Flags fell to half-mast all over Norway on Friday after the Royal Palace in Oslo confirmed the death of the country’s highly respected monarch. King Harald V was 89 and in poor health for years, but had remained a unifying and comforting force during troubled times, also within his own family.
“It is with deep sorrow that we report the death of Hans Majesty King Harald today,” read the announcement from the Royal Palace shortly after 8:30am on Friday.
The brief announcement went on to report that King Harald passed away at Rikshospitalet (Norway’s national hospital in Oslo) at 6:35am on Friday August 28. The initial announcement was made only in Norwegian and the palace’s official website was otherwise shut down in order to make “relevant changes” to it.
They are bound to include official announcements of how King Harald’s 53-year-old son Haakon has now automatically become Norway’s monarch and the country’s head of state. He reportedly had spent the night at the hospital with his father after the entire royal family had visited the monarch on Thursday. King Harald’s widow, Queen Sonja, had spent more than 10 hours at the hospital yesterday, and was seen returning just after 7:30am on Friday.
At an age of 89, King Harald V was Europe’s oldest monarch and had remained active despite various health problems in recent years. He had been hospitalized in Oslo once again early last week, suffering this time from anemia along with a bacterial infection within his blood. His condition fluctuated until it was finally described as “extremely serious” in a short press release from the Royal Palace on Thursday morning.
That set off an overwhelming reaction from Norwegians, the vast majority of whom support the monarchy despite a string of scandals involving other members of the royal family. The scandals climaxed last spring with lots of controversy around Crown Princess Mette-Marit and then her own health problems, but King Harald and Queen Sonja themselves remained respected and revered. Thousands of Norwegians had streamed to the Royal Palace in Oslo and several other royal-related sites around the country to lay down flowers, hand-written messages of support and even sing the national anthem together.
King Harald had come to be regarded in recent years as a sort of “national grandfather” figure for the nation, not least since he exhibited patience and acceptance of sometimes troublesome offspring, grandchildren and their partners in life. After years of being in the shadow of his own father, the popular King Olav V, and waiting nine years for King Olav to allow him to marry a commoner (Sonja Haraldsen), King Harald V seemed bound and determined to allow his own children to marry those they chose, even when the choices of both his son and heir to the throne Haakon and his daughter Martha Louise were controversial.
Erik Birkemo, who was among those laying down flowers in front of the Royal Palace in Oslo even before the king died, was also among those calling King Harald “hele Norges bestefar” (all of Norway’s grandfater). He thinks Harald V did an important job of unifying Norwegians. “He was a gathering point in many situations, from July 22 (the terror attack in 2011) to the World Cup this year,” Birkemo told state broadcaster NRK. He captured the hearts of many, especially immigrants in Norway and not least after his now-famous speech about inclusion on the palace grounds in 2016.
Tributes were pouring in on Friday, as they already had been when the seriousness of the king’s poor health emerged. Leaders of all of Norway’s nine political parties in Parliament called him a “pillar of strength” for the whole country, and claimed that “the whole country loved him.” Even those skeptical to the monarchy as a system of government praised him and remembered him well, with Kirsti Bergstø of the Socialist Left party claiming that King Harald “meant a lot for very many of us here in Norway.” Reds leader Marie Sneve Martinussen said it had also worried her greatly when news broke that his health was so poor because “he means so much for Norway.”
Guri Melby, leader of the Liberal Party (Venstre), called him “the people’s king, with warmth, wisdom and a glimmer in his eye during both great and tough situations.” Many remember how the seriousness of the pandemic and subsequent shutdown in March 2020 sunk in only after King Harald had addressed the nation at the top of the national news hour. His annual address on New Year’s Eve was viewed by millions every year.
Veteran journalist, commentator and author Harald Stanghelle noted on national TV how the Norwegian monarchy has remained strong, even in a social welfare state like Norway’s where power and privilege isn’t supposed to be inherited. It’s simply a strong tradition rooted to Norway’s emergence as an independent nation in 1905 when a majority wanted to restore the Norwegian monarchy. Despite a rash of recent royal scandals and crises, “this is the country’s first family, but also a family that gathers around a head of the family who has meant very much to them, and whom they love.”
NewsinEnglish.no/Nina Berglund
