Princess Märtha Louise moving abroad again

The royal court last night announced that Princess Märtha Louise and her family will be moving to London. The Princess will continue to carry out the few public engagements she has in Norway and also continue her angle school business in Oslo.
According to the court the family are moving to get new impulses and in order for the children to learn another language. The three daughters will attend an English school, but the Palace says that the duration on the stay in England will depend on how they like it there.
A few years ago there was much ado about their moving to New York, a stay which eventually lasted only a few months.

Engagement of Hereditary Grand Duke of Luxembourg

The grand ducal court of Luxembourg has announced the engagement of Hereditary Grand Duke Guillaume to Countess Stéphanie de Lannoy. Apparently the official engagement will take place at Berg Castle tomorrow, and according to Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker the wedding will take place already this year.
Countess Stéphanie de Lannoy, who is a citizen of Belgium, is the youngest of eight children of Count Philippe de Lannoy (born 1922) and Alix della Faille de Leverghem (born 1941). She was born in Ronse on 18 February 1984. Her paternal grandmother was Princess Béatrice of Ligne, whose nephew Antoine married Princess Alix of Luxembourg, who is a great-aunt of Hereditary Grand Duke Guillaume.
The Countess, who lives in Brussels, was educated at schools in Belgium and France and at universities in Louvain and Berlin.

Book news: Some royal books expected this spring

While autumn is the time of the year when most books are published this spring and early summer also seem to hold some interesting expectations.
Already out in Sweden is Göran Burén’s book Mordet på Folke Bernadotte, published by Leopard förlag, which, as the title suggests, looks at the assassination of Count Folke Bernadotte af Wisborg, the son of Prince Oscar Bernadotte, while acting as UN negotiator in Jerusalem in 1948.
Kerstin Nohrenius, the biographer of French Prince Eugène, Viceroy of Italy and later Duke of Leuchtenberg, and Lars Wiklund have now written a book on his wife and children, focusing on the eldest, who became Queen of Sweden and of Norway. The book, titled Glädje och sorg i en drottnings liv, has 30 March as its publication date, but apparently it is nevertheless not yet for sale.
Another Bernadotte Queen who continues to fascinate is Victoria, the consort of Gustaf V. She is the subject of Anders Jarlert’s new book Drottning Victoria – Ur ett inre liv – En existensiell biografi, which seems to promise insight into Queen Victoria’s inner life. Like Nohrenius’s and Wiklund’s book it will be published by Carlssons bokförlag.

Also out already is Lena Rangström’s book on royal births and christenings, titled Kanonsalut och vaggor – Kungliga födslar och dop. Another book on the same subject, but apparently dealing with a shorter span of time, Kungliga barn by Elisabeth Tarras-Wahlberg, will be published in June.
Here in Norway we can look forward to Kongens hus – Alle kongeparets hjem, which will be published by Orfeus Publishing on 8 May.

This book, written by Ole Rikard Høisæther, Thomas Thiis-Evensen and the Queen herself, will present all the residences of the King and Queen. A book of the same title was published in 1995, but very much has happened to the residences since then (for instance the major restoration of the Royal Palace, to mention only the most obvious), so this is an entirely new book on the same subject.
The British book market has much to offer this spring, including a major work on Queen Elizabeth II’s diamonds by Hugh Roberts. The Queen’s Diamonds, published by the Royal Collection, is expected to be published in mid-May ahead of a major exhibition on the same subject during this year’s summer opening of Buckingham Palace. As usual a smaller book aimed at the general audience will also be published in connection with the exhibition: Diamonds: A Jubilee Celebration, by Caroline de Guitaut.
The historian Kate Williams will, as previously mentioned, emerge with Young Elizabeth: The Making of Our Queen, expected in May, while her Mistress of Empires: The Extraordinary Life of Josephine Bonaparte, which was also due this year, has been postponed to October 2013.

