Scandinavia’s royal families often bask in mass approval, as royal historian ROGER LUNDGREN confirms. Polls from Norway, Sweden and Denmark all place public support in their royal families, though they’ve had their fair share of scandals…
Norway
From left to right: Prince Sverre Magnus, King Harald V, Princess Mette Marit, Crown Prince Haakon, Queen Sonja, Princess Ingrid Alexandra
Nowadays, the popularity of Norway’s royal family is enormous, but the going hasn’t always been smooth. The late 1990s saw a dip in support before Mette Marit married Crown Prince Haakon in 2001. Nevertheless, support for Harald and his family has bounced back. A recent poll, conducted in 2014, found that around 82 per cent of Norwegians are in favour of keeping the monarchy.
Norway’s monarchy is in fact not Norwegian, but Danish. Having shared Denmark’s king during the Kalmar Union from 1397 to 1814, and Sweden’s to independence in 1905, Norwegians searched for a new monarch elsewhere. Prince Carl of Denmark, married to the British-born Queen Maud of Wales, was shipped over and promptly crowned as the more Norwegian sounding ‘Haakon VII’ in Trondheim, where the current king had his benediction in 1991.
Sweden
From left to right: Princess Madeleine, Chris O’Neill, Queen Silvia, Prince Daniel, Princess Estelle, Prince Oscar, Crown Princess Victoria, King Carl XVI Gustaf, Princess Sofia, Prince Alexander, Prince Carl Philip
When Sweden lost all of Finland in 1809, the then king, Gustaf IV Adolf, was deposed. To fill the void, and perhaps as a sop to Napoleon, the Swedes shipped in French marshal Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, the husband of Napoleon’s beloved ‘Desirée’. The king apparantly attempted to speak Swedish to his subjects just once, but was met with such deafening laughter that he never tried again. He was also claimed to have said of his adopted country: “The wine is terrible, the people without temperament, and even the sun is without warmth.”
The current king, Carl XVI Gustaf, can speak Swedish and hasn’t yet knowingly complained about the wine. His daughter, Crown Princess Victoria, enjoys huge popularity, not least since she married her personal trainer, Daniel Westling, in 2010.
The present king met his wife, Sylvia, during the Münich Olympics of 1972. Roger Lundgren, who wrote a biography of Queen Sylvia, says she was thrown straight into being queen and had very little time to prepare.
Denmark
From left to right: Prince Joachim, Prince Henrik, Queen Margrethe, Princess Mary, Princess Marie and Prince Fredrik
Unlike their Norwegian neighbours, to whom they gave a royal, Denmark’s royal family can perhaps claim to be native, though the arrival of Mary (from Tasmania), the queen’s husband and their youngest son’s wife, Marie (from France), may have positively diluted this. Queen Margrethe’s husband, Henri de Monpezat (restyled as ‘Henrik’), died in February 2018.
Fluent in several languages and an artist in her spare time, Margarethe (now one of only two ruling queens in the world) currently holds about a 77 per cent approval rating. But, like their neighbours, the heirs to the throne, Crown Prince Fredrik and his glamorous wife, Mary, steal much of the popularity.
An absolute monarchy until as late as 1849, Margarethe’s common touch (as a chain smoker and keen shopper) has endeared her to the public. The square outside Amalienborg Palace is regularly packed for official events, and around 80 per cent of Danes are said to have seen their queen, compared to under 50 per cent of Brits.
Roger Lundgren says the Windsors may be outliers, as the other European royals regularly meeting each another both formally and informally. When the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge toured Sweden with their Crown couple in 2018, Lundgren says this was possibly the first time they realised the closeness and similarities of their contemporaries.
Denmark’s multi-tasking queen
EXCLUSIVE WATCH:
Roger Lundgren’s report on HRH Princess Madeleine of Sweden
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