The first thing that Haakon VIII inherited from his father was not the crown, but the silence of a nation gathered in front of the Royal Palace in Oslo, where tens of thousands of Norwegians laid flowers, flags and cards to greet Harald V, who died on Friday 28 August at the age of 89 after thirty-five years of reign. When the new ruler appeared on television for his first speech, sitting behind a desk with a smiling portrait of his father beside him, Norway was not just witnessing a succession, but a transition between two eras and between two very different ways of carrying the weight of the monarchy.
Haakon remembered Harald as an affectionate father and a man capable of meeting people without losing his humanity, then his voice broke when he spoke of his mother Sonja, who was widowed on the very day the couple should have celebrated their fifty-eighth wedding anniversary. Outside the palace, while many followed the speech on their phones, spontaneous applause broke out, almost a collective response to the new king who promised to defend democracy, equality and the idea of a Norway in which there was room for everyone.
It is a seemingly simple program, perfectly in line with a constitutional monarchy without political power, but for Haakon VIII it represents a much more difficult test than the sober ceremonies of the Norwegian court suggest. The new sovereign not only inherits Harald’s popularity, but a family affected by judicial scandals, illnesses, personal mistakes and a loss of confidence that has damaged the image of the most informal and reassuring of European monarchies.
The death of Harald V and the first speech of Haakon VIII
Harald V died at 6.35am on 28 August at Oslo University Hospital, where he had been admitted for a bacterial infection in his blood. He was the oldest monarch in Europe and, despite health problems in recent years, he had always ruled out abdication, maintaining that the oath taken as king was valid for life.
Haakon became sovereign automatically upon his father’s death, according to the rules of the Norwegian constitutional monarchy. There will be no coronation, abolished by Parliament in 1908, but an oath before the Storting, the national assembly, and a series of deliberately measured ceremonies, consistent with a country that considers sobriety almost a form of national identity.
The name chosen, Haakon VIII, connects him directly to his great-grandfather Haakon VII, the Danish prince called to the throne after independence from Sweden in 1905 and who became the symbol of Norwegian resistance during the Nazi occupation. Even the motto, Halt for Norge«Everything for Norway», resumes that continuity, but behind the solidity of tradition hides a sovereign who for a good part of his life tried to escape the role assigned to him.
The reluctant prince who fled to California
Haakon recounted in his autobiography how anxious it made him to be recognized as a prince during his public school years, when he preferred to leave the attention to others and tried to protect a space in which he was not observed. When it came time for university, instead of following the British path of his father and grandfather, he chose Berkeley, California, far enough from Oslo to allow him the illusion of a normal life.
Music, surfing and the relative anonymity of America offered him the distance he sought, but they didn’t erase the destiny that awaited him. Having become crown prince in 1991, upon the death of his grandfather Olav V and Harald’s accession to the throne, Haakon progressively adapted to the role, taking on more and more public commitments as his father’s health became fragile and discovering, as he would write many years later, that even within an unchosen position it was possible to find meaning.
The paradox is that the man who tried to escape from his public identity became king just when the Crown needed someone capable of exposing himself, explaining and rebuilding a relationship of trust with the Norwegians.
Mette-Marit, the queen who twice defied public judgment
The love affair with Mette-Marit Tjessem Høiby had already forced Haakon to choose between dynastic prudence and real life. The two met in 1999 at the Quart Festival in Kristiansand, when she was 25 years old, she was a single mother and came from a youth also spent in the house music club scene, far from the profile traditionally associated with a future queen.
The press reconstructed every detail of her past and Mette-Marit arrived at the 2001 wedding after a painful public exposure, during which she admitted that she had lived in an environment in which several limits had been exceeded. Harald, who in turn had had to fight to marry the bourgeois Sonja Haraldsen, defended his son’s choice and favored the young woman’s entry into the family.
Over the years, Mette-Marit managed to transform that initial fragility into a strength, dealing with literature, global health, women’s rights and the fight against HIV, until she became one of the most recognizable faces of the monarchy. In 2026, however, the publication of numerous messages exchanged with Jeffrey Epstein even after the American financier’s conviction caused a new wave of indignation. Mette-Marit apologized and said she had been manipulated and deceived, but the case deeply affected a Court that had built its credibility on transparency and closeness to ordinary people.
The health crisis has added to the image crisis. Suffering from chronic pulmonary fibrosis since 2018, Mette-Marit underwent a successful lung transplant in June, remained hospitalized for several weeks and returned home in July to begin rehabilitation. Now she becomes queen while still convalescing, with the need to protect her health and, at the same time, take on a more demanding institutional role.
Marius’ conviction and the scandal that engulfed the family
The most serious chapter concerns Marius Borg Høiby, the son Mette-Marit had before her marriage to Haakon, who grew up within the family but without a title or official duties. In June 2026 the Oslo court sentenced him to four years in prison, finding him guilty of two charges of rape, violence and abuse in a relationship.
Marius announced an appeal against the most serious sentences and the Prosecutor’s Office also appealed the sentence, but the trial, obsessively followed by the Norwegian media, put the image of the royal family to the test. Haakon expressed closeness to the victims and at the same time explained that he wanted to continue to take care of his family, a humanly understandable but institutionally delicate position for those who now represent national unity.
The problem is not to establish the Crown’s responsibility for crimes committed by an adult, a responsibility that evidently does not exist, but rather to understand how much a monarchy founded almost exclusively on reputation can tolerate before the sum of private events becomes a public issue.
Märtha Louise, the shaman and the princess outside the Court
Märtha Louise, the new king’s older sister, also contributed to questioning the boundary between institutional role and private activity. In 2022 she renounced official duties to dedicate herself to her own commercial initiatives, retaining the title of princess but committing not to use it in professional activities.
The marriage celebrated in 2024 with Durek Verrett, an American who defines himself as a shaman, transformed the couple into a media and commercial phenomenon, attracting criticism for the use of proximity to the royal family in the promotion of products, interviews and events. Harald had chosen mediation, protecting the relationship with his daughter but progressively separating her from official representation; now it will be up to Haakon to maintain the same balance without appearing indulgent towards any exploitation of the Crown.
Ingrid Alexandra and the monarchy to come
In the succession, the face of the future is that of Ingrid Alexandra, the twenty-two-year-old daughter of Haakon and Mette-Marit who became crown princess. She will be, barring institutional changes, the first queen regnant of modern Norway, thanks to the constitutional reform of 1990 which established the precedence of the firstborn regardless of sex.
Ingrid represents the generation that will have to decide whether the monarchy can continue to exist as a credible institution in one of the most egalitarian societies in the world. It is no longer enough to appear modern because you marry ordinary people, attend public schools or wear worn jackets during visits to flood areas; the new real modernity requires transparency, accountability and the ability not to use privilege as protection from consequences.
In the first months of 2026, support for the Norwegian monarchy had fallen from 70 to 60 percent, then partially recovered to 64 percent. However, Harald continued to obtain very high personal consensus, because the Norwegians saw in him something different from the apparatus: a man who had accompanied the country in the most painful moments, from the Utøya attack to natural disasters, and who had spoken of immigrants, religious minorities and homosexual people as indivisible parts of the same national community.
This is the capital that Haakon VIII receives together with the crown, but also the benchmark from which he will not be able to escape. In his first speech he promised that he will follow his own path, as his father did, and that he will defend a united, democratic and open Norway. To do so he will have to do something more difficult than a succession: he will have to demonstrate that a fragile, exposed and imperfect family can still represent an entire nation without demanding that nation forget its mistakes.
