On this date: Prince Bertil’s centenary

One hundred years ago today, one of Sweden’s best-loved royals, Prince Bertil, was born. The third son and fourth child of the future King Gustaf VI Adolf of Sweden and his first wife, British-born Crown Princess Margareta, Prince Bertil first saw the light of day at the Royal Palace in Stockholm.
Like Crown Princess Victoria and Prince Daniel a century later, the crown princely couple chose a name without royal traditions, but at least a Swedish one: Bertil, to which one added the names of Oscar II’s four sons: Gustaf Oscar Carl Eugen.
His elder siblings were Prince Gustaf Adolf, Prince Sigvard and Princess Ingrid. A brother, Prince Carl Johan, was born in 1916 and a sixth child was expected in 1920, but tragically Crown Princess Margareta died in the eighth month of her pregnancy. Among his siblings, Bertil was always closest to Ingrid, who would later become Queen of Denmark.
Like his siblings, Prince Bertil received his first schooling at the Royal Palace, but his parents were quite progressive and wanted their children to attend school with other children. At the age of 12, Bertil, like his elder brothers before him, therefore enrolled at the Beskow School in Stockholm.
Prince Bertil suffered from dyslexia and was no great intellectual, but his main interests were sports and cars, areas in which he excelled. Having left school he joined the navy and also began to undertake royal duties.
In 1934 he asked his grandfather’s permission to marry a young lady by name of Margareta Brambeck. Marrying a commoner, with or without the King’s consent, would, according to the Act of Succession of 1810, mean that he automatically forfeited his place in the line of succession, like his brother Sigvard did the same year and their cousin Lennart had done two years earlier. The royal house could hardly afford to lose yet another prince and Bertil was consequently despatched to Paris as assistant naval attaché in order to forget Miss Brambeck.
He did, but while posted as neutral Sweden’s assistant naval attaché in London during World War II, Bertil met the love of his life in the shape of Lilian Craig, a married nightclub hostess from Wales. And this time there was no question of forgetting her, a resolve which would make theirs one of the great love stories of the twentieth century.
By the time Bertil’s youngest brother, Carl Johan, married a commoner in February 1946, Prince Gustaf Adolf and Prince Bertil were the only royal princes with succession right left, except for some elderly uncles who either had no sons with succession rights or no sons at all. But the birth of a son, Carl Gustaf, to Prince Gustaf Adolf in April 1946 seemed to set Bertil free to marry Lilian as soon as she had obtained her divorce.
But then, in January 1947, Prince Gustaf Adolf was killed in a plane crash in Copenhagen. His nine-month son was thus next in succession after his 64-year-old grandfather and his ancient great-grandfather. Thus it seemed more than likely that Carl Gustaf would succeed to the throne before reaching his majority, in which case an adult prince would have to stand in as regent.
Bertil was the last prince left to fulfil this role, but would also become ineligible if he married Lilian. Loyally he chose to put duty ahead of love and asked Lilian to wait for him, which she did for three decades. The Prince used his excellent relationship with the media to form a gentlemen’s agreement: if the press did not write about his relationship with Lilian, they would get the whole story the day it became possible.
Prince Bertil moved out of the Royal Palace and bought a villa at Djurgården in Stockholm, where Lilian lived with him in great secrecy. They were thus able to be together, but could not go out together and missed the chance to have children together. Eventually, as the years passed, Lilian was accepted by the royal family, but there could be no talk of marriage until Carl Gustaf’s coming of age, which was eventually postponed to his 25th birthday in 1971.
Meanwhile Prince Bertil continued to carry out his royal duties, which were many, given that he was the only adult prince. He attended all Olympic Games until 1988, represented his country from Denmark to Iran and often described himself as a travelling tradesman for Sweden, Inc. The genial, down-to-earth prince readily made friends and admirers, enjoyed great popularity and was rightly considered a huge asset for the royal family.
Eventually King Gustaf VI Adolf was to live until the age of almost 91, dying in September 1973, two years after Crown Prince Carl Gustaf had attained his majority at 25. Thus a regency would not be necessary, but Bertil was still needed at his nephew’s side and the old King asked his son not to marry Lilian until Carl Gustaf had himself married.
This happened in June 1976, when King Carl XVI Gustaf married Silvia Sommerlath, whom he had met during the 1972 Olympics in Munich. Prince Bertil had been introduced to her the very same day as his nephew met her, and when asked by Carl Gustaf what he thought he should do, Bertil answered: “Marry her!” “And that”, he said later, “was the best advice I have ever given anyone”.
With King Carl Gustaf safely married, the way was at last free for Bertil and Lilian to tie the knot. They were married in the chapel at Drottningholm Palace on 7 December 1976. He was 64, she was 61, and they had waited for 33 years.
King Carl Gustaf honoured his uncle’s loyalty and sacrifice by allowing him to keep all his royal titles and privileges. Mrs Lilian Craig, the former nightclub hostess who had grown up in great poverty in Wales, thus became Princess Lilian of Sweden and was to prove herself a born natural in the royal role. Many royal duties fell to Prince Bertil, who was now at last able to fulfill them with Lilian at his side. When the King travelled abroad Prince Bertil acted as guardian of the realm.
But as he entered his eighties his health began to fail. He had problems with his heart and lungs, which forced him to cut down on his engagements. A hip fracture in 1994 reduced him further. One of his last public appearances was the coming of age of Crown Princess Victoria in July 1995. This meant that for the first time for decades someone other than Prince Bertil could act as guardian of the realm.
He did so for the last time in December 1996. A month later, in the early evening of 5 January 1997, Prince Bertil died in his home Villa Solbacken in Stockholm, holding the hand of his beloved Lilian and sincerely mourned by the Swedish people.
A letter to the editor of the newspaper Expressen four days later told an anecdote which said much about why Prince Bertil was so popular. The writer recalled a summer evening in 1952 when he was an eighteen-year-old sailor and stood outside a Stockholm cinema with four friends from the navy, counting their money and concluding that they did not have enough to pay for the tickets.
A sports-car stopped and out came a man they instantly recognised. They saluted and he said, “Hi guys, are you going to see the film too?” They explained that they did not have enough money. “Take what you have and come with me to the counter”, he said.
“I cannot remember how much it was, but he paid the difference”, the letter concluded. “For that gesture I flew my flag at half mast on 6 January. In honour of Prince Bertil”.

