Norway’s Royal Palace has confirmed a report in newspaper VG and on VG Nett that Princess Martha Louise is moving to London with her husband, author Ari Behn, and their children. VG wrote that the family will move to “Engel-land,” a humorous play on the Norwegian word for angels, since the princess has made millions of kroner in recent years teaching and writing about how people can learn to communicate with their own personal angels.
Palace spokeswoman Marianne Hagen told VG that the princess will continue to operate her so-called “angel school,” Astarte Education, with her Norwegian partner Elisabeth Nordeng.
“She has no plans to start any commercial operations in England,” Hagen told VG. Hagen stressed that Martha Louise will also carry out the official duties that she still has in Norway, and will commute between England and Norway.
She and Behn have three daughters: Maud Angelica will turn nine on Sunday, Leah Isadora has just turned seven and Emma Tallulah is three-and-a-half. It wasn’t yet clear how long or exactly where in London the family would live. Many Norwegian expatriates settle in the Wimbledon area, where a Norwegian school is located, but Hagen said the children “will go to English school.”
Hagen also noted that the princess, who turned 40 last September, would maintain her commitment to work with functionally challenged persons, and that she would attend the Paralympics in London, which is hosting the Summer Olympics later this year.
The family has been living in Lommedalen, a valley west of Oslo where the princess was granted special exemptions from local zoning regulations to remodel and expand a house she and Behn bought several years ago. “I must say this is exciting news coming out of Lommedalen,” Kjell Arne Totland, a journalist who has followed the royals for years, told VG. “Martha and Ari never cease to surprise us.”
Views and News from Norway/Nina Berglund
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