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Karl Johans gate, Oslo’s main street, with the Royal Palace on top of the hill, known as Bellevuehøyden (Bellevue Hill) on 17 May.

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Today, 17 May, Norway celebrates it’s National Day / Constitution Day, with the traditional school children’s parades, marching bands, entertainment, parties and cultural events all over the country of five million people.

The celebration of the National Day is a major annual tourist attraction in Oslo.

Norwegians all over the world marks the National Day – one of the biggest events took place in London, where some 7000 Norwegian expats joined in the celebrations.

The Norwegian Royal Family greets the people from the balcony of the Royal Palace in Oslo on 17 May 2016. From right to left: HM King Harald, 79, HM Queen Sonja, 78, HRH Crown Princess Mette-Marit, 41, HRH Princess Ingrid Alexandra, 12, and HRH Crown Prince Haakon Magnus, 41. HH Prince Sverre Magnus, 10, was also present. The Queen and the Crown Princess is wearing traditional Norwegian national costume, a bunad, while the King and the Crown Prince, as always on such occasions, dons a morning jacket and a top hat. Royal Court official photo by Terje Pedersen / NTB scanpix / The Royal Court.

This year, a record number of 119 schools from within the City of Oslo, and more than 60,000 children took part in the parade.

The Crown Prince, Crown Princess two of their three children, Princes Ingrid Alexandra and Prince Sverre Magnus, outside their home, Skaugum Estate, in Asker, west of Oslo, on the morning of 17 May 2016, greeting the children’s parade from their local community. The family dog, Milly Kakao, was also present. Official Royal Court photo by Audun Braastad / NTB scanpix / The Royal Court.

The following was published on the Royal Court’s website – www.kongehuset.no, today:

For more than 100 years, the Royal Family has greeted the Constitution Day children’s parade in Oslo from the balcony of the Royal Palace. 

The very first celebration of May 17th is thought to have taken place in Trondheim in 1815, one year after the Constitution was drafted and adopted by the National Assembly at Eidsvoll. In 1836 the Storting celebrated May 17th for the first time and this is considered to be the date on which 17 May officially became Constitution Day in Norway.

King Carl Johan, who ruled over Norway and Sweden from 1818 to 1844, regarded the May 17th celebrations – and Norway’s independent Constitution – as revolutionary acts and a provocation against Sweden. In 1828 he prohibited the celebration of Constitution Day. However, following the death of King Carl Johan in 1844, there was a change of strategy. In 1845, his successor, King Oscar I attended the May 17th celebrations, and greeted the banner parade from the palatial estate, where the Royal Family stayed during visits to Christiania.

King Oscar I was also the first king to wave from the Palace balcony, albeit not on 17 May, but on 26 July 1849, when the Royal Palace in Christiania was finally completed.

Marking special days or festivals with celebrations involving parades with banners, music and singing was common in the past. A school headmaster, Peter Qvam, is thought to have come up with the idea of holding the first children’s parade in Norway in 1869. Qvam was a friend of the author Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson. Both argued keenly in favour of organising a children’s parade to celebrate Constitution Day.

The following year, in 1870, the first children’s parade marched to the Palace, stopping to sing the royal anthem beneath the Palace balcony.

Only boys, some 1,200 in all and most of them from Qvam’s school in Christiania, took part in the first children’s parade. It was not until 1889 that girls, pupils from Mrs Ragna Nielsen’s school, were allowed to join the parade. Møllergata school was the first school to have its own band in 1902. The current celebration of the graduates-to-be from upper secondary school dates back to 1905, when the graduating class took part in the May 17th parade for the first time.

It was King Haakon and Queen Maud who introduced the custom of greeting the children’s parade from the Palace balcony in 1906. The custom has been upheld ever since. The only exceptions were in 1910, when the Royal Family was in England for the funeral of Queen Maud’s father, King Edward VII, and during World War II from 1940 to1944.

By 17 May 1945 Crown Prince Olav had returned from London, where he had lived in exile during the war years. That year he was in position on the Palace balcony to greet the 202,000 schoolchildren, who were once again allowed to celebrate 17 May after five years of occupation.

Each year the Royal Family gathers to greet the children’s parade from the Palace balcony. Her Royal Highness Princess Ingrid Alexandra is the fifth generation to honour this tradition.

Learn more at www.kongehuset.no

The constitution of Norway was signed on 17 May 1814 at The Eidvoll House, north of Oslo, by the Constitutional Assembly. This famous 285 x 400 centimeter oil painting by artist Oscar Arnold Wergeland (1844-1910) from 1885, called “Eidsvold 1814”, today hangs behind the Speaker’s chair in the Assembly chamber Norway’s parliament, The Storting.

The painting shows Christian Magnus Falsen, the Constitutional Assembly’s president – and known as “Father of the Constitution” – reading out the document, while the assembly’s secretary, Wilhelm Frimann Koren Christie, sits next to him on the right. Only 70 of the 112 assemblymen are shown on the painting.

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