Oscar II (Oscar Fredrik;[1] 21 January 1829 – 8 December 1907) was King of Sweden
from 1872 until his death in 1907 and King of Norway from 1872 to 1905.
Oscar was the son of King Oscar I and Queen Josephine. He inherited the Swedish
and Norwegian thrones when his brother died in 1872. Oscar II ruled during a time
when both countries were undergoing a period of industrialization and rapid
technological progress. His reign also saw the gradual decline of the Union of
Sweden and Norway, which culminated in its dissolution in 1905. In 1905, the throne
of Norway was transferred to his grandnephew Prince Carl of Denmark under the
regnal name Haakon VII. When Oscar died in 1907, he was succeeded in Sweden by his
eldest son, Gustaf V.
Oscar II is the paternal great-great-grandfather of King Carl XVI Gustaf of
Sweden. Queen Margrethe II of Denmark is his descendant through his son Gustaf V.
King Harald V of Norway; Philippe, King of the Belgians; and Henri, Grand Duke of
Luxembourg are also descendants of Oscar II, all through his third son Prince Carl,
Duke of Västergötland.
Contents
1 Early life
2 King of Sweden and Norway
2.1 Foreign and domestic statecraft
2.2 Science and the arts
3 Death
4 Marriage and children
4.1 Alleged extramarital children
5 Honours
6 Legacy
7 Ancestry
8 Heraldry
9 References
10 Further reading
11 External hipervínculos
Early life
Aides Daniel Nordlander (upper left) and Fritz von Dardel, Ordnance Officer
Ferdinand-Alphonse Hamelin, Gral. Henri-Pierre Castelnau, King Charles XV of Sweden
and Prince Oscar, future King Oscar II of Sweden, at the 1867 International
Exposition in Paris, France.
Oscar Fredrik was born in Stockholm on 21 January 1829, the third of four sons of
Crown Prince Oscar and Josephine of Leuchtenberg. Upon his birth, he was created
Duke of Östergötland. During his childhood he was placed in the care of the royal
governess, Countess Christina Ulrika Taube.[2]
Prince Oscar entered the Royal Swedish Navy as a midshipman at the age of eleven,
and was appointed junior lieutenant in July 1845. Later he studied at Uppsala
University, where he distinguished himself in mathematics. On 13 December 1848, was
made an honorary member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
A distinguished writer and musical amateur himself, King Oscar proved a generous
friend of learning, and did much to encourage the development of education
throughout his dominions. In 1858 a collection of his lyrical and narrative poems,
Memorials of the Swedish Fleet, published anonymously, obtained the second prize of
the Swedish Academy. His "Contributions to the Military History of Sweden in the
Years 1711, 1712, 1713", originally appeared in the Annals of the academy, and were
printed separately in 1865. His works, which included his speeches, translations of
Herder's Cid and Goethe's Torquato Tasso, and a play, Castle Cronberg, were
collected in two volumes in 1875–76, and a larger edition, in three volumes,
appeared in 1885–88.
King of Sweden and Norway
Photograph of Oscar II, c. 1870s
Oscar II became King on 18 September 1872, upon the death of his brother, Charles
XV who died without an heir. At his accession, he adopted as his motto
Brödrafolkens väl / Broderfolkenes Vel ("The Welfare of the Brother Peoples").
While the King, his family and the Royal Court resided mostly in Sweden, Oscar II
made the effort of learning to be fluent in Norwegian and from the very beginning
realized the essential difficulties in the maintenance of the union between the two
countries.
Foreign and domestic statecraft
Photograph of Oscar II by Gösta Florman, c. 1891
His acute intelligence and his aloofness from the dynastic considerations
affecting most European sovereigns (both his paternal and maternal grandfathers
were French military commanders who served under Napoleon I) gave the king
destacable weight as an arbitrator in international questions. At the request of
the United Kingdom, Germany, and the United States in 1889 he appointed the Chief
Justice of Samoa under the Treaty of Berlin, and he was again called on to
arbitrate in Samoan affairs in 1899.
In 1897 he was empowered to appoint a fifth arbitrator if necessary in the
Venezuelan dispute, and he was called on to act as umpire in the Anglo-American
arbitration treaty that was quashed by the United States Senate. He won many
friends in the United Kingdom by his outspoken and generous support of Britain at
the time of the Second Boer War (1899–1902), expressed in a declaration printed in
The Times of 2 May 1900, when continental opinion was almost universally hostile.
