What the Death of Norway’s King Harald Teaches Us About Christ the King
National Catholic Register, 5 September 2026
The death of King Harald on Aug. 28 fell amid feast days that prompt Catholic reflection on kingship.
Church bells tolled across Norway upon the death of King Harald V last Friday. The bells, said Rev. Olav Fykse Tveit, presiding bishop of the Church of Norway (Lutheran), signal “the presence of God on earth and the hope of life after death.”
The death of King Harald V occasioned an important reflection on the Christian understanding of kingship from Bishop Erik Varden, whose Diocese of Trondheim includes the cathedral where the king sought God’s blessing at the beginning of his reign in 1991.
There are far fewer kings today than in centuries past, but kingship remains part of the Christian tradition. There is no feast of Christ the President or Christ the Prime Minister. The death of King Harald on Aug. 28 fell amid feast days that prompt Catholic reflection on kingship. There is the feast of the Queenship of Mary (Aug. 22) and the feast of King Louis of France (Aug. 25). The martyrdom of John the Baptist (Aug. 29) illustrates the corruption of kingship by Herod, and is a foreshadowing of the passion of Jesus himself, in which the nature of kingship is discussed before Pontius Pilate.
“Physical death is a passage from life to Life,” wrote Bishop Varden, who earlier this year was chosen to preach the Lenten retreat for Pope Leo XIV. “Today our beloved king, Harald V, has made this passage. … All of us must make this passage one day. That is our life’s only certainty. Still, the passing of a king affects us uniquely. We suddenly feel orphaned, surrounded by a resounding absence.”
Being orphaned means losing a father. Kings are more likely to be fathers of their nations precisely because they are not chosen by popular vote. No one chooses his own father; it is a given.
“In an exemplary manner, King Harald embodied the nation,” continued Bishop Varden, writing of the late sovereign as a good father. “We were aware that he saw us, knew us, valued us. We knew his care, were embraced by the warmth he exuded. He gave us a magnificent example of dedication. He was so entirely our king, given to his people. No ego seemed to stand in the way. That brought him near to us in a wholly beneficent way.”
Harald had endured exile during World War II, and then returned to accompany Norway’s remarkable postwar development. As crown prince he competed for Norway in sailing at the Olympics in 1964, 1968 and 1972.
After the death of Her Late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in 2022, King Harald V was Europe’s longest-reigning monarch. On her paternal side, Queen Elizabeth was the great-great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria. On his maternal side, Harald was the great-great-grandson of Victoria. Of the current European monarchs, King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden is the last remaining great-great-grandchild of Victoria to reign, though King Felipe of Spain is also a direct descendant of Victoria (four-times-great-grandson). Monarchy is a family matter.
When he acceded to the throne in 1991, Harald V was faced with an early decision. Norway had abolished the coronation of kings in 1908. Nevertheless, Harald’s father, King Olav V, who reigned from 1958 to 1991, had chosen at the beginning of his reign to have a religious ceremony, a blessing for his service.
Harald decided to do the same, and so he went to Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim, with Queen Sonja, for a formal blessing. He knelt before the bishop of Nidaros, who prayed while laying hands on him. The similarity to an ordination was unmistakable. It had become a “consecration” rather than a “coronation.”
At the coronation of King Charles III in London in 2023, there was an anointing, another customary part of the ordination ritual. Christian kingship is intended to be a godly thing.
Norway is a Lutheran country, though highly secularized. King Harald, though quite private about his Christian faith, nevertheless emphasized the Christian character of his kingship on two important occasions. The first was the choice to be “consecrated” at his accession; the second was an intervention to preserve in the constitution the requirement that the king be a (Lutheran) Christian.
In 2012, Norway revised the constitution to remove the Evangelical Lutheran faith as the country’s official religion, while remaining the “folk church.” By 2017, the king was no longer the head of the national Lutheran church.
It was expected that the requirement that the king be a Christian would also be removed, but King Harald V intervened to preserve the constitutional requirement: “The King shall at all times profess the Evangelical-Lutheran religion.”
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