Queen Sonja Steps Out Alone to See Tributes Left for King Harald

Queen Sonja of Norway has made her first solo public appearance since the death of her husband, to face thousands of messages left for him by strangers.

She went to the National Archives in Oslo to view letters, drawings and condolence notes left at Palace Square, the open plaza outside the Royal Palace in Oslo, around the time of King Harald's death. Archivists laid out part of the collection for her visit, as reported by Town & Country.

King Harald of Norway died on Aug. 28 at age 89. The queen's official schedule had been suspended after he was rushed to hospital in the days before his death.

The Oslo visit marked her return to public duties on her own. She went back to work one month after the king's funeral, according to Hello Magazine.

The collection is large. In the days before and after the king's death, royal gardeners cleared Palace Square of flowers, candles, letters and handmade tributes. They packed the paper items and drove them to the archives' facility at Sognsvann in Oslo for safekeeping.

Archivists are now working through boxes of material. A representative selection will be stored permanently in a secure mountain facility, where Norway keeps its most important records safe from fire and decay. Much of the material will also be digitized, meaning scanned and cataloged, so future researchers and members of the public can see it without handling fragile originals.

National Archivist Inga Bolstad said the tributes will become part of the nation's memory. She said they will help future researchers and generations understand the people's relationship with the late king.

What makes this stand out is who wrote these records. They did not come from government offices. They came from children with crayons and adults with lined notebook paper. That kind of grief rarely makes it into a national collection.

For American readers, think of it as condolence books after a presidential death, except left outdoors and gathered by hand. Norway has no presidential library system for its monarchs. In this case, the National Archives, the institution charged with preserving the country's official memory, stepped in to do that work.

The queen saw that work firsthand.