Funeral ceremonies were getting underway late Wednesday morning for Norway’s late King Harald V, whose casket has been lying in state at the Royal Palace for the past week. Tens of thousands of Norwegians had already streamed past it, to pay their respects before it left the palace for a slow procession on foot to the Oslo Cathedral.
More than 35,000 people had viewed King Harald’s casket by Tuesday afternoon, most all of them waiting in line for as long as seven hours. “That alone says something about our society,” Laura Maria Schütze, a Danish researcher specializing in royal funerals, told newspaper Aftenposten. Even though traditions have become vulnerable in the digital age, Schütze stressed how rituals around major events can help people feel that they are part of them.
“That can function like glue in society,” Schütze said. Many standing in line, or emerging from the chapel, agreed. “For me, this is a major Norwegian historical event,” Elisabeth Hoddevik, age 47, told Aftenposten after she’d already been standing in line for an hour.
“I wanted to experience the mood, and I like our monarchy as an institution,” Hoddevik added. “And our King Harald was an outstanding monarch.”
Many of the mounds of flowers and written tributes to King Harald that had piled up outside the palace since he died on August 28 had been removed before the funeral procession got underway. Norwegians had started placing bouquets and other tokens of their affection on the palace grounds when the king was still in hospital and that his condition had worsened.
While most of the flowers are likely to be used in compost, palace staff have confirmed that every single card, drawing and letter has been carefully collected and added to the National Archives at Sognsvann in the hills above Oslo.
The funeral procession from the Royal Palace was due to begin around noon Wednesday, after King Harald’s casket was rolled out of the palace’s chapel and put on a military trolley, bound for the cathedral. The procession was to be led by mounted police, a military marching band, members of His Majesty the King’s Guards and the leader of the Royal Palace staff, Hoffsjef Olav Heian-Engdal.
First in line behind the casket would be Norway’s new King Haakon VIII, Harald’s son, along with Haakon’s first-born child, Crown Princess Ingrid Alexandra, and her younger brother, Prince Sverre Magnus. Following them would be Harald’s widow, the 89-year-old Queen Sonja, and Haakon’s wife, the new Queen Mette-Marit, both of them riding in a slow-moving royal limousine.
Following them, mostly on foot, were all the royal guests able and willing to walk to the Cathedral, where formal ceremonies would begin at 1pm. Kings, queens, princes and princesses have arrived in Oslo from all over Europe, plus Japan, Jordan and several other countries, and they’ll be followed by Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, the Parliament’s President Masud Gharahkhani and the chief justice of Norway’s Supreme Court, Toril Marie Øie.
They’ll be followed by other visiting heads of state, government ministers, supreme court justices, the leader of the Sami Parliament, the governor of Svalbard, Oslo Mayor Anne Lindboe and Defense Chief Eirik Kristoffersen among other dignitaries.
NewsinEnglish.no/Nina Berglund
