Who will succeed Jagland as Speaker of Parliament?

Following Monday’s general election speculations are already rife about what changes the coming reshuffle will bring to the government. But it should not be forgotten that there are also several posts in Parliament which must be filled, including leaders of the standing committees and leaders of party groups of the Labour Party, the Socialist Left Party and the Centre Party (the Centre Party was first out when they yesterday chose Trygve M. Slagsvold Vedum, deputy leader of the party).
The positions of Speaker and Vice-Speakers of Parliament must also be filled. The new Parliament will convene on 1 October and be officially opened by the King on 9 October. The day before the State Opening the new Presidium will be elected. The current Speaker, Thorbjørn Jagland (second photo), declined to be renominated in order to be a candidate for the position of Secretary-General of the Council of Europe, and the five other members of the Presidium were also not candidates for re-election to Parliament.
The position as Speaker of Parliament is the second highest rank in Norway, junior only to the King and senior to the Prime Minister. The position has traditionally been seen as mostly representative, but Jagland has chosen a more active role during the last four years.
Traditionally the Speaker has mostly come from the largest party in Parliament, which since 1927 has been the Labour Party. With the government having won a renewed majority, it will almost certainly again be a Labour MP who will take the Speaker’s chair this autumn. In my view there are two Labour MPs who are likely candidates – Marit Nybakk and Svein Roald Hansen.
Marit Nybakk (first photo) is one of the longest-serving MPs, having taken her seat for the county of Oslo in 1986. She has earlier been leader of the Standing Committee on Defence, but in the past four years has been only second deputy leader of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs. Her long service and the fact that she has never received a government post might be reasons to reward this hard-working MP with the speakership. It could also be time for a second female Speaker. Alternatively, Nybakk may wish to become leader of the Foreign Committee, a position which is now available as the current leader, Olav Akselsen, left Parliament at the election.
Svein Roald Hansen has been an MP for the county of Østfold since 2001. During the last four-year term Hansen was a member of the Standing Committee on Scrutiny and Constitutional Affairs and he may be seen as a less controversial choice than Nybakk. Both Nybakk and Hansen have often filled in as acting speakers in the absence of the actual Speaker.
Alternatively a minister from the present government could resign from the cabinet to become Speaker of Parliament, but this seems less likely. The speakership is often considered a sinecure for politicians approaching the end of their careers and none of the current ministers who have seats in Parliament seem to consider themselves on the way out of politics in the near future. Dag Terje Andersen, the Minister of Labour and Social Inclusion, is expected to leave the government at the reshuffle and has been tipped for a position in Parliament – leader of Labour’s parliamentary group or leader of the Standing Committee on Finance and Economic Affairs have been suggested, but the speakership may also be a possibility.
Meanwhile, Ola Borten Moe, an MP from the Centre Party, recently suggested that the next Speaker of Parliament should be selected from one of the three parties in the political centre, i.e. his own party, the Liberal Party or the Christian Democrat Party, but this seems quite unlikely, particularly after the election weakened the centre significantly, leaving it with only 23 seats altogether.
The introduction of a unicameral system on 1 October means that Parliament’s new presidium will be made up in a different way than earlier. For 195 years there has been a speaker and a vice-speaker of Parliament as well as of the two divisions the Lagting and the Odelsting. The Presidium will continue to have six members – one speaker and five vice-speakers. Whereas the Speaker and the Vice-Speaker have until now presided every second month, the Speaker will in the future preside permanently, to be replaced by one of the five vice-speakers when he/she is unable to attend.
Given Monday’s election results, the Labour Party will get two seats in the Presidium, while the first Vice-Speaker will come from the Progress Party (the biggest opposition party) and the second from the Conservative Party (most likely Per-Kristian Foss). The Socialist Left Party and the marginally smaller Centre Party will get one seat each in the Presidium. My guess would be Per Olaf Lundteigen from the Centre Party, while the Socialist Left Party’s candidate is more open, as most of that party’s “veterans” left Parliament at the election.