People from the past: Countess Estelle Bernadotte af Wisborg (1904-1984)

The unexpected choice of the name Estelle for the newborn daughter of Crown Princess Victoria and Prince Daniel of Sweden has naturally sparked a lot of interest in the Princess’s only relative of that name (except for a young granddaughter of Princess Désirée): the daughter of an American millionaire, who married into a non-royal junior branch of the House of Bernadotte.
Born on 26 September 1904 in Pleasantville, New York, Estelle Romaine Manville was the daughter of American industrialist Hiram Edward Manville, a self-made man who had made a fortune of an estimated 20 million dollars through asbestos, and his wife Estelle Romaine.
At the time of her marriage there were reports that the Manvilles belonged to so-called Four Hundred, i.e. the most prestigious upper-class families of New York and that they descended from Goeffrey de Magnaville, who was ennobled as Earl of Essex after accompanying Duke William of Normandy on his conquest of England in 1066. However, this was all based on a misunderstanding. In fact Estelle’s family had nothing to do with these people and were entirely self-made.
While in her early twenties Estelle Manville was frequently seen in American and European society. During a holiday on the French Riviera in the summer of 1928 she attended a dinner in honour of King Gustaf V of Sweden, where she was seated next to his nephew, Count Folke Bernadotte af Wisborg, a 33-year-old cavalry officer.
Folke Bernadotte was the youngest son of Prince Oscar Bernadotte and thus a grandson of King Oscar II of Sweden and of Norway. Prince Oscar had lost his royal statues when marrying a commoner in 1888 and Folke was therefore not himself a member of the royal family, yet he was to become one of the most famous of all the Bernadottes.
“At the first meeting with my future husband I was not really at all gripped by his personality”, Estelle recalled. “I wondered to myself whether he wasn’t actually quite an ordinary and somewhat self-preoccupied gentleman. One day, however, I found him laughing, in the special and completely irresistible way that was his own, and in that instant I understood for the first time something of his inner essence. Similarly his face exploded in a bright and lusty laugh and I suddenly realized that he had extraordinary blue eyes. [...] I thought for a moment I could see the spirit in his soul and in the same instant I realized that he was a good man”.
After an acquaintance of only two weeks, Folke Bernadotte proposed to Estelle Manville and was accepted. “You’ve got to be a fast worker to get the best girl in the United States”, said Folke Bernadotte to someone who remarked on the speed with which it had all happened.
Estelle’s parents hosted a grand wedding for 1,450 guests at their estate Hi-Esmaro in Pleasantville on 1 December 1928. The actual ceremony took place in the local Episcopal Church of St John in Pleasantville and the bride wore Queen Sophia’s bridal veil and the small so-called Bernadotte wedding crown.
The Princes Gustaf Adolf and Sigvard had come over from Sweden, the former to act as best man, and the princes and the bridal couple were entertained to lunch in the White House by President Calvin Coolidge. The American press spun the wedding as the first time a member of a European royal family married in the USA, but this was obviously nonsense as Folke Bernadotte was not a member of a royal family. Other epitaphs included “the greatest occurrence in American Society since the wedding of Miss Consuelo Vanderbilt with the Duke of Marlborough” and the whole affair was estimated to have cost some $ 1,750,000. According to Estelle herself, the price was “only” $ 250,000.
Estelle’s introduction to wider royal circles took place when she accompanied her husband to his cousin Princess Märtha’s wedding to Crown Prince Olav of Norway in Oslo in March 1929. The couple spent most of the first years of their marriage in the USA and France, but in 1931 they settled in Stockholm. At first they lived in his parents’ apartment at 89 Östermalm Street, but in 1931 Folke was given a fifteen-year lease of a 20-room villa at Djurgården, known as Dragongården (now part of the Chinese embassy complex).
In 1933 Folke Bernadotte retired from the army with the rank of major and became head of the household of Prince Gustaf Adolf, a good friend of his and father to the present King of Sweden. Estelle also became a close friend of Gustaf Adolf’s wife, Princess Sibylla, and helped introduce her to life in Sweden after her wedding in 1932. In 1946 Folke Bernadotte was among the sponsors at the christening of the future King Carl XVI Gustaf, whose third name is Folke.
Count Folke and Countess Estelle Bernadotte had four sons: Gustaf in 1930, Folke (“Ockie”) in 1931, Frederick in 1934 and Bertil in 1935. Frederick died at the age of seven months, while Gustaf died three days after his sixth birthday. The deaths of two of her sons were obviously harsh blows for Estelle Bernadotte, who spent some time in a rest home.
