The indignation which the Peace of Kiel aroused in Norway was evidence that the Norsemen had awakened from their long hibernating torpor and meant to assert their rights. They were quite ready to give up their allegiance to Frederick VI., but contended that he had no right to dispose of it to any one else. Remembering how their country had without its own consent, contrary to law and treaties, become a dependency of Denmark, they held that the sovereignty, which Frederick renounced, reverted to the people who were thus in position to bestow it upon whom they chose. The viceroy, Christian Frederick, finding this sentiment very general, refused to abide by the decision of the powers and summoned several representative men to meet him at Eidsvold (1814). It had been his first intention to claim the crown of Norway by hereditary right and to govern as absolute monarch. But yielding to the advice of Professor Sverdrup and other patriotic men, he declared himself ready to accept the crown from the people and to govern in accordance with the constitution which the people should adopt. In order to explore the sentiment throughout the country, the prince had travelled in the middle of winter across the Dovre Mountain to Drontheim, and there were many who believed that it had been his intention to have himself crowned at once in the ancient city of kings. In Guldbrandsdale he stopped to read the inscription upon the monument, erected to commemorate the destruction of Sinclair and his Scottish mercenaries: [Illustration: PRINCE CHRISTIAN FREDERICK, VICEROY OF NORWAY; LATER, KING OF DENMARK (CHRISTIAN VIII.).] "Woe to the Norseman whose blood does not course more warmly through his veins when he looks upon this stone." "Are you, too," he asked the peasants who had come to see him, "like your forefathers, willing to sacrifice life and blood for your country?"