A Royal Nightmare

The tsunami that is the Jeffrey Epstein scandal has finally struck the shores of Norway, and in the most dramatic — and, frankly, entertaining — way possible. In the three million pages of documents released on Friday by the Department of Justice, the name of Norway’s Crown Princess, Mette-Marit, 52, appears over a thousand times, and it’s now been established that beginning in 2011, the two of them met several times and were, in addition, in close and frequent online contact. In her emails to Epstein, reports NRK, “the Crown Princess tells him about family life, asks for advice, and the two discuss literature, research, meditation, and health.” He recommended that she read Nabokov’s Lectures on Literature. They wished each other a happy birthday. Telling him that she was “more the emotional picture kind of gal,” she advised him to “read with your gut not your intellect.” (RELATED: Epstein Files Law Passed During Week of JFK Assassination Anniversary Seems Like a Sign)

In one exchange, Epstein told her he was in Paris, looking for somebody to marry, to which she replied that Paris was good for adultery, but Scandinavians made “better wife material.” At one point an Epstein flunky conveyed an offer from him to arrange a dental appointment so Mette-Marit could get her teeth bleached. (Note: There are perfectly good dentists in Norway.) In yet another email, Epstein asks if she’s found him a new assistant. Then there’s one in which Mette-Marit tells Epstein that she’s just had a “[s]hitty flight”: Air France had demanded $3,000 for an upgrade, but she’d refused to pay it out of “principle,” and as a result “my back is f[*]cked.” Once she asked Epstein: “Is it inappropriate for a mother to suggest two naked women carrying a surfboard for my 15 yr old sons wallpaper?” (It’s unclear whether she’s referring to his screensaver or his bedroom wall.)

It also emerges from this tranche of papers that in January 2013, while her husband, Crown Prince Haakon, stayed at home in the freezing Norwegian cold, Mette-Marit and her “Buddhist spiritual teacher” spent four nights at Epstein’s house in sunny Palm Beach. (In a related story, I just learned from Hans Rustad’s invaluable Sunday evening podcast that Mette-Marit has spent so much time in New York that the consulate staff got sick of having to follow her around.) Oh, and then there are her compliments and expressions of affection. “You always make me smile,” she told Epstein. “You tickle my brain.” “I miss my crazy friend.” “U are very charming.” “You are so sweet.” “You’re such a sweetheart.” All these communications took place after Epstein had been convicted, in 2008, of procuring a child for prostitution and of soliciting a prostitute.

Parenthetically, some of the newly released documents expose other notable Norwegians. In 2014, for example, former Prime Minister Thorbjørn Jagland hit Epstein up for a loan so he could buy an apartment in Oslo. It also turns out that Jagland stayed at Epstein’s residences in New York and Paris, and that Epstein visited Jagland’s home in Strasbourg when the latter was Secretary General of the Council of Europe. But the news about Jagland (so far, anyway) isn’t anywhere near as intriguing or sexy — or potentially damaging to the Norwegian state — as the revelations about Mette-Marit.

Over the course of the Epstein saga, it’s been staggering to discover how broad his circle of so-called friends was. Unfazed by his notoriety, the world’s rich and famous courted this creep. But why? In some cases, the answer is obvious. Many, like Bill Clinton, enjoyed the sybaritic pleasures available on Epstein’s island. Others, like Jagland, thought Epstein could be a ready source of money. Børge Brenden, a Norwegian politician who is the current president and CEO of the World Economic Forum and who, it now emerges, met several times with Epstein, sought his support for a covert effort to replace the U.N. as a power center with the WEF and Davos.

But what was Mette-Marit up to? What did she want out of Epstein? Was it so terribly important for her to score a few free days in Palm Beach? For heaven’s sake, she already lived in one palace and had access to another one. Plus, a fact, she and her husband receive over a million dollars a year from Norwegian taxpayers, and can thus afford to pay for their own holiday accommodations. Finally, as she well knew, there were plenty of men in her own country who could have made her smile and tickled her brain. Why didn’t she give me a call?

Seriously, to understand just how this Mette-Marit story hits in Norway, you need to know a bit about her history. Before marrying Crown Prince Haakon, the heir to the throne, in 2001, Mette-Marit, who was a smashingly gorgeous young blonde of the classic Scandinavian type, was known to have led a very active social life, which included relationships with several men who had rap sheets for narcotics as well as for acts of violence and other serious offenses. With one of these men, a convicted felon, she had a son out of wedlock — Marius Borg Høiby, who at the time of the royal wedding was an adorable little blond moppet and who, ever since, has been treated like a member of the royal family (in recent years, he’s even traveled on a diplomatic passport). Now 29 years old, Marius has been in serious legal trouble for years. On Tuesday, he’ll go on trial for raping four women and for violating numerous other drug and assault laws; he faces no fewer than 38 criminal counts, and a possibility of up to 16 years in prison. To what extent, one wonders, can his bad choices in life be blamed on a mother who, when he was 15, asked a convicted child molester whether she should recommend pictures of naked women for the boy’s wallpaper?