The journalist Peter Conradi’s very interesting book on the current monarchies of Europe, which has already been published in France, Sweden and the Netherlands, will finally also appear in the author’s homeland. The Great Survivors: How Monarchy Made It into the Twenty-First Century will be published by Alma Books on 2 June.
In the less serious end of the spectre we can expect Lady Colin Campbell’s biography of the late Queen Mother of Britain, The Untold Life of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, which is due to be published on 26 April and has already caused some headlines by its sensational claims that the Queen Mother and her younger brother were not actually the children of their official parents. It will surely be interesting to see what reasons (if any) she gives for Lord and Lady Strathmore employing surrogate parents in order to have a ninth and tenth child...

My latest article: Estelle Bernadotte

The unexpected choice of the name Estelle for the daughter of Crown Princess Victoria and Prince Daniel of Sweden, who was born on 23 February, has naturally sparked renewed interest in her distant relative of that name, Countess Estelle Bernadotte af Wisborg. Estelle Bernadotte, who lived from 1904 to 1984, was the daughter of a wealthy American industrialist and married into a junior line of the House of Bernadotte when she became the wife of Folke Bernadotte, the youngest son of Prince Oscar Bernadotte and eventually a humanitarian hero. In the May issue of the British monthly magazine Majesty (Vol. 33, No. 5), which is out today, I tell the life story of Estelle Bernadotte, herself a notable humanitarian who did honour to her name.

New Swedish royal magazine to be launched tomorrow

I know many of my readers were saddened when the Swedish royal magazine Queen ceased publication two years ago. Hopefully they will be equally pleased to hear that a successor, titled Kungliga magasinet (i.e. “The Royal Magazine”), will be launched tomorrow.
Its founder is Roger Lundgren, who was also the founder and first editor-in-chief of Queen. The owner, Bonnier tidskrifter, later replaced him with Pamela Andersson, under whose editorship Queen gradually moved away from the subject of royalty until the last step was also taken and Queen was turned into the general gossip magazine that is S.
Kungliga magasinet, which is independently owned, will focus on Swedish and European royalty, palaces, jewels, orders, history and style, and will be published eight times a year.
Among the contents of the first issue are interviews with Queen Silvia and Count Carl Johan Bernadotte.

King Juan Carlos breaks hip on elephant hunt

This weekend King Juan Carlos I of Spain broke his hip while hunting elephants in Botswana. The King, who is 74, was flown to Madrid, where he underwent surgery for three fractures to his hip.
Obviously this is a PR disaster for the King of Spain. That the head of state of a country in such a deep economic crisis as Spain goes on expensive foreign holidays to hunt endangered species does not look good at all. Furthermore, it has emerged that King Juan Carlos was accompanied by his alleged mistress, Princess Corinna of Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn, who is as old as his youngest daughter.
Queen Sofía is reportedly on a private visit to her native Greece with her siblings to celebrate Orthodox Easter, and it was stated during the weekend that there would be no changes to her travel plans. The King and Queen will reach their golden wedding anniversary next month, on 14 May.

