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Norway’s King Harald died Friday at 89, the Royal House of Norway announced.
“It is with deep grief that we announce that His Majesty King Harald has passed away,” the royal palace said in a statement.
“King Harald died peacefully at Oslo University Hospital Rikshospitalet Friday 28 August at 6:35 AM,” the statement continued.
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Harald, who was Europe’s oldest living monarch, was hospitalized with a blood infection on Aug. 17.
He had previously received a pacemaker after falling ill during a vacation in Malaysia in 2024.
Harald announced he would be drawing down his number of public appearances that same year.
The monarch had served as Norway’s head of state since 1991. He was Norway’s first royal heir to be born in the country in over 500 years. In 1905, after Norway gained its independence from Sweden, Harald’s grandfather King Haakon VII became the first king of an independent Norwegian state since 1387.
Harald was viewed as a reformer, and advocated for his fellow European royals to continue a trend towards openness. “If you’ve opened the gate it’s very difficult to close it again,” he told Reuters. “I’m not sure I’d want to close it. So far so good, as far as I’m concerned,” he added.
When Nazis invaded Norway in 1940, Harald’s mother fled with him, first to neutral Sweden, then to the United States, where they briefly lived in the White House after then-President Franklin Delano Roosevelt offered the pair safe haven.
Harald, his mother, and sisters soon moved to Bethesda, Maryland and would often meet with President Roosevelt, who Harald said was like a grandfather to him.
Harald’s son, Crown Prince Haakon, 53, will succeed him and take the name King Haakon VIII.
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