A first wave of Norwegian patriotic literature was produced between 1770 and 1800, largely inspired by a growing dissatisfaction with Danish rule. Despite the stringent censorship laws upheld by the absolutist regime, poetry celebrating Norway’s individuality was relatively easy to publish, provided the poem or volume was dedicated to the Danish king or crown prince. There were, however, exceptions. The staging of Johan Nordahl Brun’s history play Einer Tambeskielver (1772) at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen was famously prohibited as some of Brun’s lines were deemed inappropriate and even seditious (“And peace the land shall have, but first let us sail for Denmark”). The self-same year, Brun’s drinking verse Norges Skaal (“Toast to Norway”) suffered a similar fate, when the first print was confiscated on account of its perceived revolutionary, anti-royal content. Also known as For Norge, Kiempers Fødeland (“For Norway, birthplace of giants”), after its first line, the song nevertheless acquired cult status in the early 19th century as the country’s unofficial national anthem, with Henrik Wergeland hailing it as the “Norwegian Marseillaise”.

Brun convened with other Norwegian students residing in Copenhagen at the Norwegian Society (Det Norske Selskab), a literary gentlemen’s club established in 1772. Toasting and singing the praise of the fatherland were part of the society’s conviviality. The patriotic poems circulating during these festive occasions already contained the main ingredients that would define the National-Romanticist literature of the subsequent century: the glorification of Norway’s sublime natural landscape; the veneration of the free, independent peasant as the personification of the national character; and the idealization of the medieval past during which Norway was still a proud and independent kingdom, with due reference to the Icelandic sagas (above all the Heimskringla) and Norse mythology. The combination of these three key tropes can for instance be found in Simon Olaus Wolff’s 1822 Hvor herligt er mit Fødeland (“How magnificent is my fatherland”), which invokes memories of the mythical saga age, while “the sons of the mountain” still carrying the mark of “the ancient warrior race”.

After the end of Danish rule in 1814, the production of patriotic poetry increased significantly. The country’s liberal constitution, maintained under Swedish suzerainty, became an important source for patriotic pride and national identification, endowing the celebration of freedom and progress with a new political tinge. Thus, in Henrik Anker Bjerregaard’s Sønner av Norge (“Sons of Norway”) neither “the birds in the forest” nor “the waves of the North Sea” are as free as the “man from Norway” and his “self-given laws”. In more radical verse, political independence from Sweden was demanded. The celebration of Constitution Day on 17 May, which usually included choral singing of fedrelandssanger (“fatherland songs”), was looked upon with suspicion by the Swedish King Charles III John for that reason.

In a contentious process, literary ties with Denmark eroded in the 1820s and 1830s. In 1829 a Sangsamling for norske Selskabskredse (“Song collection for Norwegian social circles”) appeared, intended to replace the many Danish songbooks of that type. It, however, still contained a considerable number of Danish items, especially in the genres of the drinking song and the festive song; but the section “fedrelandssanger” consisted mainly of older and new Norwegian songs, including Norges Skaal, Hvor herligt er mit Fødeland, and Sønner av Norge. That last song had earned its author, Henrik Bjerregaard, the first place in a competition for a new (still unofficial) national anthem, initiated in 1819 by the Selskapet for Norges Vel (Norwegian Society for Development). Although it would be in use as such until the early 20th century, primarily played during more formal occasions, it was soon surpassed in popularity by Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson’s Ja, vi elsker dette landet (“Yes, we love this country”). Still Norway’s de facto national anthem today, it was first performed on Constitution Day 1864 by the Christiania student choir, in celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Constitution. Bjørnson had written the first version of the song in 1859 in reaction to growing tensions between Norway and Sweden, following plans to appoint a viceroy for Norway (which was seen as an impediment to Norway’s sovereignty). This original version contained a verse directed to King Charles IV, asking him to respect Norway’s independence within the union. In a subsequent version Bjørnson removed this verse and, in the context of Denmark’s dispute with Prussia over Schleswig-Holstein, added two new ones that expressed the necessity for Pan-Scandinavian solidarity, asserting that the three Scandinavian nations should support each other in times of need.

Scandinavism, politically impotent though it was, would continue to inspire patriotic verse. The Norwegian Student Choral Society (Den norske Studentersangforening), established in 1845 during the heyday of Scandinavian student meetings, had a separate section in its songbook of 1851 of “Scandinavian songs”, including Danish classics like Carl Ploug’s Længe var Nordens herlige Stamme (“Long was the magnificent trunk of the North”) and H.C. Andersen’s Vi er eet Folk, Vi kalles Skandinaver (“We are one people, we are Scandinavians”), but also original Norwegian contributions by Andreas Munch, Jørgen Moe, and Johan Sebastian Welhaven. After the first Nordic Music Festival (Den nordiske Musikkfesten) of 1888, held in Copenhagen as part of a larger Nordic version of the World Fair, Scandinavist cultural and academic cooperation flourished again in the 1890s, involving student choir exchanges.

The resurgence of Scandinavism intersected with a growing resistance against the union with Sweden, giving new prominence to older patriotic poetry such as Bjørnson’s Olav Trygvason (a historical ballad, 1861) or Ivar Aasen’s Nordmannen (“The Norseman”), which also came to hold special status for the Landsmål movement. In his final version of Ja, vi elsker dette landet, published in 1870, Bjørnson had put extra emphasis on the Norwegian people’s love of freedom, for which it would be prepared to take up arms. Famously, Ja, vi elsker dette landet was sung by Swedish socialists in 1905 to express their solidarity with Norway’s claim for independence.

After the dissolution of the union had become a reality, the production of patriotic poetry significantly decreased. In the 1913 songbook of the Student Choral Society, the number of fatherland songs had dropped dramatically.