Harald of Norway will go down in history as the first heir to the throne who dared to challenge dynastic laws by breaking a centuries-old tradition in European courts and marrying a commoner. It is known to be his only act of rebellion in his 89 years of life. Today, the third king of modern Norway leaves behind his widow Sonia Haraldsen, the young woman he fell in love with in the late 1950s and with whom, after a ten-year effort and obtaining his father’s permission, he married in 1968.
The Norwegian court has announced the death of King Harald, who died at 6:35 a.m. this Friday, local time, at the National Hospital of Oslo, where he had been hospitalized for eleven days due to hemolytic anemia. His death paves the way for the heir, Prince Haakon, who will be crowned King of Norway as Haakon VIII, with the role of the current princess Mette-Marit still unresolved; she is recovering from a lung transplant and the serious reputational crisis stemming from her relationship with pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and the imprisonment of her son Marius from a previous relationship before her marriage to the now crown prince.
Harald of Norway was born in Oslo on February 21, 1937. His grandfather, Haakon VII, was reigning, a Danish prince who assumed the Norwegian throne in 1905 after the separation from Sweden and the holding of a plebiscite in which Norwegians approved the monarchy. The one known as Charles of Denmark was proclaimed Haakon VII, thus linking to the last Viking king, Haakon VI, who reigned in the 14th century, achieving great popularity in Norway in a few years.
Haakon VII had only one son, Alexander, who after becoming crown prince of Norway changed his name to Olav. As crown prince of Norway, from his marriage to Princess Märtha of Sweden, two girls were born, Ragnhild and Astrid, and the youngest, Harald.
As a newly established monarchy, both Haakon VII and Olav V ruled from modernity, becoming heroes of the resistance during World War II, unlike their Swedish cousins. Young Harald, with his sisters and mother, lived the war exiled in the United States, where the determined Princess Märtha gained the favor of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who supported Norway in its fight against Nazism.
After the war, the Norwegian monarchy consolidated in the country and young Harald and his sisters experienced a childhood and youth in contact with their generation, studying in public schools and brightening a court that was already missing his grandmother, Queen Maud, and later his mother, Princess Märtha. Haakon VII, widowed since 1938, died in 1957 and was succeeded by his son, Olav, also widowed since 1954, making Harald the crown prince.
After studying at military academies and lacking a queen, hopes were placed on Harald to find a crown princess who would also accompany King Olav. The Norwegian prince did not seek a wife in European courts, despite the legend that then-Princess Sofia of Greece was among the candidates. Harald was always clear, and since he met Sonia Haraldsen, daughter of a merchant from Oslo, he did not consider marrying anyone else. A tug of war began with his father, who, while modern in being a popular king, was less accepting of a commoner in the palace, but Prince Harald had an advantage: with his sisters out of the line of succession due to being women and marrying commoners, they either accepted Sonia or he would remain single and the Norwegian crown without succession.
In the end, good King Olav gave in and Harald and Sonia married in 1968, nine years before Carl Gustaf of Sweden married the also commoner Silvia Sommerlath and decades ahead of Felipe de Borbón, Frederik of Denmark, Willem of the Netherlands, or Haakon of Norway himself, to name crown princes married to women not belonging to royalty.
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From their wedding until King Olav’s death in 1991, Princess Sonia played the role of queen, accompanying her father-in-law whom she won over as she had done with Harald. From the marriage of Harald and Sonia were born Princess Märtha Louise, who inherited her grandmother’s spirit, and then Prince Haakon, named after his great-grandfather, future crown prince according to Norwegian laws which, until 1990, did not approve the heir being the firstborn regardless of gender.
The most notable aspect of Harald’s role as crown prince of Norway is that he served as such until a few days before turning 54. The shadow of Olav and his great popularity overshadowed his heir for years, and even when proclaimed king, he did not attract much attention in a country, the highest standard of living in Europe, where nothing ever happens. A good sportsman and prudent head of state, his reign was peaceful, only disturbed by the terrible attack on the island of Utøya, where far-right terrorist Anders Behring Breivik killed 77 people on July 22, 2011.
Mette Marit, diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis, has recently undergone a lung transplant
While his public reign was peaceful, Harald of Norway’s family life soon became complicated with the esoteric pretensions of his daughter Märtha Louise, first married to a rebellious writer, Ari Behn, who broke as many conventions as he could before divorcing the princess with whom he had three daughters. Years later, Behn committed suicide when Märtha Louise had already paired with Durek Verrett, a shaman with a dark background whom she ended up marrying despite Harald and Sonia’s inability to prevent it.
It was not Märtha Louise, distanced from the court but not from family affection, who caused the greatest distress to Harald and Sonia, but their son Haakon who in 2001 decided to marry Mette Marit Tjessem, a single mother who, as she herself confessed days before her wedding, had “a wild past.” Norwegian society again showed tolerance and Kings Harald and Sonia infinite patience when they accepted Mette Marit, her son, and her past.
Haakon, a prince even calmer than his father, tolerated some outbursts of anger from the crown princess who took time to adapt but finally did so until recently, coinciding with repeated health problems of King Harald, Mette Marit has become the protagonist of the greatest crisis of the Norwegian monarchy in its 120 years of existence.
Mette Marit, diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis, has recently undergone a lung transplant. Her son, Marius Borg, accused of two counts of rape and abuse, has been sentenced to four years in prison and, as if that were not enough, the crown princess is linked to pedophile Jeffrey Epstein with whom she maintained a long relationship, let’s call it friendship, and a continuous exchange of emails, even after the American millionaire was prosecuted, in which the crown princess confessed to being bored at court, among other things.
Despite the affection Norwegians felt for Harald and Sonia, the scandals surrounding their daughter, Märtha Louise, and especially the crown princess and, by extension, heir Haakon, have opened a rift in the acceptance of the monarchy. One thing is clear, King Harald did not know how, could not, or did not want to intervene in the lives of his children and now, once deceased, it remains to be seen if his legacy, not very significant but at the same time free of institutional errors, will be enough for the new King Haakon to begin a reign in which the role of Mette Marit remains to be defined and in which the only one who appears uncontaminated is the new crown princess Ingrid Alexandra.
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