By Nerijus Adomaitis, Janis Laizans and Dylan Martinez<\/p>\n
OSLO, Aug 29 (Reuters) – King Haakon VIII of Norway paid homage to his late father as “such a good dad” in his first address to the nation since becoming sovereign, his voice briefly filling with emotion when evoking his \u200cwidowed mother Queen Sonja.<\/p>\n
King Harald, who emerged from the shadow of his own well-loved, extrovert father to become a reformer during more than three \u200cdecades on the throne, died on Friday at the age of 89.<\/p>\n
His son Haakon, dressed in a black suit, white shirt and black tie, praised Harald as a warm family man in a recorded \u200btelevised speech at the palace.<\/p>\n
“My dear father, thank you for being such a good dad for Martha and I,” he said, referring to his sister, Princess Martha Louise.<\/p>\n
“I am going to miss him. I am going to miss his laughter. I am going to miss his good-natured way to meet people and situations,” he continued, sitting behind a desk, with a portrait of a smiling Harald to his left.<\/p>\n
He noted that Saturday should have been the celebration of the 58th wedding anniversary of Harald and Queen \u200cSonja, who survives him.<\/p>\n
“Congratulations on your wedding anniversary, dear Mummy,” \u2060Haakon said, his voice appearing briefly overtaken by emotion.<\/p>\n
ONE PEOPLE<\/p>\n
Haakon stressed he would do things his own way, like his father did before him, and reiterated the foundations of Norway as a constitutional monarchy, embodied by the oath he will take in \u2060parliament on Tuesday to protect the country’s constitution and laws.<\/p>\n
“We believe in our system of self-governance \u2013 and in democracy. We believe in a society built on the rule of law \u2013 where every individual has equal worth,” he said.<\/p>\n
Haakon automatically became king upon his father’s death under Norway’s constitutional monarchy. There will be no coronation as they were abolished by parliament \u200bin \u200b1908.<\/p>\n
“We believe in a Norway where there is room for everyone. We shall feel the strength \u200bof our community – and know deep within ourselves that we \u200care one people,” he said.<\/p>\n
At the end of his speech, outside the palace, mourners who had been watching on their mobile phones broke into spontaneous applause.<\/p>\n
Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere, speaking to Reuters minutes before the broadcast of the speech, said Haakon shared many qualities with his father.<\/p>\n
“This King has something from his father, which is the ability to create an atmosphere of togetherness,” he said in an interview outside the palace.<\/p>\n
TOLERANCE AND INCLUSIVENESS<\/p>\n
Since Harald’s passing, people have streamed in their tens of thousands to say goodbye to the late king at the royal palace, where he lies in state, with many well-wishers remembering his sense of inclusiveness and tolerance.<\/p>\n
Flags \u200cwere flying at half-mast throughout the country and portraits of the late king in gala uniform \u200bcould be seen at bus stops, trams and metro stations to shops, offices and public buildings.<\/p>\n
The \u200bmain avenue in central Oslo, Karl Johan, was tightly packed with people \u200bfrom all walks of life heading towards the palace, clutching flowers, handwritten cards, drawings and small national flags.<\/p>\n
Mourners praised the late king’s \u200cspirit of inclusiveness.<\/p>\n
“He meant a lot to us immigrants … We felt \u200breally very included. So, thanks to him, \u200bI feel so Norwegian,” Veselina Vitanova, a 43-year-old teacher originally from Bulgaria, told Reuters outside the palace.<\/p>\n
Another referred to a speech Harald delivered in 2016 that went viral worldwide, in which he said: “Norwegians are girls who love girls, boys who love boys and girls and boys who love each other”.<\/p>\n
“It embodies \u200bthe way he felt about people and the way \u200che wanted us Norwegians to feel about each other,” said Mari Eidsvaag, 32, who wore a T-shirt emblazoned with that sentence, a rainbow and \u200ba drawing of King Harald.<\/p>\n
“I think it’s a very important statement, especially these days,” she told Reuters.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Nerijus Adomaitis, Janis Laizans \u200band Dylan Martinez, writing by Gwladys Fouche; Editing by Ros Russell and Hugh Lawson)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Nerijus Adomaitis, Janis Laizans and Dylan Martinez OSLO, Aug 29 (Reuters) – King Haakon VIII of Norway…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":155382,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[85],"tags":[73038,73035,62656,72765,71550,73015,73037,73036,73016,157,156,27096,4344],"class_list":["post-155381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oslo","tag-aug-29","tag-dylan-martinez","tag-haakon","tag-haakon-viii","tag-harald","tag-janis-laizans","tag-martha","tag-martha-louise","tag-nerijus-adomaitis","tag-norway","tag-oslo","tag-queen-sonja","tag-reuters"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/117180354029611833","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=155381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155381\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/155382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}