Syttende mai Dinner Dance

It is a great pleasure for me to attend the “Syttende mai Dinner Dance” here in Washington, the capital of Norway’s single most important ally.

Being overseas on May 17 is no easy task for a Norwegian, not even for a Norwegian prime minister. However, when I arrived here tonight, and saw all the Norwegian bunads and the Norwegian flags, I felt for a moment as if I were home in Norway.

Thank you for inviting me. And thank you for sharing with me your celebration of syttende mai, one of the most important dates in Norway’s history.

Just as the celebration of Norway’s Constitution Day is shaped by tradition, so is the typical May 17 speech. There is a tried and true recipe for this speech, and I see no reason to break with tradition today.

You could think of a May 17 speech as an oral version of a Norwegian cream cake, or an angel food cake, preferably light and airy, sometimes a little on the heavy side, but always deliciously decorated with strawberries, cream and blueberries, representing the Norwegian national colours.

Let’s take one slice at the time and start with the year 1814.

This was an auspicious year, described by contemporaries as Norway’s “annus mirabilis” – the wonderful year. On the very last day of 1814, a Norwegian priest wrote in his diary:

“This has actually been a single year. But centuries have run their course and been far less remarkable than this one year. I do not think that any other country has seen its like.”

What was so special about 1814?

The first milestone was reached on January 14, when the Napoleonic Wars were drawing to a close and a peace treaty was signed in Kiel, in modern-day Germany. Under this treaty, dominion over Norway was transferred from the King of Denmark to the King of Sweden, ending 434 years of Danish rule.

In today’s world of Internet and round the clock news, it’s hard to imagine that it took eleven days for the news of the Kiel treaty to reach the Norwegian newspapers.

On top of that, the Danish government censored the announcement and made it vague and rather misleading: it reported that there was peace in Scandinavia but it did not even mention that Norway had been ceded to Sweden!

The Treaty of Kiel marked the birth of modern Norway. Under the leadership of the Danish Prince Christian Fredrik, who at the age of 27 became Governor or “stattholder” of Norway, an assembly of 112 men gathered at Eidsvoll to draw up the Norwegian Constitution.

Let’s pause here for a second and put history on hold. What was Norway like at the time when the constitution was written?

Professor Øystein Sørensen at the University of Oslo has described Norway in 1814 like this:

“At the beginning of 1814, Norway was a backwater on the fringe of Europe, a poor and sparsely populated country, subject to Danish rule. Anything of consequence was determined in the Danish capital Copenhagen.”

It was this “backwater on the fringe of Europe” that produced one of the most progressive constitutions of its time. It was inspired by the French Constitution of 1791, but Professor Andenæs, a Norwegian legal expert, has pointed out that the Norwegian Constitution also drew quite heavily on the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution.

As we are here in Virginia tonight, I would also like to mention that the Virginia Constitution of 1776 was another of the documents that inspired the lawmakers in Norway.

The Constitution that was signed on May 17, 1814 in Eidsvoll has stood the test of time and remains a well-written and forward-looking document.

It was Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, the author of our national anthem, who organised the first children’s May 17 parade in Oslo in 1870. This paved the way for what many Norwegians have come to associate with May 17. It is a day dedicated to the children; they are our hope for the future, for the future of our nation.

While Bjørnson wrote the national anthem, the poet Henrik Wergeland wrote an anthem to the children of Norway:

“We, too, are a nation – even we who are only two feet tall.”

We in Norway sometimes feel rather small and only two feet tall compared to many other nations. But given our size I think we do quite well. We only have about 4.5 million people. In fact, there are more Americans of Norwegian descent in the United States than there are Norwegians in Norway.

Norway is also a young country, measured in years of independence. Our independence day is June 7, which was the date in 1905 when the union with Sweden was dissolved by a decision passed by the Storting. We are currently preparing for the centennial celebration of our independence in 2005.

The first nation to recognise Norway in 1905, after we broke away from Sweden, was the United States.

The relationship between Norway and the United States is strong and enduring; the ties across the Atlantic are many and close. During World War II, the Norwegian Crown Princess Märtha and her children took refuge here in the United States at the direct invitation of President Roosevelt. King Harald spent some of the first years of his life as a refugee at Pooks Hill here in Maryland.

The many Norwegian-Americans here tonight represent our common heritage. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the many Norwegian organisations in the United States, and particularly here in the Washington Metropolitan Area, for all the work they are doing to promote the friendship between Norway and the United States, and for keeping this heritage alive. This is very important to us.

Norway’s small size poses certain challenges when the country has to navigate the troubled waters of international politics. This is why we have always been a staunch supporter of the United Nations. Our position on the war in Iraq was a reflection of this. Under no circumstances could Norway support a war that did not have the backing of the UN Security Council.

During my meeting with President Bush at the White House today, we talked about the war in Iraq and Norway’s position. As good friends often do, Norway and the United States have agreed to disagree on certain points when it comes to the war in Iraq.

Although Norway did not support the war, we are committed to supporting the efforts to build peace. We are already actively involved in humanitarian assistance to Iraq and are looking at ways to help rebuild the country, including laying the foundation for democracy. We are also considering taking part in an international security force for Iraq. We have already allocated 410 million kroner, or 58 million dollars, to these efforts.

Ever since September 11 Norway has been actively engaged in the war against terrorism in a coalition together with the United States and a number of other countries. We joined “Operation Enduring Freedom” in Afghanistan, and committed both Norwegian forces and substantial resources to humanitarian aid and reconstruction.

I have the definite impression that the President and his administration recognise and greatly appreciate Norway’s contributions so far.

Friends of Norway,

As the people of Norway are preparing to celebrate May 17 and our Constitution, independence, and freedom, my thoughts go to the many children, families, men and women suffering poverty and dictatorship, war and lack of liberty. I hope that one day all the children around the world will be able to celebrate their national day in freedom and liberty and with the same joy as we do.

As a child in my hometown of Molde, I remember May 17 as something special - almost magical. The school band got me out of bed at dawn, playing rousing music as the pale morning sun climbed above the snow-covered mountaintops. In the crisp air of the glorious May morning you could see that the woods had just started to turn green. The calm blue fjord reflected mountains and trees like a mirror. And on every flagpole, as far as you could see, Norwegian flags were waving in the morning breeze: red as the farmhouses in the countryside, white as the snow-covered peaks and blue as the fjord.

After the traditional syttende mai breakfast, we headed into town for the children’s parade. This parade is not as grand as Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade or the Rose Bowl Parade. Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson once said about Norway that there are “lots of houses and cottages, but no castles.” This reflects the Norwegian soul, and this soul is reflected in our parades. There are no big floats, no big balloons, just a joyful procession, which is what we like in Norway. And maybe the weather was not as glorious as I remember it, nor the sea as calm as I tend to think of it today.

But this is how I remember it, and many Norwegians have similar memories.

Friends of Norway,

As we are preparing to celebrate May 17 tomorrow, let us remember the words of the Norwegian poet Nordahl Grieg, written during the Nazi occupation of Norway in World War II:

"Now stands the flagpole bare
Behind Eidsvoll's budding trees,
But in such an hour as this,
We know what freedom is."

This year the flagpole is not bare. Norway’s flag is waving proudly all across a free nation. I hope that in the years to come, we will be able to say of many thousands of children, women and men around the world that they are celebrating their day of independence, and say together with them, “we know what freedom is”.

Thank you for your attention and I wish you all the best for the May 17 celebrations!

Gratulerer med dagen!