New books: Norway’s darkest day

It was said of the British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, who had been wounded in World War I, but survived, that he used to see in the galleries of the House of Commons the ghosts of his more talented, fallen friends and hear them say: “What you, Harold – you Prime Minister?”
In a couple of decades it is well possible that the same sentiment may be shared by Norwegian MPs and ministers feeling that they would not have been in their positions if others had not been killed on the terrible day of 22 July 2011, when the right wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik, driven by a hatred of the multicultural society and the Labour Party, first blew up the government building before continuing to the Labour youth movement’s summer camp at Utøya to carry out his massacre, leaving a total of 77 dead, most of them teenagers and young adults representing the future of the Labour Party.
This most dramatic day in the postwar history of Norway is the subject of journalist Kjetil Stormark’s book Da terroren rammet Norge – 189 minutter som rystet verden, which was published by Kagge Forlag in December and is now already out in paperback. It is one of those rare books which are excellent and terrible at the same time, in other words so dreadful that it is hard to put down.
Stormark follows the events from the hours before the bombing on 22 July until the enormous flower manifestation in Oslo three days later. The author does not dwell on the ideas that drove Breivik to commit his unspeakable crimes, which might have served to put the drama into a context, but would at the same time have made it a very different and much longer book.
The story is told mostly chronologically and made up of many individual stories. At first this seems somewhat chaotic as the author seems to try to tell too many stories at the same time and thus makes the book too crowded.
But eventually it comes to work very well when he reaches the massacre at Utøya, which lasted for an interminable hour. While charting the actions of the political leadership and the emergency services, Stormark also recounts the stories of individual victims, some of whom survived, some of whom did not.
Here are also the stories of the victims’ families, who in many cases were in touch with them on the telephone, but endured the heartbreak of not really being able to do anything to help their children except calling the emergency services, mostly in vain.
The many detailed accounts make it seem that the nightmare will never end and that help will never come, which must have been a feeling shared by those present as the drama unfolded. Only when he is captured is the name of Anders Behring Breivik mentioned for the first time.
The author uses his pen to paint vivid pictures, such as the bereaved family being comforted by a man with a tear-washed face whom a government official suddenly recognised as the King, or the sight after nightfall from the landside of all the cell phones abandoned on the island lighting up in the dark as families and friends desperately and in vain kept on ringing.
It is a heartbreaking story told in the present tense which shows the chaos, the desperation, the uncertainties, the shock, the relief, the despair, the ineffectiveness, the shortcomings and the heroism of that terrible day.
The trial of Anders Behring Breivik starts on Monday. Inevitably there will be many books written on the events of 22 July for many years to come, but Kjetil Stormark’s book seems likely to take its rightful place as an instant classic.

Annual report shows royals getting busier

A kind soul at the Royal Palace has sent me the royal court’s annual report for 2011, which was released two days ago. The report as usual contains a wealth of information about what the royals and the court have been up to during the previous year and the calendar of the public engagements carried out by members of the royal family reveals that most of them keep getting busier.
For 2011 the King is listed with 204 engagements, which may be compared to 169 in 2010 and 159 in 2009. The Queen carried out 99 engagements, compared to 69 in 2010 and 60 in 2009.
The Crown Prince had 194 engagements, which is almost twice as many as the 102 he carried out in 2009 (with 122 in 2010). However, the Crown Princess had a less crowded schedule, carrying out 59 engagements in 2011, compared to 74 in 2010 and 67 in 2009.
Princess Ingrid Alexandra is listed as having been present for five engagements (compared to eight in 2010 and four in 2009) and Prince Sverre Magnus at four engagements (the same as in 2010, but four times as many as in 2009). However, the calendar curiously fails to mention the children’s presence at several events at which they were actually present, meaning that the numbers for them are incomplete.
Princess Märtha Louise was present for 24 functions, which is a significant increase from seven in 2010 and thirteen in 2009 (the increase is mostly due to her having been present for several events during the World Ski Championship).
Princess Astrid, the oldest active royal, carried out 36 engagements in 2011, compared to seven in 2010 and ten in 2009. For her, too, much of the increase is due to her presence during the World Ski Championship.
Members of the royal family carried out engagements in Norway, Switzerland, Ghana, Mali, Britain, Germany, Slovenia, Croatia, Brazil, Italy, Azerbaijan, USA, Monaco, South Sudan, China, France, Finland, Sweden and Poland.
The report also reveals a decline in the number of visitors to the palaces. During the summer season of 2011 (23 June-13 August) the Royal Palace had 22,994 visitors (compared to 27,165 the previous year), while Oscarshall Palace was visited by 9,969 persons between 1 May and 25 September, compared to 19,359 in 2010.
In 2011 the King awarded one Grand Cross of the Order of St Olav and one Grand Cross Collar. No one was made a Commander with Star, while six men became Commanders. 22 people were made a Knight of the First Class.
Fifteen Grand Crosses of the Order of Merit were given out and eleven people became Commanders with Star. Thirty persons were made Commanders of this order, while 55 became Knights of the First Class and twelve were made Knights.

