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:
“[Men say:] “Don’t you know that we are your natural protectors?” But what is a woman afraid of on a lonely road after dark? The bears and wolves are all gone; there is nothing to be afraid of now but our natural protectors.”
—Frances A. Griffin, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 19, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“In history the great moment is, when the savage is just ceasing to be a savage, with all his hairy Pelasgic strength directed on his opening sense of beauty;—and you have Pericles and Phidias,—and not yet passed over into the Corinthian civility. Everything good in nature and in the world is in that moment of transition, when the swarthy juices still flow plentifully from nature, but their astrigency or acridity is got out by ethics and humanity.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Yet poetry, though the last and finest result, is a natural fruit. As naturally as the oak bears an acorn, and the vine a gourd, man bears a poem, either spoken or done. It is the chief and most memorable success, for history is but a prose narrative of poetic deeds.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)