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The oldest ruler in Europe has passed away at the age of 89. King Harald V of Norway, the first monarch born in the country after over 500 years (from 1380 to 1905 the country did not have a completely independent monarchy), ascended to the throne on 17 January 1991 following the death of his father Olav V and in his over 35 years of reign he was much loved by Norwegians as a leader but also for his human qualities.
The emotional side of the monarch
At the ceremony commemorating the 77 victims of the Utøya terrorist attack in 2011, King Harald publicly dissolved into tears and repeatedly showed his emotional side, as well as his institutional one. Like his love for Queen Sonja, his age but not a princess, as his father would have wanted. Their first meeting was at 15 years old, during a royal family boat trip, then again at 22 years old at a party and from there a love relationship was born. In a 2015 interview with NRK, Norway’s public service broadcaster, the monarch admitted that he felt torn between choosing to follow his heart and respecting his father’s wishes and institutional burdens. The Norwegian press at the time wrote that if the heir prince married a bourgeois woman it would be the end for the monarchy.
“I said that if I couldn’t marry her, I would remain celibate,” he said, whereupon the king consulted his ministers and finally gave the okay to the marriage, after nine years together. The couple had two children: Märtha Louise and then Haakon. However, it will be the second son who will succeed to the throne, according to the law that was in force at the time.
Children’s choices of love
The children of the “forbidden couple” also made love choices that caused scandal in the Norwegian press. Prince Haakon met his wife Mette-Marit at a music festival and she, in addition to not being noble, was separated and with a dependent three-year-old son, Marius Borg Høiby. At the time the issue caused scandal in Norway, especially among the bishops of the Norwegian Lutheran church. Before the constitutional reform in 2012, the King of Norway was also the head of the Norwegian Church, as the British King still is of the Anglican Church. Princess Märtha Louise divorced her first husband and then remarried, this time to an American shaman, Durek Verrett, who caused a scandal during the pandemic when he tried to sell “anti-Covid amulets”.
Recent scandals and support for the monarchy
The royal house has also recently suffered scandals, including the discovery of the friendship between Mette-Marit and Jeffrey Epstein, which emerged thanks to the Epstein files, and the legal affairs of Marius Borg Høiby, convicted in the first instance for two cases of rape. Recent crises have brought the level of support for the monarchy in Norway to historic lows, but 60% of Norwegians still support it, according to a statistic presented by NRK.
The “sailor king” and the three Olympics
King Harald, who passed away today, will be remembered as a sporting monarch, with a strong passion for sailing (the Canadian press nicknamed him the “sailor king”) which he cultivated from a young age and which led him to compete with the Norwegian national team in the 1964 Tokyo, 1968 Mexico City and 1972 Munich Olympics. At the 1964 Tokyo Olympics he was standard bearer in the opening ceremony. In the World Championship with his sailing crew he won bronze medals in 1988, silver in 1982 and gold in 1987. His last world championship was in 2022, at 85 years old.
The succession
After the success of the Norwegian football team at the World Cup, which reached the quarter-finals, King Harald welcomed the players one by one to the royal palace and his son Haakon then joined the team in front of the palace to do a final choral “row”. Now the throne of Norway goes to King Haakon and Queen Mette-Marit, both 53 years old. Their eldest daughter Ingrid Alexandra, 22, is now crown princess.