Drawing on examples from Danish and Norwegian history, this article traces the ideological origins of Nordic democracy. It takes as its starting point the observation that constitutional theories of democracy were rather weak in the Nordic countries until the mid-twentieth century; instead, a certain Nordic tradition of popular constitutionalism rooted in a romantic and organic idea of the people was central to the ideological foundations of Nordic democracy. This tradition developed alongside agrarian mobilization in the nineteenth century, and it remained a powerful ideological reference-point through most of the twentieth century, exercising, for instance, an influence on debates about European integration in the 1960s and 1970s. However, this tradition was gradually overlaid by more institutional understandings of democracy from the mid-twentieth century onwards, with the consequence that the direct importance of this folk’ish heritage declined towards the late twentieth century. Nevertheless, clear echoes of this heritage remain evident in some contemporary Nordic varieties of populism, as well as in references to the concept of folkestyre as the pan-Scandinavian synonym for democracy.

中文翻译：

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北欧民主中的民间遗产：丹麦和挪威的例子

本文以丹麦和挪威历史为例，追溯北欧民主的意识形态渊源。它以观察到二十世纪中叶北欧国家的民主宪政理论相当薄弱为出发点；相反，植根于浪漫和有机的人民观念的某种北欧大众宪政传统是北欧民主意识形态基础的核心。这一传统与 19 世纪的农业动员一起发展起来，在 20 世纪的大部分时间里，它仍然是一个强有力的意识形态参考点，例如，对 1960 年代和 1970 年代有关欧洲一体化的辩论产生了影响。然而，从 20 世纪中叶开始，这一传统逐渐被对民主的更多制度性理解所覆盖，结果这一民间遗产的直接重要性在 20 世纪后期下降。尽管如此，在一些当代北欧民粹主义以及泛斯堪的纳维亚民主同义词“folkestyre”的概念中，这种传统的明显回声仍然很明显。