New books: Versailles

Versailles is arguably the most famous palace in the world. The name itself symbolises not only a palace, an estate and a town, but a way of life, a régime and an historical epoch. Today visitors come in their hundreds of thousands or their millions, making Versailles one of France’s foremost tourist attractions.
Needless to say there is a vast literature on Versailles, yet Valérie Bajou’s splendid new book Versailles, published in France last year and now in an English translation by Abrams of New York, is a valuable addition to the bibliography on Versailles.
Through nearly 500 abundantly illustrated pages the book tells the story of the palace, the artworks, the gardens, the park, the Trianons and the museum – and the changing faces of Versailles. In doing so, the book also reminds the reader how little one actually gets to see when visiting Versailles as a tourist. The texts are rather short, but there are hundreds of mostly good photos and the captions provide details about the artworks pictured.
As such this is a book which can be heartily recommended both as a supplement to a visit to Versailles and as a consolation to those unable to go there.

Grand Cross for Duchess of Cornwall

Buckingham Palace today announced (external link) that Queen Elizabeth II of Britain has given her daughter-in-law the Duchess of Cornwall the Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order (GCVO) on the seventh anniversary of her wedding to the Prince of Wales.
The Royal Victorian Order was, as the name suggests, founded by Queen Victoria in 1896. It is in the personal gift of the monarch, meaning that appointments are not made on ministerial recommendation, and is mostly used to reward people who have served the monarch or the royal family in a personal way. The order has five grades in addition to a medal (while the Royal Victorian Chain counts as an order on its own).
According to Wikipedia there are currently 54 holders of the Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order, including nine members of the British royal family: The Duke of Kent (1960), Princess Alexandra (1960), the Princess Royal (1974), the Duek of Gloucester (1974), the Duchess of Kent (1977), the Duchess of Gloucester (1989), Prince Michael (2003), the Countess of Wessex (2010), the Duke of York (2011), the Earl of Wessex (2011) and the Duchess of Cornwall (2012).
Unlike some of her predecessors and some of her foreign contemporaries, Elizabeth II has been quite strict in awarding orders to her family members. They are generally not given upon coming of age or marriage, but have to be earned through years of service. It is worth noting that until the award of the GCVO to the Countess of Wessex on her 45th birthday in 2010, no daughter-in-law of Queen Elizabeth had been given any British royal order (except for the private family order, which was given to the late Princess of Wales).

Strong approval ratings for most Norwegian royals

Two days ago Dagbladet published an opinion poll (conducted by polling institute Ispos MMI) which shows great approval ratings for most members of the Norwegian royal family. No less than 93 % think the King does a good job, while only 1 % think he does a bad job. 81 % believe the Queen represents the country well, while 89 % say so about the Crown Prince and 75 % of the Crown Princess.
Less good are the results for Princess Märtha Louise and her husband Ari Behn. 25 % think the Princess represents the country well, while 27 % think she does a bad job and 43 % ranks her as average. 5 % think Ari Behn represents the royal family well; 57 % that he does so badly.
The other members of the royal family are not included in the poll, probably because they are either too young or not well enough known to the general public.
The bad result for Princess Märtha Louise should probably be seen in connection with the ongoing controversy over her use of her royal title for promoting her angel “school” and books about communicating with angels. Although this is strictly speaking not linked to her royal role, it is understandable if people include it in their evaluation of how she represents the royal family as nearly everything a princess does will inevitably reflect on the royal family. Furthermore, were she to be evaluated solely by how she carries out her public engagements there would not be much to go by, as she performed only seven official engagements in 2010.
Including Ari Behn may seem a bit odder, as he does not carry out any royal engagements except when accompaying his wife.