Be sure, by the way, not to confuse Mette-Marit with another Norwegian princess — namely, Märtha Louise, her daffy sister-in-law, about whom I’ve written a few times here. In June 2022, I reported on the engagement of Märtha Louise, who had founded an “angel school” at which she taught students how to communicate with the dead, to a fellow New Age fourflusher, a black, bisexual Los Angeles shaman named Durek Verrett, who claims to cure cancer. In August 2024, I wrote about the lucrative deals the couple had made for wedding coverage with Britain’s Hello Magazine and Netflix; last September, I reviewed Rebel Royals, the mortifying Netflix documentary about their wedding, in which Durek pretty much called the king, queen, and Crown Prince racists. When that thing came out, the whole country cringed at once. (RELATED: The Princess Weds Her Shaman)

But back to Mette-Marit. All those years ago, when her engagement to Prince Haakon was announced, she was prevailed upon to make a statement to the press in which she admitted to, and apologized for, having led a “wild” life. The understanding was that she was now turning over a new leaf, solemnly embracing her obligations as a member of the royal house. Well, that was a quarter century ago. She and Haakon now have two children together, and they go out in public together doing the kinds of things that royal families do — cutting ribbons, shaking innumerable hands, delivering banal speeches.

But some of us have suspected that Mette-Marit never entirely gave up her old party-girl ways — and that the Skaugum Estate, where Haakon and Mette-Marit live, is the only house on earth where the cuckold chair is a throne. Okay, cheap joke. Still, the release of her email exchanges with Jeffrey Epstein (“you tickle my brain”?) suggests that the future queen of Norway is still pretty “wild.” I’ll add this: when Haakon appeared on the NRK evening news on Saturday, apparently having been buttonholed by a reporter on a street in Oslo, he looked like a broken man as he whimpered an apology on his wife’s behalf. I felt sorry for the poor fellow. I’ve always felt that he seemed like a decent chap, despite his Davos inclinations. Why, then, had his wife, the mother of their two children, cozied up to an internationally infamous slimebag? Why had Haakon let her? Is it possible she was actually attracted to Epstein? A 2011 email from Epstein to one of his advisors raises disturbing questions about the nature of the princess’s relationship: “What happened with Mette now?? She wants to carry your kid?” Epstein’s reply: “Mette is a mess.”

Of course, these revelations about Mette-Marit raise a significant question: why should taxpayers be footing the bill for such people? The current Norwegian royal house dates back only to 1905; before that, the country spent decades being ruled by Denmark, then Sweden. When Norway broke with Sweden, it could have chosen to go the modern route and become a republic, as Iceland did when it broke from Denmark in 1918. Instead, Norway asked Denmark for a spare prince and made him king. Yes, King Haakon and Crown Prince Olav (later King Olav) performed admirably during World War II, when they and their government-in-exile operated out of London, but even then, there were heady rumors to the effect that Crown Princess Märtha, Olav’s wife, who waited out the war in the White House, was getting it on with FDR. Which, if true, suggests that the current Crown Prince comes from a long line of — well, let’s not go there.

No, the point here should be a broader one. Norway, after all, isn’t the only constitutional monarchy in Europe that has turned into a clown show. In Britain, Harry and Meghan’s hijinks, Andrew’s involvement with Epstein, and the ascent to the throne of a slavering fan of Islam, proponent of homeopathy, and absolute sucker for climate-change ideology — a vainglorious fool who seems either blind or indifferent to the catastrophic course his country is taking — have made it feel as if the House of Windsor, in the wake of Queen Elizabeth’s death, has jumped the shark (if it didn’t already do so long ago). And the more you look around the continent, at all those countries in which the sovereign is supposed to be a unifying figure and a symbol of nationhood, what you see is a bunch of societies increasingly compromising their own cultures and values and yielding to Islam — and a bunch of crowned heads who, if anything, are encouraging this treachery.

In any event, it was a busier than usual Sunday in the Norwegian media. An essay by Hanne Skartveit, editor of Norway’s largest newspaper, VG, was headlined: “Can the Monarchy Survive This?” An article by Aftenposten‘s political editor, Kjetil B. Alstadheim, bore the subhead: “Can Mette-Marit Become Queen after This?” In a break with protocol that a royal expert described as “sensational,” Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre publicly criticized Mette-Marit for her lack of judgment. On Sunday evening it was reported that on Tuesday — the same day Høiby goes on trial — the Parliament will vote on abolishing the monarchy. And on Monday evening, NRK-TV ran a special edition of its trademark public-issues series, Debatten, on which high-profile commentators, politicians, and diplomats offered many takes on the crisis, but agreed on one thing: that the royal house is in deep, deep trouble. I must admit that after a long, long period during which the Norwegian media entertained themselves by parroting rumors that Donald Trump had ugly Epstein-related secrets to hide — all the while taking it for granted that the good and great of Norway were untainted by such sordid business — it felt rather good to see the American president being totally cleared even as Norway’s queen-in-waiting was exposed as (to put it gently) a steadfast Epstein intimate.

Time, then, to end it all? Not off with their heads, but off, in any case, with their crowns?

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