Norway's first king since the middle ages, Haakon VII was well situated in the European royal heritage. Christened Christian Frederik Carl Georg Valdemar Axel, the king was born the son of King Frederick VIII of Denmark and Louise, herself a daughter of King Charles XV of Sweden. He later married Princess Maud, the youngest daughter of England's King Edward the VII and Queen Alexandra.
After many years under first Danish influence, and later union with neighboring Sweden, Norwegians had been clamoring for an independent nationhood since far before the turn of the century. Eventually this surge of nationalism was enough to produce a peaceful dissolution of the union with Sweden and the formal establishment of the country proper, whose constitution had in fact been drafted almost a hundred years earlier at Eidsvoll in 1814.
The country required a symbol around which it could rally; an individual who could gather together a community and cultivate its sense of continuity and heritage. With the support of renowned scientist and explorer Fridtjof Nansen, the Danish prince was invited to replace the then Swedish Monarch King Oscar as head of the newly formed Norwegian nation in 1905. At the King's request, Nansen later served as Norway's ambassador to London (1906 to 1908).
Upon ascending the throne, Christian Frederik Carl Georg Valdemar Axel changed his name to Haakon VII; a gesture signifying the Norway's restoration to independence after hundreds of years. His son's name, Alexander Edward Christian Fredrik, was changed to the more symbolic Olav. What had been euphemistically referred to as a "four-hundred years' night" under Danish and Swedish rule was suddenly over. Although he continued to speak Danish exclusively until his death, Haakon VII was conferred the same legitimacy as his Viking predecessor Haakon VI, and the message was a return to the natural state of things: a re-awakening of national sensibilities (Eriksen, 1997).
Haakon VII was for some time regarded among many Norwegians as a distant, unknowable figure. This would change with the onset of WWII and subsequent Nazi demand to depose the king and the Norwegian government. When German forces took Norway, Haakon was forced to flee to England, where he firmly refused to resign from his post, saying that to do so, "would go against everything I have regarded to be my duty as Norway's king since I came to Norway almost 35 years ago" (Stokker, 1995, 74).
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