Bomann-Larsen received unique access to royal archives for his latest book, called Vintertronen (The Winter Throne). Materials included King Haakon's extensive personal diaries and correspondence that literally had been sealed to keep them confidential.
One letter was in an envelope with three seals, on which King Haakon also had written that it was only to be opened by his heir. His son Olav V opened it after King Haakon had died in 1957.
In it, King Haakon described in detail a crisis he went through with the government and the parliament, after voters elected a government that favoured a republic over a monarchy, and proposed that royal power be reduced.
Haakon, according to Bomann-Larsen, who had insisted on a public referendum supporting a monarchy before he'd accepted Norway's throne eight years earlier, felt the contract between the king and Norway had been broken. King Haakon was a far more politically active monarch than many realized, certainly more political than modern royals in a constitutional democracy are expected to be.
"The king chose not to abdicate, but it was a very difficult decision," Bomann-Larsen told newspaper Aftenposten. King Haakon wrote that he wished his son had been 10 years older at the time, so that he could have conferred with him.
His wife, Queen Maud, was of little support at the time, according to several of Bomann-Larsen's sources. The man who built up Norway's foreign ministry at the time, Thor von Ditten, wrote in his own diary that he felt sorry for King Haakon because he received no support from Maud.
Norway's new queen, Bomann-Larsen suggests, continued to see herself primarily as a British princess. She never learned to speak Norwegian, despite her 33 years as queen, she traveled frequently home to England and her thoughts "were always with England, directed at her father," Bomann-Larsen said at a press conference in connection with his book's release.
At one point, the Norwegian prime minister at the time had to order her to make an appearance in Drammen, just west of Oslo. Prime Minister Christian Michelsen found it necessary to take up Maud's reluctance to be queen with her mother, Queen Alexandra of England. He told the British queen, during a visit to Norway, that Norwegians were fond of Maud, "but it would be good if your majesty could explain to her that she isn't a private princess of Great Britain any longer, but has duties as Norway's queen."
Maud went to Drammen, but only after Michelsen threatened to resign if she didn't. Maud herself is mentioned infrequently in King Haakon's diaries.
Jealous wife
She did manage to make the wife of Norwegian explorer and national hero Fridtjof Nansen extremely jealous. Nansen was a friend of the royal couple and had even tried to teach the family to ski, but Eva Nansen apparently felt her husband and Maud were too friendly.
Bomann-Larsen said he spent a lot of time on the royal couple's relationship to Fridtjof Nansen because Nansen's role was so important in the development of "the new Norway" after it broke out of its unhappy union with Sweden in 1905.
"What's a bit dramatic, though, is that Eva Nansen felt the queen was a threat," Bomann-Larsen said. Eva even wrote a letter to her husband, in which she referred to the queen as "your beloved Maud," and that her husband was Maud's "beloved knight."
Bomann-Larsen said the relation between Fridtjof Nansen and Maud "wasn't without excitement," but he could find no documentation they were having an affair. "And Haakon VII had full confidence in Fridtjof Nansen the whole time," he said.
