Norwegians headed into the weekend with more sad news from the Royal Palace in Oslo. Just two days after the funeral of their much-loved King Harald V came the announcement that his older sister, Princess Astrid, had also died, at the age of 94.
Princess Astrid served as Norway’s first lady for more than a decade after her own mother, Crown Princess Martha, died at the age of 53 in 1954. Astrid was just 22 at the time, but both her father and grandfather were widowers and her older sister, Princess Ragnhild, had married shipowner Erling Lorentzen and moved to Brazil.
“There wasn’t anyone else who could take on the role,” Princess Astrid herself told state broadcaster NRK on the occasion of her 75th birthday in 2007. “I just had to roll up my sleeves and get to work.”
She never stopped working on behalf of the royal family, even after her brother could finally marry commoner Sonja Haraldsen in 1968 and the new Crown Princess, later Queen Sonja, could take over the first lady role. Astrid continued to work as royal patron of several organizations, not least the national organization to support others like her with dyslexia who have trouble reading and writing. Her own father, the late King Olav, was also among them.
She’s perhaps most fondly remembered for being by her father’s side after he became king in 1957 and traveling along Norway’s coastline to meet and greet the public. When the young and new Queen Elizabeth II of visited Norway in the summer of 1955, it was Princess Astrid who took part in official events because her mother was already ill. After her mother’s death she was always hostess during state visits by leaders who ranged from Ethiopia’s Haile Sellasie to the Shah of Iran.
She also got down to work at the royal palace, accompanied King Olav on officials trips and represented the nation until Sonja could take over. Like Sonja, Astrid also had to wait years for permission to marry the man she loved, businessman and clothing store owner Johan Martin Ferner, because he was divorced. King Olav finally approved their marriage in 1961, after much opposition from a strict Norwegian church at the time. They ended up having five children, the youngest of whom is still running the family’s fashionable Ferner-Jacobsen clothing store in downtown Oslo.
Her husband died in 2015 but Princess Astrid carried on as usual, also with her strong interest in sporting events. She was a fixture at the annual Holmenkollen ski jumping and skiing competition and won awards herself for her dedication to the sport. Her very name became popular again, as a new generation of Norwegians appreciated her service.
She’d had a privileged yet rough childhood. She was eight years old when Nazi Germany invaded Norway and the royal family fled the country. While her grandfather King Haakon VII and father Crown Prince Olav at the time joined the government in exile in London, her mother Crown Princess Martha sought refuge first with her family in Sweden and then in the USA.
President Franklin D Roosevelt took them in and they spent the war years as refugees living on an estate just outside Washington DC. Princess Astrid was 12 years old when the family could finally return to a liberated Norway that was far from the quiet and protected lives they’d led in America.
Both she and her older sister Ragnhild, who’d had private schooling at home, demanded to be allowed to attend public school and they finally could enroll in a fashionable girls’ school in Oslo. Despite her own diffculties reading and writing, she graduated from high school and like many royals, studied for a while at Oxford in England before returning home to take on royal duties when her mother was ill.
Tributes were flowing in on Friday, with her children claiming she was “the best mama we could have had,” hailing her “wisdom, warmth and good humour.” They noted how she was “always there for grandfather King Olav and uncle King Harald, loyal and dutiful.”
Her nephew who just lost his father, the new King Haakon VIII, also noted how Princess Astrid “represented the Royal Family in a warm and dutiful manner,” and was “especially keen on caring for and including those who were most vulnerable in society.” He went on to say that his aunt “was an important source of support for King Harald and the rest of us in the family. We learned a lot from her,” adding that her death is another “great loss for us.”
Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre also called her “a clever, dedicated and engaged representative of the Royal Family right to the end. My thoughts and my sympathy go to her closest family and to the entire royal family,” after they’d lost another “dear family member.”
The flag on the palace balcony that had just been raised after King Harald’s funeral on Wednesday was taken back down to half-mast on Friday, and would be again on the day of her funeral. All public buildings also lowered their flags to half mast. Funeral arrangements were pending.
NewsinEnglish.no/Nina Berglund