During World War II Folke Bernadotte served as Vice President of the Swedish Red Cross, whose President was his uncle Prince Carl. As Prince Carl was by then in his eighties and had been President for four decades, most of the daily work fell on Folke Bernadotte, who thus got the chance to play a role on the world stage as the war neared its end.
In the spring of 1945 he conducted secret negotiations with Heinrich Himmler about a possible German capitulation, which came to nothing. However, Folke Bernadotte managed to get permission to transport Norwegian and Danish prisoners from the concentration camps.
The operation, commonly known as “the White Buses” after the colouring of the Red Cross vehicles, rescued 21,700 prisoners from the concentration camps and made Folke Bernadotte a hero. His stature in Sweden was probably increased by the fact that many were not so proud of much of what neutral Sweden had done during the war and the few Swedish heroes were therefore celebrated even more.
In 1948 the UN sent Folke Bernadotte to Palestine to act as a mediator in the conflict caused by the establishment of the state of Israel. On 15 September 1948 he was assassinated in Jerusalem by the terrorist groups Irgun and Lehy, among whose leaders were the future Israeli prime ministers Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir.
Estelle was thus left a widow at the age of only 44, but remained dedicated to her husband’s causes for the rest of her life. She continued his Red Cross work, served as President of the Swedish Girl Guides and Scout Association from 1949 to 1957 and was also involved with UNICEF and the international conservation movement.
She also continued to appear on the royal scene. For instance she was usually present for the annual State Opening of Parliament in the Royal Palace’s Hall of State in January, wearing court dress and a magnificent parure of pink tourmalines (some say topazes, others white sapphires) which had apparently been worn by Queen Sophia for her Norwegian coronation in 1873. (The parure consisted of tiara, necklace and brooch and Estelle Bernadotte bought a ring, a bracelet and a pair of earrings to go with it. It was inherited by her eldest son, but has now been sold).
On 3 March 1973, 68-year-old Estelle Bernadotte married Carl-Eric Ekstrand, who had been Master of the Household to the late Princess Sibylla and also in charge of administering Estelle’s own fortune. The couple settled in Saint-Paul-de Vence near Nice.
At the age of 79, Estelle Ekstrand died in Uppsala on 28 May 1984 from a staphylococcal infection following hip surgery which developed into blood poisoning. Her ashes were interred at the Northern Cemetery in Solna outside Stockholm, where her name is again given as “Estelle Bernadotte af Wisborg” on her plaque at Prince Oscar Bernadotte’s Family Grave.
Her widower died in 1988, while her sons Folke and Bertil are still alive. While the former is rarely seen in royal circles, the latter remains a good friend of King Carl Gustaf, who even spent his wedding night at Bertil Bernadotte’s summer house at Ingarö in the Stockholm archipelago.
Count Bertil Bernadotte was also present in the Palace Church on Friday for the service of thanksgiving following the birth of the princess given the same name as his mother. No official explanation has been given for why the Crown Princess and her husband chose the name Estelle, which is not Swedish and which does not have any previous royal history. Indeed the choice of name ignores the history, tradition and continuity which the names of (future) monarchs are normally supposed to reflect.
The royal court has not confirmed that the Princess is actually named for Estelle Bernadotte; the information department has replied to press inquiries that they have no information about the reasons for the choice of the name Estelle. There are media reports that Crown Princess Victoria has always liked the name, while Elisabeth Tarras-Wahlberg, who was earlier the Crown Princess’s Court Marshal, has suggested that the Crown Princess’s interest in peace work may have influenced her choice of the name Estelle for the future Queen of Sweden. The Mistress of the Robes, Countess Alice Trolle-Wachtmeister, said to Aftonbladet yesterday that “the King was very close to Estelle’s husband Folke”, but this is obviously impossible, given that Folke Bernadotte died when King Carl Gustaf was two years old.
As Estelle Ekstrand lived in France for the last years of her life and Crown Princess Victoria was not yet seven years old when she died, the Crown Princess can hardly have known her distant relative very well. However, according to what Estelle Bernadotte’s son Folke told Aftonbladet yesterday, Crown Princess Victoria has met his mother, but in another interview, with Upsala Nya Tidning, he is less certain about it.

