Princess Madeleine is engaged

The Swedish Royal Court this morning officially announced the engagement of Princess Madeleine to Jonas Bergström, her boyfriend of seven years. No date or place has been set for the wedding, but according to the Royal Court it will only take place after the wedding of Crown Princess Victoria and Daniel Westling in June 2010 and the general election in September 2010. The engagement took place at Solliden Palace at Öland this weekend and the couple will meet the press there at 4 p.m. today. Both the King and the Government have given their consent, as the Constitution prescribes.

The Royal Court’s press release (in Swedish and English):
http://www.royalcourt.se/ovrigt/pressrum/pressmeddelanden/aretsarkiv/prinsessanmadeleineochjurkandjonasbergstromforlovade.5.4d52a9051226f69aa7780003025.html

The third son of Claes and Elisabeth Bergström, Jonas Claes Bergström was born in Danderyd outside Stockholm on 23 January 1979 and grew up in Djursholm, a well-to-do suburb. He has a master degree in law, graduating from the University of Stockholm in 2006, and works at the law firm Vinge in Stockholm.
Nothing has so far been said about the title issue, unlike in February when the annoucement of Crown Princess Victoria’s engagement to Daniel Westling stated clearly that he would be styled “Prince Daniel, Duke of Westrogothia”. This may mean that Jonas Bergström will not receive any title - which will seem odd if Prince Carl Philip’s future wife is made a princess.
The current King’s sisters were all downgraded from Royal Highnesses to “Princess Firstname, Mrs Lastname” when they married commoners, with the exception of Princess Birgitta, who was the only one of them to marry a prince. The big difference between them and Princess Madeleine is that the latter has succession rights - personally I would find it most natural that she remains HRH Princess Madeleine of Sweden, Duchess of Helsinga and Gestricia, but what her future husband should be known as is less obvious. It really all depends on what has been planned for the future wife of Prince Carl Philip - were she to become a princess and Daniel Westling a prince, it would be only fair that the husband of the youngest child also received that title.
The question of where they will live also remains - it has earlier been speculated about Lilla Parkudden at Djurgården in Stockholm, a property which belongs to the Crown and adjoins Parkudden, which was the summer house of Prince Carl and Princess Ingeborg 1899-1909. Another possible option could be Villa Beylon at Ulriksdal, the former home of Princess Christina, which is now empty and undergoing renovation.
It was the journalist Åsa Bönnelyche at Svensk Damtidning who first broke the news of the engagement in an article at their website yesterday:

http://svenskdam.se/2009/08/extra-extra-extra-prinsessan-madeleine-och-jonas-bergstrom-forlovade/

The Royal Court was unwilling to confirm, while the royal correspondent at the newspaper Expressen, Johan T. Lindwall, recently stated that another royal engagement in Sweden this year was “out of the question”, ignoring the fact that it has happened several times that two royal siblings have been engaged within a short span of time. Today he claims that they have been engaged for two weeks already, but his credibility has probably suffered a bit now.
(The photo above was taken by the Royal Court).

What to see: The former barracks of HM the King’s Norwegian Guard, Stockholm

The changing of His Majesty the King’s Guard outside the Royal Palace in Oslo at 1.30 p.m. is always a happening which attracts a crowd, many of the spectators being tourists. Although the Guard was founded in 1856, it did not settle in the Norwegian capital until 1888.
Being the King’s personal guard naturally meant that it should be close to the monarch, who in the days of the Swedish-Norwegian union mostly resided in Stockholm. They were therefore housed in the so-called Northern Barracks at Storgatan at Östermalm, which had actually been built as a brewery by the brewer Lars Malmborg in 1738.

The wing towards Skeppargatan was added in 1749 and in 1812 the building was bought by the city of Stockholm for use as barracks. On 1 November 1856 His Majesty the King’s Norwegian Guard took possession of the building. They remained until 1888, after which the building housed Östermalm’s fire brigade 1891-1927 and then became a police station during the years 1894-1977.
With the King’s Norwegian Guard stationed in Stockholm, the King was accompanied by Christiania Royal Citizens Guard for ceremonial events in his Norwegian capital. The Citizens Guard, popularly known as “the Yellow Choir”, was however dissolved in 1881 and by a political decision in 1888 the King’s Guard was relocated to Kristiania, as Oslo was then called.
The Guard left Stockholm on 30 September 1888 and 100 years later a commemorative plaque was unveiled on the wall of its first “home”. Today the Guard’s main barracks are at Huseby on the outskirts of Oslo, but the uniforms (seen in the second picture, showing the Guard marching past the statue of King Carl XIV Johan on their way to the changing of the Guard) are the same as in the Stockholm days.

