The Danish court has released Princess Marie’s monogramme: http://kongehuset.dk/publish.php?id=19170
Unlike many of the others in the family, Prince Henrik excepted, who have flowing letters, double letters, or fancy fonts, this seems to be a rather simple, yet elegant version of the M.
Of course, with all the Ms going on, they probably had to do something to separate them from each other. Wouldn’t do to get the china mixed up in the kitchens…
Pictures and video here.
When marking the 40th anniversary of Newcastle Civic Centre, King Harald will be awarded the Honourary Freedom of the city of Newcastle.
Earlier in the day, he will be unveiling Nicolaus Widerberg’s sculpture ‘Five Figures’ at Northumbria University. Widerberg has previously sculpted art for the university.
Norwegian artist Kjell Torriset, is also having an exhibition at the Northumbria University Gallery.
All in all, a very Norwegian time in Newcastle Upon Tyne.
(Fascinating tidbit: Newcastle Upon Tyne is probably one of the few cities in the world, outside of Norway, where you can find Metro instructions in Norwegian at the airport.)
I did this on my LiveJournal, and figured I’d do it here as well.
Usually around this time, I send out/exchange Christmas cards. It’s a pretty straight-forward procedure. I choose the card, I write a greeting in it, and I post it. You would presumably receive it, depending on the postal system.
Since the world of royalty watching isn’t solely about watching, but also about participating in a fellowship online, I thought it might be nice to send out Christmas cards to those I interact with, and those I don’t.
I don’t stalk the card-receivers, so we’re clear on that, if you were worrying. 
(In fact, despite my rather shiny degree, I’m so disorganized that I tend to lose the addresses after the cards have been sent, hence why I’m asking year after year on LJ…)
If you’re interested in receiving a Christmas card from me, in the post, please send your details (where you’d like to receive the card) to norwegianne@gmail.com. If you’re interested in sending me one, let me know via the same e-mail, and I’ll send you my details back…
Prince Joachim and Princess Marie are announcing on the royal website that Princess Marie is pregnant.
The birth is expected to take place in the beginning of May, 2009.
Both Marie and Joachim have been adamant in their wish for more children, if possible. Prince Henrik has also uttered a wish for more grandchildren.
*cue speculations on amount of children, the sex, names, date of birth, and godparents* Remember, the Danish royal children, unlike the Norwegian, usually end up with 4 names. While some of them are traditionally Danish names, there’s always a spot for the more unusual, say, Joachim, Nikolai or Felix.
The announcement now, ensures that Marie will have all eyes on the stomach, when she’s in Morocco today and tomorrow.
Of course, if she’s due in May, the earliest of the speculations that she was pregnant, in June… may have been wrong. If not, that’s a very long pregnancy, indeed.
In an interview with VG, King Harald of Norway talked about his level of activities. At the end of October, he’d had 356 official engagements in 2008. It is somehow down-sized since his illness, after which the King and Queen made the effort to work only four days a week. The King points out in the interview that they usually manage to do this 40 out of 52 weeks.
Since then, the Crown Prince and the Crown Princess has stepped up. According to the interview, Haakon has had 124 engagements, whereas Mette-Marit has done 76.
Of course, this is nothing compared to his second cousin, Queen Elizabeth II, but then Norway and Britain aren’t really comparable in the population sizes either.
I ended up watching the four first episodes of the British series, The Palace, last night. Obviously, it may not be fair to judge an entire series on so few episodes, but here are some of my thoughts.
I’ve tried my best to get the event calendar up to date, so I could do this. Obviously, I’m not perfect, and if I’ve left something off, please let me know, so I can adjust.
Here is a question, which I’ve been wondering about. I figured that as long as there was consistency, it wasn’t so bad. However, for events/occasions which go over several days - should they be counted as one event, or should I count the days? To clarify, I’m not going to count the individual events on these days anyway, as some of the courts do announce it in details, and some don’t, so it is more fair to select one of the above. For now, I’m counting the days, and logically assuming that a visit going over 4 days have more events than one that goes on for 2. Opinions or thoughts on that issue? (Or any issue in general?)
Things got thrown a bit out of order for November. I had a 30th birthday in London to attend, and a paper due after that, so I’ve spent most of this week catching up and trying to make sense of things. Still trying to catch up on the blogging, which seems to have been waylaid slightly as professors seem to enjoy adding to my workload. Sadly, academic life comes before blogging, and even royal stuff. Crazy, but true.
So, London. Did not see Buckingham Palace (but spent an awful lot of time pouring over the royal biographies and books in the bookshops,) but noticed the Diana’s head postcards still being sold from street-vendors. If you have something that’s getting sold, I suppose, why change it?
