History of the Jews in Norway
aspect of history
The history of Jews in Norway dates back to the 1400s. Although there were very likely Jewish merchants, sailors and others who entered Norway during the Middle Ages, no efforts were made to establish a Jewish community. Through the early modern period, Norway, still devastated by the Black Death, was ruled by Denmark from 1536 to 1814 and then by Sweden until 1905. In 1687, Christian V rescinded all Jewish privileges, specifically banning Jews from Norway, except with a special dispensation. Jews found in the kingdom were jailed and expelled, and this ban persisted until 1851.
In 1814, when Norway gained independence from Denmark, the general ban against Jews entering the country was "continued" in the new Norwegian Constitution. Sephardim were exempt from the ban, but it appears that few applied for a letter of free passage. After tireless efforts by the poet Henrik Wergeland, politician Peder Jensen Fauchald, school principal Hans Holmboe and others, in 1851 the Norwegian parliament (the Stortinget) lifted the ban against Jews and they were awarded religious rights on a par with Christian dissenters.
The first Jewish community in Norway was established in Oslo in 1892. The community grew slowly until World War II. It was bolstered by refugees in the late 1930s and peaked at about 2,100.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “History of the Jews in Norway” is aspect of history. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through History, Jews and Norway, not as a finished interpretation.
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This entry incorporates text from “History of the Jews in Norway” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.