Norway’s crown princess has become embroiled in another scandal after newly unsealed files appeared to show her years of extensive contact with the late child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The latest tranche of Epstein files, released on Friday by the US justice department, appear to include nearly 1,000 mentions of the crown princess, Mette-Marit.
The files include scores of emails traded between the two, suggesting they were in contact from 2011 to 2014, the Norwegian daily VG reported. Mette-Marit married the future king of Norway in 2001.
The revelations come at a sensitive time for the royal family. The trial of Mette-Marit’s son, Marius Borg Høiby for rape is due to begin on Tuesday. He was born from a relationship before she married Crown Prince Haakon
Høiby is facing 38 charges, including the alleged rape of four women as well as alleged assault and drug offences. If convicted he could face up to 16 years in prison. Høiby has denied the most serious charges, including those of sexual abuse.
How can one man be so infuriatingly involved in so much corruption globally? I just want to live in peace, urgh
That is good for your goal to live in peace if we take it seriously though. Catching so many corrupt and vile people at the same time is a great thing.
Mossad wants dirt on everyone
But not russians?
The only russians to pop up in the files are informants or business partners, nothing else.
There is, however, quite a bit of dirt on various Israelites.
They’ve released less than 1% of the files. Still plenty of things we have yet to see.
How can “the most democratic country” have a monarchy?
The US doesn’t have a monarchy, but we ended up with a king anyway.
What has the US to do with this?
Epstein.
Probably for the same reason we still have one in the Netherlands, where a large part of the country can’t comprehend abolishing the monarchy because “it’s tradition” or “because they do important diplomatic work” (ie brown-nosing other politicians for an idioticly high salary)
Ik vondt de enige gechillte Nederlander ;) Groeten vanuit Duitsland! (Grapje, ik weet dat niet iedereen Rutte of Wilders in het achterste wil neuken)
I’m guessing it’s like the UK where they have a monarchy but they don’t actually have any real power.
Well, aside from the usual rich person power of being able to commit all sorts of crimes and get away with it.
Powerful or not, inherited leadership is undemocratic.
Wait until you find out about hereditary peers…
Not even just the hereditary peers - there are also the 26 Anglican bishops, and the politically appointed lords, eg Mandelson. Senators for life, basically.
Tradition is a hell of a thing
I’ve heard that this is so bad that it might be the end of the royal family in Norway.
Damn, I wish! I’m against all kinds of kings.
Why?
They have decorational value, nothing else.
Imagine you have some decorational vases on your mantle. They cost you an extraordinary amount of money each year, but you like them and they’re family heirlooms. But then one vase starts spewing the most insane conspiracy theories that make everyone uncomfortable, one shills dangerous health advice for money (despite you paying its salary), one is facing multiple accusations of sexual assault, and has been indicted for rape, and one it turns out is heavily in the Epstein files. Would you reconsider if those vases were worth paying a ton of money every year that could be used to better yourself or others?
I mean, yeah, these specific vases have to go, but I wouldn’t reconsider the idea of having vases based off of that.
No? You’re saying you wouldn’t even consider spending the exorbitant amount of money it cost to maintain those purely decorational vases on something else? Like saving for your retirement or your kid’s retirement, setting up community gardens, beefing up your home security, funding medical research, etc?
No? You’re saying you wouldn’t even consider spending the exorbitant amount of money it cost to maintain those purely decorational vases on something else?
Well, I like vases. People like vases. Some vases being shitty doesn’t make ALL vases shitty.
And let’s not pretend like the “royal whatnot” upkeep is a major amount of money on a country’s scale. Sure, looking at it itself it seems like a lot, but removing, for example, the UK royal family in its entirety wouldn’t even be noticeable in the overall budget. They cost UK taxpayers around £510 million, whereas the 2025 budget spending was £1,244.9 billion. You’d lower it to £1,244.4 billion. That’s peanuts.
The issue - on that scale - isn’t the funding itself, it’s that the overall spending of taxpayer money is extremely inefficient.
