As Crown Prince, Harald Kept a Notebook Where He Wrote Down Thoughts About What He Would Do Differently When He Ascended the Throne.

Few monarchs have come as close to their people as King Harald V of Norway, which is why five million Norwegians are mourning him, writes historian Trond Norén Isaksen in a commentary for Aftenposten. It took a long time after King Olav's death in 1991 before King Harald got used to the fact that it was him people addressed when they said "Your Majesty. In his mind, it was still his father who was the monarch, as he had been fully for 33 years.

As crown prince, Harald kept a notebook where he wrote down thoughts about what he would do differently when he ascended the throne. He also had in-depth conversations with some of his confidants about how he should approach the task. As long as his father lived, those thoughts remained in the notebook.

"King Olav decides everything. The Crown Prince decides nothing, said cabinet secretary Magne Hagen. King Olav was not in the habit of consulting the heir to the throne.

Two words recurred in the notebook: organization and the Palace. The Palace was a dilapidated fire hazard. After the succession, it underwent extensive restoration that became far more expensive than expected.

The budget overruns led to one of the strongest storms of King Harald's reign, but he was sure posterity would understand that what was done was absolutely necessary. King Olav led a court where meetings were never held, and where the court's leading men were not always in agreement about what the king had decided. King Harald and Queen Sonja wanted the court to be a modern organization with a more flexible and flatter structure, and they wanted to create a corporate culture with impulses from the business world.

While King Olav's court consisted almost exclusively of men with military backgrounds, King Harald and Queen Sonja recruited staff from a much broader background and of both sexes. In several ways, the court was modernized and rationalized, but at least in later years it became quite cumbersome and top-heavy compared with other European courts. King Harald and Queen Sonja aimed for greater openness, which was expressed, among other things, in the court beginning to publish annual reports.

Around the turn of the millennium, the court also got its own communications department, and the Palace was opened for tours in the summers. The royal couple also wanted to make the royal collections accessible. When the Storting and government did not allocate funds for a royal museum, the king took matters into his own hands and established the Queen Sonja Art Stable.

The openness was conditional, however, because the court is not covered by the Freedom of Information Act and thus decides itself what it wants to be open about. In some areas, a sharper line was drawn than before between private and official. The biggest difference between Olav V and Harald V was that the latter had a queen.

For King Harald, having Queen Sonja by his side was an "enormous support. "It has given me someone to discuss with, someone to seek help from, someone to test myself against, he said. While King Olav was a sole ruler, King Harald was a team player.

Where King Olav made decisions on his own and then informed about what he had decided, King Harald routinely consulted the queen, the crown prince couple, and the court. He believed it was a strength that the royal house operated as a team. Family gave him honest feedback, but all monarchs meet people who tell them what they think they want to hear.

Old, trusted friends could also speak openly and act as a link to the outside society, but over the years many of these fell away. Thus, there could be a lack of dissenting voices. Some aging monarchs find it hard to replace staff.

King Olav used to reject requests for retirement by referring to the fact that he himself could not retire. King Harald was better at bringing in new blood. But staff who were several decades younger than him did not necessarily stand as strongly as their predecessors against a monarch who, with long experience, felt confident that he had found the right way of doing things.

When he inherited the crown from King Olav, he felt there were big shoes to fill, but around the year 2000 he began to find his place in the king's role and became more self-assured. Monarchs are supposed to see the long lines and the big picture. King Harald was concerned with taking a deep breath and choosing solutions that not only eased the pressure of the moment but held up over time.