What to see: Strömsholm Palace, Strömsholm

Strömsholm is probably the least known of the ten palaces currently at the disposal of the King of Sweden. It is also the one which is furthest away from Stockholm, situated almost in the middle of nowhere 5 kilometres from a small place called Kolbäck (a railway station, a café and some shops) and 27 kilometres from the town of Eskilstuna.
The first palace on the spot was built in the late 1550s for the third and last wife of King Gustaf I, Queen Katarina, née Stenbock. The current palace is however a Baroque structure built for the Dowager Queen Hedvig Eleonora by the architect Nicodemus Tessin the Elder (1615-1681) in 1669-1681. The interior did however remain unfinished until Queen Ulrika Eleonora the Younger had Carl Hårleman decorate them in the 1730s. In 1766 the palace was put at the disposal of Crown Princess Sophia Magdalena, the bride of the future Gustaf III, and the interiors were redecorated in Rococo style, some of which were later redecorated again in Gustavian (early neoclassical) style.
In 1808 the Dowager Queen Sophia Magdalena exchanged Strömsholm for Ulriksdal Palace, which is much closer to Stockholm. The last royal to use Strömsholm was King Carl XIV Johan – Sweden had then joined Norway in a union in 1814 and the King would sleep at Strömsholm when travelling between the capitals of his two kingdoms, a journey which back then took at least one week.
Following his death in 1844, no-one showed much interest in the palace, which in 1868 was made available for the Army Riding and Driving School. They stayed for a century, leaving the palace in 1960 and the estate in 1968. The rooms on the ground floor were restored in the 1990s, bringing the interiors back to what they were like in 1816, the year of the first complete inventory of the palace. Strömsholm is open to the public in the summer, but the royal family rarely come there.
The largest room on the ground floor is the Hall of Portraits – the name derives from the large portraits of the palace’s founder Queen Hedvig Eleonora and the monarchs Gustaf I, Gustaf II Adolf, Christina, Carl X Gustaf, Carl XI, Carl XII, Ulrika Eleonora and Carl XIV Johan, the latter posing with the crowns of both Sweden and Norway on a table to his right.
The Chinese Dining-Room is one of the most beautiful rooms of the palace – the wall paintings are by Lars Bolander and were done in 1774. On the walls of the ground floor can be found a large number of portraits of members of the dynasties Pfalz and Holstein-Gottorp and various relatives, as well as some landscapes done by Queen Ulrika Eleonora the Elder, consort of Carl XI and a keen amateur painter.
On the second floor the most important room is the Hall of State, where one can see large paintings of King Carl XI and his favourite horses. On the third floor, beneath the lantern, is the Palace Chapel, dating from 1734-1741.

Late royals: Prince Oscar Bernadotte (1859-1953)

