{"id":74546,"date":"2026-09-24T12:03:56","date_gmt":"2026-09-24T10:03:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/?p=74546"},"modified":"2026-09-24T12:03:58","modified_gmt":"2026-09-24T10:03:58","slug":"the-good-king","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/the-good-king\/","title":{"rendered":"The Good King"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Harald V ascended to the Norwegian throne in 1991 and transformed the monarchy into a nonpartisan, inclusive institution. He passed away on August 28. 2026 at the age of 89. Author Awaatef Abdullah Hassan said, \u201cHe opened up a space I didn\u2019t know existed.\u201d<\/strong><\/span>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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On my way to work as a lecturer in Steiner pedagogy and anthroposophy, I walk through the palace park in Oslo. Today, I am met by a sea of people, children\u2019s drawings, and flowers. Some have tears in their eyes. King Harald passed away just as the lunar eclipse reached its peak on the morning of September 28. \u201cSince time immemorial, solar and lunar eclipses have been interpreted as omens of changes in power and the death of kings. It is as if the cosmos wanted to emphasize that he was our true monarch, destined by destiny,\u201d wrote the religious studies scholar J\u00f8rg Arne J\u00f8rgensen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

King Harald, born on February 21, 1937, was the first king born in Norway in 560 years. At the age of three, he fled to the United States with his mother and siblings when Norway was occupied by Germany. The family lived on President Roosevelt\u2019s estate and developed a close relationship with him. One of King Harald\u2019s most vivid memories was standing directly behind President Roosevelt when he was inaugurated for the last time in 1945. He described the president as a sort of grandfather figure who had a profound influence on his childhood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Harald was in love with a \u201ccommon\u201d woman: Sonja Haraldsen. The two met in secret for years. The press discovered the relationship, and a heated public debate ensued. Harald wanted to marry the woman he loved and issued his father an ultimatum: Either he would be allowed to marry Sonja, or he would remain unmarried for the rest of his life. Harald got his way, and the wedding took place on August 29, 1968. Following one\u2019s heart and placing love above social norms were central themes in the speech that King Harald delivered nearly 50 years later, in August 2016. It was later described as a masterpiece of inclusive rhetoric. He focused on the right to love the person you love with all your heart, the right to be yourself, and respect for the dignity of all people regardless of what they believe, their gender, their sexual orientation, their culture, or their ethnicity. Harald described modern, diverse Norway in a way that no head of state had done before him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His answer to the question \u201cWhat does it mean to be Norwegian?\u201d moved a nation\u2014indeed, the world:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNorwegians have immigrated from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Poland, Sweden, Somalia, and Syria. [\u2026] Norwegians are girls who love girls, boys who love boys, and girls and boys who love each other. [\u2026] Norwegians believe in God, Allah, the universe, and nothingness. [\u2026] Norway is you. Norway is us.\u201d<\/span>2<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The young author Awaatef Abdullah Hassan wrote about Harald that, before his speech in 2016, she had always \u201cquietly felt she was an outsider.\u201d But when he \u201cspoke about Norwegianness as something we all carry in different ways, it was as if he opened up a space I didn’t know existed. [\u2026] He made it possible to stand in my own identity without feeling like it had to be adjusted to fit in.\u201d<\/span>3<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not only did gay, bisexual, and lesbian people find affirmation in the king\u2019s speech, but transgender and gender-nonconforming people also found it inclusive. In 2016, King Harald unambiguously and matter-of-factly included the queer community in Norwegian society. When the international press highlighted how unusual this was, the king replied that he had simply described Norway as it is, and that he found it \u201ca little strange\u201d that this should come as a surprise to so many.<\/span>4<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Following the terrorist attack on the queer community in Oslo on June 25, 2022, King Harald once again used his voice to emphasize their place in society. He later explained that the way we, as a society, protect our minorities is \u201ca litmus test of how well the Society functions.\u201d<\/span>5<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Jewish-Ukrainian-German thinker and politician Marina Weisband also spoke of such a litmus test in a lecture at the Unternehmen Mitte in Basel on November 11, 2024. She said that the state of a democracy and a country could be gauged by how transgender people were handled. Unfortunately, she noted, they were the so-called \u201ccanaries\u201d that signaled what was wrong with a system. Weisband illustrated this point using the example of the Jewish minority in Germany during the interwar period. Members of that community did not develop a natural sense of belonging to society. As a result, they became a target for attack by fascist groups. The fascist tactic, she noted, has always been to stigmatize a small minority: an outgroup that could be sacrificed. Weisband asked: How does the Society behave toward transgender people, who are currently being singled out as the first victims?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this regard, King Harald differs significantly from authoritarian leaders such as Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. Since the beginning of his last term in office, Trump has rolled back rights that transgender people have fought for. His counterpart in the East compares gender incongruence and the fight for transgender rights to \u201cnew strains,\u201d \u201clike the coronavirus.\u201d<\/span>6<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, the pathologizing of transgender identity is by no means limited to these two so-called \u201cstrongmen.\u201d Just as homosexuality was still largely pathologized in the 1970s, we still hear from many quarters today\u2014I myself heard it in 2024 at a conference at the Goetheanum\u2014that the feeling of belonging to a gender other than the one assigned at birth falls within the realm of psychiatry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was no reason to expect King Harald to make such statements and thereby, as Hassan wrote, open up a space she didn\u2019t know existed. Far-right political parties, whose racist thinking and ideology of white supremacy are permeated by conspiracy theories about a planned replacement of the European and Western populations, are experiencing strong growth across Europe. Cultural minorities feel the effects of this firsthand every single day. Against this backdrop, it is important that people in positions of power\u2014and this applies especially to a head of state, like King Harald\u2014stand up for the dignity of all people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the inaugural address of the new Norwegian monarch, King H\u00e5kon, there are signs that he will follow in his father\u2019s footsteps. He emphasized that he \u201cwill always strive to understand the life situations of different people\u201d and that he \u201cbelieves in a Norway where there is room for everyone.\u201d<\/span>7<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Translation<\/strong> Joshua Kelberman
Image<\/strong>\u00a0King Harald at the opening of the new St. Olav Hospital in Trondheim on June 12, 2010, CC BY-SA 2.0.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Harald V ascended to the Norwegian throne in 1991 and transformed the monarchy into a nonpartisan, inclusive institution. He passed away on August 28. 2026 at the age of 89. Author Awaatef Abdullah Hassan said, \u201cHe opened up a space I didn\u2019t know existed.\u201d On my way to work as a lecturer in Steiner pedagogy and anthroposophy, I walk through the palace park in Oslo. Today, I am met by a sea of people, children\u2019s drawings, and flowers. Some have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22448,"featured_media":74250,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10939,8845],"tags":[11839,11840,8824],"class_list":["post-74546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-obituary","category-social","tag-ausgabe-37-2026-en","tag-english-issue-39-40-2026","tag-spotlights"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22448"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74546"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74546\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":74572,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74546\/revisions\/74572"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}