" (Collin, ii, 308, 309)
Note 4.
OUR COUNTRY. Written for the celebration of the Seventeenth of May
in Bergen in the year 1859. This is Norway's Constitution Day,
corresponding to our Fourth of July, the anniversary of the day in
1814 when at Eidsvold (see Note 5) a representative convention
declared the country's independence and adopted a Constitution. The
celebration day was instituted as a result of King Karl Johan's
proposals for changes in the Constitution during the years 1821 to
1824, especially in favor of an absolute veto. It was taken up in
Christiania in 1824, and spread rapidly to all the cities in the
land, was opposed by the King and omitted in 1828, taken up by the
students of the University in 1829, and soon after 1830 made by
Henrik Wergeland (see Note 78) the chief of Norwegian patriotic
festivals. In 1870 Bj?rnson conceived and put into practice the
"barnetog" or children's procession on this day, when the children
march also, each carrying a flag. Bauta, prehistoric, uncut,
narrow, tall, memorial stone, from the bronze age.
Hows, burial mounds, barrows.
Note 5.
SONG FOR NORWAY. Written in the summer of 1859 in connection
with the tale Arne, but not included in that book. The people of
Norway have adopted this poem as their national hymn, because
it is vigorous, picturesque summary of the glorious history of the
country in whose every line patriotic love vibrates.
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