But, oh, the bookshops. I suppose I’ve come to see the mark of a good English bookshop as to whether or not it has a section dedicated to royals. The bigger ones do.
As for royal-related stuff, I’ve managed to catch that Mette-Marit’s fall may have been more serious than originally anticipated, and she’ll be off for two extra weeks. This means that the dinner they were planning to hold at Skaugum, has been postponed until December 1.
Bomann-Larsen’s 4th book in the series about King Haakon and Queen Maud is out. In it, we see rumours that the population had their doubts about whether or not Crown Prince Olav could actually speak Norwegian, given that the royal family were a bit reclusive up at the Palace.
As the Norwegian television channel, TV Norge, is having it’s anniversary, they were planning to show clips from the years it has existed. Among these clips were the time Mette-Marit was on television and tried to find a date. However, the television channel executives at the time of Mette-Marit and Haakon’s engagement, had decided that this clip wouldn’t be shown, or sold, out of respect for the Crown Princess. Upon hearing this, the current administration decided to comply with these wishes. So, we won’t get a repeat of Mette-Marit on the dating scene. At least not at the moment.
A while after the wedding, it seemed as if though Mette-Marit was going through an extreme bout of bad luck.
In February 2002, she was admitted to the hospital, when the flu she’d got during the Salt Lake City Olympics, developed into pneumonia. A trip to Mozambique was postponed.
In March, the same year, she broke her ankle on Easter holiday, while skiing. She limped around on crutches for official assignments for a while.
In May, still the same year, Haakon and Mette-Marit were interviewed by German television as a preparation for their trip to Germany. Both the two ended up with sunburn, although Mette-Marit’s were the most severe. She had 1st and 2nd degree burns over most of her face, and also her eyes had been affected. Haakon made the trip to Germany on his own.
But for a long time, things have seemed to be better. Until this week’s trip to Ukraine for UNAIDS. The Crown Princess fell in her room, and hit her head. The first parts of today’s events were cancelled, while she went to the hospital to get it checked out. One does hope that it is nothing serious.
EDIT: It is serious enough that she has to cancel the next day’s programme, but she should be okay by Wednesday.
In class the other day, we had an interesting discussion about leaders and charisma: does it take charisma to be a leader or can you be one without it?
And the professor touched upon an interesting question, that I thought I’d bring forth here:
Would you say that Henry VIII was a more charismatic leader than Queen Victoria?
And, following up on my own accord, how about today’s monarchs and royal family?
Any royal who seems very charismatic to you?
Do we follow the royals we do, because of their charisma, or are there other reasons?
On October 28, Princess Marie is taking the trip to Morocco. According to earlier reports, Marie has been spending this autumn getting acquainted with the more official sides of Denmark, including the political side.
This trip is a part of the foreign department’s effort in strengthening the ties between Denmark and Morocco, and it seems like an easy enough beginning task for Marie to sink her teeth into.
In Rabat, she will present a donation from the Lego Charity Fund to Moroccan orphanages.
It is not in Denmark, her first big solo engagement, but at the same time, it is on behalf of (and with) the Danish foreign ministry that she is making the trip, and Lego - the quintessential Danish company - is also involved. One shall, of course, wait to make a final judgement until after the trip has pulled through, but initially it does seem like a good way to ease into things.
Every year, the Norwegian tax authority makes public the income, fortune and taxes of everybody in Norway, with some exceptions. It is said that this announcement is to make the society more transparent, and less susceptible to corruption. I don’t know about that. The crux of the matter is that you can search up almost any Norwegian, and people who have worked in Norway, and see what they made last year, and what they paid in tax.
It’s not entirely accurate, as there are loads of deductions to be made, but an interesting curiosity for the curious, and the newspapers who revel in writing stories on the richest in various categories, counties and cities.
The royals don’t pay tax, so naturally they are not on the list. Mostly we have an inkling of their income anyway, since that happens through the country’s budget, although we have no way to know their personal fortune.
However, the royals outside the royal house - Princess Märtha Louise, Princess Ragnhild and Princess Astrid, by virtue of not having the HRH, and paying tax - gets to be included. There was some noise from the media this year, as apparently Märtha Louise and Ari Behn have blocked their address in the directories, and therefore been taken off the lists. After many enquiries, they agreed to have it made public.
Better late than never… probably.
September saw the passing away of the father of Crown Princess Mathilde of Belgium. The sad event also marked the Princess’ calendar for the last days of the month.
Apologies for the infrequent posts recently; I’ve been moving. This, of course, also means that some of the posts that I had planned for September, didn’t go quite as planned. Again, apologies.
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