Election victory for Norway’s government

The results from Norway’s general election on Monday show victory for the three parties of the government – they won 86 out of 169 seats in parliament, leaving 83 seats to the opposition. It is the first time since 1993 that a government is not defeated in a general election in this country. All in all, the three parties went back only 0.2 %, which is quite unique in a European government context these days.
It was the biggest party, the Labour Party, which carried the day for the government. Its share of the votes rose by 2.7 % to 35.4 %, giving them 64 seats in Parliament, which is up 3 from the 2005 election. The Socialist Left Party did not do very well this time, and went down (2.6 %) almost exactly as much as the Labour Party went up, ending with 6.2 % of the votes and 11 seats in parliament (down 4). This means that the Socialist Left Party is now exactly the same size as the Centre Party, the third government party, which also won 6.2 % (down 0.3 %) and retained its 11 seats in Parliament. This means that the three parties will now agree on a new government platform and that the ministries will probably be redistributed between the three parties in an upcoming cabinet reshuffle. During the past four years the Socialist Left Party, being bigger, has had one minister more than the Centre Party, but now that they are exactly the same size, this will almost certainly change, unless the Centre Party is compensated by getting a “heavier” ministry.
On the right wing the Progress Party remained the biggest opposition party and with 22.9 % got its best result ever. Yet this was up only 0.9 % from the 2005 election, which was far from the results opinion polls until recently had suggested might be possible. Anyway, this gives the Progress Party 41 seats in Parliament, but their dream of taking part in a government was crushed for another four years.
The Conservative Party celebrated as if they had won the election and was indeed the party which gained most votes – up by 3.1 % to 17.2 % and 30 MPs (up by 7). Yet this is only a “victory” because their result four years ago was the worst in the history of a party which was over 20 % in 2001 and over 30 % in the 1980s.
In general the election results show that the three larger parties, which each had a candidate for the premiership, did quite well, while the small parties were squeezed. The Christian Democrats did their worst election ever, going down by 1.2 % to 5.5 %, which means that they lose 1 MP and get 10 seats in Parliament. This was the party which had the Prime Minister 1997-2000 and 2001-2005.
The heaviest defeat was accorded to the Liberal Party, the country’s oldest party. They received only 3.9 % of the votes, which is down 2 % from 2005 and which means that they lose 8 of their 10 seats in Parliament. The party leader, Lars Sponheim, himself lost his seat in Parliament. Flabbergasted by this unforeseen outcome he immediately announced his resignation as leader of the party, later pointing to Trine Skei Grande, one of the party’s deputy leader and now one of its two MPs, as his preferred successor.
The collapse of the Liberal Party and the defeat of the high-profile, colourful Sponheim was perhaps the greatest surprise of the election night. Sponheim had played a risky game during the campaign, issuing guarantees that his party would not take part in a government with the Progress Party, would not vote for a fiscal budget from a government which the Progress Party was part of, would not support a government which allowed petroleum activity in Lofoten and Vesterålen, would prefer a Labour government to a government in which the Progress Party participated, but would not support a Labour government if they continued in a coalition with the Socialist Left Party. All these negative, unconstructive guarantees were probably the main reason for his downfall – the exit polls show that thousands of former Liberal voters deserted to the Conservative Party, obviously realising that a vote for the Conservatives would be the safest way to get a non-socialist government. Sponheim played a high game and he lost it.
This leaves the right wing in an even greater chaos than before. But for the country the outcome is in my opinion a good one. The current government has done a good job over the last four years and will not get four more years to carry on their work.
The photo above shows the leaders of the Labour Party and the Socialist Left Party, Jens Stoltenberg and Kristin Halvorsen, on an earlier occasion. The speculations on what changes will occur in the cabinet are already rife, some suggesting that Kristin Halvorsen will leave the Ministry of Finance, from where it is obviously hard to profile the party she leads, and become Minister of Education instead.
Jens Stoltenberg was received by the King this morning, but, contrary to what some journalists write, the King was not going to ask him to form his third government. With this election result Stoltenberg’s second government will simply continue in office and the King will not have to act in any way.

The full election results can be found here:
http://www.regjeringen.no/krd/html/valg2009/bs5.html

What to see: Stjernsund Palace, Askersund

Stjernsund Palace, a few kilometres south of the small town Askersund in the Swedish province of Nerike, is mostly associated with the brief tenure of Prince Gustaf, but its history goes further back.
There has been a building on the spot since 1637, when Count Johan Gabrielsson Oxenstierna built a palace which later passed to his widow’s second husband’s son Gustav Soop. From Soop it passed again to his widow’s second husband’s relatives, the Dohna family, who in 1785 sold it to the wealthy landowner Olof Burén (later ennobled as Burenstam).
The new owner did away with the old palace and commissioned the architect Carl Fredrik Sundvall (1754-1831) to build him a new, modern one. The new palace was built between 1798 and 1808 and counts as one of the great works of Swedish neoclassicism. It is a simple, but imposing rectangular building, stripped of almost all external ornamentation except the imposing staircase and its portico of four Ionic columns carrying an entablature inscribed with the year of its completion. The palace’s location is wonderful – it sits on a hilltop with an elevated terrace in four levels rising from the water which surrounds it on three sides. This is where the lake Alsen meets the huge lake Vättern.
Following the death of Olof Burenstam in 1821, his daughter Eva Fredrika Hagelstam two years later sold Stjernsund to King Carl XIV Johan, who would stay there when travelling between his two capitals Stockholm and Christiania (now Oslo). Upon his death it was inherited by his only son, King Oscar I, whose second son, Prince Gustaf, came to like it very much.
In 1848 a thorough redecoration for Prince Gustaf began, but it was only in 1851 that he bought it from his father. Sadly, the prince did not have the chance to spend much time there. He only came there a few times, never staying for more than a week, before his death at 25 in 1852.
Stjernsund was then inherited by his parents, who in 1856 sold it to their youngest son, Prince August. This rather dim-witted prince soon tired of it and after four years he sold it to the landowner Knut Cassel, whose son Albert inherited it in 1895. His widow Augusta in 1948 sold the land and the forest to the University of Uppsala, but retained the palace and the park until her death in 1951. She then left it to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which opened it to the public as a museum.
The Dining Room, seen in the fifth picture, is one of the few rooms which retain Sundvall’s original décor, although the furniture and chandeliers are of a younger date. The furniture in the Drawing Room (sixth photo) is a mix of neo-Rococo and Gustavian (roughly Swedish louis-seize) pieces. The murals, showing Italian landscapes, were done by the painter F. Hagedorn for Prince Gustaf in 1848.
The next room, in photo 7, is the Ante-room, decorated in a mix of neo-Gothic and neo-Renaissance. This room shows clearly what damage light exposure can do to textiles. The furniture coverings are now in a golden tone, but were originally a brownish purple, while the walls used to be yellow. A reproduction, leaning against the sofa, shows the original colours of the faded Aubusson carpet. Above the sofa are a portrait of Countess Ulrika Dohna, a former lady of the manor, and a landscape painted by King Carl XV in 1865.
Stjernsund Palace is open for guided tours in the summer and next summer there will be an exhibition relating to Carl XIV Johan to celebrate the 200th anniversary of his arrival in Sweden.

