Norway saw the establishment of its first university only as late as 1811. After some debate, the relatively small town of Christiania – modern-day Oslo – was chosen as its location. The university was hard fought for, as Frederick VI, king of the Dano-Norwegian union, had long been opposed to the founding of an institution that could potentially function as a centrifugal force. This apprehension was overtaken by events one year after the university had opened its doors in 1813, as Norway, until then under Danish suzerainty, was ceded to Sweden. In the new political constellation, Norway gained far-reaching independence, only sharing its king and foreign policy with Sweden, and keeping its (at that time revolutionary) liberal constitution.

Before 1813, young men from the higher classes had received their education, first and foremost, at the University of Copenhagen, a brain-drain that hampered the development of cultural and intellectual life in Norway. This constraint was felt until well into the 19th century, as the Copenhagen-educated upper class of state officials (the so-called embettsmenn) retained their strong ties with Denmark, even under Swedish suzerainty. Danish culture was, in their perception, equated with high culture, Norwegian culture, consequently, with low culture. Norwegian theatres, for example, were dominated by Danish actors and directors until the 1850s, and the “boorish” (East) Norwegian dialects were deemed fundamentally unfit for the stage.

Thus, the mere existence of the University of Christiania had a nation-building effect by making domestic higher education possible. Its alumni would play a major role in the articulation of a Norwegian national identity through the study of the nation’s history, culture, law, geography and language. Thus, the so-called “migration theory” propounded by Rudolf Keyser and P.A. Munch framed the Norwegians as the Scandinavian Urvolk, which had settled on the peninsula well before the ancestors of the Swedes and Danes. (In time, this theory was debunked by Ludvig Kristensen Daa and Ernst Sars.)

In the fields of philology and folklore studies, prominent figures like Carl Richard Unger, Steinar Skjøtt, Gustav Storm and Sophus Bugge made important contributions to the survey of the country’s vernacular culture and the publication of both scholarly and popular editions of medieval manuscripts like the Eddas and Snorri’s King’s Sagas. Of special note, also, is the mapping of Norway’s geography. Baltazar Mathias Keilhau charted the country’s central mountain range Jotunheimen (the name, literally meaning “Home of the Giants”, was suggested by the poet O.A. Vinje, who took it from Nordic mythology); expeditions to the polar regions had similar national significance, not least because of the heroism surrounding adventurer-scientists like Fridtjof Nansen and Roald Amundsen.