Harald V, King of Norway: 1937–2026

Local News Pasadena Poet Laureate Robert Oventile and his wife Denise Laing were visiting in Norway when the passing of King Harald was announced. Robert shares some of his observations and Denise's photos with our Pasadena audience.  In support of this reporting, our new correspondent Andrew Bush contributed a video highlighting King Harald's famous 2016 speech on equality.

On August 28, 2026, Harald V, King of Norway, passed away. He had reigned since 1991, and he has been succeeded by his son, Haakon Magnus, whose reign as Haakon VIII began on the day of his father’s death. Harald V was the son of Crown Prince Olav (who in 1957 became King Olav V) and Crown Princess Märtha.

The day after Harald V’s passing, in a spontaneous display of respect and affection, thousands of Norwegians in Oslo gathered at the Royal Palace, thronging the Palace Square and the blocks of the city’s main street, Karl Johans gate, leading up to the Palace.

Unofficial memorials of flowers, candles, and photographs of the king appeared in the city, which is Norway’s capital. The official memorial picture appeared widely at parks, train stations, and cobble-stone sidewalks, virtually anywhere a digital screen allowed for the photo’s display.

Harald V was known for engaging citizens in conversation while on walks in city locales, to all appearances unaccompanied by a security detail, or so one Oslo taxi driver testified. This habit of civic perambulation recalls how his father Olav V enjoyed cross-country skiing about Oslo with his dog Troll.

Winter sports and athleticism generally are pervasive aspects of Norwegian society, as reflected in the country’s culture of friluftsliv or “open air life.” Exemplifying this national characteristic, Harald was a member of the Norwegian Olympic sailing team for the 1964, 1968, and 1972 Summer Olympics. He won a gold medal in the 1987 One-Ton World Championship and pursued competitive sailing late into his life, achieving, at age 85, with his crew, tenth place in the 2022 World Championship for 8-meter craft.

Harald’s early years were marked by WW II. After the Nazi invasion of Norway, with his mother and siblings Harald went into exile, first briefly to Sweden and then for the remainder of the war to the US, specifically to Washington, DC, where he attended the ceremony swearing Franklin D. Roosevelt in for the president’s fourth term. With his family Harald returned to Norway in 1945.

In 1968, Harald married a commoner, Sonja Haraldsen, who later became Queen of Norway upon Harald’s accension to the throne. Harald V later supported his son Haakon Magnus’s marriage to a commoner, Mette-Marit Tjessem Høiby, despite her history of relationships with men convicted of drug-related offences and having had a son by one of them.

As reported in Norwegian media in 2019, after her marriage to Haakon, thus having become Norway’s Crown Princess, Mette-Marit became an acquaintance of the convicted sex offender Jeffry Epstein in 2011, the acquaintance lasting until 2014. Harald V refused comment on the matter. Mette-Marit is now Queen of Norway.

Harald V was Norway’s first Norwegian-born king since the reign of Olav IV in the fourteenth century. Over the course of his thirty-five-year reign, Harald V engaged in official duties in keeping with the traditions of the Norwegian crown and aligned with its delimited role in a modern parliamentary constitutional monarchy. He also used his position to advocate for the acceptance in Norway of religious diversity and of LGBTQ rights.