The fact that Mette-Marit was a single mother and the fact that Høiby’s father was a convicted felon created controversy. TV 2 later wrote that “merely by existing, Marius Borg Høiby was seen by many as a scandal for the royal family.”
He sure lived up to their expectations. Well cheer up guys, at least he can use your tax money to hire himself the best lawyer available.
Parasites.
Epstein was a billionaire and we live in a capitalistic economy. Beinf said that, There’s no doubt poor people will be licking is boot but that doesn’t mean he’s fucking anyone and everyone. He had many 9-5s working for him, does that mean he was raping all of them? No!! What i am trying to say is there will be many people who must have been in touch with him for money and his influence for personal gains that doesn’t mean all are criminals.
Possibly, but that excuse doesn’t fly for contacts following his first conviction in 2008:
[…] was convicted in 2008 by a Florida state court of procuring a child for prostitution and of soliciting a prostitute.
That was well before the above mentioned email contacts.
Lol as I said before we live in capitalistic economy where money defines your worth. With your justification, nobody should be working for HSBC, Meta, Google, Apple etc. Read about the shit they have done but poor people need money so they dont care and will do whatever you’re asked to do. For example- if you’re a 9-5, then you definitely can’t question your line leader and you’ll do exactly what they have asked you to do. Even if you’re manager reports to someone who is a rapist and you’ll justify it by saying, I didn’t rape, I am just doing my job so its all good.
With your justification, nobody should be working for HSBC, Meta, Google, Apple etc. […]
You are so close.
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The movement to get rid of the parasitic monarchy in Norway got a lot of traction this week, so that is nice.
There is an actual hearing in Parliament this tuesday about abolishing the monarchy. Not caused by this but happily strengthened.
You can bet that once the inevitable population-wide vote happens on whether to keep the monarchy, I will vote no. I already didn’t like having a monarchy from before, now doubly so.
I’ve traditionally been a supporter of keeping the monarchy for its diplomatic functions and (mostly) unifying force among people, but this does feel like a sea-change. Maybe opinions in Norway are more forgiving, I don’t know–I moved away many years ago. In my opinion, it’s probably time to re-evaluate whether we (Norway) want to keep this going. It was decided decades ago to keep it at least until the current Crown Prince had his turn, but now that’s looking like a bad idea. They need to do something, and hopefully they can still wind it down with some dignity. Maybe it’s possible to make a nice, clean break when King Harald passes on. Either way, it should be up to the People.
I’m not 100% convinced having a President will be better, seeing as some Presidents like to act as if they’re kings. But with all the scandals, I think if anyone still believes monarchs are immune to political influence, they should wake up now.
PS: I was wondering if you have some more information about the hearing (e.g. news article). I can’t find it in the Norwegian media. (I read/speak Norwegian).
You can have a President without having a Presidential system - like, for example, Germany - were that post is mainly being a figurehead/top-diplomat with mainly the power of shaming parliament when they go overboard with some laws, both not actually able to block it, possible with some limited power to dissolve parliament and call new elections.
Basically it’s the same thing as a modern day monarch in a Democratic nation, except that people actually get to chose who gets the post, if they turn out to be bad at it they get replaced after 4 years rather than being there for life and they don’t actually own a massive chunk of wealth for historical reasons (like, for example, the British Royal Family).
I’ve lived under Presidential systems (Portugal) and Constitutional Monarchies (The Netherlands, Britain) and vastly prefer the former: the latter is especially fucked up in Britain were the Royals actually have real power (to block laws) - if seldom used - and are the cornerstone of a well entrenched system of patronage and class segregation which is far beyond anything I’ve seen elsewhere in Europe, though granted in The Netherlands The Royals were a lot closer to normal people - to the point that before becoming King the current ruler used to work as a pilot for KLM - than in Britain.
The German figurehead presidency is probably a result of the absolute failure of Hindenburg in the Weimar republic (interwar).
Portugal doesn’t have a Presidential system, it’s a Semi-Presidential one.
You’re correct, similarly to Germany it has a President with limited powers which are far less than Parliament or the Govern, not a Presidential System (like the US or France) were the President actually has executive power.
