BIRTH AND REIGN
Harald’s birth on Feb 21, 1937, was cause for national celebration – he was the first royal heir to be born in Norway in almost 570 years. Danish and Swedish monarchs had ruled over the Scandinavian nation for centuries, until 1905.
Just three years after Harald was born, Nazi Germany invaded the country. King Haakon and then-Crown Prince Olav fled to Britain, where they led Norway’s government-in-exile, while the three-year-old Harald went with his mother, Crown Princess Martha, to neutral Sweden, then to the United States.
After living briefly at the White House, and then for five years in Bethesda, Maryland, Harald, his older sisters Ragnhild and Astrid and their mother met frequently with US President Franklin D Roosevelt, whom Harald years later described as like a grandfather.
When he returned to Norway after the war ended in 1945, Harald attended state schools rather than the private lessons his father had received.
His marriage in 1968 to a commoner broke with tradition and followed a nine-year stand-off with his father that ended only after Harald threatened never to marry rather than give up Sonja.
LATER YEARS
In 1998, the king faced an unprecedented wave of public criticism over press reports that he had accepted a 4-million-crown (US$400,000) yacht from a group of industrialists as a birthday present, and that palace repairs had cost the government 500 million crowns.
Around the same time, his former deputy private secretary suggested that Harald should abdicate at the egalitarian country’s normal retirement age of 67.
Opinion polls gave the king firm backing to stay on for life, however, and the criticism subsided. A year later, in another Reuters interview, Harald joked that he would remain on the throne for life unless he went mad.
“There is no tradition in Norway for that (abdication). But you never know. If you go completely bonkers,” he said. Queen Sonja laughed and said: “But who will ever tell you that?”
Harald’s son Haakon, 53, will be Norway’s fourth king since the country gained independence from Sweden in 1905, with Mette-Marit, also aged 53, as his queen.
