegians found prince Carl of Denmark. Now, that was no fitting name for a king whose people were not particularly keen on Danish royalty. He should have a Norwegian kings name of old. Håkon it was, after Håkon the Good that made us proud 1000 years earlier.</p><p><br /></p><p>It&#039;s an understatement to say that the Norwegian people were excited. Oscar II of Sweden wasn&#039;t as excited. He threatened with war. 26 000 thousand young Norwegian men were sent to the border to stand guard, among them my great-grandfather. No attack came. The Swedes loved us too much, and we are still a brotherly people.</p><p><br /></p><p>Numismatically, the young nation tried to bring out their best. Ivar Throndsen was the go-to engraver. His style is very much Art Noveau, and he is considered to have been a very gifted man artistically. His first pieces were silver 2-kroner coins commemorating the free nation. One of them had a low mintage, only 27.500. That issue also had crossed guns on the reverse. It was made for the 26 000 men that watched the border in 1905:</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1075688[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>A few years later, Throndsen made his first gold coins; the 10 and 20 kroner cons from 1910. They have been voted the finest coins ever made in Norway. On the obverse the young king is wearing his crown (which Haakon VII did as seldom as he could). On the reverse the Viking king Olav the Holy is presenting his axe:</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1075657[/ATTACH][/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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