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The Norwegian Constitution of 1814 was the last in a series of European constitutions inspired by the American and French examples between 1776 and 1814 of which today the American and the Norwegian examples are the only two left. This paper revisits the debates preceding the Norwegian 17 May 1814 Constitution and argues that republican ideas of liberty as independence from arbitrary power formed the intellectual background and context of the debates. This breaks with standard narratives in Norwegian history where the constitution is described as an early example of liberalism. The republican influence forces us to revise the conventional reading of the Norwegian Constitution, and may further provide us with new keys to interpret the intellectual roots of the "Nordic model." The author suggests that the present high levels of economic equality, egalitarianism and trust in the Scandinavian countries may have their intellectual origins in a particular "Scandinavian republicanism," inspired by the example of the American republicans in the late eighteenth century.