Crown Princess Mette-Marit marks 53rd birthday with family portrait as she recovers from lung transplant
Crown Princess Mette-Marit of Norway turned 53 on 19 August 2026, and the Norwegian Royal Court marked the occasion by releasing a new family portrait — the first public image of the Crown Princess together with her husband and children since she underwent a lung transplant in June.
The photograph, taken by Ola Vatn of the Norwegian Royal Court (Det kongelige hoff), shows Mette-Marit beside Crown Prince Haakon, Princess Ingrid Alexandra, 22, and Prince Sverre Magnus, 20. She wears a golden silk skirt and navy blazer. The Royal House shared the image on Instagram with a caption congratulating the Crown Princess on her birthday. The celebration itself was private (Hello Magazine; Kongehuset.no).
The portrait lands at the end of a bruising year. Mette-Marit's pulmonary fibrosis — a condition in which lung tissue becomes scarred and breathing steadily worsens — deteriorated to the point that a transplant became necessary. She has also weathered the trial of her son Marius Borg Høiby, now 28, from a previous relationship. Haakon and Mette-Marit married in 2001 and have two children together, Ingrid Alexandra and Sverre Magnus (Hello Magazine).
The birthday coincides with a separate health crisis at the top of the Norwegian Royal House. King Harald, 89, was admitted to Oslo National Hospital — Rikshospitalet — on 17 August 2026, following a medical examination. He was diagnosed with haemolytic anaemia, a condition in which red blood cells are destroyed faster than the body can replace them, and placed on sick leave for two weeks. Cortisone treatment caused fluid accumulation that required hospital management (Hello Magazine; Kongehuset.no).
With the King on sick leave, Crown Prince Haakon was set to serve as regent — stepping into his father's constitutional role as acting head of state, the mechanism by which Norway's monarchy continues to function when the sovereign is incapacitated (Hello Magazine).
The royal children, meanwhile, are charting their own paths. Princess Ingrid Alexandra, second in line to the throne, was welcomed as an exchange student at the University of Oslo in August 2026. Prince Sverre Magnus will study at Forward College in Lisbon (Kongehuset.no).
Looking ahead, the King and Queen Sonja are scheduled to visit the municipalities of Siljan and Nissedal on 20 and 21 October 2026. Once those visits are complete, every Norwegian municipality will have received an official visit from King Harald, Queen Sonja, or the royal couple together — a decades-long tour of the country that, paperwork and protocol aside, has now nearly run its course (Kongehuset.no).