Second great-granddaughter for Queen Elizabeth II

It was announced today that Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip of Britain became great-grandparents for the second time yesterday, when their granddaughter-in-law Autumn Phillips gave birth to another daughter at Gloucestershire Royal Hospital.
The child’s name will be Isla Elizabeth Phillips and she is thirteenth in line to the thrones of Britain and other countries of which her great-grandmother is queen.
The girl’s father, Peter Phillips, is the eldest child of Princess Anne, the Princess Royal, and her first husband Mark Phillips. Peter was himself born in the year when his grandmother celebrated her silver jubilee, while his daughter has now seen the light of day as her great-grandmother celebrates her diamond jubilee.
The first child of Peter Phillips and his Canadian-born wife Autumn, Savannah, was born on 30 December 2010.

On this date: The Queen Mother remembered

Time flies; today is the tenth anniversary of the death of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother of Britain. The Queen Mother died at the Royal Lodge, Windsor, at 3.15 p.m. on 30 March 2002 (Easter Saturday), aged 101 years and 238 days.
Having laid in state in Westminster Hall, her funeral was held in Westminster Abbey on 9 April before burial in St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle.
Among my personal memories of those days are the warm atmosphere when I queued for three or four hours for the lying in state (I did not see a single person leave the queue during those hours) and the sound of the crowd of one million people in the streets singing “God Save the Queen” at the conclusion of the funeral service - as well as the sound of hundreds of bagpipes as the funeral procession made its way from Westminster Hall to Westminster Abbey, a sound which was very clearly audible where I stood in the Mall.
The Queen Mother’s last semi-public outing was the funeral of her daughter, Princess Margaret, which was held in St George’s Chapel at Windsor on 15 February (the fiftieth anniversary of the funeral of King George VI in the same chapel). Princess Margaret had died on 9 February 2002, aged 71.
Today the British royal family again gathered in St George’s Chapel, this time for a memorial service for Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret. Among the family members present were Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh, the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall, Prince Harry, the Princess Royal and Sir Timothy Laurence, the Duke of York, Princess Beatrice, Princess Eugenie, the Countess of Wessex, Prince and Princess Michael, Princess Alexandra and Princess Margaret’s children and grandchildren. The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are on a private holiday abroad and thus missed the event.

New books: The history of Paris in photos

Following three enormous photo books on Berlin, New York and Los Angeles, Taschen has recently published a fourth, Paris: Portrait d’une ville. Portrait of a City. Porträt einer Stadt, written and edited by Jean Claude Gautrand. When it comes to photographic histories of cities, Paris is particularly interesting as this city was the city where photography was first invented in the late 1830s and also where the technique to make colour photos was discovered in 1904.
This book thus offers a unique photographic account of the development of Paris from 1839 to 2011 and of life in the metropolis through 172 years. There is something almost breathtaking about seeing street views from as far back as 1839, but also photos of daily life and major events, such as the revolution of 1848, pictures which may well be regarded the first press photos.
Here is the changing of the guard at the now lost Tuileries Palace in the reign of Louis-Philippe, the proclamation of the Second Empire in 1852, the troops returning from Italy in 1859, Baron Haussman’s turning Paris upside down, the revolutionaries, politicians, writers, artists, actors and models who have helped create the myth of Paris, but also the destinies of the ordinary man, woman and child.
The book, which is trilingual (French, English and German), is divided into five parts (1830-1871, 1871-1914, 1914-1939, 1939-1959 and 1959-2011). It is only towards the end that the pace is perhaps a bit too hasty as the book moves quite fast from the events of 1968 to the present day.
This is a great book in all meanings of that word, and may almost be considered a must have for all lovers of Paris as well as those interested in the history of photography.

New photos of Princess Estelle and her parents

The Swedish royal court today released three new photos of Princess Estelle and her parents. The photos were taken at Haga Palace and copyright is Kate Gabor/kungahuset.se.