Born on 15 November 1859, Prince Oscar Carl August, Duke of Gotlandia was the second son of the future King Oscar II and Queen Sophia of Sweden and Norway and was named for his recently deceased grandfather Oscar I. The future Gustaf V was his elder brother, with Prince Carl and Prince Eugen making up a quartet of brothers.
Like his father, Prince Oscar joined the navy at an early age. He caused quite a scandal when he made it known to his parents that he wanted to marry Ebba Munck af Fulkila, a lady-in-waiting to his sister-in-law Crown Princess Victoria. It was constitutionally forbidden for princes of the royal house to marry non-royals and Ebba was discharged from royal service and Oscar sent on a long journey around the globe to think things through. When he returned, the couple were still intent on marrying and were able to do so after winning the support of the wise Queen Sophia.
The wedding took place in Bornemouth, England on 15 March 1888. The marriage to a commoner meant that Prince Oscar automatically lost his right of succession to the Swedish and Norwegian thrones and with them he lost those titles which were considered linked to his dynastic status. He did however keep his title of prince (but not of Sweden and Norway), which was seen as his by birth, to which was added the surname Bernadotte. He renounced his Norwegian citizenship and became Prince Oscar Bernadotte. His wife was styled Princess Ebba Bernadotte, but their children were plain Mr and Miss Bernadotte until Queen Sophia’s half-brother, Grand Duke Adolphe of Luxembourg, granted Oscar’s descendants in the agnatic line the title Count(ess) of Wisborg in 1892.
Five children were born of the marriage: Maria, Carl, Sofia, Elsa and Folke. Prince Oscar’s naval duties meant that the family firstly lived in Karlskrona, but later they settled in a house at Karlavägen in Stockholm. As he was no longer a member of the royal house, Prince Oscar Bernadotte did not carry out public duties and his great-niece Princess Astrid of Norway once told me that eventually there was some sort of distance between Prince Oscar’s branch of the family and the royal branch.
When the union between Sweden and Norway was brought to an end in 1905, the Norwegian Parliament proposed to Oscar II that he should choose a prince of the royal house to be King of Norway. King Oscar offered the Norwegians Prince Oscar Bernadotte, but this was flatly refused by the Norwegian negotiator Fritz Wedel Jarlsberg as Prince Oscar did not belong to the royal house and was therefore not included in the so-called “Bernadotte Proposal”.
Oscar II eventually refused the offer on behalf of his family and informally recommended Prince Carl of Denmark. While the issue was still unresolved, the prospective King Oscar III wrote to his brother Eugen: “For my own part I do not want to put my children in such a situation, but possibly I could sacrifice myself, but probably they do not want me and Ebba, except of course those in Norway who believe in the Lord Jesus”.
Prince Oscar and Princess Ebba were both deeply religious and active in organisations such as YMCA and the Salvation Army. Prince Oscar Bernadotte was also a dedicated lay preacher.
All the four sons of Oscar II lived to a great age – Gustaf V to be 92, Prince Carl to 90 and Prince Eugen to 82. Prince Oscar Bernadotte outlived them all, dying on 4 October 1953, a few weeks before his 94th birthday. Princess Ebba had died in 1946 and he also had the misfortune of losing their daughter Sofia in 1936 and their son Folke, who was assassinated in Jerusalem while on a UN peace mission in 1948.

Frederik VIII’s Mansion to open its doors

In Copenhagen the renovation of Frederik VIII’s Mansion at Amalienborg is now drawing to a close and it will soon open its door to the public for a shorter period. The house will be the official residence of Crown Prince Frederik and Crown Princess Mary – they will live on the top floor, while the ground floor and first floor will be used for official functions and entertaining. These floors will be open to the public from 27 February to 30 May 2010, before the royals move in. For more information:

http://www.ses.dk/da/SlotteOgHaver/Slotte/AmalienborgOgAmaliehaven/frederik8palae/AabningForOffentligheden.aspx

The newspaper BT recently had a graphic presentation of the layout of the mansion:

http://www.bt.dk/show_image_gallery/718699

The renovation of the mansion was originally expected to cost 126.3 million DKK, but it seems the final bill will be 220 million DKK. As this is funded by taxpayers’ money it seems only natural that they will be allowed in to see what the money has been spent on.
Frederik VIII’s Mansion was the last of the four Amalienborg mansions to become a royal residence. It was furnished in the Empire style by the architect Jørgen Hansen Koch when Frederik VI’s daughter, Princess Vilhelmine Marie, married the future King Frederik VII in 1828. The marriage ended in divorce and the first reigning couple to live there were King Frederik VIII and Queen Louise, followed by King Frederik IX and Queen Ingrid.
Sadly Hansen’s interiors were treated quite badly when King Frederik IX and Queen Ingrid made their home there and much time and money has now been spent on restoring them.
The photos show Frederik VIII’s Mansion in July 2008 and February 2009.