Norway votes tomorrow

Tomorrow Norway votes in a general election whose outcome is still completely open. With more than 50 out of 169 MPs not seeking re-election there will certainly be many new faces when the new parliament convenes in October, but the question which has dominated the campaign is what government we will get after the election.
When the current government, a centre-left coalition of the Labour Party, the Socialist Left Party and the Centre Party, took office in 2005 it was the first majority government for twenty years. Some polls in the last few days have shown a renewed majority for the government parties, such as Dagbladet’s final poll yesterday, which gave them 89 seats in Parliament with two for the far-left wing party Red (presently not in Parliament) and only 79 seats for the opposition, while Aftenposten’s poll today predicts the narrowest possible outcome – 85 seats for the coalition, 84 for the opposition. If this holds true, the present government will remain in office and be the first government to survive an election since 1993.
Some polls have shown the opposite scenario, giving the majority to the four opposition parties – the Liberal Party, the Christian Democrats, the Conservative Party and the Progress Party. TV2’s poll last night gave the opposition 87 seats against the government parties’ 82. If so it is hard to tell what government the country will get, as the opposition has lately been very busy issuing guarantees against each other.
Siv Jensen, the leader of the populist, far right-wing Progress Party, which will by all prognoses remain the second largest in Parliament, has made it clear that she is willing to cooperate with all the three opposition parties. However, she will not support a government which her party is not part of, nor will they vote for a budget presented by such a government.
The leader of the Liberal Party, Lars Sponheim, has on the other hand issued a guarantee that his party will not support a government in which the Progress Party participates – recently he added that if he breaks this promise, he will allow voters to come home to his farm and beat him up. Sponheim has also made it clear that his party will not take part in a government which allows petroleum activity in the vulnerable northern areas Lofoten and Vesterålen. The other party most opposed to such activity is the Socialist Left Party and although Sponheim has said he rather wants the current Prime Minister, Jens Stoltenberg (Labour), than Siv Jensen, he has also made it clear that he will not support a government in which the Socialist Left Party participates. The same has been said by the Christian Democrats, who have also guaranteed that they will not cooperate with the Progress Party.
The leader of the Conservative Party, Erna Solberg, has said her party is also willing to cooperate with all the non-socialist parties. With this scenario quite improbable, a non-socialist majority means that she will most likely have to choose between forming a government with the Progress Party or with the Christian Democrats and Liberals. The leaders of the latter parties have said that if they form a government with the Conservatives, Erna Solberg will be its prime minister. If the Conservatives and the Progress Party join forces, Siv Jensen insists that she will be prime minister as her party is bigger than the Conservative Party (although recent opinion polls have shown a somewhat narrowing gap).
The changing fortunes of Erna Solberg have been one of the most interesting aspects of this election campaign. A month ago the newspapers were full of articles about her being a failure as party leader and speculations about who would succeed her, while the media made it look as if Siv Jensen was the only alternative to Jens Stoltenberg as PM. Now it seems quite likely that a non-socialist majority in tomorrow’s election can give the premiership to Solberg, which would be one of the most amazing comebacks of Norwegian politics.
Although Jens Stoltenberg insists that a non-socialist victory will mean a non-socialist government, a third possible scenario could be that the Labour Party continues as a minority government without its coalition partners, seeking parliamentary support from issue to issue. Some have also suggested that the centre-left coalition would go on as a minority government until defeated in Parliament, but if so, Lars Sponheim has said he will call for a vote of no confidence.
Further, one cannot rule out the possibility that, faced with a non-socialist majority, some of all those guarantees will be torn up and the politicians of those parties solemnly announce that the people have spoken, the country needs a government and they will accept their responsibilities even though it involves working with parties they have earlier rejected. So in short, almost anything can be the outcome of this election.
It is no secret that I personally would prefer the current government to continue. Although it has not been able to fulfil all its promises from four years ago (what government ever did?), it has mostly done a good job and achieved many notable changes for the better. It has also steered Norway safely through the financial crisis, meaning that Norway has one of the soundest economies in Europe and an unemployment rate of only 3 % - the lowest in Europe. This may be jeopardised if the opposition comes to power, and would be almost unavoidable if the Progress Party were to get a hand on the wheel. A centre-left government will in my opinion be the safest for the future of this country and I cross my fingers that this will be the outcome of tomorrow’s election.
This weekend means the end of campaigning for the politicians and their supporters – the pictures show politicians from Labour and the Socialist Left Party campaigning in central Oslo yesterday. Tomorrow it is up to the people to decide what future they want.