People from the past: Iver Winfeldt Buch, Norwegian court jeweller in St Petersburg

This week is the last chance to see the Norwegian National Museum’s exhibition “Sacral Treasures from the Kremlin Museums in Moscow”, which blends the Norwegian museum’s unusual collection of Russian icons with loans from the Kremlin, such as further icons, priestly vestments and precious items used during the liturgy in the imperial cathedrals.
While the many Swedes who left their mark on St Petersburg are fairly well-known, this exhibition reminds us of one the less well-known Norwegians who were also active in the capital of imperial Russia.
Included in the exhibition are two items made by the court jeweller Iver Winfeldt Buch (1749-1811). The picture above (a press photo copyright of the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design) shows one of them, a golden chalice set with 435 diamonds and three gems showing the birth of Jesus, the baptism of Jesus and the removal of the Virgin Mary’s house to Loreto – possibly from Ekaterina II’s own collection of gems. The chalice was commissioned by the Empress in 1795 and presented to the Monastery of St Sergey.
Iver Winfeldt Buch was born in Drammen in 1749. He came to St Petersburg in 1770 and was received into the guild of foreign gold and silver smiths in 1776. According to a family legend related by his relative Ada Polak, a renowned Norwegian art historian who died in London last autumn at the age of 96, Buch first worked for a court jeweller who was exiled to Siberia after he had exchanged one of the largest diamonds in an imperial tiara with an imitation while he was repairing it.
Buch is said to have taken over his workshop and eventually came to own one of the largest such stores in the Russian capital. He was appointed court jeweller to Ekaterina II and later to Pavel I.
Prince Potemkin was also among his customers and following Potemkin’s death Empress Ekaterina II presented the Monastery of St Alexander in St Petersburg with another jewelled chalice by Buch in commemoration of the Prince. In addition to liturgical items he is known to have made jewellery, silver furniture and chandeliers for the imperial palaces.
He was appointed consul for Denmark-Norway in St Petersburg and visited Norway again in 1804. He died in 1811, supposedly in poverty, having spent his fortune on his passion for long journeys.