What to see: The Throne of Norway

There are two proper royal thrones in Norway, but it is not often that the King sits on them. The smaller one is used during the State Council meetings at the Royal Palace every Friday, while the larger one, which this post deals with, is used once a year, during the State Opening of Parliament.
The throne is of gilt wood and covered in red velvet, which originally had golden crowns with pearls sewn onto it. The armrests are in the shape of crowned chimeras and the rich ornaments on the top surround the Norwegian Coat of Arms. The second photo shows the Coat of Arms in its current design of 1937, while the shape of the earlier design can be seen on the back (photo 3).
We know for sure that the throne was made in Stockholm in 1847 by woodcarver Wilhelm Heinrich Hoffmann (1813-1864) after a drawing made at the Royal Palace in Oslo. The throne was shipped to Norway at the end of July or beginning of August 1847.
But thereafter there are at least two theories about the throne’s further history. Based on a document he has found in the archives of the Ministry of Finance, the historian Eystein M. Andersen believes that the throne was intended for the coronation of King Oscar I – a coronation which in the end never took place – and that it was transferred to the Parliament when the new Parliament Building was completed in 1866.
On the other hand, the art historian Geir Thomas Risåsen, the leading authority on the Royal Palace, believes that the throne was meant for the Palace, which was being furnished at the time and that it had its place in the Throne Room (now the Hall of Mirrors) until it was dismantled as such by King Oscar II “around 1880” and only then transferred to the Parliament.
Andersen insists that there was only one throne at the Royal Palace, namely the one which is now in use in the State Council Chamber, and bases this on a rather unreliable book by Yngvar Hauge. He is apparently unaware of the fact that the inventory of the Palace’s furniture states clearly that there were two thrones and a newspaper article describing the larger throne at the time it was shipped to Norway in 1847 also mentions that with it went a smaller throne intended for the State Council Chamber.
Concerning the date of the dismantling of the Throne Room I can add that the book Mindeblade fra Deres Majestæter Kong Oscars og Dronning Sofies Kroninger i Stockholm og Trondhjem 1873 describes it as the Throne Room in connection with the coronation of Oscar II in 1873, while a book on the architecture of the Norwegian capital, Bidrag til fremstilling af Kristiania arkitektur i det nittende aarhundrede – Slottet, Universitetet, Logen, published in 1880, names it as the former Throne Room. With this in mind it is reasonable to believe that the dismantling happened when the Palace underwent its first major reconstruction in 1876-1878 to make it more comfortable for King Oscar II and Queen Sophia, who, with the advent of the railway, were able to come more often to Norway than their predecessors.
So far no pictures have been found which can settle the dispute. Apparently no pictures of the Throne Room exist and the earliest illustrations known to the Parliament Archive are a drawing in the newspaper Verdens Gang from the State Opening of Parliament in 1897 and photos from the same ceremony in 1903. I have however been able to find three photos which show the throne in use by Oscar II at the unveiling of the statue of King Christian IV in the Great Square in 1880, as well as a drawing by Carl Larsson reproduced in Ny Illustrerad Tidning of 18 September 1875 showing the unveiling of the statue of King Carl XIV Johan in the Palace Square in 1875, where the throne can be glimpsed behind Oscar II (a detail of the drawing is seen in the seventh picture). However, none of these illustrations answers the question about whether the throne was at the Palace or the Parliament at the time.
In Parliament it is still used by the King during the State Opening each October – the sixth photo shows King Harald V reading the Speech from the Throne last year. As the fifth photo shows the throne is now flanked by chairs for the Queen and the Crown Prince. In the days of the union with Sweden the King would sit on the throne flanked by the royal princes, while the Queen and the other royal ladies would sit on their own in the Diplomatic Box. (If the King was not present at the State Opening, the Prime Minister or another deputy would read the Speech from the Throne standing in front of the throne on the steps of the podium).
This was changed when the union ended in 1905. Queen Maud would then sit on the podium together with King Haakon VII, and one of the princely chairs was turned into a queenly chair by replacing the princely crown on the top with the crown of a queen. Since then the tradition has been that only the King, Queen and Crown Prince attend the State Opening.
There is however a third chair, similar to the Queen’s and the Crown Prince’s, which is now stored away at the Museum of Cultural Heritage together with the throne which was used in Parliament by the King before it was replaced by the current one. The earlier throne is in Empire style and matches the chairs for the Queen and the Crown Prince.