At the road’s end: Norman Borlaug (1914-2009), Nobel Laureate

The American agronomist and humanitarian Norman Borlaug, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970, died from cancer in Dallas yesterday, aged 95. Borlaug was considered “the father of the Green Revolution” and his discoveries are estimated to have saved the lives of hundreds of millions of people. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for having contributed to world peace through increasing food supply, particularly in Asia and Latin America.
This award may be seen as a forerunner of recent years’ awards to laureates such as Wangari Maathai, Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank, and Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, who have received the Peace Prize for work less directly connected to wars and conflicts but rather to substainable development and thereby prevention of wars and conflicts.

Washington Post reports:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/13/AR2009091300375.html?hpid=topnews

Prince Joachim to take over as chancellor of Danish orders

The Danish Royal Court yesterday announced that the Prince Consort has asked the Queen to relieve him of his duties as Chancellor of the Royal Orders, a position he has held since 1968, the year following his marriage. In his place Queen Margrethe II has appointed their second and youngest son, Prince Joachim, who will succeed his father in the position from 1 October.
Whereas the monarch is Grand Master of the Royal Orders, the position of Chancellor has traditionally been held by another member of the royal family. Among earlier chancellors are Prince Viggo, a cousin of Christian X; Prince Harald, a brother of Christian X; and Prince Hans, younger brother of Christian IX. The Chancellor is in charge of the administrative work connected to the Order of the Elephant and the Order of Dannebrog (whose Grand Cross is seen in the photo above).

The Royal Court’s press release:
http://kongehuset.dk/publish.php?id=22348

The news agency Ritzau’s article (in Berlingske Tidende):
http://www.berlingske.dk/article/20090911/danmark/909110389/

Two new Windsors this week

Two members have been added to the non-royal branches of the Windsor dynasty this week. Today Lord Frederick Windsor, the only son of Prince and Princess Michael of Kent, married the actress Sophie Winkleman in the Chapel Royal at Hampton Court Palace in Richmond upon Thames, and on Tuesday Lord Nicholas Windsor, the youngest son of the Duke and Duchess of Kent, became the father of a second son, who has not yet been named. The cousins Lord Frederick and Lord Nicholas are great-grandsons of King George V. The Guardian reports on the wedding:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/sep/11/freddie-windsor-sophie-winkleman-wedding

Ari Behn gets a new grandfather

The newspapers Dagbladet and Nordlys today report that the King of Norway’s son-in-law, the author Ari Behn, has got a new grandfather – or rather, a different one from what had earlier been thought.
Behn’s father, Olav Bjørshol, discovered through a DNA test last year that he man he had always considered his father, Bjarne Bjørshol, was in fact not his biological father. At the time he had no idea who his real father was. It has now been established that it is Terje Erling Ingebrigtsen, a 76-year-old living in Tromsø with his wife Helen. They have already received a visit from Olav Bjørshol and his wife Marianne Solberg Behn.
The discovery means that Ingebrigtsen is the great-grandfather of Maud Angelica, Leah Isadora and Emma Tallulah Behn, fifth, sixth and seventh in line of succession to the Norwegian throne. (The girls are described as princesses by the two newspapers, but in fact have no titles whatsoever).

http://www.kjendis.no/2009/09/11/kjendis/ari_behn/kongefamilien/kongehuset/dna/8057575/

