Norway buries King Harald V after 13 days of mourning and a packed Oslo cortege

Norway buried King Harald V on Wednesday after 13 days of national mourning. The king died on 28 August at Oslo University Hospital Rikshospitalet, aged 89, after being admitted on 17 August. He had reigned for 35 years. His son took the throne as Haakon VIII.

The public day began at noon. The coffin left the Slottskapellet on a gun carriage pulled by a Mercedes-Benz G-Class and rolled down Karl Johans gate to Oslo Cathedral. A 21-gun salute sounded from Akershus Fortress and from designated saluting points across the country. More than 3,000 military personnel lined the route. Tens of thousands of people stood behind them. Some wore bunad. The cortege moved to cannon fire.

Haakon walked immediately behind the coffin with Crown Princess Ingrid Alexandra and Prince Sverre Magnus. Princess Märtha Louise walked with them. Queen Sonja, 89, and Queen Mette-Marit followed in a car. Mette-Marit has recently undergone a lung transplant. More than 35,000 people had already filed past the casket during the lying in state that ran from 31 August to 8 September. Many waited up to seven hours.

The guest list was a map of European courts and a few governments beyond them. Britain's Prince William walked in the procession. So did the kings of Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands and Spain, and the monarchs or heirs of Belgium, Luxembourg, Monaco, Liechtenstein and Jordan. Japan's crown prince attended. The presidents of Germany and Finland were there. France sent its prime minister. Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy walked with the foreign party. Queen Rania of Jordan and Princess Charlene of Monaco were among the consorts named in court coverage.

The funeral service at Oslo Cathedral started at 13:00. The hour included music, poetry and a gospel choir, a mix that matched the late king's public talk of inclusion during a long reign. After the service a smaller procession moved to the rhythm of Chopin's Funeral March toward the Palace Chapel at Akershus Fortress, the medieval castle above the harbour. There the coffin was placed in a sarcophagus in the Royal Mausoleum, beside King Olav V, Crown Princess Märtha, King Haakon VII and Queen Maud.

When the burial ended, Norwegian flags in Oslo rose from half-mast to the truck. The family returned to the palace and stepped onto the balcony: Haakon, Mette-Marit, Ingrid Alexandra, Sverre Magnus and Sonja. Crowds filled the square. A palace reception closed the official day. Court mourning is set to run until 9 October.

Harald spent much of his early reign in the shadow of Olav V, who was widely loved. Over three decades he became the plainer face of the monarchy: sailing, public walks, a marriage to Sonja Haraldsen that had once been treated as a break with custom. The family has had a run of private trouble in recent years. The funeral still pulled a full European royal turnout and a dense civilian crowd. Arve Stallvik, 56, a businessman standing on the route, told Reuters that Harald was popular and that the day felt like a history mark.

Laura Maria Schütze, a Danish researcher who studies royal funerals, told Aftenposten that the length of the lying-in-state queues said something about the society that produced them. That is a soft metric. The hard ones are simpler. Thirty-five thousand viewers of a coffin. Three thousand troops on the street. A 21-gun salute from every designated battery. A new king walking in public behind his father's standard.

Haakon now has to reign in a country that still supports the monarchy in polls and that has just watched its longest-serving modern king buried beside the founders of the current dynasty. The balcony appearance was the first image of that reign offered to the crowd that had stood in the street all afternoon.