Three new ministers appointed today

In today’s State Council the King appointed three new members of the cabinet: Bård Vegar Solhjell (fourth photo) was appointed Minister of Environment, Heikki Holmås (sixth photo) Minister of Development and Inga Marte Thorkildsen (fifth photo) Minister of Children, Equality and Integration. After the State Council the new ministers were, in keeping with tradition, presented in the Palace Square by Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg.
All the new ministers are MPs for the Socialist Left Party (SV), one of the three parties which make up the centre-left coalition which has governed Norway since 2005 (the other parties being the Labour Party and the Centre Party).
The ministerial changes come as a consequence of SV’s recent change of leadership. Having done badly in the local elections in September last year, Kristin Halvorsen announced her intention to step down as party leader after fifteen years in that position.
Holmås, Solhjell and Thorkildsen were all mentioned as possible successors along with Audun Lysbakken, deputy leader of the party and at that time the only of the four to sit in the cabinet (as Minister of Children, Equality and Integration).
Thorkildsen declined to run, while Solhjell and Holmås later withdrew from the contest as it was clear that Lysbakken had the most support. However, on 5 March Lysbakken was forced to resign from the cabinet after a scandal over his ministry having given financial support to organisations close to him and his party without following the rules properly.
Regardless of this Lysbakken was elected party leader a few days later, but will consequently have to lead the party from Parliament, despite the Prime Minister’s express wish that all the party leaders shall have a seat in the Cabinet and its subcommittee consisting of the three party leaders.
SV’s seat in that subcommittee, and the position as the Prime Minister’s deputy, will now be taken by Bård Vegar Solhjell, who is also deputy leader of the party and served as Minister of Education from 2007 to 2009. Since then he has been an MP and the party’s parliamentary leader, a post which Lysbakken will now fill.
Inga Marte Thorkildsen, who has been an MP since 2001 and was elected deputy leader of the party two weeks ago, now takes over Lysbakken’s former ministry.
As Kristin Halvorsen is no longer party leader she will now take over the entire Ministry of Education, which since 2007 has been split between a Minister of Education and a Minister of Research and Higher Education. This means that Tora Aasland, who has held the second post since 2007, now leaves the cabinet (she will turn 70 later this year and is thus the oldest female cabinet minister ever).
Erik Solheim, who was party leader from 1987 to 1997, was appointed Minister of International Development in 2005 and Minister of Environment and International Development in 2007, was widely expected to return to being only Minister of Environment, but was in the end deprived of both cabinet posts, which he has objected loudly to.
Solheim is succeeded as Minister of Environment by Bård Vegar Solhjell, and as Minister of International Development by Heikki Holmås, who has been an MP since 2005.
The replacement of a former party leader (Solheim) and a former deputy party leader (Aasland) from the 1980s and 1990s with the two current deputy leaders (Solhjell and Thorkildsen) and the man who did second best in the leadership contest (Holmås) is obviously a generational shift, but may also be interpreted as an attempt by a party which struggles in the polls to regain ground ahead of next year’s general election by putting three of its four most talented politicians of the younger generation in the cabinet.
The irony is of course that of the four people who were mentioned as possible party leaders last September, three are now in the cabinet, while the one who actually won the leadership contest was forced to resign from the cabinet just days before his elevation to the leadership.

Statue of King Christian Frederik for 1814 jubilee

As I have earlier voiced my dissatisfaction with the decision of the Parliament’s Presidium not to erect a statue of King Christian Frederik for the bicentenary of 1814, I am naturally pleased that the Culture Minister, Anniken Huitfeldt, in today’s Aftenposten announces that there will after all be a statue of him erected for the jubilee.
No decision has yet been made about the location of the statue, but Huitfeldt says this will be decided in consultation with the Presidium and that she welcomes suggestions. Personally I would prefer the statue to be placed outside the Parliament Building.
The above portrait of the then Prince Christian Frederik of Denmark was painted in 1812, possibly by C. G. Kratzenstein-Stub, and hangs at Rosenborg Palace in Copenhagen. Two years later, on 17 May 1814, the Constituent Assembly at Eidsvoll elected Christian Frederik, who had played a crucial role in the events of that momentous year, the first King of an independent Norway in centuries. He was however forced to abdicate on 10 October that same year and later reigned as King Christian VIII of Denmark in the years 1839-1848.

