Was there any specific factor that made them feel distinct from their immediate neighbours?

15 comments

  1. Nationalism as we understand it, is very much a modern concept—I recommend reading Benedict Anderson’s terrific book, _Imagined Communities_(1983) for a good historical work on the modern national identity—tied intrinsically to liberalism and generally what we can call “bourgeos ideology.” Contrary to earlier forms of nationalism, where it mainly was concerned with some direct systems of domination and states, modern nationalism is tied to an understanding of a socio-cultural community.

    In Denmark, this idea, as in most of Europe, really started to be widely spread during the 18th and 19th centuries. Particularly the early 19th century, the so-called “Golden Age,” was when nationalism really flourished and spread into the wider population. It culminated with the 1st Schleswig War, against Holsteinian German rebels, during which, the first liberal constitution of Denmark was passed into law, in 1849. Danish nationality came to be defined somewhat in opposition to German identity, and during the same period, a strong movement of “Scandinavianism” developed, positing a special brotherly relation between the three Scandinavian people, and further coming to define Danishness as distinctly Nordic or Scandinavian, opposed to the central-European Germans.

    After the 1st Schleswig War, nationalism was the name of the game, and the drive for furthering the establishment of a true nation-state helped drive Denmark into the 2nd Schleswig War, against Prussia and Austria. It was a stupid war, provoked by Danish nationalist ambitions, violating international treaties and basically inviting Bismarck to attack. After the disastrous defeat, Denmark however _did_ end up as a nation-state, though not of the sort that the liberals had wanted. Denmark had been cut down to size, and a large share of Danish speakers now found themselves to be under German rule. This led the still developing nationalism to take an inwards turn, and the politics changed, with Denmark entering a 50 year period of reaction. The new motto became “What outward is lost, must inward be won,” and shifting governments ruled Denmark through decrees and _basically_ put the not-quite democratic parliament out of commission for half a century, reducing it to a mere formal institution. It was a period defined by reaction and harsh laws, by purposefully inflicted hunger, and brutal police repression of the young socialist movement.

  2. 1847/1848 brought a lot of national feelings together along with the first push to form a proper German Democracy – and a failed revolution that failed utterly. But these feelings already were built on a feeling of togetherness in the fight against Napoleon that a lot of principalities brought together. However prior to 1848 it was against the interest of the ruling nobles that their peoples would identify with anything else than their part of the world.
    1871 and the victory a combined German force over Napoleon III Led to the “unification from above” by the Prussian Chancellor and the Prussian king as opposed to a people’s unification some quarter century prior.

  3. Actually, I don’t know, but it was a very long time ago, perhaps before our era. Geradot and Ptolemy wrote about my people. I know for sure that in the middle of the first millennium we already existed. We accepted Islam in the 12th century. I am Bashkir. Bashkirs are an Eastern European people of Turkic origin (partly Finno-Ugric).

  4. The first really explicit example from our side I can think of on a larger scale, would be from the later half of the 900s, where King Harald Bluetooth raised runestones in Jelling to commemorate his parents and that he christened the Danes. But from oral tradition, we know that the notion of ‘Dane’ is quite a bit older than that, even if its scope was largely limited to Zealand back then. There are older written references than the runestones of Jelling, such as Frankic sources of the 800s referring to “Kings of the Danes”. But the idea of a people called Danes back then doesn’t translate properly to what you would understand as a national identity now

  5. In modern time, probably after the napoleonic wars when we became independent from denmark, but was awarded to sweden (probably to compensate for their loss of finland). A time period that is really speacial then is the last part of the 1800s when there was nation building on high levels.. With the nations most famous authors etc. looking back to the time when norway was a great power.. back to the 1200s and earlier..One of the really big thing making the distinction regarding the nationality/nationalism was polar expedition. They are crucial in the way to distinct norway. Probably the most famous one being [Roald Amundsen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roald_Amundsen) who beat the brit Scott to the south pole. An expedition even the norwegian king put some of his own/private money into. Just think of britains history as the empire that never sets and [Scott being beaten by Amundsen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amundsen%27s_South_Pole_expedition) in 1911..Today 3 x polar explorers are among the very few non-royals to have streets or places named after themselves in the centre-centre of the capital. Going from being a puppet state under the danish crown to beat the british to be the first to the south pole… It’s the epithome of the creation of the national identity.

  6. Like all things in Belgium, the answer depends on which side of the language border you look on ^^

    Modern Belgium is made up of two big-ass groups: the Dutch-speaking Flemish and the French-speaking Walloons. In the east, there’s a small German-speaking community, and in Brussels, the prevailing rule is “ethnicity? lol #yolooooo”.

    In Flanders, you’d probably get a lot of people saying it was the Battle of the Golden Spurs (11 July 1302). There’s also a very romantic story that gets told/weaponized about Flemish soldiers in WW1 not being able to understand the orders of their French-speaking superiors and losing their lives as a result of it.

