Norway’s King Harald V has died at the age of 89, after being hospitalised with a rare blood condition.
The death of Europe’s oldest reigning monarch was announced on Friday by the Royal Palace of Norway.
“King Harald passed away peacefully at Oslo University Hospital on Friday, Aug 28 at 6:35 a.m,” the palace said in a statement.
His son, Crown Prince Haakon, automatically succeeds him and is expected to reign as King Haakon VIII.
Royal family members had visited the king on Thursday, and crowds gathered outside the palace and laid flowers for the king after officials warned that his condition had turned “extremely serious”.
Harald was hospitalised on August 17, suffering from haemolytic anaemia, a condition caused by an abnormally rapid destruction of red blood cells which leads to fatigue and shortness of breath.
Harald, who ascended the Norwegian throne 35 years ago, has had multiple health problems in recent years, forcing him to have a pacemaker fitted and to scale back his official schedule.
But he had always ruled out abdicating, arguing that he took a lifelong oath before the Norwegian parliament.
He was born in February 1937, near Oslo. When the Nazis invaded Norway his mother fled with him and his sisters to Sweden and then the United States, while his father and grandfather, Haakon VII, sat out the war in Britain.
Harald won lasting public affection for his speech in 2011 after Anders Behring Breivik‘s bomb attacks which killed 77 people, telling mourners: “I remain convinced that the belief in freedom is stronger than fear.”
His death, however, comes at a fraught time for the monarchy, after documents published in January showed Crown Princess Mette-Marit corresponding with notorious US sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, years after his conviction.
Her 29-year-old son, Marius Borg Høiby, the new King Haakon’s stepson, was sentenced in June to four years in prison on two counts of rape and 32 other charges, including domestic violence.
