Oslo - Norway will bury Harald V on Wednesday 9 September. The King died at Oslo’s Rikshospitalet on 28 August, aged 89, after thirty-five years on the throne. It will be the first funeral of a Norwegian monarch since 30 January 1991, when his father Olav V was buried from the same Oslo Cathedral in the presence of delegations from 103 countries, amid what VG described at the time as the largest security operation in Norwegian history. Most of those lining the barriers along Karl Johans gate tomorrow will have no personal memory of a royal funeral procession.
The Royal Court set out the timetable for the day in a statement issued on 6 September. It begins in private, with a gathering for the closest members of the family in the Slottskapellet, the Palace Chapel, where the coffin has lain for public viewing from 1 to 8 September. Around 5,000 people a day have come to pay their respects, according to Nettavisen, with queues reaching seven hours on Saturday.
At noon, the coffin will leave through the main entrance on a gun carriage, accompanied by officers from the King’s staff of aides-de-camp, who will act as pallbearers. A 21-gun mourning salute will be fired from Akershus Fortress. As with previous Norwegian monarchs, the royal regalia will rest on the coffin.
The procession
The route is the same one Harald and Sonja travelled in an open-top car on 17 May 2020, at the height of the pandemic: along Karl Johans gate, then Kirkegata, before reaching Oslo Cathedral. The procession will move at sixty paces a minute, half the pace of a normal ceremonial march, and the coffin is expected to arrive outside the Cathedral shortly before 1pm.
The Royal Court has published the order of procession: mounted police, the Guard’s signals corps, the military bands of the Defence Staff and the Army, the Guard’s colour draped in black crepe with its escort, a guard of honour from His Majesty the King’s Guard, the head of the Royal Court and then the coffin. Immediately behind it, walking, will be King Haakon VIII, Crown Princess Ingrid Alexandra, Prince Sverre Magnus and Princess Märtha Louise. Queen Mette-Marit and Queen Sonja will follow by car.
They will be followed by foreign royals, the President of the Storting Masud Gharahkhani, Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre and Supreme Court President Toril Marie Øie, visiting heads of state or their representatives, members of the government, the Storting’s presidency, representatives of the Supreme Court, the President and plenary president of the Sámi Parliament, county governors and the Governor of Svalbard, Oslo Mayor Anne Lindboe, senior members of the Royal Court and the leadership of the Armed Forces. A second mounted police unit will bring up the rear. Around 1,900 soldiers will form a cordon along the entire route from the Palace to the Cathedral and from there to Akershus. A further 1,200 will take part in guards of honour and military bands. In all, around 6,500 police officers and military personnel will be involved in the security and ceremonial operation.
There will be nine public access points along the route, open from 6am. Palace Square will remain closed off and the procession route cannot be crossed. Central Oslo will be closed to private traffic and public transport from 6pm today until 9pm tomorrow. Electric scooters will be disabled within the pedestrian zone. Akershus Fortress will remain closed until 11 September and the castle until 14 September. At Gardermoen Airport, Avinor has cancelled around forty aircraft movements to make room for official state arrivals.
Inside Oslo Cathedral
At exactly 1pm, once the coffin is inside the Cathedral, Norway will observe a minute’s silence. Three tolls of the bells from churches across the country will mark its beginning, and another three its end. The official term used by the Royal Court for the ceremony is gravferd, rather than begravelse. It is the liturgical term, and the service will follow the Church of Norway’s funeral rite, with readings, hymns, prayers and a sermon. The service will be led by Olav Fykse Tveit, the preses of the Bishops’ Conference, the bishop who has chaired the college of Norway’s twelve Lutheran bishops since 2020 and who previously spent a decade as general secretary of the World Council of Churches in Geneva. He will be joined by the Bishop of Oslo, Sunniva Gylver.
The music will be led by Oslo Cathedral cantor Marcus André Berg and the Oslo Cathedral Choir. In keeping with tradition, the commemorative addresses will be delivered by the President of the Storting and the prime minister. The Church of Norway ceased to be the State Church after the constitutional reform of 2012 and gained legal autonomy in 2017, although the Constitution still describes it as the “People’s Church”, and Article 4 continues to require the monarch to profess the Evangelical Lutheran faith.
Alongside the liturgy, however, the Royal Court has included a gesture that became familiar during Harald’s reign: the lighting of candles by representatives of different religions and worldviews. The leaders’ forum of the Samarbeidsrådet for tros- og livssynssamfunn (STL) has been invited. It brings together Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh and Bahá’í communities, the Catholic Church, the Christian Council of Norway, the Humanist Association and others. Its members had already filed past the coffin on Saturday during a private viewing behind closed doors.
Only invited guests will be admitted to the Cathedral. Space is limited and the Foreign Ministry has said that the guest list will not be published for security reasons. The criteria, explained by ministry spokeswoman Thea Finstad, are known: every country with diplomatic representation in Oslo has been invited, along with NATO, European Economic Area and European Union member states that do not have diplomatic representation there. Each government decides whom to send. The service will also be shown on screens in 143 churches and parish halls across the country. In Svalbard, at Longyearbyen Church, the live broadcast will begin as the coffin leaves the Palace.
