Haakon, Crown Prince, and Crown Princess Mette-Marit

▪ 2002

      On Aug. 25, 2001, Crown Prince Haakon of Norway married Mette-Marit Tjessem Høiby, who was not only a commoner but also a single mother when they began dating in 1999. Even in permissive Norway—where in 1998 almost 50% of firstborn children were born to unmarried women—the prince's choice of bride raised eyebrows.

      The objection, however, seemed to be less the issue of descent—her four-year-old son, Marius, could never be king—than the people with whom the new crown princess had associated in her former life. Less than a week before they tied the knot, the crown prince and his bride-to-be held a press conference in which she apologized for her former life and made her statement serve as both a plea and an object lesson. She hoped to curtail future questions about her past and, without admitting she had used drugs, used the occasion to condemn them. For that was the issue Norwegians cared most about; her former boyfriend (and the father of her son) had been sentenced to prison for assault and possession of cocaine. Crown Prince Haakon, who acknowledged in mid-May 2000 that Mette-Merit was his girlfriend, was completely supportive of her, as were his parents, King Harald V and Queen Sonja. The king did not stand in the way of the marriage, perhaps because he had had to wait nine years before his father, King Olav V, and the Norwegian Parliament approved his marrying commoner Sonja Haraldsen.

      The crown prince was born on July 20, 1973, in Oslo. Though he had an older sister, Märtha Louise, Haakon Magnus was the only son of then crown prince Harald and crown princess Sonja, and as such he was from birth heir to the throne. (The succession law was changed in the 1990s.) He had a happy childhood, mostly out of the limelight. After four years of service in the navy, including time at the Naval Academy in Bergen, he broke with Norwegian tradition to attend the University of California, Berkeley, where he obtained (1999) a B.A. in political science. Thereafter he enrolled at the University of Oslo to study law and social science. On Dec. 1, 2000, he introduced his fiancée, with whom he was already sharing an apartment, to the public.

      Mette-Marit Tjessem Høiby was born on Aug. 19, 1973, in Kristiansand, Nor., and grew up under quite different circumstances, with an ordinary middle-class upbringing. She was an exchange student in Wangaratta, Australia, during six months of her high-school years. Thereafter she experienced what she called a “youth rebellion” that resulted in her “wild life.” That life came to an end for her in an almost fairy-tale manner when she met, and ultimately married, a prince.

Kathleen Kuiper

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