In 1940, King
Haakon VII of Norway has a major decision to make.
King
Haakon VII, Queen Maud, Crown Prince Olav and many government ministers managed to escape to Great Britain, where they established a government in exile.
In the early hours of April 9, 1940, King
Haakon VII of Norway was awakened by an aide shouting, "Majesty, we are at war!" The frantic and desperate flight of the Norwegian king and his government into snow-clad mountains and eventually to London is just one of the spellbinding stories in Lynne Olson's masterful account of England in World War II, Last Hope Island.
Scandinavia as a whole seems to be on a 1940s kick (at least when it comes to Oscar submissions), with Norway's entry "The King's Choice," directed by Erik Poppe, focusing on the nation's wartime monarch
Haakon VII and his resistance to the Nazi occupation.
He feared a court martial for breaking orders but instead King
Haakon VII presented him with the Knight's Cross of the Royal Norwegian Order of St Olaf.
In 1957, Norway's King
Haakon VII died in Oslo at age 85.
When Nazi Germany occupied Norway in April 1940, King
Haakon VII and his senior government officials fled into exile and set up shop in Toronto.
"When Norway was invaded by the German forces in 1940 King
Haakon VII set up a government in exile." Mr Westwood said the links between the two peoples were important to both.
When her niece attended the coronation of the king and queen of Norway, which had seceded from Sweden and elected Edward VII's Danish son-in-law as
Haakon VII, Augusta was horrified that 'a future Queen of England [should] witness a Coronation par la grace du Peuple et de la Revolution !!!
On June 10,1940, she and her family were evacuated on the British heavy cruiser HMS Devonshire along with King
Haakon VII and the Norwegian government, having eluded the Nazis for two harrowing months after the Germans invaded Norway in World War II.
On behalf of King
Haakon VII of Norway, Liverpool's Norwegian Consul, Mr Johan Vogt, awarded five Liverpudlians with Norway's Cross of Freedom, for wartime services, at the British Council, in Basnett Street, including Mrs I Cooke, secretary of the Anglo-Norwegian Society, in December, 1948.