Who is Norway's new King Haakon VIII?

ByJames Gregory and Mallory Moench.

Key points

• Shortly after his return to Norway, Haakon met his now-wife Mette-Marit at a music festival in her home city of Kristiansand in 1999.
• Born in 1973, King Haakon is the youngest child of the late king and Queen Sonja.
• After the death of his grandfather King Olav V, he became crown prince in 1991 at the tender age of 17.
• Unusually for a royal, he was educated at local state schools before embarking upon a four-year-long naval career, graduating from the Norwegian Naval Academy in 1995.
• "What we two found together was so strong that I could not let it go, " the then-Crown Prince Haakon remarked of Mette-Marit ahead of their wedding in 2001.

King Haakon VIII has inherited the Norwegian throne after the death of his father, Harald V. Plenty of in Norway believe he has sizeable shoes to fill.

As shown by his consistent high polling and the outpouring of emotion in the lead-up to his death, king Harald was immensely popular with ordinary Norwegians.

Since it was restored in 1905 after the country gained independence from Sweden, haakon is the fourth king to head Norway's modern monarchy.

Among his first duties as monarch, he led an extraordinary cabinet session where he unveiled his royal title and adopted his father's motto "Everything for Norway".

Plenty of commentators believe he is well-placed to follow in his predecessors' footsteps.

As crown prince, Haakon worked closely with his father as he carried out his royal duties and over recent years was handed more responsibility, increasingly acting as regent while Harald was ill or absent.

King Haakon VIII takes the throne in Norway after death of Harald V.

"I am so lucky that Crown Prince Haakon is the one who will carry this forward, " King Harald wrote of his son in his biography The King Tells.

Historian Trond Norén Isaksen tells the BBC that Haakon will be a different type of king to his father, but no less respected.

King Harald. Particularly charismatic, he a great sense of humour. It everyone appreciates, and Haakon is a bit more reserved, a bit more like his mother.

"But in recent years he has also become a bit more relaxed and opened up a bit and showed a bit more of his sense of humour. He has been pulling enormous weight for many years given his parents have become older and his wife has been ill." Haakon is a great-great-great-grandson of Britain's Queen Victoria.

His daughter Ingrid Alexandra, 22, now becomes the crown princess and heir to the Norwegian throne.

Haakon was ahead of his older sister, Princess Märtha Louise, in the line of succession.

Notably, the constitution was changed in 1990 to offer women the right to inherit the throne, so Crown Princess Ingrid Alexandra is in line to be Norway's first female head of state since the 15th Century.

Haakon has become the king at a turbulent time for Norway's royal family.

Meanwhile, the monarchy remains broadly popular among Norwegians and has been long praised for its modern outlook. But over recent years it has been beset by scandal.

Only this year, Haakon's wife Mette-Marit has apologised for a number of years of ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, and her son has been convicted of rape in a high-profile trial. Marius Borg Høiby, who was born from an earlier relationship, is appealing against the conviction.

By Haakon's own admission, he struggled at times to accept his royal status in his early years.

"Yes, I was a royal, but I did not want to talk regarding it. At school it created me anxious, " he wrote in his 2023 autobiography, recalling his days in a state primary school in the 1980s.

He decided not to follow his father and grandfather to Oxford University, instead flying to California to enrol at the University of Berkeley, where he studied political science.

She was dubbed by the press as the Cinderella of Kristiansand – a reference to her humble beginnings.

But their relationship was not without controversy and there was a fierce public debate in Norway from the moment Haakon first confirmed they were dating.

Some commentators even cautioned at the time that their relationship could spell the end of the Norwegian monarchy, with comparisons being produced to the infamous union between American divorcee Wallis Simpson and British King Edward VIII which led to his abdication in 1936.

Mette-Marit was not the first commoner to marry into the Norwegian royal family – the late King Harald had already broken with tradition by marrying Queen Sonja three decades earlier.

She was, nevertheless, a single mother to a four-year-old child whose father had served time for a conviction of cocaine possession.

Meanwhile, the royal couple's co-habitation in an Oslo flat had additionally drawn criticism from the conservative Lutheran Church of Norway – though polls from the time demonstrated most ordinary Norwegians did not care regarding either.

What plenty of Norwegians did question, though, was whether her former party lifestyle was one compatible with that of someone married to the future king.

In an emotional interview three days before their marriage, Mette-Marit publicly apologised for her "wild past" and condemned drug employ after reports that drugs were taken at parties she attended in Oslo during the 1990s. She did not say whether she had taken them herself.

It was seen as something of a turning point. She won the affection of ordinary Norwegians and for years has been seen as the embodiment of a modern monarchy capable of shaking up convention. The couple have two children together, Ingrid and Prince Sverre Magnus.

In her new role as crown princess, she took up popular causes including backing for residents with HIV and promoting literacy.

Her diagnosis with pulmonary fibrosis in 2018 additionally led to widespread public sympathy.

Haakon has remarked Mette-Marit assisted him come out of his shell and described her as an emotional counterweight to his analytical mind. "I am not very good socially, " he wrote. "Mette is a natural talent. She can go into a room and obtain along with everyone."

But in recent times, Haakon's family has come under increasingly heavy public scrutiny and criticism.

Marius Borg Høiby's rape conviction hangs over the family. One of women was raped on Haakon's estate at Skaugum outside Oslo.

For now, who is Norway' s new King Haakon VIII? Remains the part of the story worth watching, and further updates are likely as more details are confirmed.