OSLO: Norway’s King Harald V, a reformer who emerged from the shadow of his well-loved, extrovert father over more than three decades on the throne, died on Friday at the age of 89, the royal palace said, at a time of multiple crises for the Norwegian royal family.
“King Harald passed away peacefully at Oslo University Hospital at 0635 on Friday (0435 GMT),” the palace said on its website.
Harald, who was Europe’s oldest living monarch, was taken to hospital on Aug 17. The palace said he was being treated for a bacterial infection in his blood.
In 2024, he had been hospitalised for an infection while on holiday in Malaysia and received a temporary pacemaker. He was flown back home by the Norwegian armed forces and later fitted with a permanent device.
That same year, Harald, Norway’s ceremonial head of state since 1991, said he would reduce the number of official engagements in which he took part, but ruled out abdication, insisting that his oath as king was for life.
After his death was announced, hundreds of people converged on the palace in Oslo to lay flowers and the government declared nationwide mourning until after his funeral.
Multiple challenges
Harald’s death comes at a tumultuous time for the royal family. Crown Princess Mette-Marit, married to Haakon and who becomes the new queen, is facing intense scrutiny for her friendship with the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, a relationship for which she has apologised.
Her son Marius Hoiby, born from a relationship predating her marriage to Haakon, was found guilty in June of two out of four counts of rape and one count of domestic violence and sentenced to four years in prison after a seven-week trial.
Two days after Marius was convicted, the palace said Mette-Marit had undergone a successful lung transplant.
King Harald’s marriage in 1968 to Mette-Marit, 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.
In 1998, the king faced an unprecedented wave of public criticism over press reports that he had accepted a four-million-crown ($400,000) yacht from a group of industrialists as a birthday present, and that palace repairs had cost the government 500m 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 an 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?”
A descendant of Queen Victoria
A great-great-grandchild of Britain’s Queen Victoria, Harald acceded to the throne in 1991 and slowly introduced modern touches that brought a ceremonial post seen mainly as a symbol of national independence into the 21st century.
The popular king played a crucial role comforting the nation in times of mourning.
When far-right, anti-Islam fanatic Anders Behring Breivik killed 77 people in 2011 in Oslo and on Utoeya island, the king consoled the nation with a powerful televised speech. His voice trembling with emotion, he said that “freedom is stronger than fear”.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif expressed sorrow over the death of King Harald.
“On behalf of the government and people of Pakistan, I extend our heartfelt condolences to the royal family and the people of Norway,” the prime minister said in a post on his official X handle.
He said the people of Pakistan stood in solidarity with the bereaved family and the Norwegian nation.
Published in Dawn, August 29th, 2026
