A brief history of Judaism in Norway

Norway’s small Jewish community has come a long way from Article Two M. Michael Brady Asker, Norway Historically, Judaism was long repressed in Norway. In 1687, King Christian V (of Denmark and Norway) enacted the Norwegian Law in which it was stated that Jews could stay in Norway only with a Royal Letter of Safe Conduct. The Second Article of the Norwegian Constitution of 1814 furthered that restriction and tightened it by banning Jews outright, with no legal recourse, as to a Letter of Safe Conduct. In 1845, a “Nonconformist Law” (permitting worship not conforming to the constitutional specification of Evangelical Lutheranism as the state religion) granted religious freedom to Christian faiths but not to non-Christian ones. For Jews, the constitu