The Portuguese President has more power than the German one, though.
Yeah, power corrupts. But royalty is excempt from scrutiny way too much. The king keeps pardoning finance crime buddies and it’s not even mentioned in the media like other corruption would be.
Anyway, https://stortinget.no/ has info on the hearings :)
Thank you, I found it here. I’m a little bit surprised it’s not in the media more.
Pretty sure because it’s a routine tradition, and is always expected to end in the favor of keeping the monarchy. So it’s not really too interesting unless you are a politician
I guess ‘No Kings’ is doing something after all
Does the Norwegian monarchy also generate a significant amount of revenue for the government like the British one does?
The buildings and overboard “state folklore” are what generate revenue, not the Royals - the probability of ever seeing a Royal in person, either as a tourist or a local, is basically zero.
Meanwhile the Royals are a cornerstone of a massive system of patronage and class segregation, not to mention being one of the wealthiest families in Britain. Oh, and the king also has the power to block laws, though he seldom uses it and apparently will instead in the background use the threat of it and of shaming governments (look up the “black spider memos”, which date back to his time as prince).
They’re pretty much the most anti-Democratic Royals in Europe by a long margin, IMHO.
Strange typo, you wrote “generate” instead of “cost”
I asked this when the final season of The Crown came out. What EXACTLY does the monarch do? There was so much talk of “the work we do for this country” but no explanation of it? In the same vein, how exactly do they generate revenue?
Without clicking I already know what both of those videos will be.
CGP Grey is a liberal hack. He’s very skilled at explaining things in an entertaining and easy-to-understand way, but he’s really bad at making it clear when what he’s “explaining” is his (or someone else’s) opinion and not an actual fact. And when it is his opinion, far too often it’s a bad one, tainted by some of the laziest liberal status quo bs.
This is one such example, and Shaun’s response is justifiably scathing.
I also found it particularly telling when he did his “guns, germs, and steel” explainer (a book that is widely criticised by historians for its vastly oversimplified explanations), and he responded to criticism by laughing it off, and saying there was no problem. But when he later did a video and made a minor mistake by using the name of a submarine-based missile for what was actually a ground-based missile (or something along those lines), he made a huge deal about how important his integrity is and how he could not possibly live with himself if he allowed that misinformation to go uncorrected.
Suffice it to say, I was not particularly surprised when I later learnt the reason Grey pulled out of Nebula was that he (and Veritasium, IIRC?) wanted a business model/corporate structure which would allow him and other early members to profit off of the work of later-added members. An opinion that put him at odds with the other early founders like Wendover and Real Engineering, who preferred the more equitable model.
Suffice it to say, I was not particularly surprised when I later learnt the reason Grey pulled out of Nebula was that he (and Veritasium, IIRC?) wanted a business model/corporate structure which would allow him and other early members to profit off of the work of later-added members. An opinion that put him at odds with the other early founders like Wendover and Real Engineering, who preferred the more equitable model.
Really? I never did find any info about why he and Kurzgesagt (not Veritasium) left. Where did you hear this? (I’m not doubting you I’m just curious.)
Ah it was Kurzgesagt? Yeah that…really checks out. That dude is sketchy af.
I’ve just gone down a rabbit hole of old Reddit threads. This comment by Brian of Real Engineering is the source for that claim. At the very least, it shows they weren’t interested in putting in effort to grow the platform into the fantastic place it has become since their departure. At worst, Brian’s speculation as to their motives paints them in a very unflattering light.
But it seems it was my mistaken recollection that it was specifically about discussions relating to the “creator-owned” business structure.
You can read further down in that thread for a comment of my own summarising why exactly I described Kurzgesagt as “sketchy af” above. Or for more detail, here’s another thread on the subject where I go back and forth with someone staunchly intent on defending Kurzgesagt despite the overwhelming evidence against him.
I’m pretty sure this is the thread that got me silently banned from all CGP Grey–related subreddits, too. Not a proper ban, but all my comments are silently auto-removed, presumably by Grey’s bot account that mods all his subreddits. I went months cheerfully commenting in Hello Internet (RIP) threads and getting no engagement before I realised I had been banned. Back then I was actually a huge fan of Grey’s in spite of my growing frustrations with some of his content, so that really stung.