http://www.nordlys.no/nyheter/article4575994.ece

From a bygone age: The Norwegian nobility

“A monarchy without nobility can of course impossibly exist, but was nevertheless established in Norway”, wrote the new Queen of Norway, Hedvig Elisabeth Charlotta, when her husband, Carl XIII of Sweden, had been elected King of Norway in November 1814. Perhaps it was not such an unreasonable thought. As Ellis Wasson points out in his book Aristocracy and the Modern World (2006), “Monarchs needed the cooperation of a powerful aristocracy to rule effectively. There was no contradiction between a strong monarchical state and strong nobility”.
Yet, 195 years on, history has proven Queen Hedvig Elisabeth Charlotta wrong. In an egalitarian country as Norway there would have been no place for an aristocracy, whose privileges would have been resented and who might have become some sort of buffer zone between the monarchy and the people.
The Norwegian Constitution which was signed on 17 May 1814 forbade the creation of new noble titles and privileges, but did not take the final step and abolish the aristocracy altogether. However, when the first ordinary Parliament met in 1815, they passed a bill to do so, which the King refused to sanction. A similar bill was passed in 1818 and again in 1821, thus becoming law even without the King’s assent.
King Carl XIV Johan, who had succeeded Carl XIII in 1818, was staunchly opposed to abolishing the nobility – he wanted to have the possibility to award deserving people with noble titles and mentioned non-hereditary titles for life as a possible compromise. He also saw a Norwegian nobility as a means to even out the differences between Norway and his other kingdom, Sweden, which had an influential aristocracy.
Naturally he also saw the aristocracy as a possible powerbase – certain nobles such as Peder Anker (of Bogstad Manor), his son-in-law Count Herman Wedel Jarlsberg (of Jarlsberg Manor) and Severin Løvenskiold (of Fossum Manor) had supported Carl Johan in the struggle for Norway in 1814. On the other hand, some, such as Carsten Anker (of Eidsvold Manor), Peder Anker’s cousin, had supported his rival, King Christian Frederik.
The King failed in convincing the Parliament of the advantages of an aristocracy and veiled threats such as assembling soldiers just outside the capital did not work. The act of Parliament of 1 August 1821 abolished the nobility in Norway, but accorded the noble titles and privileges to those born before that date for their lifetimes.
Wedel Jarlsberg and Løvenskiold were the most important noble families in Norway, but the country’s nobility was not large. Yet the kings of the House of Bernadotte were to find many of their courtiers and trusted advisors among the ranks of these noble families. As a side note, one member of a former noble family, Anniken Huitfeldt, is Minister of Children and Equality in the present government, but, as a Social Democrat, is not particularly proud of her noble background.
Peder Anker served as Norway’s first Prime Minister in the years 1814-1822, while his daughter Karen later became Mistress of the Robes and her husband, Count Herman Wedel Jarlsberg, was Minister of Finance during Anker’s premiership and later became Speaker of Parliament and Governor-General of Norway. Severin Løvenskiold was Prime Minister 1828-1841 and then succeeded Count Wedel as Governor-General in 1841, which he remained until 1856. Their mutual grandson, Carl Otto Løvenskiold (of the Bærums Verk branch), served briefly as Norwegian Prime Minister in Stockholm in 1884, while his wife (and cousin) Elise, née Wedel Jarlsberg, was Mistress of the Robes to Queen Sophia. Ida Wedel Jarlsberg was a lady-in-waiting of Queen Sophia’s.
Many other members of the former aristocracy also found employment at the court of the Bernadottes. Count Wedel’s brother, Baron Ferdinand Wedel Jarlsberg, was head of the Norwegian court 1839-1857, a position which later received the title “hoffsjef” (Lord Chamberlain). Severin Løvenskiold’s son Ernst also became Lord Chamberlain, and so did his nephew Herman Severin, Carl Otto’s brother, to name just some prominent examples.
To a certain extent this continued even after the end of the Swedish-Norwegian union in 1905. At the outbreak of World War II one would find Peder Anker Wedel Jarlsberg (heir to Jarlsberg Manor) as Marshal of the Court and Borghild Anker (of Rød Manor) as Mistress of the Robes. In 1985 King Olav V appointed Ingegjerd Løvenskiold (of the Bærums Verk branch) as Mistress of the Robes, a position she still holds even if she has been relieved of her duties since her remarriage to American millionaire Robert D. Stuart in 1995, which saw her moving to the USA. There will most likely be no successor to the position.
The members of the former nobility are scattered around the country and the globe, but some of the families have retained their manors – such as the Wedel Jarlsbergs at Jarlsberg, the Løvenskiolds at Fossum and Bærums Verk and the Treschows at Fritzøehus.
The last titled Norwegian noblemen were the brothers Count Peder Anker Wedel Jarlsberg and Baron Harald Wedel Jarlsberg. The Count died on 23 June 1893 and when the Baron died on 4 January 1897, the Norwegian aristocracy came to an end. The diplomat Frederik “Fritz” Wedel Jarlsberg used the title Baron, but as he was born as late as 1855, he had no right to do so. When asked what using such a title should be good for, he replied that it was at least very useful if one wanted to make a good marriage.

The photos show, from the top, the arms of the Wedel Jarlsberg family, Bogstad Manor, Fossum Manor and a bust of Peder Anker, ancestor of much of the land-owning former nobility.

