In the early hours of August 4, 2024, Norwegian police were called to a flat in Frogner, an upmarket district of western Oslo, over a case of suspected domestic violence. Neighbours had been alarmed by loud cries — including one from a man heard shouting: “I want you to die.”
When officers arrived, they found a knife embedded in the wall and the chandelier shattered into fragments on the floor. The victim, in her mid-twenties, had been hit in the face, pinned down to the bed and “repeatedly choked so that she could not breathe”, prosecutors claim.
The ferocity of the attack, thought to have been the culmination of months of abuse, made it especially horrific. But it shocked Norwegians for another reason, too: the alleged perpetrator was Marius Borg Hoiby, the son of Crown Princess Mette-Marit, 52, whose husband, Crown Prince Haakon, also 52, is set to be the next king.
Hoiby with his mother, Crown Princess Mette-Marit, in 2022
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Hoiby’s arrest that afternoon, a few steps from the Skaugum estate, the royal couple’s residence southwest of the capital, was the first act in an extraordinary legal case that will reach its dramatic finale next month when Hoiby goes on trial in an Oslo courtroom.
Hoiby, 29, who admitted after his arrest to having “struggled with substance abuse for a long time”, has been indicted on 38 counts. The allegations include the rape of four women, physical and psychological abuse of two other women, a threat to kill a man, multiple traffic offences and transporting 3.5kg of marijuana.
The proceedings against him, much of which will be open to the public, are set to start on February 3 and last seven weeks. If convicted, he could be jailed for up to ten years.
The affair has added to the already considerable woes of the Norwegian royal house and its elderly head, Harald V, 88, who is the great-grandson of Edward VII and a second cousin (once removed) of Charles.
King Harald V and Queen Sonja attending Queen Margrethe II of Denmark’s golden jubilee in Copenhagen in 2022
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Hoiby was born to Mette-Marit after a brief liaison two years before she met Haakon, but was brought up by the crown prince as his own son after the couple married in 2001. By then aged four, he was a page boy at the wedding in Oslo Cathedral and joined the royal family afterwards on the balcony of the palace. The couple went on to have two children together: Princess Ingrid Alexandra, 22, and Prince Sverre Magnus, 20.
Mette-Marit holding Hoiby, and Haakon on the balcony of the royal palace after their wedding in 2001
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“This case comes at a very difficult time for the monarchy and really does affect them,” said Trond Noren Isaksen, a historian who has written seven books on the Norwegian monarchy. “Although not part of the royal family or in the line of succession, Hoiby has been raised by the crown prince and crown princess, and he has been part of royal events for his whole life.”
This is not their only crisis. Hoiby’s arrest came just weeks before the marriage of Harald’s daughter, Princess Martha Louise, 54, whose money-making antics have been a constant source of embarrassment. Her husband, Durek Verrett, 51, is an American conspiracy theorist and self-professed shaman.
Martha Louise and Durek Verrett in 2024
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Then last month the palace announced that Mette-Marit, who suffers from chronic pulmonary fibrosis, a progressive and ultimately fatal lung disease, will probably need to undergo a transplant after a “clear deterioration” in her condition. At present 30 people are waiting for a transplant, and the head of her medical team has insisted she will not jump the queue.
All this has taken its toll: the royal family’s popularity ratings, once above 80 per cent, have since fallen to closer to 60 per cent, though have recently recovered somewhat.
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Norwegian journalists who have reported on Hoiby (who is not in line for the throne) paint a picture of a young man who struggled to establish a role for himself as a semi-detached member of the royal family. All the while he was becoming a fixture at cocaine-fuelled evenings at expensive clubs in western Oslo, where he hung out with models and influencers.
“He always thought of himself as untouchable,” said Ulf Andre Andersen, who recently stepped down as editor of Se og Hor, a popular if controversial magazine that has closely followed Hoiby’s activities. “He has always done everything he wants. Nobody has set any boundaries for him.”
When her son turned 20, Mette-Marit wrote an open letter to the media in which she criticised them for writing about his “youthful indiscretions”, adding: “He should not have a public role and is not a public person.”