Oh and just for fun, here’s another thread I came across with some other people detailing some of the grift-like penny-pinching behaviour from Grey, wherein he treats his audience not as a community but as a resource to be extracted…until it’s no longer useful: https://old.reddit.com/r/JetLagTheGame/comments/1iom4n4/whats_bens_beef_with_cgp_grey/
Thanks, that was interesting, and pretty neatly sums up the revenue side of things (and why I think it’s a bs argument for their continued existence)
I’m still curious about the “work” that The Crown (show) kept going on about. As mentioned in the rebuttal video, all of that revenue essentially comes about through just existing (and there’s no reason it couldn’t continue even if the monarchy were officially abolished)
From the outside, (and going by the events in the show) it seems to be just cutting ribbons, and hosting/attending parties. Oh, and a speech once a year. Is that the extent of their work, or do they actually serve some political function that couldn’t be done by a regular old diplomat?
Officially, the British monarch can reject any bills that Parliament sends them, effectively vetoing it, but no king or queen has exercised that power since 1708.
They’ve used threats instead, as well as the power of shaming and the influence they have in many places including the Press (for example, pretty much the whole Board of the BBC has a royal title, be it a Peerage or higher, and this is similar in quite a number of other places, both in the public and the private sector).
Look up the “black spider memos” from the time the current King was still a Prince.
like the British one does?
pfft. that was some fantastic propaganda. royalty in no way generates revenue, they’re fucking parasites.
I honestly don’t keep up with them much, so I can’t say what the current status is. I didn’t even realize until today that Mette-Marit had been connected with Epstein already back in 2019.
It’s not just about money, though. When I still lived there ('90s), the common sentiment seemed to be that though they have no political power (even less so than the British), they were good, wholesome ambassadors for Norway and served as a sort of cultural focal point that “everyone” shared pride in. (Obviously not a 100% true, but if you’re Norwegian you know what I mean.)
Importantly, one point of pride was that they weren’t as embroiled in scandals as other royals. They were “of the people”, with one example often cited that King Olav during the oil crisis took his skis on the bus instead of driving. That kind of thing.
The current line of Norwegian royals is even pretty new, so to speak. King Haakon VII was chosen by committee in 1905 after the dissolution of the union. At the time, they passed on becoming a republic. So, it felt more like they had been selected by us rather than they just inherited everything.
But: the whole Epstein business, greed, political influence and all that flies directly in the face of all that pride. That’s why I think that case is probably lost now. The trust is gone, the monarchy is tarnished. It’s become a liability and expense rather than a point of pride.
That actually makes a lot of sense. Coming from a country heavily influenced by Thomas Paine especially on the topic of nobility it’s always been weird to me when such egalitarian countries as most of Scandinavia and the Netherlands maintain monarchies.
A: she’s married in. Not actual you know. Heritage
Are you mansplaining my own fucking country of 45 years to me?
*monarchsplaining
I’m Norwegian…
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all the NONCE kings and princes had ties with epsteins MS kung fu master.
He was first sentenced in 2008…
Looks bad until you realise how afraid of confrontations Norwegians are
I was told that royal families are all ceremonial and that they don’t have any real power, but we keep finding them embroiled with people who have real power.
Really makes you think.
In theory, yes. In our country, our royal family has an undisclosed amount of money, get an undisclosed amount of money from the taxpayer and has a number of other sources of income as well. One of the nephews of the king has a huge real estate business built upon his family money.
Fucking parasites.
Money==power. Monarchs roll in money.
No times 2. Monarchs don’t really roll in money, and to elaborate let’s dive into your first statement, and why it’s off. Money is only really power if you have the freedom to buy with it as you want. Monarchs have very little freedom of any in that regard. Often you’ll find that the vast majority of the so-called appanage comes with a note of exactly what they should pay for. Like, paying for renovations of buildings you don’t appreciate living in and stills being told to live in it. Agreed, they do live a rather decent lifestyle, and there’s no reason to feel sorry for monarchs’ financial setup, but it comes at a hefty price of a lifetime commitment to no freedom in some regards. Personally I really appreciate the royal family in Denmark. The Danish king is a wise, highly trained military man, who also is a father driving his kids to school in a flatbed bicycle. It’s just good PR for a country to have a king (and queen) like that.