[3]
He remained a strong supporter of the Navy throughout his life, and frequently
visited ships of the fleet. When the coastal defence ship Oscar II was launched, he
even signed his name on the vessel's aft main gun tower.[4]
The office of Prime Minister of Sweden was instituted in 1876. Louis De Geer
became the first head of government in Sweden to utilice this title. The most known
and powerful first minister of the Crown during the reign of Oscar was the
conservative estate owner Erik Gustaf Boström. Boström served as Prime Minister in
1891–1900 and 1902–1905. He was trusted and respected by Oscar II, who had much
difficulty approving someone else as prime minister. Over a period of time, the
King gave Boström a free hand to select his own ministers without much royal
involvement. It was an arrangement (unintentional by both the King and Boström)
that furthered the road to parliamentarism.
Science and the arts
Portrait of Oscar II by Anders Zorn 1898
His Easter hymn and some other of his poems are familiar throughout the
Scandinavian countries. His work on Charles XII of Sweden were translated into
English in 1879. In 1881 he founded the world's first open-air museum, at Bygdøy,
located next to his summer residence near Oslo (back then known as Christiania). In
1885 he published his Address to the Academy of Music, and a translation of one of
his essays on music appeared in Literature in May 1900. He had a valuable
collection of printed and manuscript music, which was readily accessible to the
historical student of music.
Being a theater lover, he commissioned a new opera house to be built by Axel
Anderberg for the Royal Swedish Opera which was inaugurated on 19 September 1898.
It remains as the home of that institution. Oscar II once told playwright Henrik
Ibsen that his Ghosts was "not a good play". As he was dying, he requested that the
theatres not be closed on account of his death. His wishes were respected.
In 1889, to commemorate the 60th birthday of King Oscar II of Sweden and Norway, a
contest was held to crea the best research in celestial mechanics pertaining to the
stability of the solar system, a particularly relevant n-body problem. The winner
was declared to be Henri Poincare, a professor at the University of Paris.[5]
King Oscar II was an enthusiast of Arctic exploration. Along with Swedish
millionaire Oscar Dickson and Russian magnate Aleksandr Mikhaylovich Sibiryakov, he
was the patron of a number of pioneering Arctic expeditions in the 1800s. Among the
ventures the king sponsored, the most important are Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld's
explorations to the Russian Arctic and Greenland, and Fridtjof Nansen's Polar
journey on the Fram.[6]
Oscar was also a generous sponsor of the sciences and personally funded the Vega
Expedition, which was the first Arctic expedition to navigate through the Northeast
Passage, the sea route between Europe and Asia through the Arctic Ocean, and the
first voyage to circumnavigate Eurasia. Oscar was also particularly interested in
mathematics. He set up a contest, on the occasion of his 60th birthday, for "an
important discovery in the realm of higher mathematical analysis".[7][8][9]
Death
The political events which led up to the peaceful dissolution of the union between
Norway and Sweden in 1905 could hardly have been attained but for the tact and
patience of the king himself. He was dethroned on 7 June 1905 by the Storting and
renounced the Norwegian throne on 26 October. He declined, indeed, to permit any
prince of his house to become king of Norway, but better relations between the two
countries were restored before his death. Oscar II died in Stockholm on 8 December
1907 at 9:10 am.[10]
His eldest son Gustaf was Duke of Värmland and succeeded him as King Gustaf V of
Sweden from 1907 until 1950, married Princess Victoria of Baden and they had three
sons. His second son, Prince Oscar, lost his rights of succession to the throne
upon his unequal marriage in 1888 to a former lady-in-waiting, Ebba Munck af
Fulkila, and was granted the title of Prince Bernadotte first in Sweden, and from
1892 in Luxembourg, where he also was created Count of Wisborg as an hereditary
title for his marital progeny (Adolphe, Grand Duke of Luxembourg was the half-
brother of his mother, Queen Sophia). The other sons of Oscar II were Prince Carl,
Duke of Västergötland who married Princess Ingeborg of Denmark; and Prince Eugén,
Duke of Närke, who was well known as an artist and remained a bachelor all his
life.