See also the archivist Gro Vilberg’s article on the Norwegian Parliament’s website:

http://www.stortinget.no/no/Stortinget-og-demokratiet/Historikk/Tronstolen/

WWI veteran Harry Patch to be buried today

Today Harry Patch, who at the time of his death at 111 on 25 July was the last surviving veteran of WWI in Britain, will be buried. The funeral will take place at 12.00 BST today in the cathedral of Wells. Among the 1,000 mourners attending will be the Duchess of Cornwall and the Duchess of Gloucester. Later there will be a national memorial service in Westminster Abbey for all those who fought in the Great War.
The coffin will today be accompanied by British, French, Belgian and German soldiers, which will reflect Patch’s view that “Irrespective of the uniforms we wore, we were all victims”. Harry Patch was the last man to have experienced the horror of the WWI trenches and in his old age made clear his staunch opposition to war. On the eve of his funeral the band Radiohead released a song titled “Harry Patch (In memory of)”, where the lyrics consist of Patch’s own words:

I am the only one that got through
The others died where ever they fell
It was an ambush
They came up from all sides
Give your leaders each a gun and then let them fight it out themselves
I’ve seen devils coming up from the ground
I’ve seen hell upon this earth
The next will be chemical but they will never learn

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/aug/06/harry-patch-first-world-war-funeral

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8184000/8184802.stm

Royal jewels: Danish poiré pearl tiara

Among the grandest jewels at the disposal of the Queen of Denmark is the so-called “poiré pearl tiara”, which consists of eighteen large pear-shaped (poiré) pearls hanging from diamond arches.

It was probably made in Berlin in 1825 and was a wedding present from King Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia to his daughter Louise when she married Prince Frederik of the Netherlands. Curiously, the King gave an exactly similar tiara to Princess Marianne of the Netherlands when she married his son Albrecht five years later. Apparently this “twin tiara” was inherited by her descendants of the princely Reuss family, but its current whereabouts are unclear.
When Princess Louise of the Netherlands died in 1870 her tiara passed to her eldest daughter Lovisa, Queen of Sweden and Norway. Queen Lovisa never got to wear it as she died a few months later. The tiara then became the property of her only surviving child Louise, future Queen of Denmark.
Queen Louise often wore it with a pearl brooch which had also been her grandmother’s and a necklace and earrings which were wedding presents from the Khedive of Egypt in 1869. These pieces fit so well together that they are often considered a parure, which they actually are not.
Upon her death in 1926 Queen Louise left the “parure” to the Danish Royal Property Trust, which means that it cannot be divided up and always belongs to the reigning monarch. Since then the tiara has been frequently worn by the Queens Alexandrine, Ingrid and Margrethe II.

The latter has also worn it for many portraits, including the first official photographs, taken a month after her accession by Rigmor Mydtskov (who always refers to it as “the Bernadotte pearls”) and on the 10 and 20 DKK coins. Above is a detail of Dimitri Zhilinskij’s 1993 portrait of the Queen, which hangs at Fredensborg Palace.
Only rarely has the tiara been worn by the royal ladies other than the Queen. In 1937 the then Crown Princess Ingrid was allowed to use it for the coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth of Britain and sixteen years later Princess Margaretha borrowed it when she and Prince Axel represented Denmark at the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in London.

What to see: Yelagin Palace, St Petersburg

One of the nicest but least known of the former imperial palaces of Russia is the Yelagin Palace, which is situated on the Yelagin Island on the northern outskirts of St Petersburg – its empire style interiors and its location on the outskirts of the (former) capital makes it somewhat reminiscent of the French Malmaison or the Swedish Rosendal.
In the late 18th century the island belonged to Ivan Perfilevich Yelagin, one of Empress Ekaterina II’s courtiers, who had a house built on the eastern tip of the island. In 1817 the house and the island were bought by Emperor Aleksandr I, who gave the architect Carlo Rossi (1775-1849) the task of transforming the house as a present to his mother, the Dowager Empress Maria Fyodorovna. This was the first important commission in St Petersburg given to the man who would become one of the most important neoclassical architects in Russia and thereby put his distinct mark on the then capital.
The house new palace was built between 1818 and 1822. However, the Dowager Empress herself did apparently not show much interest in her new island and palace – she did after all live in considerable splendour at the wonderful palace at Pavlovsk. She later ceded the Yelagin Palace and island to her third son, who made it his official summer residence when he became Emperor Nikolaj I.
It remained an imperial residence until the revolution in 1917. In 1942 it was badly damaged by German shelling. Although it opened as a museum in 1987, it is only during this decade that the interiors have been restored to their former splendour. The central room is the Oval Hall, seen in the third and fourth photo, which is flanked by a blue and a red drawing-room (picture 5 and 6, respectively). Other important interiors are those of the dining room (in the seventh photo) and a drawing-room decorated in the Pompeian manner (last picture) – the latter is somewhat reminiscent of the Hall of Columns in the Mikhailovsky Palace, another important Rossi work.

