In August 2001, Crown Prince Haakon and Mette-Marit Tjessem Høiby celebrated a fairytale wedding. Not everything has been easy in the couple’s life since then. An illness and the children have bonded the two even more closely.
Oslo – For a cool Scandinavian, this declaration of love was the highest of feelings. “Dear Mette-Marit, your soul is blazing,” said Crown Prince Haakon to his tearful bride in a white wedding dress, who on that day went from being a commoner to being a Crown Princess.
She is sensitive, courageous, sometimes “a little insecure”, spirited and so much more, as the heir to the throne affectionately enumerated. “You have a lot of humor and a warm, big heart. In other words, you are a fantastically complex person. ”He is proud to be able to call himself her life partner. “Mette-Marit, I love you!”
Crown prince couple close to the citizens
This touching declaration of love is now 20 years ago, which on August 25, 2001 around 400 wedding guests in the ballroom of Oslo Castle and millions of viewers listened to in front of the TV. At that time Norway got a Crown Prince couple who were more open and closer to the people than previous generations. The royal family has since become more and more popular thanks to Mette-Marit – and has proven to the Norwegians that they can count on their farm in the toughest hours.
Mette-Marit Tjessem Høiby was warmly welcomed to the royal family that summer’s day, despite a controversial past with wild parties and drugs. “I have read about you many times that you are the ordinary girl who will become Norway’s Crown Princess today. That doesn’t agree with my impression, ”said Haakon’s father, King Harald V, in front of the smiling wedding party. “You are not an ordinary girl. You are an extraordinary girl. You are exceptionally open and honest, exceptionally committed, and have an extraordinary willpower. You are extraordinarily brave. “
single mother
It is also extraordinary how openly Mette-Marit dealt with its past. “You are now opening a whole new chapter in your life, the pages of which are completely blank,” said Bishop Gunnar Stalsett during the wedding in Oslo Cathedral. Looking at her illegitimate son Marius, who was four at the time, the bishop said: “You have shown other single mothers a way.”
All of this was also exceptionally good for sprucing up the image of the Norwegian monarchy. Haakon and Mette-Marit (now both 48), who had met only two years earlier at a festival, were probably the most popular couple among the royal children of Europe at the time. In Germany, too, people were ecstatic. “True love overcomes all boundaries. True love forgives everything. Norway’s Haakon and his Mette-Marit have proven it, have inspired us ”, cheered the Cologne“ Express ”. “The scandal-ridden noble houses in England or Monaco are now looking enviously to Oslo.”
Terror shakes Norway
Shortly after the fairytale wedding, all hell broke loose in the country of their honeymoon when Islamist terrorists carried out attacks on September 11, 2001 in the USA, killing almost 3,000 people. The newly wed couple, each just 28 years old at the time, had landed in New York a few days earlier and had also been spotted in Manhattan.
Ten years later, the terror also reached Norway. On July 22, 2011, right-wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik set off a bomb in Oslo’s government district before he massacred the summer camp of the youth organization of the Social Democratic Workers’ Party on the island of Utøya. 77 people were killed that day, including Mette-Marit’s stepbrother.
Norway then looked for a stop – and found it with its royals. Together with then Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, Harald and Haakon showed the population the way to meet Breivik’s hatred not with vengeance, but with love and solidarity.
A month ago, Haakon and Mette-Marit visited Utøya to mark the tenth anniversary of the attacks. In their midst sat someone else: Princess Ingrid Alexandra. A good six months before her 18th birthday, the number two of the Norwegian succession to the throne is gradually growing into the duties of a royal family representative. With her interest in environmental protection and her passion for sport – from skiing to kickboxing to surfing – she gives the farm a breath of fresh air like her mother once did.
Mette-Marit makes her illness public
With Ingrid Alexandra and her two years younger brother Sverre Magnus, two royal grandchildren are growing up that the Norwegians apparently don’t have to worry about. However, that does not hide the fact that the Crown Prince couple also had to go through tough times. This also included the diagnosis Mette-Marit received in autumn 2018: she had pulmonary fibrosis, she announced on the Norwegian evening news. This is an incurable disease in which the lungs are attacked by chronic inflammation of the connective tissue.
Since then, people in Norway have regularly been worried about Mette-Marit when she has to miss one or the other appointment due to health reasons. However, the Crown Princess had already announced after the diagnosis that she would have to step back a bit from time to time. And Haakon said at the time: “We have good days ahead of us.”
And they also have these good days, as they recently described in a podcast on the NRK broadcaster. Mette-Marit showed herself to be strong and vulnerable at the same time: “During my illness, it was more important than ever to just be Mette,” she said. “And that that’s okay. That I don’t have to define myself as a Crown Princess, but have the right to be Mette first and foremost. ”Dpa
