Norway’s King Harald V has a talent for delivering speeches aimed at uniting the country, inspiring Norwegians and righting wrongs. Now he’s done it again, while dwelling on some of the darker sides of Norway’s liberation from German occupation in 1945 and sending what some have interpreted as a clear message to US President Donald Trump.
King Harald V made another noteworthy speech on Liberation Day. PHOTO: Johanne Søstuen/Forsvaret
His latest speech came at the end of a long day for the 88-year-old monarch last week, on the occasion of Norway’s combined Liberation- and Veterans’ Day on May 8. He’d had meetings in the morning, attended ceremonies at Akershus Fortress in Oslo and observed a long string of medal awards to military personnel later in the afternoon.
Then he was driven up to a forested area close to Norway’s gateway airport about an hour’s drive northeast of Oslo. It’s called Trandumskogen and it’s a sombre place, the site of executions and mass burials of resistance fighters and other prisoners of war in Nazi German custody. It wasn’t discovered until after the war in Norway officially ended on May 8, 1945, and now King Harald has brought it back into the public spotlight as an important place for remembrance of right versus wrong.
There’s now a memorial at the site of the Trandum execution grounds. PHOTO: Johanne Søstuen / Forsvaret
He spoke about some of the 194 victims buried at the site, including 173 Norwegians, 15 Soviet citizens and six British. He spoke about how arrested Norwegian and German Nazis were ordered to dig the bodies up again by hand, without any protective gear, as punishment. Those executed had risked their lives so that Norway could once again enjoy freedom and democracy: “That was worth risking their lives for,” he said.
Liberation Day was not, however, a day of joy for everyone: “The war continued to cast long shadows over the lives of innocent people: Jews, homosexuals, Roma folk, children of Norwegian Nazis, children with a Norwegian mother and German father. Those who had lost their loved ones in the war. Many had lost so much. For some, the war never ended.”
King Harald’s speeches often grab lots of attention in Norway, like his latest one has. PHOTO: Torbjørn Kjosvold/Forsvaret
He stressed that it’s “always complex” to talk about the war. “In order to move forward,” he said, it can be necessary to have one version of the heroes versus the villains. “But eventually we must tolerate to see the injustices that occurred, and that there are several truths,” King Harald said. He called such reconciliation efforts “painful but necessary work for which we are all responsible.”
And then came what commentator Harald Stanghelle, Norwegian Broadcasting and other media have viewed as a clear message to Trump, because of fears the US president is trying to overturn the current world order with what’s viewed as his support for authoritarian regimes, a lack of tolerance for diversity and respect for international agreements. All of that is still worth fighting for today, the king said, “but when we talk about protecting freedom and our values, what does that really mean?”
King Harald answered his own question, without, of course, mentioning Trump’s name: “In the world it means showing respect for countries’ borders. That we respect international laws and regulations. That we can cooperate with and rely on one another within a fellowship of allied nations, a fellowship that was built on the ruins of the Second World War, to prevent new World Wars.”
The king also had some advice for Norwegians at home, but his three crisp points on the international scene all centered on what Trump is not doing. No Norwegian king has ever found it necessary to formulate such a message to a US president, noted commentator Stanghelle.
The three points are also the main lessons from World War II, according to the monarch whom Trump himself expressed admiration for during a recent meeting with Norwegian government leaders at the White House. For Norwegians, it was a new lesson similar to the one King Harald conducted during a speech in his own garden nine years ago, while praising Norway’s ever-emerging diversity. His annual speeches to the nation on New Year’s Eve are also followed closely.
NewsinEnglish.no/Nina Berglund