Narrative Non-fiction · Hardback

Haakon & Maud I

Norwegian title: Kongstanken

Tor Bomann-Larsen

The Regal Idea (Kongstanken) is the first book in a collection of books where Norway´s foremost biographer gets into two of the most interesting destinies that Norwegian history holds. Writing the story about Haakon & Maud, Tor Bomann-Larsen has taken on an extraordinary research. The archives of the European Royal families opened their doors for the very first time. First and foremost His Royal Majesty King Harald of Norway allowed access to the Norwegian archives of private letters and pictures, and also allowed access to material in the hands of the Danish, Swedish and English royal archives. This also opened the doors to the state archives of Moscow, where the letters between the Tsar family and other European royal families are kept. The material for the works are collected in seven different countries, and a well of new knowledge has been discovered. Through the material Tor Boman-Larsen learned about everything from everyday life to the great national and international political decisions that still have repercussions in the Europe of our time. In this, the first book in the series about Haakon & Maud we enter the story with a backdrop of a Europe in change, where the idea about autocracy is just as prominent as the dawn of socialism. In the Nordic countries, Bjørnsonian nationalism, the uncompromising Ibsen and the polar dreams of Nansen where some of the elements in the game that would lead to the birth of a nation. Not only does Bomann-Larsen give us the strange story about a young prince of Denmark and a princess of England that together would become the foremost national symbols of a nation that none of them had any special ties to. With the baffling connections between dynastical royal power, cultural events and political games, the writer give us nothing less than a new perspective on Norwegian - and European - history.