Notable architects: Hans D. F. Linstow (1787-1851)

Hans Ditlev Franciscus (or Frants) von Linstow was one of the first architects of consequence working in Norway after independence in 1814. He is best known for the Royal Palace in Oslo, but sadly got to build little else.
Linstow was Danish by birth and came to Norway in 1812, when the country was still part of the Danish Kingdom. With the secession in 1814, Linstow decided to make Norway his new homeland and he became a member of the royal court during the short reign of King Christian Frederik before Norway entered a union with Sweden.
Linstow was an officer and a jurist by education, but had attended lectures on architecture at the Academy of Art in Copenhagen. He had been one of the founders of Norwegian National Academy of Craft and Art Industry in 1818, but had little experience as an architect. On the other hand there were few architects in Norway at all.
It was apparently King Carl XIV Johan himself who chose Linstow as the architect for the Royal Palace in Christiania (as Oslo was then called). He was appointed in 1823 and the foundation stone for his grand H-shaped project with an elevated centre section (second photo) was laid by the King in 1825. When the terrain had been modified and the foundation walls built two years later, nearly all the money granted by the poor country’s Parliament had been spent and no further money was forthcoming.
Meanwhile Linstow had to make a living elsewhere, which he did partly through selling vegetables. Only after six years was more money granted and Linstow could continue with a reduced and much altered project. In 1845, when it was nearly completed, it was found to be too simple and extra funds were granted to improve it. The result was the Royal Palace as we know it (first photo), completed in 1849.
Linstow himself was not entirely satisfied with the final result, but despite its modest size its artistic quality is fully on par with other royal palaces in Europe. His architectonical inspiration has often been said to be mainly the Dane C. F. Hansen and the Prussian Karl Friedrich Schinkel. Before drawing up the plans for the Palace’s interiors he went on an educational tour of Denmark and Germany in 1836-1837, a tour which certainly left its marks on the Palace. Recently some influence from Sweden has also been pointed out.
The long and difficult process of building the Royal Palace meant that Linstow was stuck with it for 25 years and thereby not able to embark on any other grand projects. He saw many other commissions which he had wanted be given to his assistant-turned-rival Christian Heinrich Grosch, whom Linstow developed a deeply felt bitterness towards. Among the commissions “lost” to Grosch were Christiania Theater and the University – in the latter case it was Linstow who insisted that Grosch’s drawings should be sent to Schinkel in Berlin, who greatly altered and improved them.
Besides the Royal Palace Linstow’s greatest work is Karl Johans gate, the main street of the Norwegian capital. Linstow planned it as a monumental processional route leading from the Eger Square to the Palace and at approximately 2/3 of the street he planned a monumental square framed with public buildings such as university, parliament and a museum. His plan, published in 1838, was carried out only partly – Grosch’s and Schinkel’s three buildings for the University were erected on the northern side, whereas the southern side of the square and indeed the street was turned into a public park (third picture). Yet Linstow counts as the man who planned the new centre of the capital and gave it its most beloved street.
By the Palace Square Linstow had planned a small house for the King’s Guard in a style matching the Royal Palace, but a simpler, temporary building (seen in the fourth photo) eventually became permanent. The Guard House is itself a good example of Linstow’s wood architecture and counts as the country’s first building in what in Norway was called “Swiss style”, which turned out to be both popular and enduring. Linstow’s original design for a guard house was later used for a building in Park Street behind the Palace (fifth picture) – it now houses a car dealer.
Whereas he had originally planned a parliament building as part of the rectangular square including the University and other public buildings, Linstow later changed his mind and in 1841 came up with a plan for a parliament which would be situated on its own opposite the University (sixth photo). Next to it would be a building for the ministries followed by the Supreme Court’s building, which would create an axis of the three powers of state along the street leading to the Palace. The idea was rejected by the majority of the committee for a parliament building, with only Linstow voting for his own plan.
Linstow twice made suggestions for reconstructions of Oslo’s Cathedral. His second proposal, from about 1840 (seventh picture), shows a Byzantine influence, but was not carried out. Neither was his earlier, more restrained neoclassical plan. Outside the capital some 80 rural churches were built according to plans and patterns worked out by Linstow, but often with variations made by the local builders, who were generally quite conservative and retrospective in their preferences.
Near the Swedish town Kristinehamn is the manor Krontorp (eighth photo), which traditionally has been attributed to Linstow, although the attribution is uncertain. The manor house was built 1825-1828 as a place for King Carl Johan to stay when he made the long journey from Stockholm to Christiania and has some similarities with Linstow’s original design for the Royal Palace.
His story has something of the tragedy of unfulfilled genius. Unlike Grosch he did not get the change to put his wider mark on the capital and unlike Grosch he wrote ferociously about architecture, but his textbook on the topic was never published and is now lost. He probably never felt he received the recognition he deserved. In June 1851 the students of the capital threw a party to celebrate Linstow and his work. This must have felt like a welcome, if late, recognition. On his way home Linstow was killed in a carriage accident. He was buried at Christ Churchyard, but his grave disappeared when that part of the cemetery was turned into a park and public playground a century later.