Akershus
After the Cathedral service, a smaller procession will take the coffin to Akershus Castle Church. The ceremony there will be private and attended by the family, royal guests, the President of the Storting, the prime minister, the President of the Supreme Court and just two heads of state: Icelandic President Halla Tómasdóttir and Finnish President Alexander Stubb. The coffin will be lowered into the crypt of the Royal Mausoleum, which contains the sarcophagi of Haakon VII and Queen Maud, and of Olav V and Crown Princess Märtha, Harald’s mother.
A double sarcophagus has been made for Harald and Sonja, financed with the 20 million kroner allocated by the government in 2024. When the King and Queen emerge into the fortress courtyard, the flags that have flown at half-mast since 28 August will be raised to full mast and a double royal salute will be fired. At the same moment, bells will begin ringing in churches across Norway and will continue for an hour. Haakon, Mette-Marit, Ingrid Alexandra, Sonja and Sverre Magnus will return to the Palace along the same route taken by the morning procession. The barriers around Slottsplassen will be removed at around 4.30pm, and at 4.45pm the Royal Family will appear on the balcony to greet the people gathered in the square. In the Palace Park, between Parkveien and Wergelandsveien, a large screen will show NRK’s live coverage from 10am until 5.30pm.
The official programme will then continue at two venues. At the Palace, the King and Queen will host a reception for foreign delegations, the family and representatives of the state. At Oslo City Hall, the government will hold a commemorative ceremony hosted by the foreign minister and attended by around 450 guests. The period of national mourning proclaimed by Haakon VIII will continue until 9 October.
Who will be there
Europe’s royal houses will be represented almost in full, and in many cases those attending are relatives. Norway’s Glücksburg dynasty descends from a branch of the Danish royal house and is related to almost every reigning family in Europe. King Frederik X and Queen Mary are coming from Denmark and have postponed their state visit to Belgium, which had been due to take place from 8 to 10 September, in order to attend the funeral in Oslo. They will be joined by Crown Prince Christian and Princess Benedikte.
Queen Margrethe, Harald’s second cousin and a lifelong friend, has had to withdraw for health reasons. The royal yacht Dannebrog, where the couple will stay, entered Norwegian waters this morning, without the King and Queen on board.
Sweden is sending the entire Royal Family: Carl XVI Gustaf and Silvia, Crown Princess Victoria with Prince Daniel, Carl Philip and Sofia, Madeleine with Christopher O’Neill, and Princess Christina with Tord Magnuson. From the United Kingdom, William, Prince of Wales, will attend on behalf of Charles III - by convention, the British monarch does not attend the funerals of other heads of state - while Princess Anne, Haakon’s godmother, will attend in a personal capacity. Belgium will be represented by Philippe and Mathilde; the Netherlands by Willem-Alexander, Máxima, Princess Beatrix and the Princess of Orange, Catharina-Amalia; Spain by Felipe VI, Letizia and Queen Sofía; Luxembourg by Grand Duke Guillaume, Grand Duchess Stéphanie and Grand Duke Henri, who abdicated last year; Liechtenstein by Hereditary Prince Alois and Princess Sophie; and Monaco by Albert II.
Japan will be represented by Crown Prince Fumihito and Princess Kiko. Emperor Naruhito, then Crown Prince, attended Olav’s funeral in 1991. King Abdullah II of Jordan will also attend. Jordan observed three days of mourning following Harald’s death. Among the members of former ruling houses expected in Oslo are Queen Anne-Marie of Greece, Prince Kyril of Bulgaria and Crown Prince Alexander of Serbia with Princess Katherine, who arrived in the Norwegian capital today.
The political representation is more limited than many in Norway had expected. Those attending include German Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the presidents of Finland and Iceland and the three Baltic presidents: Alar Karis of Estonia, Edgars Rinkēvičs of Latvia and Gitanas Nausėda of Lithuania.
Thailand’s prime minister has also arrived. The United States will be represented at a noticeably lower level. Donald Trump will be in Dallas on the same day, and the White House has not said who will represent him.
Russia has been invited only at diplomatic level. There is still no confirmation regarding Volodymyr Zelensky, who last week announced plans to visit Norway and Canada to discuss missile defence. Kåre Aas, Norway’s former ambassador to Washington, summed up the situation to Nettavisen by saying that those attending would mainly be Europe’s royal houses and, politically, Norway’s closest neighbours. Marius Borg Høiby, Mette-Marit’s son from a relationship before her marriage to Haakon, is expected to attend the funeral, although his name does not appear in the order of procession published by the Royal Court. Princess Astrid, Harald’s 94-year-old elder sister, will also attend both the Cathedral service and the ceremony at Akershus.