Notable architects: Hans D. F. Linstow (1787-1851)

Hans Ditlev Franciscus (or Frants) von Linstow was one of the first architects of consequence working in Norway after independence in 1814. He is best known for the Royal Palace in Oslo, but sadly got to build little else.
Linstow was Danish by birth and came to Norway in 1812, when the country was still part of the Danish Kingdom. With the secession in 1814, Linstow decided to make Norway his new homeland and he became a member of the royal court during the short reign of King Christian Frederik before Norway entered a union with Sweden.
Linstow was an officer and a jurist by education, but had attended lectures on architecture at the Academy of Art in Copenhagen. He had been one of the founders of Norwegian National Academy of Craft and Art Industry in 1818, but had little experience as an architect. On the other hand there were few architects in Norway at all.
It was apparently King Carl XIV Johan himself who chose Linstow as the architect for the Royal Palace in Christiania (as Oslo was then called). He was appointed in 1823 and the foundation stone for his grand H-shaped project with an elevated centre section (second photo) was laid by the King in 1825. When the terrain had been modified and the foundation walls built two years later, nearly all the money granted by the poor country’s Parliament had been spent and no further money was forthcoming.
Meanwhile Linstow had to make a living elsewhere, which he did partly through selling vegetables. Only after six years was more money granted and Linstow could continue with a reduced and much altered project. In 1845, when it was nearly completed, it was found to be too simple and extra funds were granted to improve it. The result was the Royal Palace as we know it (first photo), completed in 1849.
Linstow himself was not entirely satisfied with the final result, but despite its modest size its artistic quality is fully on par with other royal palaces in Europe. His architectonical inspiration has often been said to be mainly the Dane C. F. Hansen and the Prussian Karl Friedrich Schinkel. Before drawing up the plans for the Palace’s interiors he went on an educational tour of Denmark and Germany in 1836-1837, a tour which certainly left its marks on the Palace. Recently some influence from Sweden has also been pointed out.
The long and difficult process of building the Royal Palace meant that Linstow was stuck with it for 25 years and thereby not able to embark on any other grand projects. He saw many other commissions which he had wanted be given to his assistant-turned-rival Christian Heinrich Grosch, whom Linstow developed a deeply felt bitterness towards. Among the commissions “lost” to Grosch were Christiania Theater and the University – in the latter case it was Linstow who insisted that Grosch’s drawings should be sent to Schinkel in Berlin, who greatly altered and improved them.
Besides the Royal Palace Linstow’s greatest work is Karl Johans gate, the main street of the Norwegian capital. Linstow planned it as a monumental processional route leading from the Eger Square to the Palace and at approximately 2/3 of the street he planned a monumental square framed with public buildings such as university, parliament and a museum. His plan, published in 1838, was carried out only partly – Grosch’s and Schinkel’s three buildings for the University were erected on the northern side, whereas the southern side of the square and indeed the street was turned into a public park (third picture). Yet Linstow counts as the man who planned the new centre of the capital and gave it its most beloved street.
By the Palace Square Linstow had planned a small house for the King’s Guard in a style matching the Royal Palace, but a simpler, temporary building (seen in the fourth photo) eventually became permanent. The Guard House is itself a good example of Linstow’s wood architecture and counts as the country’s first building in what in Norway was called “Swiss style”, which turned out to be both popular and enduring. Linstow’s original design for a guard house was later used for a building in Park Street behind the Palace (fifth picture) – it now houses a car dealer.
Whereas he had originally planned a parliament building as part of the rectangular square including the University and other public buildings, Linstow later changed his mind and in 1841 came up with a plan for a parliament which would be situated on its own opposite the University (sixth photo). Next to it would be a building for the ministries followed by the Supreme Court’s building, which would create an axis of the three powers of state along the street leading to the Palace. The idea was rejected by the majority of the committee for a parliament building, with only Linstow voting for his own plan.
Linstow twice made suggestions for reconstructions of Oslo’s Cathedral. His second proposal, from about 1840 (seventh picture), shows a Byzantine influence, but was not carried out. Neither was his earlier, more restrained neoclassical plan. Outside the capital some 80 rural churches were built according to plans and patterns worked out by Linstow, but often with variations made by the local builders, who were generally quite conservative and retrospective in their preferences.
Near the Swedish town Kristinehamn is the manor Krontorp (eighth photo), which traditionally has been attributed to Linstow, although the attribution is uncertain. The manor house was built 1825-1828 as a place for King Carl Johan to stay when he made the long journey from Stockholm to Christiania and has some similarities with Linstow’s original design for the Royal Palace.
His story has something of the tragedy of unfulfilled genius. Unlike Grosch he did not get the change to put his wider mark on the capital and unlike Grosch he wrote ferociously about architecture, but his textbook on the topic was never published and is now lost. He probably never felt he received the recognition he deserved. In June 1851 the students of the capital threw a party to celebrate Linstow and his work. This must have felt like a welcome, if late, recognition. On his way home Linstow was killed in a carriage accident. He was buried at Christ Churchyard, but his grave disappeared when that part of the cemetery was turned into a park and public playground a century later.

