NORWAY: Royal Wedding

(See front cover)

No royal wedding seems ever quite complete without a bomb, and a bomb there was, last week, for Crown Prince Olaf of Norway and his bride, Sweden's grave and lovely Princess Martha. In placing such royal nuptial dynamite—this time a whole kilogram—the usual thing is to plant it in the storied castle where the Prince and Princess expect to make their home. Therefore, last week experienced Norwegian police searched and searched every nook and cranny in and about Castle Oskarshal, until they found and nullified the nuptial bomb.

Smart international yachting folk who have sailed up the pine-fringed Kristiania Fjord to the capital of Norway, Oslo, will remember Castle Oskarshal. As they cast anchor off the Royal Yacht Club, in the wimpling Frognerkilen, they had Oslo on their starboard and suburban Bygdo, with its Castle Oskarshal, on their port.

Also plainly visible from the fjord is Norse King Haakon's long, plaster-white Kongelige Slot or royal palace. Among connoisseurs the Slot is recognized as Norway's architectural family skeleton. Cheaply and hastily thrown together when the present dynasty of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksburg was established in Norway in 1905, it compares pitiably with Sweden's imposing Kungliga Slottet in Stockholm (Venice of the North), whence came last week Princess Martha to Oslo. As every Scandinavian knows the Kings of Sweden were also the elected Kings of Norway from 1814 until 1905, when the Storting (parliament) dissolved the union with Sweden, elected Prince Christian of Denmark King of Norway, proclaimed him "King Haakon VII"—thus reviving the traditions of the ancient and extinct native royal line of Norway—and finally declared the present dynasty hereditary. To Oslo with King Haakon VII came the Princess he had married in 1896, the youngest (third) daughter of His Majesty Edward VII, British King and Emperor, to reign as inconspicuous and reserved but very popular Queen Maud of Norway.

Thus last week nothing could have been more appropriate than the arrival at Oslo of Britain's tall Duke and plump Duchess of York in the quality of wedding guests. "Hello, Aunt Maud," said the Duke, and Her Majesty responded graciously, "Welcome to Norway, Albert." En route from London the British royalties passed incognito through Germany and achieved the first visit to Berlin ever made by a member of the House of Windsor.*