When his father became ill in 1990, the crown prince became regent. Harald then ascended to the throne when Olav died on 17 January 1991.
The new king came into his own around 2000, according to historian Trond Norén Isaksen, growing from a reserved, serious and shy man into someone who became much more open and empathetic.
In July 2011 Harald faced his greatest challenge yet as king, when neo-Nazi Anders Breivik murdered eight people with a car bomb in Oslo before moving on to a youth camp on the island of Utøya, where he shot dead 69 others, most of them teenagers.
He gave a televised address the next day, and weeks later he delivered a speech, empathising with the victims and their families as a father, grandfather, husband, and king. On the verge of tears, his voice quivered and broke.
“I can only imagine the depth of your pain. As King of this nation, I feel for each and every one of you,” he said.
Looking back, historian Ole-Jørgen Schulsrud-Hansen said: “I think that moment has been burned into our minds of what a monarchy should be.”
In 2016, the king made headlines again by giving an impassioned speech , externalsupporting diversity of religion, ethnicity and sexual orientation.
He said Norwegians are from “Afghanistan, Pakistan and Poland, from Sweden, Somalia, and Syria,” they “believe in God, Allah, the Universe and nothing”, and they “are girls who love girls, boys who love boys, and girls and boys who love each other”.
The king was also a keen athlete and environmentalist – one of the initiators of the Norwegian branch of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), who served as president of the Norwegian chapter for 20 years.
He was such an accomplished sailor, he represented Norway three times at the Olympics, and declared his competitive sailing days over in 2022.
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