OSLO, Norway — Norway bade its final farewell to Harald V on Wednesday as crowds lined the streets and foreign royals and leaders converged on Oslo for the funeral of the long-serving king, who was remembered as a popular monarch with a down-to-earth touch. A 21-gun salute rang out over the capital at the start of a funeral procession from the royal palace to Oslo Cathedral. Harald’s son, new King Haakon VIII, and other senior royals walked behind the coffin, draped with the red Norwegian royal standard. Harald’s widow, Queen Sonja, and Haakon’s wife, Queen Mette-Marit, followed in a car. Norwegian officials and foreign dignitaries joined the solemn procession. They included the monarchs of Sweden, Denmark, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Monaco and Jordan. Also present were the heir to the British throne, Prince William, and Japan’s Crown Prince Akishino, as well as political leaders from more than 20 countries, including Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Harald V was a king who met people ‘in his rubber boots’ As the funeral service began, Norway came to a halt for a minute of silence. Harald, who died on Aug. 28 aged 89, was Europe’s oldest monarch and had reigned for 35 years. He modernized the royal house but refused to follow in the footsteps of other aging monarchs who recently abdicated. His son immediately became king and last week took an oath of allegiance to Norway’s constitution in parliament. The parliament’s speaker, Masud Gharahkhani, said at the service that “King Harald was close to the people” and recalled that “he wasn’t afraid to meet people in his rubber boots.” He remembered Harald saying in his 2008 New Year’s address: “I wish we would stop using the term ‘the weakest in society.’ In reality, some of these people are among the strongest of us all.” “He lived up to his motto: He gave his all for Norway,” Gharahkhani said. Large crowds lined the streets ahead of the funeral Large crowds flocked to Oslo for the funeral, and thousands stood behind barriers on streets lined with national flags. The downtown area was closed to vehicles and electric scooters, and police had instructed people not to bring bicycles, umbrellas or sharp objects. People tuned in across the country of about 5.6 million. Scores of churches, libraries, cultural centres and city halls made big screens available for the public to watch the funeral, public broadcaster NRK reported. The government said it wasn’t an official holiday, but schools and workplaces could individually opt to let students and employees watch. Ahead of the funeral, Norwegians waited patiently to file past Harald’s coffin in the chapel of the royal palace. The queue was seven hours long at one point over the weekend. Over 46,000 people visited the chapel during the week it lay in state. “The love between the people and King Harald has not ended — quite the contrary,” said Bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, who led the funeral service, pointing to the tributes left outside the palace after his death. “The sea of flowers, along with the words and drawings that accompany them, speaks loudly and clearly of a heart so full that it overflows.” After the funeral, Harald’s coffin was taken in a smaller procession to Akershus Fortress, where the late king’s predecessors are buried in the palace chapel. Haakon followed with the two other Scandinavian monarchs, King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden and King Frederik X of Denmark. Norway’s monarchy traces its origins to King Harald Fairhair in the ninth century. When Norway regained its independence from Sweden in 1905, three-quarters of voters in a national plebiscite approved restoring the monarchy. The Norwegian royal house has kinfolk in other European royal families. Harald and Haakon are related to both Britain’s King Charles III and Spain’s King Felipe VI: They’re all descendants of the U.K.’s Queen Victoria, who reigned from 1837 until her death in 1901. Today, the throne’s role is largely symbolic and power lies with the elected government and parliament, but the Norwegian royal family retains a role in promoting the wealthy Scandinavian nation around the world. ___ Markus Schreiber, The Associated Press Associated Press writers Geir Moulson in Berlin, Jamey Keaten in Geneva and Claudia Ciobanu in Warsaw, Poland contributed to this report.