    In Wallonia, I can’t really put a finger on any specific event that would awaken some sort of national consciousness. Walloons were the Romans of the Burgundian Netherlands. There’s always been a Walloon Movement (since the late 1800’s) and over the years the aims of the movement have shifted from out-and-out “No Dutch, French Only” to “Ok guys let’s just join France” to “OK we’ll live with you Flemish on your territory, but ONLY if we can speak French.” (And of course Flanders goes #lolnahfam. It’s a somewhat delicate balance.)

    Brussels? Historically the city belonged to the Duchy of Brabant and was Dutch-speaking, but modern Brussels is very French-speaking (mostly) and you can basically find someone from everywhere here. The Region was created in 1989 (?), so I guess that? Bruxellois isn’t really an ethnicity these days, you can be Bruxellois from Day 1 and have roots from basically anywhere.

  7. The idea behind a unified German state is really old, but got a lot of traction during the wars against Napoleon in the 18th century and later in the 1848 revolution.

    But when the Germans as a nationality formed is somewhat unclear, some point to the Battle in the teuteburg forest in the late days of the roman empire as the founding point of a german nation, others think that Karl the great/Charlemagne with his conquest and formation of the east frankish realm and later the Holy Roman Empire laid the foundation of a German nation

    Especially Kaiser Otto the first or Otto the German or Otto the Great is often pinpointed as the first German Emperor in the late 900s

  8. In Italy it’s in the 11th century that people begin to refer to themselves italian, and start unifying together the various terms. It’s when people start to talk about certain commonalities within the people of the peninsula, and when literature and cultural productions start to diffuse throughout the peninsula and when certain languages start to adopt a certain role of lingua franca.

    All those dynamics settle the dust only in the 1300s

    Of course as TonyGaze mentioned true nationalism is a modern invention in any country.

  9. In 1555 our protestant priest Primož Trubar first used “Slovenci” as a general name for people in the area of modern Slovenia. He actually denoted which regional identities fit under this moniker. The one that makes me question if his use was the same as modern is the fact he also included Croats under it. So he might have used it as the word for Slavs.

    And actual nationalistic thought was, as for almost every other European nation, developed during 1848 revolution.

  10. It’s been claimed that England as a nation and a people has been identifiable for sometime around 730 when Venerable Bede wrote Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (Ecclesiastical History of the English People) which helped define English identity and is the earliest written evidence of England and the English being referred to as a nation.

    The Battle of Maldon poem (991) also references England and it’s people as a nation.

    William of Malmesbury (English historian, c. 1095 – c. 1143) laments “”That fatal day for England, the sad destruction of our dear country” in reference to the Battle of Hastings. He also lamented “England has become the habitation of outsiders and the dominion of foreigners. Today, no Englishman is earl, bishop, or abbot, and newcomers gnaw away at the riches and very innards of England; nor is there any hope for an end of this misery”.

    So we can that the Anglo-Saxons may have already begun to identify as a distinct ethnicity and a nation sometime around 730-991 and by 1066 at the latest, interestingly England had only unified around 927.

  11. It’s a hard question to answer. The earliest date you could argue for something along the lines of “Scotland” would be in the ninth century when the Gaels and Picts merged, but even then a substantial amount of what is now Scotland would have been Norse in some islands and the far north, Britons in the south west and Angles/part of the Kingdom of Northumbria in the south east. As time went on these areas became part of Scotland, with the inevitable shuffling of border towns/villages between Scotland and England too.

    Wikipedia reckons that the wars with England in the twelth and thirteenth centuries “started the growth of a Scottish national consciousness”. Maybe this is the definition of a national identity – “well, we’re certainly not one of *them*!”

  12. I don’t really know. It’s not easy to give an answer. Lithuania was mentioned in 1009 for the first time. That country was formed in 1236 by Mindaugas. During PLC times, most Lithuanians were polonized. Russian Empire annexed Lithuanian lands in 1795 during the third partition of PLC.

    It could be debated that distinct nationality was formed in the 19th century. Lithuanian press were banned after 1863-1864 uprising by Russian empire. A book-carriers secretly gave people books written in Lithuanian language. Lithuanian newspapers such as Aušra and Varpas were aired in late 1800s. Keep in mind, this was a goal to promote Lithuanian language and keep the language alive.

  13. This is a damn near impossible question to answer, and something that historians frequently disagree on. On one side you’ve got historians who argue that prior to nationalism (1800s) there were no such thing as national identity, then on the other side you’ve got people who argue that nationalism is built upon pre-existing notions of identities. I’m a historian of the latter camp, and will answer accordingly.

