Sailing, family, the crown. The challenges and medals of King Harald V

The ‘sailor king’, as he was known due to his Olympic achievements – which, incidentally, were similar to those of his father – has died aged 89 from a bacterial blood infection. Hospitalised since 17 August, Harald V of Norway was Europe’s oldest monarch and belonged to one of the continent’s oldest dynasties. He was head of state of what the Economist’s Democracy Index considers the most democratic country in the world. The only son of Olav V and Princess Marta of Sweden, he was the first King of Norway to be born in the country since the time of Olav IV Haakonsson, who reigned from 1370 to 1387 but was raised in the United States.

Exactly ten years after the death of Olav IV, the Kalmar Union had brought the whole of Scandinavia under the Danish crown. In 1448, Christian I of Oldenburg ascended that throne; his descendants, bearing the dynastic name of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, gave rise to the royal houses of Denmark, Norway and the United Kingdom, as well as the deposed royal house of Greece. In 1523, Sweden regained its independence. In 1814, Norway passed from Danish to Swedish rule: to punish Copenhagen for its alliance with Napoleon, and at the same time to compensate Stockholm for having had to cede Finland to the Tsar. It was a personal union: the same king, but separate constitutions and parliaments. For this reason, when the Nobel Prizes were established in Stockholm, Oslo was allocated the Peace Prize. However, the Norwegians eventually took offence at not having an autonomous diplomatic service, and so in 1905 they decided to seek full independence, offering the crown to the brother of the King of Denmark. Haakon VII, Harald’s grandfather, was actually called Christian Frederick, but he adopted that Norwegian dynastic name, under which he reigned until 1957. His son Alexander, who was two years old at the time, also took the name Olav: Olav V, King of Norway from 1957 to 1991. Harald was his only son. With the German invasion, he began to follow the government-in-exile led by Olav, who had won a gold medal in sailing at the 1928 Olympics and was sent to Sweden – his mother’s homeland – in April 1940. However, the government in Stockholm feared Hitler, so after four months they moved to the United States on a military ship provided by the US government. The first member of the Norwegian royal family to attend a state school, he lost his mother to cancer when he was 17, and at the age of 18 he served as regent for the first time.

He trained as a cavalry officer at the Norwegian Military Academy and went on to study History, Economics and Politics at Oxford; like his father, he was an Olympic sailor: Tokyo 1964, where he was the flag-bearer at the opening ceremony; Mexico City 1968; and Munich 1972. In 1994, together with his son, he opened the Winter Olympic Games in Lillehammer, and subsequently represented Norway at the opening ceremonies of the 2006 Turin and 2008 Beijing Games. At the World Championships, with his sailing crew, he went on to win bronze in 1988, silver in 1982 and gold in 1987, before finishing sixth again in 2007 and second in 2017, at the age of 79.

Meanwhile, in 1968, he had married Sonja Haraldsen, following a nine-year secret relationship: he faced the prospect of renouncing his dynastic rights, initially imposing a ban on their marriage due to her commoner status. The couple had two children: Martha Louise and Haakon, who has since become Haakon VIII. As the coronation ceremony had already been abolished in 1908 by a constitutional amendment, King Harald V took the oath of office in Parliament on 21 January 1991 and received the solemn blessing in Trondheim Cathedral on 23 June of that year. In 2011, he openly shed tears for the victims of Anders Breivik’s massacre, and in 2015 he became the first reigning monarch to visit Antarctica, in the Norwegian territory of Queen Maud Land. He led a very active life despite significant health problems. As early as 2003, he had in fact overcome bladder cancer; in 2005, he underwent open-heart surgery to have an artificial valve fitted; in 2020, he required further surgery to replace the device; in 2024, he had a permanent pacemaker fitted after contracting an infection in Malaysia whilst on holiday; and as recently as February, he was admitted to hospital with a skin infection on his leg in Tenerife, where he was on holiday.