Late royals: Prince Gustaf of Sweden and Norway (1827-1852)

Due to his talents and his early death there has always been an aura of romance surrounding the name of Prince Gustaf, the second of five children of King Oscar I and Queen Josephina. He was born on 18 June 1827 at Haga Palace just outside Stockholm, where his bust (pictured above) can be found nearby. The choice of the name Gustaf, which was strongly associated with the deposed Holstein-Gottorp dynasty, was quite unexpected.
Four of the five children of Oscar I and Josephina shared their parents’ artistic gifts. Prince Gustaf was a talented composer and that is how he is remembered today, as “Sångarprinsen” (the Singer Prince). Some of his songs are still popular in Sweden today, the most well-known being “Sjung om studentens lyckliga dag”. It is always sung by students when graduating – perhaps with particular fervour in Uppsala, where the Prince himself, who was also Duke of Uplandia, studied. “Glad såsom fågeln” is another of his light, happy songs. In a more sombre mood, the Prince in his early twenties wrote a funeral march, dedicating it “to myself”. It was not long before it was to be heard.
In 1851 Prince Gustaf became the owner of Stjernsund Palace near Askersund, which his grandfather Carl XIV Johan had bought as a place to rest on his travels between his two capitals. At the nearby manor Boo lived Baron Hugo Hamilton, head of the royal theatre, and Prince Gustaf fell in love with the Baron’s pretty, 17-year-old daughter Josephine. It has been claimed that the Prince intended to renounce his rights of succession to be able to marry Josephine, but no proof has been found for this.
There was something melancholic, something restless, something fragile about Prince Gustaf, whose health was never strong. In the summer of 1852 he travelled to Germany with his parents, sister Eugénie and brother August, but on the homebound journey he fell gravely ill aboard the ship sailing for Christiania. At the time it was said to be typhus, but more likely it was tuberculosis.
On arriving in the Norwegian capital, Prince Gustaf was carried to the newly completed Royal Palace where he died on 24 September, aged 25. With the exception of his great-nephew King Haakon VII he is the only royal to die at the Palace. His death nearly crushed Princess Eugénie, who had a breakdown she never really recovered from.
His elder brother Carl’s only son was born later that autumn, but died in infancy, leaving the succession to Oscar I’s third son. One can only guess at what sort of king Gustaf would have been. As a young man he was certainly no democrat, opposing the freedom of the press and democratic elections. We can only speculate on whether the history of Sweden and Norway would have taken a different turn if Carl XV had been succeeded by Gustaf V rather than Oscar II in 1872.

What to see: The Primate’s Palace, Bratislava

Bratislava, formerly known as Pressburg or Pozsony, is now the capital of the Republic of Slovakia, but was for a long time the capital of the Kingdom of Hungary – its kings were crowned in the city’s St Martin’s Cathedral. Since the middle of the 15th century the Archbishop of Esztergom had had his residence in a house located in the square behind the Town Hall.
The present building, known as the Primate’s Palace, was built when Archbishop Joseph Batthyany decided to pull down the old house and have a new and more modern one built. The task was given to the Austrian-born architect Melchior Hefele, who built the new, neoclassical palace between 1778 and 1781. Queen-Empress Maria Theresa had died the previous year and her son Joseph II’s transferred the Hungarian state institutions to Buda, while Batthyany’s successors later moved to Esztergom, meaning that the new Primate’s Palace never really came to be used for what it had been built for.
The palace was used to house visiting archbishops and royals, for offices, apartments and schools until the Archbishop sold it to the city of Bratislava in 1903. The old Town Hall had become too small and the Primate’s Palace was turned into the new town hall, which it remained until the 1940s, when yet another town hall was built opposite it. Today the Primate’s Palace is used for representation and as a picture gallery.
The Mirror Hall (third picture) serves as a session hall for the city representation. This hall was where on 26 December 1805, following the Battle of Austerlitz, the Peace of Pressburg was signed, whereby the Austrian Emperor ceded the Veneto, Istria, Dalmatia and Tyrol to Napoléon I. A memorial plaque in Slovak and German (fourth photo) was put up 100 years later, but unfortunately misspells Liechtenstein – it was of course not the artist Roy Lichtenstein but Sovereign Prince Johann I of Liechtenstein who signed the peace treaty on behalf of Austria, with Talleyrand signing for France.
The plaque is placed in the columned entrance vestibule (fifth photo), from where a grand staircase (sixth picture) leads up to the first floor. In the Red Drawing Room (seventh photo) are three of six valuable 17th century English tapestries which were discovered when the Primate’s Palace was renovated after the city bought it in 1903.

An interview with Mikhail Gorbachev

Twenty years after the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe, Ginny Dougary of The Times has interviewed Mikhail Gorbachev, the last (and first) President of the Soviet Union, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for allowing the peaceful revolutions. In the interview, which appeared in yesterday’s edition of the newspaper, Gorbachev talks about the events which brought down the Communist system, his views on Vladimir Putin, Barack Obama and Margaret Thatcher, the Western view of Russia and the loss of his wife Raisa Gorbacheva, who died ten years ago this month.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6816872.ece

