Statsutvikling nedenfra i Norge ca. 1500–1814

State building in Norway, as well as in most of Europe between c. 1500–1814, was most often a top-down process; rules and regulations, bureaucracy and military organization were implemented in urban and rural societies very much from “above”. I claim, however, that the people “below” developed effective means of and strategies for influencing the state-building process throughout the early modern period. They helped to shape the scope and character of state institutions in a variety of ways, as described in this article. In Norway, the prerequisites for state building from below are better compared to those of Denmark and other parts of Europe based on manor economy and manorial bondage. Norwegian peasants managed to exploit tax increases and expand local self-government, while the elites in Denmark-Norway exerted tremendous influence in the process of moderating the system of absolutism. In 1814, the civil society in Norway that emerged around 1770–1790 took action to abolish autocratic government when it implemented a constitutional monarchy.