British royals start Scandinavian tour in Oslo

Today the Prince of Wales (Prince Charles of Britain) and his wife Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, arrived in Oslo on the first leg of their tour of the three northern kingdoms on the occasion of Queen Elizabeth II’s diamond jubilee.
The British royals were received at Oslo Airport Gardermoen by their Norwegian counterparts, Crown Prince Haakon and Crown Princess Mette-Marit, but will be hosted at the Royal Palace by the King and Queen.
The first stop in Oslo was Akershus Fortress, where the King and the Prince of Wales inspected a company of His Majesty the King’s Guard and Prince Charles laid a wreath at the National Monument. With an eye for detail the Prince of Wales wore a lapel pin which indicates that he has been awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of St Olav (by King Olav in 1978).
The heir to the British throne subsequently had a meeting with Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg at the Prime Minister’s residence before the King and Queen accompanied their guests to the Nobel Peace Centre, where they met representatives of youth organisations and survivors of the terrorist attack directed at the Labour Party’s youth movement last summer.
Tonight the King and Queen are hosting a banquet at the Royal Palace in honour of the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall, where the Crown Prince and Crown Princess, Princess Märtha Louise and Princess Astrid will also be present.
Tomorrow the royals will carry out engagements in Bergen, Norway’s second largest city, but on Thursday they will be back in Oslo, where their final stop will be the Museum of Decorative Arts and Design and the exhibition of treasures from the Royal Collection which opened a month ago and has been an immense success which has already attracted more than 15,000 visitors.
On Thursday afternoon the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall will depart for Stockholm before rounding off their Scandinavian tour in Denmark during the weekend.
Back in London today Queen Elizabeth herself addressed a joint session of both Houses of Parliament in Westminster Hall as part of the diamond jubilee celebrations.

Princess Estelle to be christened on 22 May

The Swedish royal court today announced that the christening of Princess Estelle, who was born on 23 February, will take place in the Palace Church on 22 May. The Archbishop, Anders Wejryd, will officiate.

Royal jewels: Queen Sophia’s alleged coronation tiara (Estelle Bernadotte’s tiara)

