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There will be little to celebrate when Norway’s King Harald, Europe’s oldest reigning monarch, turns 89 later this month.
Two multigenerational crises have rocked the institution, causing its popularity to dip in polls of Norwegians and bringing a public glare that far exceeds that of previous scandals.
The king’s step-grandson, Marius Borg Høiby, who joined the royal family when his mother Mette-Marit married in 2001, is standing trial in Oslo charged with 38 counts, including the rape of four women. Crown Princess Mette-Marit, meanwhile, has come under intense scrutiny over damaging revelations in the Epstein files about her years-long relationship with the late sex offender.
On Tuesday, the first day of his trial that has transfixed Norway, Høiby pleaded not guilty to the most serious charges of rape and domestic violence but acknowledged partial guilt – a plea allowed under Norwegian law – for aggravated assault and reckless behaviour. He also admitted lesser charges, including driving too fast.
The crown princess had planned to leave the country for at least some of the trial, but changed her mind after the latest tranche of the Epstein files, released last Friday by the US justice department, appeared to include nearly 1,000 mentions of her. In one exchange from 2012, she asked Epstein in an email if it was “inappropriate for a mother to suggest two naked women carrying a surfboard for my 15 yr old sons wallpaper?”
The Epstein revelations prompted fierce criticism of Mette-Marit, including from the prime minister, Jonas Gahr Stør, who agreed with her own comments that she had shown “poor judgement” and called on her to provide more information.
On Friday, Mette-Marit released a statement via the royal household expressing her “deepest regret for my friendship with Jeffrey Epstein” and apologising for “the situation that I have put the royal family in, especially the king and queen.”
Her husband, Crown Prince Haakon, speaking to reporters, said there was “a lot happening at once” for his family. “We support Marius in the situation he is in, we look after the other children, they must also be looked after, and I have to look after and take care of the crown princess,” he said. “Fortunately, she takes care of me, too.”
Although the king and his wife, Queen Sonja, remain popular among many Norwegians, the standing of the wider royal family has taken a severe hit. A poll this week by the newspaper Aftenposten found that support for Norway having a monarchy has dropped from 72% in 2024 to 54% today. A total of three polls have found that close to half of the population believes Mette-Marit can no longer become queen when Haakon ascends to the throne.
As recently as December there was a public outpouring of support for the crown princess, who has pulmonary fibrosis, when she revealed that she will probably have to have a lung transplant. Now, some of the organisations of which she is royal patron have said they are considering ending their association with her.
Kjetil B Alstadheim, Aftenposten’s political editor, who wrote an article this week asking the question: “Can Mette-Marit become queen after this?”, said the Epstein revelations posed the biggest threat because unlike Høiby – who is not an official member of the family – Mette-Marit has a central role in the institution and its future.
“She is supposed to be queen one day, so that’s more difficult,” he said. “The others are side stories. Difficult stories but side stories. So it hits the family in a more direct way.”
Støre’s decision to comment on Mette-Marit’s actions was unprecedented, he said. “I have not found any example from earlier where a prime minister has criticised a member of the royal family in that way.”. He also added that Støre’s instruction to her to provide the public with more answers was highly unusual. “It’s very unique that a prime minister tells a member of the royal family what to do.”
The royals are not immune to scandal: Mette-Marit’s entry into the family as a single mother before her marriage to Prince Haakon in 2001 caused a stir, and the business activities of Princess Märtha Louise – the crown prince’s sister – drew unwelcome attention after her marriage to a self-described shaman in 2024. But the developments of recent weeks are of a different order of magnitude.
How the royal family handles the Epstein files issue will be crucial to “how they are viewed in the weeks and months and years to come”, said Alstadheim.
Despite the apparent rise in republican sentiment and the unusual prime ministerial intervention, the dial hasn’t moved on the status of the monarchy among Norway’s wider political class. In a strange coincidence, a vote that takes places every four years in parliament on making Norway a republic was held on Tuesday. Just 26 MPs voted in favour of getting rid of the monarchy, against 141 who voted to keep it. Support was in fact lower than the last time a vote took place, in June 2022, when 35 voted in favour of a republic. The measure requires a two-thirds majority to pass.
Alstadheim attributed the result to a desire on the part of the MPs to “look at this on a longer horizon than the current news cycle”.
The Norwegian republican association, Norge Som Republikk, argued that the vote should have been postponed until more information was known about the mother and son’s behaviour. “Now we have to wait at least another four years,” said their leader, Craig Aaen-Stockdale.
Vilde Helljesen, a journalist for the state broadcaster NRK, said many Norwegians were waiting for answers from Mette-Marit on the full extent of her relationship with Epstein. “She has said that she regrets her contact with Epstein and that she should have better researched his past and apologised for that,” Helljesen said. “However, the recent files have left new questions unanswered.”
In practice, she added, the only person who could give and remove royal titles was the king: “As long as Mette-Marit is the wife of the heir to the throne, she will one day be queen – or the title that the king at the time decides. That is the formality.”
