Norway will be among the stops when Prince Charles and Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, head off on royal tour of Scandinavia next month. The tour is part of a string of official visits tied to overseas celebrations of Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee.
The British royals will arrive in Norway first, on March 20, and visit both Oslo and Bergen during their two-day stay. The prince will, like other visiting dignitaries, lay a wreath on the national monument at the Akershus Fortress, visit Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg and be the guests of honor at a banquet at the Royal Palace.
King Harald and Queen Sonja will be the couple’s official host and hostess, and Charles and Camilla will also stay at the palace. While in Oslo, they’ll also meet representatives from youth organizations at the Nobel Peace Center along with survivors from last summer’s massacre on the island of Utøya.
Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall will then travel on to Bergen, where they’ll attend a concert and meet the crew of the HMS Liverpool, which recently took part in the liberation of Libya. Prince Charles also visited Bergen as a young man in 1969 with his parents.
From Norway the couple will travel on to Stockholm, where Prince Charles will be making his first official visit to Sweden. He was last in Norway in May 2010, attending a climate conference on forest preservation, and visited Denmark in 2009. The tour will mark the duchess’ first official visits to all three Scandinavian countries.
It will end July 27 in Copenhagen, where Danish Queen Margrethe is also celebrating a jubilee this year after 40 years as monarch.
Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall also plan to visit other countries with monarchies related to the British royal family, and will visit New Zealand, Canada and Australia later in the year.
Views and News staff
