The guy on the horse
You won’t find many equestrian statues in Norway. One of the few is situated in front of the Royal Castle in Oslo. It is King Karl Johan sitting up there on the horse, looking out on the town and the main street which is named after him.
From the top of our head, most Norwegians will tell you that he was Swedish. Actually, he was French (a fact that is well known to us, when we come to think of it…). As the son of a middle class lawyer, Jean Baptiste Bernadotte was born in Pau in France in 1763. He entered the military forces and rose to the ranks in time to be one of Napoleon’s most succesful generals, until he in 1810, by one of historys more curious coincidences, was asked to become the heir to the Swedish throne.
As Napoleon’s luck turned, Bernadotte – now as the new crown prince Karl Johan and the real man in charge – rapidly maneuvered Sweden into the English/Russian/Preussian alliance against France, while Denmark unhappily had to stick with Napoleon. Norway, at the time being under Danish domain, was at the table, and the Danish king lost. Bernadotte/Karl Johan got Norway as his reward, and after a few months of excited independence, under which the Norwegian constitution was made, Norway had to join Sweden as a junior partner in a new union (until 1905).
Karl Johan became a quite popular king, even though he never spoke Swedish, and of course not any Norwegian. He died in 1844, a few years before the castle that he ordered was finished. If he could turn his head up there on the horse, he would have seen it…