In 1999, Mette-Marit was 25, an unmarried single mother without any noble status. Then she met Norway's then-Crown Prince Haakon at the Quart music festival in Kristiansand, her home city – and everything changed. Haakon, who became King Haakon VIII of Norway on Friday upon the death of his father, King Harald V, later described the moment in his autobiography.
She was like a light,” he wrote. The pair managed to date in secret for several months prior to their relationship becoming public knowledge. Later, Mette-Marit resisted the media’s attempts to frame her as a real-life Cinderella, saying: “What has happened between Haakon and I has happened between two normal people.” The initial press coverage pursued distinctly negative angles, demanding details regarding her lifestyle during her time in Norway's house music scene and questioning the appropriateness of someone with that past joining the royal family.
Haakon and his father King Harald, who had himself married a commoner, stood by her. However, this was merely the first in a line of deeply painful clashes between her private and public life. "The discomfort from that year is still with me.
To feel hunted is an overwhelming feeling," she was quoted as saying in Haakon's book. "I can promise you, there is nothing romantic about being washed clean of your sins in full public view. It is terrible." Norway's new queen was born Mette-Marit Tjessem Hoiby in Kristiansand on 19 August 1973, the daughter of a journalist and a bank clerk.
Her parents divorced when she was a child and she lived with her mother and her siblings. Of her partying years, Mette-Marit told journalists in 2001: “At that time, it was important for me to live against what was accepted. That also led to me living quite a wild life.
But “with time she found herself more at home in the role, and became more herself”, Trond Noren Isaksen, a historian and author of several books on the Norwegian monarchy, said. Her strengths lay in "her great personal warmth" and her ability to connect with people, he added. Upon her marriage, she became just Mette-Marit, as the royal family does not use surnames.
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