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Bringing your girlfriend home to dinner for the first time is something many people fear, but it can certainly be compared to what King Harald had to go through in his day.
There was no doubt that Miss Sonja Haraldsen was allowed to invite to the palace, and it was completely impossible for an heir to the throne to be with, and at least not marry, someone of red blood.
Love, on the other hand, is a game without rules, and the then Crown Prince could do nothing because he had fallen in love with the bourgeois girl from the West Coast. They met through mutual friends, and sweet music eventually began to emerge between the two teenagers of the same age.
– Free game
Today, as is well known, they are the king and queen of the country, but it has not been without a fight. In the new book “The King Counts”, the country’s royal couple now speak of difficult times, which even more than 50 years later awaken feelings and commitment in them.
– He was wildly wild, says Queen Sonja.
It refers to the period when newspapers and magazines first learned that she was possibly the bride of the Crown Prince. It had not yet been discussed between the king and the crown prince, but it still did not stop the media from printing photographs and opinion polls.
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In the period from the two meeting until the engagement was announced in March 1968, which lasted about nine years, a lot happened for the couple. In the book, author Harald Stanghelle writes that there was broad political agreement that a crown prince could not marry a bourgeois woman.
The matter was debated in various government conferences, where according to the author both one and several bullets are heated in the room. Some thought that the monarchy would be destroyed. When Prime Minister Per Borten asked King Olav who his son’s chosen was, and he replied that he knew nothing about Miss Haraldsen, the king must have said, “I don’t think so either.”
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That says something about how controversial the relationship was. Queen Sonja says:
– Those years were not easy. Feeling unwanted is not a good feeling. So it was very difficult. All the criticisms that came in were not easy. (…) So I made my own mantra: I really shouldn’t be allowed to destroy me completely. But I felt quite small and insecure. I was aware that everyone was judging me. In the end it went well.
Sonja’s big nightmare
– did something illegal
“They” refers to the media, who wrote so much about her that the Palace was forced several times to deny that the crown prince was marrying civilly. At the same time, there was a topic that father and son stopped talking about, so there wasn’t much advice to give either.
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– I did something illegal, then, with goose bumps. That’s why my father and I never talk about it. Very strange, explains the king in the book.
However, he never doubted that it would be possible.
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– I always thought that time would help us. “I didn’t think it would take that long, but the only thing that could help us was time,” he explains.
King Olav for a long time was very negative about a marriage between Harald and Sonja, when he feared that people would turn to the royal family. He expected Harald to find a princess and he never met Sonja for the long nine years before the engagement was finally approved.
Harald had to celebrate his own 30th birthday with dinner at the castle without Sonja, her boyfriend of eight years, by his side. But when Sonja herself turned 30 months later, she was invited to a party on the royal ship.
Crown Prince Harald was clear that he did not want to marry if he did not have Sonja Haraldsen. When he told Prime Minister Per Borten, “things must have sped up,” he says in the book.
The king asked the government and parliamentary leaders for advice, but another year had passed before the answer came and the king gave his “yes.”
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– Like a script
Already the day before the engagement, the rumors began to spread. NTB had sent a message to the Norwegian and foreign press that an engagement would be announced after eleven at night. Despite the deadline, Danmarks Radio sent the message directly. NRK quoted Danmarks Radio, and the hysteria was on.
At exactly eleven o’clock on March 19, 1968, Storting President Bernt Ingvaldsen sat in the Storting rostrum and announced the engagement. That to wild cheers from the people. The wedding took place the same fall, on August 29, at the cathedral in Oslo.
King Harald and Queen Sonja have been Norway’s royal couple since the death of King Olav in 1991. Although Harald and Sonja have been side by side for all these years, it was a very troubled start to the relationship between the prince. heir and his chosen one.
– Sonja and Harald’s story is like a script. Royal meets bourgeois, they fight for love, they face adversity, but in the end they meet and live happily ever after. I shouldn’t be surprised if it is one day made into a feature film, as See and Hear royal house expert Anders Johan Stavseng has previously said.
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