Home · World · Sep 9 archive
Thousands Gather for Funeral of Norway’s King Harald
Developing
In Short: Thousands lined the streets of Oslo for the funeral of King Harald V, with world leaders and royals in attendance.
Thousands of people lined the streets of Oslo, Norway, as the coffin of King Harald V began its journey to his funeral, attended by world leaders and royals from across Europe and beyond.
Harald’s son, King Haakon VIII, and other senior royals walked behind the coffin, which was draped in the red Norwegian royal standard, as the monarch’s body was laid to rest.
King Harald V, who died on August 28 at the age of 89, was Europe’s oldest reigning monarch and had been on the throne for 35 years.
The funeral service was a somber affair, with large crowds gathering in the capital, standing behind barriers along streets lined with national flags.
His son, King Haakon VIII, immediately became the new monarch and last week swore an oath of allegiance to Norway’s constitution in parliament.
The event marked the end of an era for Norway, as the country bid a final farewell to a monarch who had been a symbol of stability and continuity for decades.
Meanwhile, a separate incident occurred at an air show in Greece, where a Greek air force fighter jet crashed and burst into flames, resulting in a fatal accident with thousands of spectators present.
Background
Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country comprising the western and northernmost parts of the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe, the remote Arctic island Jan Mayen and the archipelago Svalbard. Bouvet Island, located in the Subantarctic, is a dependency, and not a part of the Kingdom; Norway also claims the Antarctic territories of Peter I Island and Queen Maud Land.
What's still developing
- Al-Abideen, who was the first civilian to enter the museum after the Sudanese army clawed back Khartoum, walked to a room where staff had gathered all the ordnance found when bomb experts came and sanitized the museum of explosive materials.
- Like gold, oil, gum arabic and other resources, Sudan’s archaeological treasures, a legacy of the successive kingdoms that flourished and died in the Nile Valley over millennia, have been commandeered to power a war machine that has killed hundreds of thousands and displaced some 14 million people.