2 min readCrown Prince Haakon and Crown Princess Mette-Marit of Norway have been married for over 24 years.
The couple tied the knot on August 25, 2001, at the Oslo Cathedral. Following the example set by his parents King Harald and Queen Sonja, the Crown Prince, too, married for love. While Haakon didn’t have to wait the better part of a decade to marry Mette-Marit, there was some controversy in the earlier years of their relationship.
The couple announced their engagement in December 2000.
Few details have been published about the couple’s first meeting. According to Norwegian news outlet Dagbladet, Crown Prince Haakon and Mette-Marit had met by the summer of 1998 and were publicly dating by July 1999 when they were pictured together at the Quart Festival, an annual music festival in Kristiansand, Norway—Mette-Marit’s hometown. “The bright southern girl made an impression on me. You notice when Mette enters a room. There is a power there that is not so easy to overlook. And was nice to talk to,” Haakon later said in a 2021 interview. They announced their engagement in December 2000.
When she started dating Haakon, the international media described Mette-Marit as a “modern-day Cinderella,” given she was a single mother to a son born out of wedlock, not an aristocrat or noble, and had been described as a “fixture” in Oslo’s house party scene. The Church of Norway reportedly frowned upon their cohabitation before marriage, while the Norwegian public were bothered by her past drug use.
Mette Marit and Haakon on their wedding day in 2001 at Oslo Cathedral.
Still, the King and Queen of Norway ultimately gave their blessing for the union. Harald admitted his hesitations in a speech on their wedding day, while crediting Mette-Marit being open to the public about her past. “For the Queen and me this has been a challenging and valuable process, but above all it has been a good one,” the King said at the time. “On several occasions, I have read that you are an ordinary young woman who has become Norway’s Crown Princess today. This does not fit with my own impression. You are not an ordinary young woman. You are an extraordinary young woman…and today you have chosen to embark on an extraordinary life.”
Rachel King (she/her) is a news writer at Town & Country. Before joining T&C, she spent nearly a decade as an editor at Fortune. Her work covering travel and lifestyle has appeared in Forbes, Observer, Robb Report, Cruise Critic, and Cool Hunting, among others. Originally from San Francisco, she lives in New York with her wife, their daughter, and a precocious labradoodle. Follow her on Instagram at @rk.passport.