At road’s end: Svend Auken (1943-2009), former leader of Danish Labour

One of Denmark’s most significant politicians of our time, Svend Auken, Vice President of Parliament, former minister and leader of the Social Democrats, died from cancer at Bispebjerg Hospital around 5 a.m. this morning. He was 66 years old. “Svend Auken will be remembered as the prime minister Denmark never had. He was one of his generation’s greatest political talents”, writes Politiken today.
Born on 24 May 1943, Auken was a political scientist from the University of Århus and was elected to Parliament for the Social Democrats for the first time in 1971, which made him the longest-serving MP at the time of his death. Auken, Rit Bjerregaard, Mogens Lykketoft and Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, who belonged to the same generation, entered Parliament about the same time and all showed great talent, came to be known as “the Gang of Four” – eventually the rivalries between them would put a heavy mark on the party.
Auken served as Minister of Labour in Anker Jørgensen’s government 1977-1982, became deputy leader of the party in 1985 and its leader in 1987. In 1990 he led the Social Democrats to an election victory in which the party scored 37.4 %, its best result in many years and never surpassed since. Yet the socialist parties fell 4 seats short of a majority in Parliament and without the backing of the Danish Social Liberal Party, Auken was not able to form a government.
In 1992 he became the first leader in the party’s history to be challenged and lost the position to Poul Nyrup Rasmussen. Yet he did not retire from politics, but when the party returned to government in 1993, he joined his rival’s team as his Minister of Environment, a position from which he advocated renewable energy. Following the Social Democrats’ electoral defeat in 2001, Auken became First Vice President of Parliament.
A few days ago Niels Corfitzen’s portrait of Svend Auken won the people’s prize at the Nordic portrait competition Brewer J. C. Jacobsen’s Portrait Award.
Obituaries in Politiken and Berlingske Tidende:

http://politiken.dk/politik/article754278.ece

http://www.berlingske.dk/article/20090804/politik/90804007/

Bernadotte bicentenary exhibition

As I wrote about in April, there will be many events to celebrate the Bernadottes’ 200 years in Sweden next year, among them an exhibition at the National Museum of Fine Arts in Stockholm. The exhibition is entitled “Härskarkonst”, which may be translated both as “Art of Ruling” and “Rulers’ Art”.
It will deal with King Carl XIV Johan of Sweden and Norway, Emperor Napoléon I of the French and Emperor Aleksandr I of Russia and include some 400 works by Jacques-Louis David, François Gérard and other masters. Among the themes covered are “Visual manifestations of power”, “Great politics and dynastic family ties” and “Art collecting”, according to the museum’s website:
http://www.nationalmuseum.se/sv/Besoka-museet/Utstallningar1/Kommande1/Harskarkonst/
The exhibition will open at the National Museum in the autumn of 2010 and be shown until January 2011. From Stockholm it will continue to the Hermitage in St Petersburg. Shortly after the exhibition leaves the Swedish capital, the National Museum of Fine Arts will close down for renovation and be closed for an almost incomprehensible seven (!) years.
The picture shows a detail of David’s painting of the ceremony in 1804 when the newly proclaimed Emperor Napoléon presented the imperial eagles to his army. Carl Johan, or Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte as he then was, turns away. The painting hangs at Versailles Palace.

