![\"Flowers](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/flowers-are-left-at-slottsplassen-LVCD2VJ5UNDANIXAQDS5IHNCFQ.png\")
<\/p>\nKing Harald V of Norway, who went into exile in the United States as a child during the Nazi occupation of his homeland and refused a string of European noblewomen in order to marry his school sweetheart, has died. He was 89.<\/p>\n
The royal palace said he died at the National Hospital in Oslo on Friday at 6.35am (local time).<\/p>\n
Harald was Europe’s oldest monarch. The popular king modernised the royal house but refused to follow in the footsteps of other ageing monarchs who have abdicated in recent times. His son now automatically becomes King Haakon VIII.<\/p>\n
Like other royal houses in Europe, the Norwegian monarchs serve a largely symbolic role, enjoying celebrity status while real power in the democracy of 5.5 million rests with an elected parliament. Harald was crowned king after his British-born father, King Olav V, died in January 1991, and reigned during an oil-and-gas-driven economic boom in his country.<\/p>\n
Harald was born in 1937 in Asker, near Oslo, becoming the first Norwegian prince to be born in the country since King Olav IV in 1370. In the following centuries, Norway didn’t have a king of its own until Harald’s grandfather, Haakon VII, was elected king following the 1905 dissolution of the union between Sweden and Norway.<\/p>\n
Harald was three years old when the Nazis occupied Norway at the start of World War II. To avoid capture, his mother fled with him and his sisters, Ragnhild and Astrid, first to Sweden and then by boat to the US, while Harald’s father and grandfather went into exile in Britain with Norway’s government.<\/p>\n
Haakon’s refusal to go along with German demands garnered respect among his people.<\/p>\n
During their time in the US, the Norwegian royals were often guests at the White House. Harald was six when he carried out his first official duty, christening new warplanes at a Norwegian air base in Canada.<\/p>\n
The family was reunited in Norway in June 1945, shortly after the end of the war. Harald attended public schools, the Norwegian military college and Oxford University.<\/p>\n
Like his father \u2014 an Olympic champion sailor in 1928 \u2014 Harald loved the sea and sailboats. He represented Norway at several Olympics, and in 1987 he skippered his yacht to gold in the World Championships.<\/p>\n
Refused marriages \u2013 held out for school sweetheart<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Flowers are left at Slottsplassen. (Source: Associated Press)<\/p>\n
As a young man, Harald was urged to find a bride among the princesses of Europe. For nine years he shunned a series of noblewomen, holding out until he finally won his father’s permission to marry his school sweetheart, Sonja Haraldsen, the daughter of a successful businessman.<\/p>\n
King Olav had feared the marriage would weaken Norway’s still-young monarchy. Instead, Norwegians greeted the August 29, 1968, wedding with jubilation, and later embraced Sonja as their queen. The couple had two children, Haakon and his older sister, M\u00e4rtha Louise.<\/p>\n
The Norwegian Constitution was altered in 1990 to allow the first born, regardless of gender, to take precedence in the line of succession. However, it was not applied retroactively, meaning that Haakon continued to take precedence over his sister.<\/p>\n
When Harald assumed the throne on January 21, 1991, he adopted the same motto his father and grandfather had used: “All for Norway.” He spent the next years trying to modernise the monarchy.<\/p>\n
“It has been my experience that the monarchy stands strong,” he once said. “This is not least because my father and grandfather did most things right. That puts me under pressure, but I take it as a challenge.”<\/p>\n
‘Freedom is stronger than fear’<\/p>\n
Harald won the praise of the country with an emotional speech at a memorial service after a right-wing extremist, Anders Behring Breivik, killed 77 people in bomb and gun attacks in Norway in 2011.<\/p>\n
“I remain convinced that the belief in freedom is stronger than fear. I remain convinced in the belief of an open Norwegian democracy and society. I remain convinced in the belief in our ability to live freely and safely in our own country,” the king said.<\/p>\n
At around the same time, her eldest son, Marius Borg H\u00f8iby, was convicted of rape in a high-profile trial and sentenced to four years in prison. H\u00f8iby, Mette-Marit’s son from a previous relationship before she met Haakon, has no royal titles or official duties.<\/p>\n
In January 2024, after the abdication of Denmark’s Queen Margrethe \u2014 his second cousin \u2014 Harald said that he stood by the oath he made when ascending the throne: “It lasts for life”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"King Harald V of Norway, who went into exile in the United States as a child during the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":583011,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,6747,40,38,41,39,1745],"class_list":["post-583010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-royalty","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-uk-europe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=583010"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583010\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/583011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=583010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=583010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=583010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}