Late royals: Prince Gustaf of Sweden and Norway (1827-1852)

Due to his talents and his early death there has always been an aura of romance surrounding the name of Prince Gustaf, the second of five children of King Oscar I and Queen Josephina. He was born on 18 June 1827 at Haga Palace just outside Stockholm, where his bust (pictured above) can be found nearby. The choice of the name Gustaf, which was strongly associated with the deposed Holstein-Gottorp dynasty, was quite unexpected.
Four of the five children of Oscar I and Josephina shared their parents’ artistic gifts. Prince Gustaf was a talented composer and that is how he is remembered today, as “Sångarprinsen” (the Singer Prince). Some of his songs are still popular in Sweden today, the most well-known being “Sjung om studentens lyckliga dag”. It is always sung by students when graduating – perhaps with particular fervour in Uppsala, where the Prince himself, who was also Duke of Uplandia, studied. “Glad såsom fågeln” is another of his light, happy songs. In a more sombre mood, the Prince in his early twenties wrote a funeral march, dedicating it “to myself”. It was not long before it was to be heard.
In 1851 Prince Gustaf became the owner of Stjernsund Palace near Askersund, which his grandfather Carl XIV Johan had bought as a place to rest on his travels between his two capitals. At the nearby manor Boo lived Baron Hugo Hamilton, head of the royal theatre, and Prince Gustaf fell in love with the Baron’s pretty, 17-year-old daughter Josephine. It has been claimed that the Prince intended to renounce his rights of succession to be able to marry Josephine, but no proof has been found for this.
There was something melancholic, something restless, something fragile about Prince Gustaf, whose health was never strong. In the summer of 1852 he travelled to Germany with his parents, sister Eugénie and brother August, but on the homebound journey he fell gravely ill aboard the ship sailing for Christiania. At the time it was said to be typhus, but more likely it was tuberculosis.
On arriving in the Norwegian capital, Prince Gustaf was carried to the newly completed Royal Palace where he died on 24 September, aged 25. With the exception of his great-nephew King Haakon VII he is the only royal to die at the Palace. His death nearly crushed Princess Eugénie, who had a breakdown she never really recovered from.
His elder brother Carl’s only son was born later that autumn, but died in infancy, leaving the succession to Oscar I’s third son. One can only guess at what sort of king Gustaf would have been. As a young man he was certainly no democrat, opposing the freedom of the press and democratic elections. We can only speculate on whether the history of Sweden and Norway would have taken a different turn if Carl XV had been succeeded by Gustaf V rather than Oscar II in 1872.

