Norway’s new King Haakon VIII makes his first speech to the nation at the Royal Palace in Oslo on August 29, 2026.OSLO: Norway on Saturday opened a new chapter in its history under King Haakon VIII, who was due to give a memorial speech a day after the death the previous day of his 89-year-old father King Harald.

Flags flew at half-mast as scores of Norwegians kept turning up at the Royal Palace in Oslo, where mountains of flowers already lay on the ground after more than 20,000 people paid their respects on Friday to the late king, who had served 35 years on the throne.

Tributes also poured in from European monarchies and world leaders, including US President Donald Trump, who hailed the memory of “a strong, proud, and greatly respected man”.

“Everyone is sad, and the king was a man whom everyone respected. A fine man, so I think everyone feels a bit down today,” Anne Lobbe, 35, said outside the palace early on Saturday.

King Haakon was due to hold audiences later in the day with the leaders of the Church of Norway, parliament and supreme court. A national period of mourning has been declared in the Scandinavian kingdom. No date has been set for the late king’s funeral.

King Haakon will swear an oath of allegiance in Norway’s parliament on Tuesday.

The 53-year-old takes over a monarchy hailed for its modernity and modesty but recently beset by a string of scandals.

“An era has ended. A new one begins. The king is dead. Long live the king,” Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store said in a speech shortly after meeting the new monarch on Friday.

City halls across Norway put out condolence books on Saturday for the public to write personal messages. One of the first to write a message in Oslo’s City Hall, Unni Zetterquist Thorsen, 68, said she had thanked the late king for his “patience and strength through difficult times in Norway”. “He’s essentially been a steady support,” she said.

National mourning

The late king’s casket was brought from Oslo University Hospital to the royal palace on Friday. The public will be able to view the casket in the palace chapel on dates to be fixed.

King Haakon and his wife, Queen Mette-Marit, are not expected to be crowned in ceremony — Norway abolished that practice in 1908. But, like his father and grandfather before him, the new king could choose to have his reign blessed during a ceremony at Trondheim Cathedral, where Norwegian monarchs were crowned between 1814 and 1906.

King Harald, who was Europe’s oldest reigning monarch, had been in hospital in Oslo since August 17, suffering from haemolytic anaemia, a condition caused by an abnormally rapid destruction of red blood cells that leads to fatigue and shortness of breath.

Store said Harald, who ascended to the throne in 1991, was “a king of his time and for his time”. He said the late king accompanied Norway through decades of enormous change during which the country “grew richer, we became more numerous, and we became more diverse”.

King Harald was widely seen as the embodiment of an open and tolerant Norway.

Many of those spoke with pointed in particular to King Harald’s speech after neo-Nazi Anders Behring Breivik killed 77 people in 2011 — Norway’s worst massacre since World War II.

The late king “was someone who always seemed to find the words that brought us together and gave us a sense of security,” Caroline Vagle, a reporter for magazine Se og Hor, said. King Harald faced mounting health problems in his final years, forcing him to scale back his official schedule.

Published in Dawn, August 30th, 2026