368,208 votes for, 184 against. That was the count in Norway on August 13, 1905, when voters were asked whether the union with Sweden should end. The shift from a parliament’s declaration to a public vote came fast, and the result was lopsided enough that it still gets cited more than a century later.
The union itself dated to 1814. After the Napoleonic Wars, Denmark handed Norway to Sweden under the Treaty of Kiel. Norwegians did not take it quietly. They drafted their own constitution, and Sweden answered with military pressure before settling on a looser arrangement: one king ruling both countries. Sweden, bigger and politically heavier, got the better end of it, according to EBSCO’s history of the separation.
Where the friction was
Two grievances kept coming up. Sweden controlled the diplomatic service and kept Norwegians out of it, and it held the reins over Norway’s fast-growing merchant fleet. By 1905 the fight centered on consuls. Talks on foreign policy and consular administration broke off on February 7. Both chambers of the Norwegian legislature passed a bill for a separate consular service in May, and on May 27 King Oscar II rejected it.
The government offered its resignation. It was not accepted.
Then came June 7. The Storting declared the union dissolved and temporarily handed the king’s powers to the government. Sweden did not accept that at once. On July 28 its national assembly laid out conditions for a formal dissolution, and the two sides edged toward a crisis. As EBSCO puts it, “war nearly broke out between the two countries.”
The vote and the standoff
The referendum on August 13 was meant to show Sweden what Norwegians actually wanted. The tally was 368,208 in favour of breaking up the union and 184 against. EBSCO describes the outcome as “nearly 100 percent” approval.
It did not end the tension. On August 30, Sweden mobilized 70,000 troops along the border. The next day, delegates began formal negotiations in Karlstad.
Those talks produced the Karlstad Agreement on September 23. Both parliaments approved it between October 9 and 13, and King Oscar II recognized Norwegian independence in late October.
A king from Denmark
One question remained: monarchy or republic. A second plebiscite on November 12 and 13 gave 259,563 votes (78.9 %) for a monarchy and 69,264 (21.1 %) for a republic. On November 18 the Storting chose Prince Carl of Denmark, and on November 27 he took the name King Haakon VII.
So the sequence ran from a declaration in June to a referendum in August, a troop buildup, a negotiated treaty in September and a new king in November. No shots were fired.