My recent blogpost about Countess Estelle Bernadotte af Wisborg has already attracted hundreds of readers since its publication three weeks ago, as the interest in her has understandably soared after the name Estelle was given to the new-born Swedish heiress. Several readers have asked for further details about Estelle Bernadotte’s grand tiara, which I wrote had been sold. Therefore, here is what I know:
There is some confusion about what stones there are in the parure. The art historian Göran Alm, head of the Bernadotte Library, has described them as “white sapphires”, while they are identified as pink topazes in the inventory of jewellery drawn up after the death of Dowager Queen Sophia of Sweden in 1913. Queen Sophia herself described them as pale rubies in her will of 31 October 1907, while they have been called pink tourmalines by her descendants.
The first certain owner of this tiara was Queen Sophia of Sweden and of Norway, although there is an uncertain tradition that it may have belonged to her mother-in-law, Queen Josephina, or at least have been a gift from her.
There are no jewels matching any of the above descriptions in the inventory of Queen Josephina’s jewellery following her death in 1876, but this is understandable, as the jewellery seems to have belonged to her daughter-in-law already before that time.
The tiara’s first known appearance is a portrait of Queen Sophia (in the possession of the King of Sweden) painted by Hilda Lindgren in 1875, three years after Oscar II’s accession to the throne. In this painting the Queen wears the tiara, but other jewellery rather than the rest of the parure. There is also an identical photograph, making it apparent that the portrait was painted after a photo.
Queen Sophia also wears the tiara in Knud Bergslien’s painting of her and Oscar II’s Norwegian coronation in Trondhjem Cathedral (now Nidaros Cathedral) on 18 July 1873, which hangs in the Hall of Mirrors at the Royal Palace in Oslo. However, this does not necessarily mean that she actually wore the tiara for the coronation, as the painting was executed only in 1882 and it might be possible that Bergslien has painted the tiara after Lindgren’s portrait, which until the dissolution of the union of crowns in 1905 hung in Oscar II’s office at the Royal Palace in Kristiania (now Oslo).
Dowager Queen Sophia died in 1913 and in the inventory of her jewels one finds a parure consisting of a necklace of pink topazes and diamonds, a golden bracelet with one large pink topaz set in diamonds, a tiara of nine large pink topazes and diamonds, and a brooch made of one large pink topaz and diamonds. The value of the parure was estimated at a meagre 9,600 SEK (which might be compared to 222,450 SEK for the emerald parure which now belongs to the King of Norway).
In her will, Queen Sophia left the parure to her daughter-in-law Princess Ebba Bernadotte, the wife of her second oldest son, Prince Oscar Bernadotte. There are photos of Princess Ebba Bernadotte wearing it, for instance to the eightieth birthday of King Gustaf V in 1938.
Princess Ebba Bernadotte died in 1946 and the parure was next worn by her daughter-in-law Countess Estelle Bernadotte af Wisborg. Estelle Bernadotte wore it frequently throughout her life and according to her daughter-in-law bought matching earrings, bracelet and ring.
Following Estelle Bernadotte’s death in 1984 the parure was inherited by her eldest surviving son, Count Folke (“Ockie”) Bernadotte af Wisborg, whose wife Christine wore it to at least one royal banquet in the 1980s and possibly also in the 1990s.
However, Countess Christine Bernadotte af Wisborg has told me that she and her husband, in consultation with their children, decided to sell the parure, preferably to the Swedish royal family as they wanted the jewellery to remain in the Bernadotte family. The Swedish court contacted the Norwegian royal family, who was interested and bought the parure. The Countess cannot remember which year this happened, something I interpret as that it cannot have been very recently.
However, no member of the Norwegian royal family has ever worn the parure, although there should have been plenty of opportunities for doing so, for instance during one of the official visits exchanged between Norway and Sweden to mark the centenary of the dissolution of the union in 2005. This was a reservation I also added when I published the information given me by Christine Bernadotte in an article on the royal crowns of Norway in the 2010 edition of the yearbook Trondhjemske Samlinger.
Recently I mentioned this information to Kjell Arne Totland, former royal reporter for the weekly magazine Se og Hør, but when interviewed by the Norwegian TV channel TV2 Nyhetskanalen following the birth of Princess Estelle he stated that the parure had been bought by the main line of the Swedish royal family. I do not know what were his sources for this, but it cannot have been me, as I clearly said the Norwegian, not the Swedish royal family. Kjell Arne Totland speculated that Count Bertil Bernadotte af Wisborg, the younger son of Estelle Bernadotte and a close friend of King Carl Gustaf, may have acted as intermediary.
The TV2 interview was picked up by the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet, which ran a short story on it on 28 February. The weekly magazine Svensk Damtidning followed it up with an article in this year’s issue no 11, in which Count Folke Bernadotte confirms the information his wife gave me about the sale to the Norwegian royal family.
The magazine’s journalist Margareta Heed further claims that the tiara was bought from the Norwegian royal family by Prince Daniel and presented to Crown Princess Victoria at the hospital after she had given birth to Princess Estelle.
It is, however, worth noting that Svensk Damtidning gives no sources for this and that the magazine is not always very reliable. There are also several factual mistakes about the tiara in that article (and it is reported in the same issue that Princess Madeleine had returned to New York, although she was seen in Stockholm the previous evening and had engagements in the Swedish capital the following week).
So there the issue stands at present, with several loose treads left, such as the question of why the Norwegian royals never used the jewels if they did in fact possess them.