As comfortable in a duffel coat as in ceremonial dress, Norway’s new monarch, King Haakon VII, is the new face of a monarchy long praised for its modernity and modesty but now beset by woe and scandal.
Haakon automatically succeeded to the throne Friday after his father, King Harald, passed away peacefully earlier in the day.
The 53-year-old informed the government in a meeting that he would keep the same motto as his father and grandfather: “All for Norway.”
He has increasingly seen his family’s affairs plastered across front pages: his wife’s lung transplant, revelations about her ties to convicted US sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, a rape conviction against his stepson, and the escapades of his eccentric sister and her American self-proclaimed shaman husband.’
“Everything will be fine with him when the time comes. It is reassuring to know that,” the late King Harald said of him in a book.
“I am fortunate that it is Crown Prince Haakon who has to take over,” Harald said, musing that his own father had probably been more worried about the succession
The tall, bearded and stately Haakon is as modest and measured as most Norwegians — reflecting a society that shuns opulence and ostentation.
Married to Mette-Marit, a commoner who was a single mother before their wedding, Haakon has focused his attention on issues that concern many of his generation, including environmental protection and fighting racism and homophobia.
“It’s important that we protect who we are and for Norway to be a country where we’re allowed to love and be with whoever we want,” he said the day after a bloody attack against the gay community in Oslo in June 2022.
Born on July 20, 1973, the prince attended state-run daycare and schools, in line with the wishes of King Harald and Queen Sonja, who were keen to see him grow up among “ordinary” Norwegians.
After a stint in the navy, he went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in political science at the University of California in Berkeley and a master’s in international politics at the London School of Economics.
Haakon is a fan of skiing, surfing, and windsurfing, as well as music.
It was at a 1999 music festival at Kristiansand, in southern Norway, that he met his future wife, whose tumultuous past made headlines in the Scandinavian country.
At the time, Mette-Marit Tjessem Hoiby was a single mother of a young son named Marius, the fruit of an earlier relationship with a man with a heavy criminal record, including assault and cocaine possession.
