History
After the Kalmar War broke out in 1611, the Danish king tried to revive the volunteer leidang, with dire results. As the Norwegian citizenry had not been armed or trained in the use of arms for nearly three centuries they were not able to fight. Soldiers deserted or were captured. The soldiers had to participate in military drills, while providing supplementary labor to the local community when not in active service. Although the army still did not represent the whole nation, as city residents were exempt from military duty, 1628 is generally regarded by historians as the year when the modern Norwegian army was born.
During the war of 1643–45, the Norwegian army performed well while its Danish counterpart flopped. As a result, large areas had to be ceded to Sweden. This led the Danish king to invite German mercenaries to coach and command the Danish-Norwegian Armed Forces: a decision echoing down the centuries in traces of Germanic vocabulary used by the Norwegian military to this day. In 2008 the army faced criticism from within for only being able to defend only one district in Oslo in the event of a national invasion.
Read more about this topic: Norwegian Army
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“What has history to do with me? Mine is the first and only world! I want to report how I find the world. What others have told me about the world is a very small and incidental part of my experience. I have to judge the world, to measure things.”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)
“It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.”
—Henry James (1843–1916)
“Both place and time were changed, and I dwelt nearer to those parts of the universe and to those eras in history which had most attracted me.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)