People from the past: Thomas Konow, last of the “founding fathers” of Norway

Thomas Konow was at the age of 17 the youngest member of the Norwegian Constituent Assembly of 1814 and, at the time of his death in 1881, the last survivor of the “founding fathers”.
Born in Bergen on 10 October 1796, he entered the Naval Academy in Copenhagen at the age of 12. He graduated in 1813, as one of the last Norwegians before the events on the world stage meant that Denmark had to surrender Norway to the King of Sweden by the Treaty of Kiel in January 1814. The Norwegians answered by declaring their independence and a Constituent Assembly met at Eidsvoll north of Oslo on 10 April 1814 to write the Constitution which was eventually signed on 17 May.
The armed forces were also allowed to send representatives to the Assembly and two of the Navy’s representatives were to be officers. Only two officers declared themselves candidates – Commander Jens S. Fabricius and Second Lieutenant Thomas Konow – which naturally meant that both were elected, although Konow was, at 17 ½, well below the age limit of 25. Konow did not take any particularly active role at the Assembly, where he belonged to the so-called “Independence Party”.
Following the monumental events of 1814, Konow returned to the Navy and two years later was given his first ship command on a journey to Eastern Finnmark to uphold Norwegian sovereignty against illegal Russian settlers – this was the first naval mission prepared for war since the establishment of a separate Norwegian navy in 1814.
Thomas Konow rose in the ranks until he became Rear-Admiral in 1860 and held many important positions on his way – in 1841 he was a member of the committee which established new rules of service for the Navy, two years later he had a seat in the Navy’s education commission and became secretary for the committee on the navigation law. In 1848 he became head of the naval shipyard in Horten, in 1851-1860 he was in command of the garrison at Horten and in 1860 he became head of the naval command.
Konow only returned briefly to politics in 1839, when he served as MP for the county of Jarlsberg and Larvik. He did not stand for re-election three years later. When King Carl XV travelled to Britain and France in 1861, Rear-Admiral Konow was appointed one of the members of the interim government.
Konow retired from the Navy in 1869 and received the Grand Cross of the Order of St Olav. The following year he moved to Christiania (now Oslo), where he lived in a house in Young’s Street. It soon became a tradition that the parade on Constitution Day, 17 May, would stop outside it to pay their respects to the last surviving member of the Constituent Assembly.
Thomas Konow died on his 85th birthday, 10 October 1881. His funeral took place from the Church of Holy Trinity a week later, with full military honours and King Oscar II at the head of the mourners. The short route from the church to the Cemetery of Our Saviour was lined by thousands of people when the last of the “founding fathers” was laid to rest.
The picture shows Thomas Konow as a 17-year-old member of the Constituent Assembly and is a small detail of Oscar Wergeland’s huge canvas “Eidsvold 1814”, which hangs in the Parliament Chamber.

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.

People from the past: Curt von Stedingk, ambassador and Sweden’s last field marshal

