OSLO: Norway’s Princess Astrid, an older sister of the late King Harald, died on Friday at the age of 94, the royal palace said in a statement.
Astrid’s brother Harald died last month, aged 89, after more than 35 years on the throne, and the princess made her last public appearance at his funeral on Wednesday.
‘Throughout her long life, Princess Astrid represented the Royal House in a warm and dutiful manner,’ King Haakon VIII said in the statement.
She was born in Oslo as the second daughter of King Olav V and Crown Princess Märtha of Sweden. Following the 1940 German invasion of Norway during World War II, she fled with her family and spent the war years in exile in Washington, DC, before returning home in 1945.
Following her mother’s early death in 1954, a 22-year-old Princess Astrid tookover the demanding duties of First Lady of Norway. She served as the hostess at the Royal Palace and represented the country extensively at home and abroad alongside her grandfather, King Haakon VH, and later her father, King Olav V, until her brother Harald’s marriage in 1968.
In 1961, she married a commoner, Norwegian businessman and Olympic sailor Johan Martin Ferner. Because of the societal norms of the era, marrying a commoner sparked major controversy at the time. The couple had five children together and remained married until Ferner’s death in 2015.
Even well into her nineties, she remained an active working royal holding numerous patronages, famously noting on her 93rd birthday that she felt a deep responsibility to remain ‘useful’ to the Crown. Up until her passing, she was also the oldest living descendant of Great Britain’s Queen Victoria.-Agencies