Norway’s Princess Mette-Marit wears oxygen mask at Constitution Day parade amid battle with lung disease – as she awaits verdict in son’s rape trial
Crown Princess Mette-Marit attended Norway’s Constitution Day children’s parade on Sunday with an oxygen tank amid her years-long battle with pulmonary fibrosis.
The future Norwegian Queen, 52, first made her battle with the condition, in which the lungs have become scarred making breathing increasingly difficult, in 2018.
While she has restricted her royal engagements over the years to cater for her health needs, Sunday marked one of the first times that the wife of Crown Prince Haakon was spotted wearing a nasal cannula to aid her breathing at a public event.
Together with her husband, 52, and son, Prince Sverre Magnus, 20, the family watched the children’s parade from their residence, Skaugum in Oslo, Norway.
The trio put on a brave face, waving towards cameras with wide grins, amid what has been one of the toughest times for the Norwegian throne in modern times after Mette-Marit’s son, Marius Borg Høiby, was charged with rape and sexual assault in June last year.
Høiby, stepson of the heir to the throne, Crown Prince Haakon, has been under scrutiny since he was repeatedly arrested in 2024 on preliminary charges of bodily harm and criminal damage.
The charges included four counts of rape, four cases of sexual assault and two cases of bodily harm. The Norwegian court is due to deliver a verdict in Høiby’s rape trial on June 15.
Challenges intensified earlier this year again, when the future Queen’s seemingly intimate bond with her ‘sweetheart’, Jeffrey Epstein, came to light – with one email released in the Epstein Files suggesting she was still in contact with the late paedophile financier just months before his death.
Crown Princess Mette-Marit was seen with an oxygen tank during Sunday’s Constitution Day parade (pictured alongside Prince Sverre Magnus, left, and Crown Prince Haakon, right)
While it was known that the Princess had corresponded with Epstein, the intimacy of the emails blows apart any suggestion that the pair were mere associates, with the late paedophile referring to her as ‘twisted’ and ‘not your typical royal’.
Meanwhile, the mother of three, who married Norway’s future King, Crown Prince Haakon in 2001, referred to the disgraced financier as ‘sweetheart’.
In one eyebrow-raising exchange, mutual friend Boris Nikolić, a former adviser to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, asked Epstein if the pair were going to have a baby together.
Nikolić, who references the Norwegian royal in several emails and appears to speculate about her mental and physical health, wrote in April 2012: ‘What happened with Mette now? She wants to carry your kid?’
Epstein’s reply was: ‘Mette Marit is a mess’.
The revelations, which the Crown Princess said were ’embarrassing’ and ‘showed poor judgement’, have put immense strain on the Norwegian monarchy, coming in the same week that Mette-Marit’s son went on trial for the rape of four women.
The emails, sent between 2011 and 2014, show Mette-Marit continued to write to the late paedophile financier despite knowing he had been jailed for procuring an underage girl for prostitution.
They also spent time together in New York when she was on official royal duties in the absence of her husband, although there is no suggestion that she stayed at any of Epstein’s properties.
The 52-year-old royal’s name appeared at least 1,000 times in the Epstein documents released by the US Department of Justice in February.
In 2018 Mette-Marit issued a statement explaining that the pulmonary fibrosis ‘means my working capacity will vary’ to accommodate her treatment, including ‘periods of time without an official programme’.
‘For a number of years, I have had health challenges on a regular basis, and now we know more about what is involved,’ she said. ‘The condition means that my working capacity will vary.
‘The Crown Prince and I are choosing to make this public now partly because in future there will be a need to plan periods of time without an official programme to accommodate treatment and when the disease is more active.’
Pictured: Princess Mette-Marit getting extra oxygen during the celebrations of the National Day at the residence in Skaugum, Norway
Pictured: Marius Borg Høiby and Crown Princess Mette-Marit of Norway in Oslo in 2022
Pulmonary fibrosis is incurable and worsens over time, but the Norwegian royal’s doctor, Professor Kristian Bjøro at the National Hospital, said they’d been monitoring her condition for several years and the ‘disease progression has been slow over this period’.
Not much is known about the unusual variant of fibrosis that was detected in Mette-Marit’s lung, but according to the Royal House, ‘there is broad consensus that, unlike other more common types of pulmonary fibrosis, it is not related to environmental or lifestyle factors’.
The fact that the disease was detected at an early stage improves Mette-Marit’s prognosis, as per a previous Palace statement.
‘Even if such a diagnosis will limit my life at times, I am glad that the disease has been discovered so early. My goal is still to work and participate in the official programme as much as possible,’ the mother-of-three said.
According to the NHS, the symptoms of pulmonary fibrosis include shortness of breath, loss of appetite and weight loss, extreme tiredness, a persistent dry cough, and swollen fingertips.
