Norwegian Royal Visit to Britain

The British Royal Family hosted the Norwegian Royal Family at Buckingham Palace on this day in 2005, 20 years ago, on their Official Visit to Britain for the Norwegian Centenary, following their visit to Sweden and ahead of their visit to Denmark.

Crown Prince Haakon and Crown Princess Mette-Marit joined King Harald V and Queen Sonja on their Official Visit to the United Kingdom, travelling on the Royal Yacht Norge to London, where they were received by the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh in an Official Ceremony at Buckingham Palace.

In the evening the Queen and Royal Family hosted a State Banquet for Norwegian Royal Family at Buckingham Palace, with speeches from both the British and Norwegian Sovereigns, with the Queen saying:

Your Majesty,

In 1955, on my first visit outside the Commonwealth, Prince Philip and I sailed up the Oslo fjord in Britannia to join the celebrations for Norway’s Golden Jubilee of Independence.

It was midsummer, an enchanting time in Norway, and I remember the bonfires along the coastline as we arrived and the enthusiastic welcome we received as guests of your grandfather, King Haakon.

Today, fifty years on, we are delighted to have you and Queen Sonja here to mark this Centenary Year for Norway. It is also a great pleasure to welcome Your Royal Highnesses on your first official visit to the United Kingdom, although you are no strangers to our country.

We are pleased to welcome you here for the chance it gives us to celebrate the close friendship between our peoples as well as our own families. The kinship between Britain and Norway is rooted in a thousand years of shared history, which has left its mark on both our countries.

I have to say that the first Norse visitors were not always as welcome as our guests tonight, but many stayed and settled, and enriched these islands with new ideas, new language and a new culture.

Since then we have welcomed to our shores generations of merchants, seafarers and scholars, and in the nineteenth century, following self-rule for Norway in 1814, the Norwegian influence flourished spread by men like Grieg and Ibsen. Britain was one of the very first countries to recognise newly independent Norway in 1905.

Of course, I can claim a family interest. My Great Aunt, Maud, who was married here in Buckingham Palace in 1896, became the first Queen of Norway and your father, King Olav, was born at Sandringham in 1903.

This year also marks the 60th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, and the liberation of Norway. Earlier today, you met British and Norwegian veterans who took part in the Norway campaign. Britain was proud to stand with you as you fought for the liberation of your own country and contributed to the wider defeat of tyranny.

That outward-looking, global approach unites us today. It was no surprise that the first Secretary General of the United Nations was Norwegian; no surprise that Norway is a significant donor of foreign aid, and is working with us and others to improve the lives of millions, especially in Africa; no surprise that we are such close partners and allies in NATO.

Together, we share many of the challenges of today’s world – tackling poverty, protecting human rights, addressing climate change and dealing with the new threat of global terrorism.

I was grateful for your message of sympathy and solidarity, and for the many other messages from ordinary Norwegians, following the bomb attacks here last July. No country is immune from these dangers and we all need to work together to prevent those who wish to attack our way of life from achieving their aims.

Your Majesty, relations between Britain and Norway today remain as strong as ever. The North Sea unites, rather than divides us – we are bound together not only by oil and gas pipelines, by air and shipping routes, by the closest cooperation between our armed forces, but also by a common outlook, a shared sense of history and of humour, of exploration and discovery.

Thousands of our citizens bear witness to this, travelling in both directions for business, study and pleasure. Your visit at this time is therefore a moment of celebration for us both: a time to recognise the links that exist between us; an occasion to look back, not just at one century, but at hundreds of years of kinship; an opportunity to look forward together to the challenges that the new Millennium brings.

Ladies and Gentlemen, it is in that spirit that I ask you all to rise and drink a toast to the King and Queen of Norway, to the prosperity of the Norwegian people and to the health of a natural, deep and abiding friendship.

The Queen (in the Vladimir Tiara) and Queen Sonja of Norway (wearing the Norwegian Emerald Parure)

Crown Prince Haakon, and Crown Princess Mette-Marit (in the Norwegian Amethyst Tiara)

The Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall (in the Delhi Durbar Tiara)

The Countess of Wessex (wearing the Aquamarine Tiara)

Princess Alexandra (in the Ogilvy Tiara).

Other engagements included a visit to the British Prime Minister at No. 10 Downing Street, while the Crown Prince and Crown Princess also had tea with the Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall at Clarence House.

The Lord Mayor of the City of London held a Banquet for King Harald and Queen Sonja (in Queen Josefina’s Diamond Tiara) at the Guildhall, also attended by Crown Prince Haakon, Crown Princess Mette-Marit (wearing the Diamond Daisy Bandeau), the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester (in the Gloucester Honeysuckle Tiara), and Princess Astrid (in Queen Alexandra’s Turquoise Circlet).