In the letter, the crown princess drew comparisons with her own rebellious youth spent on Norway’s party scene before she fell for Haakon, whom she met at a music festival in 1999. Hoiby’s biological father, Morten Borg, was jailed for drug offences in the early 1990s.
Hoiby’s nights out brought him into close contact with members of Norway’s criminal underworld, according to White Lines, Black Sheep, a bestselling book published last autumn. Hoiby’s lawyers tried and failed to stop its publication.
“Police sources told us that they had seen him from the age of 15-16 hanging out with the wrong people and doing the wrong things, but said that when they let their superiors know, they were told to ‘leave him be’,” Oistein Norum Monsen, the book’s author and a prominent investigative reporter, told me.
By September 2023, Hoiby’s behaviour had become of such concern that officers from Oslo police’s organised crime unit visited him at his home on the Skaugum estate. In an audio recording released during legal proceedings over the book, they can be heard warning him about his cocaine abuse and personal links with large-scale dealers who are “interesting for us”.
The royal Skaugum estate
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Hoiby’s arrest in August 2024 followed a complaint by his alleged victim, who cannot be named and is referred to by Norwegian media as “the Frogner woman”. They had been living together for a year.
Days after the story of the arrest broke, Juliane Snekkestad, 30, a model, actress and influencer who had been in a relationship with him from 2018 until 2022, claimed that she, too, had been abused physically and psychologically by him, leaving her deeply traumatised.
Hoiby and Juliane Snekkestad in 2019
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“No woman should be exposed to this,” she wrote in an Instagram story. “So I feel a real responsibility to speak out.”
Snekkestad’s claims were echoed by Hoiby’s next partner, Nora Haukland, 29, a hugely popular influencer who made her name on Love Island Norway and now stars in Girls of Oslo, another reality television show.
The pair lived together from summer 2022 to autumn 2023, during which time Hoiby subjected her to both verbal and physical abuse, calling her a “slut” and “f***ing whore”, “repeatedly hitting her in the face, including with his fist, strangling her, kicking her and grabbing her roughly”, the indictment claims. On other occasions, he allegedly slammed a door in her face, threw objects at her and destroyed furniture.
Even more serious revelations followed Hoiby’s second arrest, in September 2024 and third that November. Prosecutors alleged that he sexually assaulted four women while they were not conscious, which constitutes rape under Norwegian law. They were alerted by photographs and videos of the incidents he appeared to have taken on his own phone.
Asked by The Sunday Times for comment, Hoiby’s lawyers said he was “taking the accusations very seriously”, adding: “But he does not acknowledge any wrongdoing in most of the cases — especially the cases regarding sexual abuse and violence.”
The first such alleged incident, involving Linni Meister, a model, singer and television personality, took place just after 7am in December 2018 at an “after party” that Hoiby hosted in the basement of Haakom and Mette-Marit’s home on the Skaugum estate.
Meister, 40, only learnt that she had been assaulted more than five years later when she was called in by police last February. Not given any reason for being summoned, according to reports she had planned to speak positively of Hoiby as a friend. To her shock, she was instead shown images showing the alleged abuse.
The three other women were also unaware of what had been done to them and, according to the indictment, were “unable to resist” due to sleep and/or intoxication.
The most serious assault was allegedly on a woman Hoiby met while on a visit with his stepfather to the Lofoten archipelago in northern Norway in October 2023. There has been no suggestion that Haakon knew what had gone on.
The last of the four is said to have happened on November 2, 2024, by which time Hoiby had already been arrested and released twice.
As close members of Hoiby’s family, the crown prince and princess will not be asked to appear as witnesses at the trial, which is conducted by a judge and two lay assessors. Meister is expected to testify on the first day; the other alleged victims will follow.
In an annual Christmas documentary looking back on the royal year, Mette-Marit revealed that she had been especially hurt by suggestions that she and the Crown Prince failed in their parental responsibilities.
“What perhaps makes me most upset is being criticised for how we have handled this as parents,” she said. “That we haven’t taken it seriously. I find that difficult.”
Mette-Marit added: “All parents — perhaps especially parents who have been in the situation we have been in — can probably relate to the fact that there is an incredible amount of self-blame involved.”