What to see: The State Hall of the Austrian National Library, Vienna

The State Hall of the Austrian National Library is rightly considered one of the world’s most beautiful libraries and also one of the best Baroque interiors in Europe. It was built for Emperor Karl VI after plans drawn up by his court architect Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach (1665-1723). It was however Fischer von Erlach’s son Joseph Emanuel (1693-1742) who saw the plans through in the years 1723-1726.
The State Hall measures 77.7 by 14.2 metres and is 19.6 metres high, except for the cupola, which reaches nearly 30 metres to the sky. The allegorical ceiling frescoes were done by Daniel Gran and completed in 1730. The motif on the central cupola shows the apotheosis of Karl VI and beneath it is a statue of the Emperor as “Hercules Musarum” by the brothers Peter and Paul Strudel.
The nutwood bookcases hold some 200,000 books printed between 1501 and 1850. The 15,000 books placed in the library’s oval centre belonged to Prince Eugen of Savoy. Altogether 7.8 million books and other items are to be found in the collections of the Austrian National Library. The Austrian National Library’s website: www.onb.ac.at

Scottish Government wants independence referendum next year

When presenting the Scottish government’s plans for next year the day before yesterday, First Minister Axel Salmond from the populist Scottish National Party announced a forthcoming Referendum Bill to enable Scotland to hold a referendum on full independence in 2010. However, there will most likely be no referendum as the bill is unlikely to garner the necessary support in the Scottish Parliament; the Labour Party, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats having made clear their intention to vote against it.
As Tom Peterkin commented in The Scotsman yesterday, such a rejection of the bill “by opposition MSPs would enable Mr Salmond to go into the next Scottish election basing his campaign on claims that the other parties had denied the people the right to choose their constitutional future”. On the other side there is at present no majority in the Scottish people for independence from the United Kingdom.

What to see: The Parliament Building, Vienna

It was in 1857 that Emperor Franz Joseph I decided that Vienna’s so-called Glacis would be the home of new monumental buildings for parliament, university and city hall. The plan was that there would be separate buildings for the House of Deputies and the House of Lords, which at the time made up the Council of the Realm, but in the end the Danish-born architect Theophilius Hansen (1813-1891, later ennobled as Baron Theophil von Hansen) won the commission with a plan for a building incorporating both chambers in one building, which was more to the frugal Emperor’s taste.
Work began in 1874 and the building was completed in 1883. Unusually for such a late date the Austrian Parliament is in Greek neoclassical style. Hansen had spent a long time in Athens, where he and his brother, Christian Hansen, were responsible for several important buildings after the independence of Greece. The neoclassical style was often chosen for 19th century parliaments because of democracy’s Greek “roots”, but this style was quite outdated in the second half of the 19th century – when Theophil von Hansen in 1884 was asked to design a new palace in Copenhagen after the second Christiansborg had burnt down, his plans for a grand neoclassical structure were immediately put away. The grandiose, unfashionable parliament building in Vienna could perhaps be read as a metaphor of the once so great Austro-Hungarian Empire’s beginning decline.
Hansen viewed the building as a “Gesamtkunstwerk”, which meant that he was himself in charge of all decoration, furniture and fittings. He also planned the huge statue of Pallas Athene in front of the main entrance (first and second photos), but it was only executed by the sculptor Carl Kundmann eleven years after Hansen’s death. Above the entrance’s columned portico is a tympanum with a relief showing Emperor Franz Joseph granting his subjects the right to participate in the legislative process.
A rear view of a model of the building (photo 4) shows how the grand Columned Hall is placed in the middle of the building. The idea was that the members of House of Deputies and the House of Lords could meet in this hall, but in reality this rarely happened – for the simple reason that the members of the two chambers did not really want to meet. Hansen’s idea that the Emperor would perform the State Opening of Parliament by reading a Speech from the Throne in this hall also fell to the ground because Franz Joseph I declared that he “had not been educated for a constitutional monarchy” and therefore could not be expected to feel any enthusiasm for it.
The semi-circular room to the right on the model is the former House of Lords, a room which is now used by the 192 members of the National Council, the elected representatives of the Austrian people (fifth picture). The hall was hit by two bombs during WWII and rebuilt in 1956 by architects Max Fellerer and Eugen Wörle, making it one of the ugliest parliamentary chambers in Europe.
Across the corridor is the rather small room which was originally an anteroom for the House of Lords, but is now used by the Federal Council (sixth photo), which is made up of representatives of the nine provincial assemblies and has certain delaying powers over legislation.
The large chamber seen to the left on the model and in the seventh and eighth photo was formerly used by the House of Deputies and retains Hansen’s original décor. It is now used for the quite rare joint sessions of the two chambers, which are then called the Federal Assembly, and for ceremonial events such as the inauguration of a new president – were the President to be impeached, the trial would also take place in this hall.
Towards the end of the Austro-Hungarian Empire the current plenary hall was a rather noisy place. The imperial Austrian Parliament had 516 members speaking a total of eleven languages with no translations provided, German being the official language supposed to be used. While one MP spoke, for as long as he pleased, the other MPs would slam the drawers of their desks, shout, heckle him, sing, throw inkwells and play the musical instruments they had brought along. Today Austria is governed in a more polite way.