Any social influencers of this level obviously have indirect power and anyone who claims otherwise is delusional.
That being said, I do think it’s possible that ceremonial representation can be beneficial. I’d love states start electing purely ceremonial roles more as it’s a really powerful social tool for uniting people and can be done right.
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Sounds like the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.
A lifetime of living without consequence where your every whim is met creates dangerously broken people
What happened here is actually worse somehow. Mette marit was a “commoner” known on her circles as a fun party/rave girl. The usual drugs included. She had a son (Marius) with someone from that walk of life. He had the chance to turn 8 or 9 i think before having the title of “royalty” thrust uppon him at the same time his single mother got swept away on all sorts of royal adventures.
Not hard at all to see how that can fuck you up royally.
Edit: just remembered she had a sextape from the good old days, and since it was only of interest to us Norwegians and the internett wasn’t as big as it is now they’ve managed to scrub it. Or that might just have been rumors, but I’m like 80% sure i saw it at one of the early 2000’s LAN parties.
The dominos start to fall
Not a Norwegian, but I would hope so.
As a Norwegian, I would be perfectly fine with seeing the monarchy abolished whenever the passing of our current monarcs occur.
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Norwegian here, and I don’t think it’s gonna change a whole lot. Well, not for her, at least.
Personally I don’t care enough about them, and I don’t get the impression anyone under 60 care that much either, neither positive or negative. Her husband is genuinely a nice person, so is her father in law (yes, I’ve met them both). Her son is a scumbag, though. (And he almost ran into me on a bicycle when he was 5 or so!)
So if anyone wants to litigate against her, I’m not gonna stand in the way, but for now this looks mostly like a case of “Should’ve known better”, something several government officials have publicly stated.
Just to clarify my stance on monarchy: Conflicted. In theory it does make sense to have someone who can veto everything on behalf of the state if the government goes weapons grade guano. However, the apolitical nature of a monarch pretty much stand in the way of this. And on the other hand, I’m not a big fan of inherited power.
But all in all, I don’t really care that much. Larger portions of my taxes go to stupider things.The problem is this voting power is held by someone just because he/she is the child of someone, not because they can actually wield it responsibly. This is the whole reason monarchy was abolished.
While I agree that having an independent body from the main political organ makes sense, I feel like a monarchy isn’t a great symbol to have in the first place
And what’s going to stop future scandals from happening? Or consequences for them? If a future king does something bad, we can’t exactly fire them and replace them with someone else, as that’s not how a monarchy works. We only got one tool, and it’s to abolish the monarchy. It doesn’t feel like great checks and balances
Generally I am against inherent power. And a monarchy is the peak of that, as you simply are in a position of power by having a lucky birth. It is true that lucky births happen constantly and are everywhere, especially if you get born in norway, but it feels wrong to actively support it.
It just doesn’t really feel like a system that has a place today. Though I do also realize that there’s problems with having a president or the like as well. But generally I support more democracy, not less.
And also as a final note like, if this went hidden for so long until the files got released, I wonder what other stuff got hidden as well? I mean, we got pretty much directly lied to here back in 2019
I’m just uncomfortable with systems that enforce a hierarchy. I think we could do with less of that
They can definitely replace the monarch. Remember it’s a constitutional monarchy where the monarch has only ceremonial power. The throne has been given to the current royal family by the people. The people can take the crown away if they want to. Parliament just needs to amend the constitution. Also the monarch can be encouraged to step down if they are embroiled in a scandal.
Also monarchs are just humans their heads can be chopped off like any of us. They should never forget what happened to their cousin during the French Revolution.
Who would replace the monarch though?