Count Curt von Stedingk (1746-1837) was born to a noble family in Swedish Pomerania and joined the Swedish army at an early age. He received his baptism of fire in the battle of Stralsund when he was only 13 years old and later joined the Swedish regiment in France, Royal suédois. He took part in the America War of Independence and was awarded the Order of the Cincinnati by George Washington.
Back in France, he was celebrated as a hero and, with the more famous Axel von Fersen, he became a member of the circle around Queen Marie-Antoinette and King Louis XVI, which also brought him into contact with King Gustaf III of Sweden, with whom he was to develop a close relationship.
In 1787 he returned to Sweden and took part in the war against Russia in 1788-1789. When the war ended he was appointed ambassador to the court of St Petersburg, where he was on close terms with the monarchs Ekaterina II and Aleksandr I.
He was recalled from St Petersburg when war again broke out between Sweden and Russia in 1808. After the Swedish defeat it fell to him to lead the negotiations for peace with Russia in Fredrikshamn in 1809 and it was he who had to put his signature on the treaty which cost Sweden Finland. After the peace had been concluded, he was again appointed ambassador to Russia.
Already made a general in 1807 and a count in 1809, in 1812 he was promoted to the rank of Field Marshal. He led the Swedish army in the campaign against France and in 1814 Stedingk signed the Peace of Paris on his country’s behalf.
He made his last visit to Russia at the age of 80 in 1826, when he represented Sweden and Norway at the coronation of Emperor Nikolaj I. When he died in 1837, he was the last surviving Swedish Field Marshal and the last of the so-called “Gustavians”, having seen six kings from Fredrik I to Carl XIV Johan.
The picture shows a detail of a portrait by G. J. J. H. Le Monnier. It was done in 1802 and hangs at Elghammar Manor, the beautiful country house in Russian Empire style, located in Sudermania, which Giacomo Quarenghi, one of Ekaterina II’s favourite court architects, designed for Stedingk in 1809-1810.

People from the past: Peder Anker, Norway’s first Prime Minister

Peder Anker (1749-1824) became Norway’s first Prime Minister when the country achieved independence in a union with Sweden in 1814. He had been ennobled by the Dano-Norwegian King in 1778 and owned huge estates, including the manor Bogstad outside Oslo where he resided. Before entering politics he dedicated himself to the running and development of his estates as well as the office of “generalveiintendant”, which he had been appointed to in 1789 and which made him responsible for the building and maintenance of roads in Southern Norway.
When Norway broke away from Denmark in 1814, Peder Anker became a member of the Constituent Assembly which met at Eidsvoll in April. Anker came to act as some sort of host to the Assembly as the Eidsvoll Manor was owned by his cousin Carsten Anker, who was absent in England. He became the first Speaker of the Assembly, serving during its first week (11-18 April). Two informal “parties” were soon formed, with Peder Anker belonging to the minority group, which was sometimes called “the Union Party” and led by his son-in-law, Count Herman Wedel Jarlsberg. Anker was himself no significant politician and supported Count Wedel in everything.
The Constitution was signed on 17 May 1814, but after a war with Sweden in the summer Norway and Sweden formed a union on 4 November. Both countries remained independent states, but shared the same king and foreign service (which was then a royal prerogative), while having separate constitutions, parliaments, governments, laws, armies etc.
Due to the long distance between the Norwegian and Swedish capitals (it took at least one week to travel from Christiania to Stockholm) the Norwegian Prime Minister and some other cabinet ministers had to reside in Stockholm, while the rest of the government remained in Christiania. It was only in 1873, when trains and telegraphs had made communications easier, that the head of the Norwegian government established his office in the Norwegian capital.
Peder Anker was, supposedly quite unwillingly, talked into accepting the position of Prime Minister of Norway by Crown Prince Carl Johan and consequently became the first to reside in the Norwegian “Minister Hotel” in Stockholm. He served as Prime Minister from 18 November 1814 to 1 July 1822, while Count Wedel became Finance Minister. With Wedel the strongest force in the government it often fell to Anker to mediate between his son-in-law and Carl Johan. Anker was considered a good representative for his country in Stockholm; he was made a Knight of the Order of Seraphim in 1815 and to him fell important ceremonial duties such as carrying the Crown of Norway in Carl XIII’s funeral procession in 1818 and reading out the oath to King Carl XIV Johan at his coronation in Trondheim later that year.
In 1822 Count Wedel was impeached by Parliament and, although acquitted, he chose to resign as Finance Minister. Half a year later his father-in-law also resigned as Prime Minister and returned to Norway and to Bogstad, where he died on 10 December 1824. He is buried in Sem Church adjacent to his son-in-law’s Jarlsberg estate outside Tønsberg.
The posthumous portrait is by Harriet Backer and was done in 1914. It hangs in the Parliament Building in Oslo.