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held at Copenhagen in 1660 the indignation of the clergy and
burghers against the nobility hurst forth, and they demanded the
abolition of its oppressive privileges. It was next dicovered that
the pledge given by the king was subversive of all liberty and
progress, the king and the lower Estates proceeded to declare the
succession to the throne hereditary, and Frederick was empowered
to revise the constitution. The result was that he declared the
king alone to be invested with sovereign and absolute power, and
to this document he succeeded privately in procuring the
signatures of most of the members of the diet. This declaration became
law in 1661, but was not actually promulgated till 1709. These
great changes were on the whole beneficial to Norway. The
country was at least now placed on an equality with Denmark, and
the strict bureaucratic administration was preferable to the old
evils of local tyranny and individual caprice. The supreme
authority now consisted of the heads of the five government
departments, presided over by the king, and the feudal lords with
their local jurisdictions were replaced by crown officials.
Frederick’s son Christian V. (1670-99) was not unsuccessful
in the Skåne war against Sweden (1675-79), but his chief merit
as regards Norwray was the promulgation of a code (16S7), based
on the Danish code of 1683, and of a church ritual for both
countries. The erection of the new counties or earldoms of Laurvig and
Tønsberg, afterwards called Jarlsberg, and of the barony of
Rosendal were unproductive of benefit to Norway. The unjust
treatment of his minister Griffenfeld, who for a trivial offence suffered
a cruel imprisonment for 22 years, forms a blot on this king’s
memory.
Christian V. was succeeded by his son Frederick IV.
(16991730), in whose reign was waged the great northern war in which
the Norwegian naval hero Peter Vessel (ennobled under the name
of Tordenskjold) took a prominent part. The sole gain to
Denmark by the Peace of Fredriksborg (1720) was the renunciation
by Sweden of its immunity from Sound dues. The King husbanded
his finances, but often procured money by discreditable means,
lie hired out mercenary troops, sold most of the crown-property
in Norway, and granted a monopoly of the trade of Finmarken.
These abuses, maladministration, and an attempt to alter the land
laws so embittered the Norwegians that a union with Russia was
actually proposed. In this reign a mission to Lapland was organised
(1714), Th. v. Vesten being one of its chief promoters, and Hans
Egede went as a missionary to Greenland (1721).
Under Frederick’s son Christian VI. (1730-46) Norway was
injuriously infected with German Puritanism, which enjoined the
utmost rigidity of church observances and abstention from all
worldly amusements. Among the expedients used for reviving
trade in Denmark was an oppressive enactment that S. Norway
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