At that point it’s literally just an appointed minister by another name. And I’d rather have the position taken by someone who doesn’t live in a literal castle
And yes, I know it’s a constitutional monarchy, I live here :)
Yeah at that point it will just turn into a republic. But nothing is stopping Norwegians to go into that direction except tRAdiShyUn and decades of brainwashing.
But that’s literally what I’m arguing for though…?
Her son is a scumbag
when he was 5
Thoughts on the monarchy aside, I think it’s a little unfair to judge someone based on how they acted as a really young child
My assessment was not based on that one incident from when he was five.
Yup, I see that now. I agree, he’s a scumbag
And that’s why you shouldn’t white-knight random people you don’t know
Oh go fuck yourself. From the way it’s written it’s not unreasonable to think they’re talking about the kid running them over at 5 years old. Turning out to be a douchebag later doesn’t make it OK to judge a 5 year old.
No one is judging anyone except you.
False. I’m judging you to be a moron.
God forbid we’re unfair to this guy https://www.cbsnews.com/news/norway-crown-princess-son-rape-trial-marius-borg-hoiby/
Ok, fair. I didn’t know about that
Good thing my queen is a decent women with nice, well educated kids. I has to suck to have parasites like this live at your expense.
All monarchs are parasitic scum.
I was kidding but in all seriousness, I have a dual Polish-Spanish citizenship. The last Polish president (2 terms, 10 years in office) was an useless, partisan idiot who help destroy the justice system and blocked everything the government tried to pass. He was recently hired by the Heritage Foundation and is now spewing pro-Trump propaganda in Polish media. The newly elected president is a ex football hooligan idiot who, again, is blocking any progress to help his opposition party. The office or president in Poland is abused and is harmful to the democracy. Most of Polish presidents elected since the office was created were either drunks, idiots or hacks and embarrassed the office and country they are supposed to represent on countless occasions.
In the meantime, the Spanish king is not aligned with any party and is limiting his work to purely representative functions and occasionally mediating between the parties. He’s well educated, speaks foreign languages and knows all the protocols. He’s nothing but professional. His daughter, the princess, from the youngest age is getting all the education she will need to represent the country with honor and dignity. (Yes, the old king was an old drunk and pervert but he had enough common sense to resign when the scandals started surfacing).
The office of the Spanish King costs the taxpayers like 10% of what the president costs the Poles.
I know there’s a good middle ground where people elect smart, professional people to represent them and you have the best of two worlds but if I had to choose I’m taking well educated King over drunk President every time.
Guillotine the educated king and the drunk president as far as I’m concerned. If the king’s really so smart he’ll renounce his title when the guillotine comes out and the bloodshed can be avoided, so it’s a win all around.
I’m sure there are great solution that work in fantasyland. Here, in the real world, we have to work with what we have and in my experience, a King with little actual power works better than politically nominated president.
Today’s liberals are so deep in the “end of history” bullshit that they actually believe the very concept of a revolution is “fantasyland”
I couldn’t have satirized your position better if I’d tried.
It’s not the concept of revolution that’s “fantasyland”. It’s the idea that in Europe we will guillotine democratically elected presidents and constitutionally established monarchs. If that’s you plan for changing the system: good luck! Here in reality we simply realize that this is not going to happen and if it did, it woult not result in a system that’s better for anyone.
Norway’s Crown what? Are they from the past or something?
The constitutional monarchy is from 1814, but our real political power is democratically elected every 4 years. There is a significant minority who wants a republic instead, but most of us like having an unpolitical symbolic head of state to do the speaches, diplomacy and ribbon cutting that we can (mostly) all get behind. It’s the same system as in Sweden and Denmark.
We almost had a king instated in 1917 in Finland. The right wing party Kokoomus was desperate for a boot to lick.
It don’t want to should sound disrespectful to the finish language, but kokoomus sounds like the villain of a Mario spinoff.
Sounds like Kokusnuss, so coconut in German.
Are you truly so ignorant?
Just as a good few other European countries, yes. Most definitely yes.
And America now.
A lot of Europe has monarchs. Yes, the french and American mind struggles to comprehend this, but they just don’t ger rid of them
