Princess Astrid of Norway dies at 94, two days after burying her brother

Princess Astrid of Norway died on Friday, 11 September, at the age of 94, the royal palace said, two days after she attended the state funeral of her younger brother, King Harald V.

"His Majesty the King has received with great sadness the news of the passing of Princess Astrid. The Princess fell asleep today, Friday 11 September, at the age of 94," the palace statement read. The new king, Haakon VIII, said that "throughout her long life, Princess Astrid represented the Royal House in a warm and dutiful manner." He added that her work had been "particularly concerned with care and inclusion for the most vulnerable in society" and that her death was "a great loss for us."

Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store said she would be buried at state expense and that flags would fly at half-mast across the country. Haakon ordered the flag on the palace balcony down the same afternoon. It will fly that way again on the day of her funeral. No date has been set.

The last public hour

Astrid's last appearance was in Oslo Cathedral on Wednesday, 9 September. She was wheeled in shortly before the 1 p.m. service for Harald, who died on 28 August at 89 after more than 35 years on the throne. The Prince of Wales and the Princess Royal were among the foreign mourners. Two days later she was gone. The interval is two weeks to the day from Harald's death at Rikshospitalet.

Her health had been failing. She was treated in hospital for pneumonia in March. At 94 she was widely described as the oldest working member of any European royal house still carrying official duties.

First lady at 22

Astrid Maud Ingeborg was born in Oslo on 12 February 1932, the second daughter of Crown Prince Olav and Crown Princess Martha of Sweden. Her elder sister, Ragnhild, died in 2012. Harald was the youngest. When Martha died in 1954, Olav did not remarry. Astrid, then 22, took on the public work of a first lady and kept it until Harald married Sonja in 1968. That fourteen-year stretch is the part of her life Norwegians of a certain age still mention first.

She married businessman Johan Ferner in 1961 and accepted the style Princess Astrid, Mrs Ferner. They had five children: Cathrine, Benedikte, Alexander, Elisabeth and Carl-Christian. Ferner died in 2015. She kept the official list after his death, appearing at national days, hospital visits and the quieter royal jobs that do not draw cameras.

She was the last surviving child of Olav V, who reigned from 1957 to 1991. That fact now sits on the family tree in a stark way. The generation that returned from exile in 1945 is gone. Haakon is the first king of a line that no longer includes an aunt who remembered the war as a teenager.

The 1945 return

Photographs from 7 June 1945 show the family on the steps of Oslo City Hall and on the deck of HMS Norfolk, waving to the harbour. Astrid was 13. Those pictures have been recirculating in Norwegian papers since Friday because they are the last common memory that still includes her, Harald and their grandfather King Haakon VII in the same frame. She served every modern Norwegian king: Haakon VII, Olav, Harald, and, in the last days, Haakon VIII.

The palace has not said where she died. The tone of the statement, "fell asleep," is the house style for a death at home or in care rather than a sudden event. That is consistent with the months of declining health.

What the house does now

Norway has buried a king and will now bury his sister inside the same fortnight. The court will have to stage a second national farewell while Haakon is still in the first weeks of his reign. Store's decision to fund a state funeral answers the protocol question. The political question is smaller and simpler: a country that likes its monarchy quiet has lost the woman who did the quiet work for seventy years.

Flags on public buildings will tell the rest of the country when the funeral is. Until then the image that will travel is the one from Wednesday, an old princess in a wheelchair saying goodbye to the brother she outlived by two days.