The Three Hundred Year Night

If you read Norwegian texts from the period when Norway was ruled from Copenhagen (1397–1814), you don’t get the impression that Norwegians were terribly unhappy about their plight. In fact, they didn’t take any steps towards independence until Denmark had to hand Norway over to Sweden after the Napoleonic wars. It’s quite possible Norway would have remained part of Denmark if Denmark-Norway hadn’t been on the losing side in those wars.

However, after Norway became independent again in 1905, it became popular to refer to the years of Danish rule as firehundreårsnatten “the four hundred year night”. With hindsight, they suddenly realised that Norway could have done so much better if it had been run by Norwegians for Norwegians in Norway all along, and they were kicking themselves for having put up with Danish rule for so long, even though at the time it seemed like a reasonable set-up.

Will Scots in the same way talk about the period from 1707 to 2016 as the “three hundred year night” in a generation’s time? Will people be shaking their heads in disbelief at what their forebears thought was an acceptable state of affairs?

PS: The photo shows a statue of Ludvig Holberg, who lived from 1684 to 1754 and is often considered the father of Danish literature. He wrote in Danish because Norwegian had ceased to exist as a written language, in the same was as Scots is now often seen as an English dialect. Although he was born in Norway, he studied in Denmark, worked in Denmark and lived in Denmark because Denmark didn’t see any need to build a university in Norway. It’s quite lucky the Scottish universities were founded before 1707.