On Saturday, the royal family of Norway joined in the celebrations of the Seventeenth of May, wearing heirloom jewels on the palace balcony for the annual children’s parade in Oslo.
May 17th, the anniversary of the signing of the constitution of 1814, is celebrated annually as a national day in Norway, with parades marching and flags flying across the country. In Oslo, children from local schools join a procession that passes in front of the Royal Palace, with members of the royal family waving back at them from the palace balcony.
This year, King Harald V and Queen Sonja were joined on the palace balcony by Crown Prince Haakon, Crown Princess Mette-Marit, Princess Ingrid Alexandra, and Prince Sverre Magnus. The men wore morning suits for the occasion, while the ladies dressed in patriotic shades of blue, red, and white. All wore red, white, and blue ribbons pinned to their jackets.
Queen Sonja’s white jacket and blouse were accessorized with a red, white, and blue hat, as well as a red necklace and earrings. Her ribbons were secured by a special heirloom brooch set with diamonds and sapphires.
The brooch originally belonged to King Harald’s grandmother, Queen Maud of Norway, who was the daughter of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra of the United Kingdom. The sapphire and diamond jewel was one of her wedding presents in 1896, a gift from her cousins, Emperor Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra Feodorovna of Russia. Norwegian royal jewelry historian Trond Norén Isaksen writes on his Instagram account that Harald inherited the brooch in 1968, when Maud’s jewelry was divvied up by her grandchildren.
There were more royal jewels sparkling on the balcony, too, courtesy the ladies of the crown princely family. Both Crown Princess Mette-Marit and Princess Ingrid Alexandra wore navy blue for the children’s parade, with Mette-Marit opting for a natural straw picture hat and Ingrid Alexandra wearing a blue and white headband.
Ingrid Alexandra wore pearl pendant earrings (also owned by Princess Josephine of Denmark) and used a small jeweled brooch to gather her ribbons, but it was the brooch worn by her mother that garnered more attention. Mette-Marit made her first public appearance on Saturday in a diamond and pearl brooch that also belonged to Queen Maud.
Isaksen writes that the pearl and diamond brooch was inherited as a lifetime loan by the King’s eldest sister, Princess Ragnhild, in the division of Maud’s jewelry in 1968. She wore it often for gala occasions; above, it’s pinned to her sash during a state visit from the President of Portugal to Oslo in 1980. Isaksen explains that Ragnhild returned the jewels she had received as lifetime loans from Queen Maud’s collection to the royal vaults in 2012, “when she realised she would no longer attend big events.”
Some of those jewels have subsequently been given to Princess Ingrid Alexandra, including the diamond and pearl earrings and diamond rivière necklace worn by Princess Ragnhild in this photograph. Those jewels were recently worn by Princess Ingrid Alexandra for a state banquet given in honor of the visiting President of Iceland. The diamond and pearl brooch, though, has so far only reappeared on Crown Princess Mette-Marit.
The crown princely family also made a second traditional appearance earlier on Constitution Day. They stepped outside their residence, Skaugum in Asker, to greet the children’s parade there. For that patriotic moment, they wore traditional costumes. Haakon, Mette-Marit, Ingrid Alexandra, and Sverre Magnus all wore bunad with traditional silver jewelry.
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