Earning the Vote with Honour. Suffrage, Economic Independence, and Gender in Norway, ca. 1814–1919

The Norwegian Constitution of 1814, written after Napoleon’s defeat, was inspired by American and French suffrage laws; it reserved the right to vote for men who paid land taxes and high-level civil servants. The reasoning was that these men could act independently and for the common good, thus receiving trust and esteem from other eligible citizens. Consequently, to paraphrase the British sociologist T. H. Marshall, political rights in Norway were not secondary to civil rights. Economic and moral measures were also used to define honour among men on whom the vote depended. Nevertheless, Norway was the first among Nordic countries to remove an article from the constitution that suspended the vote for citizens who enjoy “or within the last year have enjoyed support for the poor.”