The Hunt for the King (part 2)

‘As long as there as an inch that is Norwegian’

Hitler demanded that Vidkun Quisling should be Prime Minister. The king said: No! With that, all possibility of compromise was closed off for King Haakon and his government. And it was a decision that put them in extreme danger. No monarch or head of state was killed by the Nazis during the war – but on the 11th of April 1940, they not only tried to assassinate King Haakon, they were also fully convinced they had succeeded. In fact, the king and politicians evaded the bombing raids on Elverum and Nybergsund. They moved northwards from place to place – to avoid detection and to bolster the spirits of the ever-more beleaguered defence forces. But they finally had to sail for England and exile. As the figurehead of Norwegian resistance, the king’s work from England was of huge significance for the people of Norway.

EPISODE PHOTO
King Haakon seeks cover in a birch grove during an air raid on Molde in late April 1940. (Detail. See full photo below – King Haakon together with Crown Prince Olav.)

Photo: Per Bratland
Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 NO

CONTACT
Twitter: @northbynorway
Email: northbynorway@gmail.com

LINKS & SOURCES
Quisling : A Study in Treason
Oddvar K. Høidal
Norwegian University Press, 1989

Kongens flukt
Lars West Johnsen, Jens Marius Sæther
Kagge forlag, 2016

9. april – time for time
Alf R. Jacobsen
Vega forlag, 2020

Kongens nei
Alf R. Jacobsen
Vega forlag, 2011

Vekstår og Vargtid
Nils Hjelmtveit
Aschehoug, 1969

MUSIC
00:00 North by Norway
written on GarageBand by Andrew J. Boyle, using the Norwegian folksong ‘I Ola-dalom, i Ola-tjønn’

02:20 Sagasøyla
Andrew J. Boyle

08:00 I Ola-dalom, i Ola-tjønn
Edvard Grieg, op. 66, no. 14

Music performed on GarageBand by Andrew J. Boyle

Per Bratland’s famous image of father and son, King Haakon and Crown Prince Olav, sheltering in a wood during a bombing raid on Molde in late April 1940.

Letter from cabinet and King Haakon to the German envoy, Curt Bräuer. The cabinet has advised the king to refuse Hitler’s demands, and in the last line, the king agrees with the cabinet.

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