Through the year: The Royal Palace, Oslo

What to see: Ulriksdal Palace, Solna

Ulriksdal is one of the ten royal palaces in Sweden and can be found by Edsviken in the municipality of Solna just north of Stockholm. The first palace there was a Renaissance structure built in the 1640s, probably by the architect Hans Jacob Kristler, for Jakob De la Gardie and named Jakobsdal after him. In 1669 it was bought by Dowager Queen Hedvig Eleonora, who later presented it to her grandson Prince Ulrik at the time of his christening in 1684. It then received the new name Ulriksdal, but sadly the prince died at the age of one.
Hedvig Eleonora’s reconstruction of Ulriksdal, carried out by Nicodemus Tessin the Elder, was never completed and the current palace is mostly a result of a great rebuilding done by Carl Hårleman on behalf of her granddaughter, Queen Ulrika Eleonora, in the years 1727-1729. That was when two projecting wings were added on the side which faces towards the park and the roof was supplied with a lantern. It later became one of the favourite residences of King Adolf Fredrik and Queen Lovisa Ulrika and the Dowager Queen Sophia Magdalena lived there from 1808 until her death in 1813.
King Carl XIV Johan, who had been a Marshal of the French Empire, in 1822 created a home for invalid veterans of the 1808-1809 war with Russia at Ulriksdal, inspired by the Hôtel des Invalides in Paris. For the happy reason that Sweden has not been at war since 1814, the number of veterans soon dwindled and in 1849 the remaining few were moved to Danviken Hospital.
In 1856 Ulriksdal again became a royal residence when the future King Carl XV and his wife Lovisa moved in. Today Ulriksdal is first and foremost Carl XV’s palace. King Carl dreamed of the days when Sweden had been a great power and collected furniture and other items from that period. His collection was installed at Ulriksdal, which means that most of the interiors are still in a Renaissance/ mock 16th century style. The joint Swedish-Norwegian arms can still be found above the main entrance, as the fourth photo shows.
His sister-in-law, Queen Sophia, received Ulriksdal as a dower house on the death of Oscar II in 1907, but did not leave many marks on the palace, where she lived in the south wing. Three years after her death, in 1916, her grandson, the future Gustaf VI Adolf, and his wife Margareta, were given the right of disposition and began a reconstruction which was interrupted when the Crown Princess suddenly died in 1920. In 1923 Gustaf Adolf remarried and the architect Sigge Cronstedt created a home for him and Crown Princess Louise at Ulriksdal.
Their footprints are most visible in what had been Carl XV’s “Hall of Knights” – there the dark interior was torn out and the room was transformed to a modern living room. The interior, designed by Carl Malmsten, was a wedding present from the people of Stockholm to the newlyweds and was the first room in a Swedish royal palace to be called a living room rather than a drawing room.
Malmsten considered it the ideal living room and obviously the royal couple agreed. Gustaf VI Adolf stayed at Ulriksdal regularly until 1972, the year before his death, and changed next to nothing in the living room in those nearly fifty years. After his death, time has stood still there – the newspapers from 1972 are still on the table and his and Louise’s monogram as crown prince and crown princess can still be found on the cast-iron gate (photo 5).
In the summer of 1940, Crown Princess Märtha of Norway and her three children in great secrecy stayed at Ulriksdal for several weeks after escaping the Nazi occupation of their country and before going on to the USA. Since 1986 Ulriksdal is open to the public and is occasionally used by the royal family for various events, such as Princess Madeleine’s 25th birthday party in 2007. WWF, which is close to the King of Sweden’s heart, is housed in the south wing of the palace.
There are several other buildings of interest in the park. The orangery (sixth picture) was built in 1693-1705 by the architect Nicodemus Tessin the Younger (best known for the Royal Palace in Stockholm) and is the oldest orangery in Sweden. In this reign it has been transformed into a museum for Swedish sculpture. The theatre Confidencen was founded by Queen Lovisa Ulrika in 1753 and is as such the oldest operating theatre in the country. Villa Beylon, which can be glimpsed in the seventh photo, was built in 1802-1804 and was until recently the home of Princess Christina, who now lives in Stockholm. Certain parts of the media were convinced that Villa Beylon would be become the married home of Crown Princess Victoria and Daniel Westling, but they settled for Haga Palace.
The Palace Chapel, seen in the last picture, was built by Fredrik Wilhelm Scholander in 1864-1865 and consecrated on the name day of Queen Lovisa on 25 August 1865 – it therefore used to be known as Queen Lovisa’s Chapel. Carl XV himself took an active part in creating the chapel, which is built in what the architect called “Dutch Renaissance”, inspired by the fact that Queen Lovisa was Dutch by birth. Their daughter Lovisa, later Queen of Denmark, was confirmed there in 1868.
When Carl XV fell seriously ill, he felt that he had not achieved much in his short reign and was not worthy of being buried with his predecessors in the Riddarholm Church. He therefore asked to be buried in the Palace Chapel at Ulriksdal. However, his brother and successor, Oscar II, duly had him buried in the Riddarholm Church with the other kings and queens of Sweden.