    A more precise name for national identity post 1800s would be nation state-identity. Although that is also insufficient imo. Nevertheless, national identities were clearly a thing throughout the entirety of the Dano-Norwegian union. We know this due to the way the Crown spoke about its subjects as distinct cultural groups – making sure to adress each identity within the realm accordingly. For example the Danish king made a point of adressing Norwegian peasants as extraordinarily loyal. Ludvig Holberg wrote of the Norwegian people as those who make the best admirals in the world, also suggesting that Norwegians were considered distinct to Danes – which also suggests that Danish was an identity by then (late 1600s). These are just two of plenty of examples of that time period. Prior to the 1500s was a time of neglect of the Norwegian subjects, clearly shown in Norwegian disdain for the Crown and Danes at the time, who were viewed as something of an external occupant that were too far removed to understand the needs of Norwegian peasants. It’s worth noting that contrary to popular belief in Norway today, this disdain was never anywhere near the idea of indepence. The idea of a state based on the Norwegian national identity didn’t exist back then. Anyway, the disdain shows a sense of otherness felt by the majority of Norwegians at the time towards Danes, suggesting distinct identities in the time period between roughly 1400-1537. Even before that we have Icelandic sagas describing a distinct – although vague – Norwegian identity from around year 1000 and onwards. By the 1200s Icelanders would consider themselves to be Norwegians. For those out of the loop on Norwegian history, Iceland is considered our “memory”, as mainland Norway didn’t care to write anything down for hundreds of years. So what Icelanders said and wrote is key to understanding early Norwegian history.

    The sagas on the Norwegian unification in about 870 does not mention a national identity, but rather a unification of regional tribes (and identities) such as Ryger (Rogaland), Horder (Hordaland), Trønde (Trøndelag) etc. So by late 800s there was arguably no such thing as a Norwegian identity. Foreign sources (non-Nordic) from the 900s interstingly write of Norwegians from the same time period as “of the Norwegian land” rather than being Norwegian in the same way they would call a person from Rogaland a Ryger just a hundred years earlier. Suggesting that a Norwegian identity wasn’t known to them during the 900s. However within the Nordics it seems as if such an identity had already caught on among the elite. The Jelling Stones raised around 950 iirc tell of Harald Bluetooths successfull conquest of Denmark and Norway, and succesfull christianisation of the Danes. Imo this suggests that at the very least the Danish identity was a thing by then, and the omission of “Norwegians” here could be understood as a sort of negative proof of its existence. Also, the significant downturn in mentions of older tribal identities such as Ryger during the 900s could be understood as it being replaced by another identity.

    **TL;DR**

    So to answer your question, the people started considering themselves to be Norwegians gradually from mid 900s until the 1200s, when Icelandic sources tell of a distinct Norwegian identity. In the early 1400s we can for certain map out a nationwide feeling of “Norwegianness”

  15. *Laughs in Belgian*

    Well this won’t be easy. **Let’s begin with Belgium itself.**

    The Belgian identity didn’t spontaneously appear but was created by the Belgian government after our independence in 1830. There had been some idea of a common history and identity among intellectuals however, as early as the 1700s. This was mainly because the Austrian Netherlands essentially functioned as an independent state within the Austrian empire. As such historians began to create books about the history of the Southern Netherlands as a separate entity. At least that’s what they told me in uni last year.

    So the ‘idea’ of being Belgian was something that sort of existed in some form during the late 1700s among intellectuals. But actual Belgian nationalism and identity only became a thing after the 1830s.

    **Then we of course have Flemish identity.**

    The first time the term Flemish was used to denote people *outside* of the County of Flanders was during the Burgundian and Spanish time. The Spanish called all Dutch speakers *Flamencos* so from this point on when people refer to Flemings they’re not always talking about people from Brugge or Gent. By the time Belgium became independent Flanders had already become a synonym of the Dutch-speaking part of the southern Netherlands.

    But Flemish identity itself only began *after* the creation of Belgian nationalism and identity. It was originally meant to support Belgian nationalism. The famous author Hendrik Conscience, often credited as the founder of the Flemish Movement, was pro-Belgian and wanted to convince the Dutch-speaking Belgians to join the retoric of the new nation. This backfired spectacularly as Flemish nationalists who had become radicalised kidnapped his work and turned it into a pro-Flemish and anti-Belgian story. The fact that the government kept on refusing to acknowledge Dutch as an official language quite obviously did *not* help the situation.

    Flemish nationalists will **always** refer to the Battle of the Gulden Spurs as *the* defining moment of Flemish identity. The day where the proud and simple Flemish peasants defeated the evil French knights in their shining armour. Even though the French were supported by Brabant, which now makes up 1/3 of Flanders (including the capital Brussels).

    I’m sorry for any Walloons here, but AFAIK there is not really a Walloon identity? So I don’t really know what to asnwer for them.

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