Harald V of Norway, the ‘sailing king’ who made the monarchy seem ordinary, has died

Harald V of Norway died this morning at 6.35 am at the Rikshospitalet in Oslo. He was 89 years old, the oldest head of state in Europe, and had been hospitalised since 17 August with a bacterial blood infection, a complication of the haemolytic anaemia from which he suffered. On Thursday, the Royal Palace had described his condition as “extremely serious”, and Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre had cancelled a trip to Germany. He had reigned for thirty-five years, having ascended the throne on 17 January 1991 following the death of his father, Olav V. He is succeeded by his son Haakon, aged 53, who has been acting as regent in recent weeks and will be sworn in before the Storting as Haakon VIII.

"A monarch," writes Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni in X, "who served his nation with balance, authority and a deep sense of the institutions, helping to strengthen the ties between Norway and Italy throughout his long reign."

Born in Skaugum on 21 February 1937, the only son of Olav V and Märtha of Sweden, and related to half of the European elite, Harald was the first monarch born in Norway since the time of Olav IV, who died in 1387: a heraldic detail that the Norwegians treated as a matter of national identity. He was also the fifth king to bear that name, the first in 855 years. He spent his childhood in exile: in 1940, following the German occupation, he found himself between Sweden and the United States, whilst his grandfather Haakon VII and his father, from London, served as beacons for the resistance. He returned in 1945, then went to Oslo, the Norwegian Military Academy and Balliol College, Oxford, where he studied history, economics and politics.

He was, first and foremost, a sailor. He led Norway to the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, the 1968 Mexico City Olympics and the 1972 Munich Olympics, and continued to race as monarch well into his eighties, on his Fram-class yachts. He was often seen on board, wearing a oilskin coat, soaked to the skin.

The event that defined his reign, however, took place in 1968. After a nine-year secret engagement, he married Sonja Haraldsen, the daughter of a clothing trader. A commoner: for Oslo at the time, it was a scandal. The heir threatened to remain celibate and renounce his dynastic rights, so his father relented. The wedding took place on 29 August in Oslo Cathedral. From that point onwards, the Norwegian monarchy ceased to be a dynasty and became a family, with the same merits and the same vulnerabilities as any other.

The marriage produced Märtha Louise (1971) and Haakon (1973), who followed the same pattern. In 2001, he married Mette-Marit Tjessem Høiby, a single mother: they have two children, Ingrid Alexandra, aged 22, and Sverre Magnus. In 2002, she married the writer Ari Behn, from whom she divorced in 2017 and who died in 2019; he was the father of Maud Angelica, Leah Isadora and Emma Tallulah. On 31 August 2024, she married the American shaman Durek Verrett.

However, there is a price to pay for normality. The trial of Marius Borg Høiby, Mette-Marit’s son from her first marriage, who was sentenced in June to four years’ imprisonment for rape and other offences, has eroded public support for the Crown more than any previous controversy. Harald weathered this too without ever considering abdication: the oath he swore before the Storting, he repeated, is valid for life. Haakon inherits a throne that is more fragile than the one his father received in 1991, and a daughter destined to become Norway’s first reigning queen since the 14th century.