NordenBladet – The Danish Royal Court has released the programme for Crown Prince Frederik and Crown Princess Mary’s official business visit to Rome, Italy from 6th November to 8th November. The tour will focus on solutions in health, climate change, water and energy, urbanisation and sustainable food production.
The headline for the Danish business promotion is “Italy – We Think Business” and will have the following sectoral traces: Healthcare, Urban & Cleantech, and Food & Beverages. The visit also aims at strengthening relations between Denmark and Italy and supporting the position of Danish companies in Italy.
For the first day of the visit, Crown Prince Frederik and Crown Princess Mary will be received by the Italian President Sergio Mattarella for lunch at the Palazzo del Quirinale presidential palace. Afterwards, the couple will visit the Terme Di Caracalla before attending the welcome reception with the Danish delegation.
On 7th November, the Crown Prince Couple will take part in an event marking the official beginning of the business visit. Crown Prince Frederik will make a speech. The Crown Prince Couple will then spend the morning apart. Crown Prince Frederik will open the seminar “Shaping the Future of Healthcare and Strategic Investments”, and he will also attend the seminars “Water: Efficiency and Revenue Streams” and “Catch up – the market is moving”. Crown Princess Mary will also attend three seminars: “Keynote: The Business of Denmark’s Green Transition”, “Ready for tomorrow’s consumers” and “The Transformation of Healthcare and Business Models of the Future”.
The couple will then meet again to attend a business launch with Danish companies. Afterwards, they will visit the panel debate “Outlook on the EU and the global industry agenda” and also participate in a cooking show with Danish and Italian chefs. They will have the opportunity to meet Danish companies in the food industry. The day will conclude with an official dinner.
On their last day in Rome, on 8th November, Crown Prince Frederik and Crown Princess Mary will be received in an audience by His Holiness Pope Francis at the Vatican. Crown Prince Frederik will then visit the Trevi Fountain and the aqueduct Acqua Vergine to focus on Urban & Cleantech. This official visit will conclude by a visit by the couple to the Hospital Bambino Gesu to meet some of the patients.
NordenBladet – On November 13th, Princess Marie will be the guest of honour at a dinner hosted by the Stop Wasting Food Movement. The international Stop Wasting Food Dinner will be hosted by Selina Juul and the Ambassador of the Netherlands to Denmark Henk Swarttouw and will focus on the fight against food waste. In addition to Princess Marie, guests will include the Danish Minister for Environment and Food Jakob Ellemann-Jensen and high-level leaders from organisations and businesses.
The hope is to make this dinner an annual tradition with a different embassy hosting each year, and the dinner’s primary focus is to give the inspiration to achieve UN Sustainable Development Goal 12.3 which is to halve the global food waste by 2030. The dinner will be a menu made out of surplus food and prepared by Dutch chef Lucas Jeffries – who works at the InStock restaurant which fights against food waste- and Danish chef Martin Jacobsen – who works at the Kadeau and the Nabo restaurants. The guests will have the opportunity to take the leftovers home in biodegradable boxes.
About hosting the dinner, Henk Swarttouw said: “During the last 10 years, the Danish consumers are starting to become aware of the gigantic food waste in Denmark, which annually reaches 700.000 tonnes. It’s also important to get all the decision makers onboard the agenda – and that is why we are hosting this dinner; to activate and inspire Denmark’s leading key stakeholders, who can anchor the agenda in their respective organisations and projects.“
Princess Marie has been focusing on the fight against food waste a lot in the past few years. This year alone, she helped launched new material focusing on food waste in schools, opened the first Too Good To Go store in Denmark, attended the World Food Summit of which she is the patron, visited the Danish Food Bank and hosted ten school children in her home to teach them about food waste.
About Princess Marie attending the dinner, Selina Juul – the founder of the Stop Wasting Food Movement and a member of the coalition fighting to achieve the UN goal – said: “We are very thankful that H.R.H. Princess Marie will participate in our dinner against food waste – and we are very delighted for the Princess’ enthusiasm in the fight against food waste. Earlier this year in Stop Wasting Food, we had honor and pleasure to prepare a lunch with focusing on food waste at the Princess’ own home together with the Princess, the Princess’ children, and ten school children.”
Featured image: Princess Marie (Screenshot DR1/ Fair Use)
NordenBladet – On Tuesday, His Royal Highness Crown Prince Haakon of Norway attended the funeral of one of Norway’s greatest war heroes from the Second World War, Joachim Rønneberg. The funeral was held in clear, sunny weather in Aalesund in the western part of Norway where Rønneberg came from. Joachim was 99-years-old and died of old age at his local retirement home on 21 October. He leaves behind a nation’s gratitude, several children and grandchildren. His wife died in 2015.
His Royal Highness attended the funeral in his Navy uniform and was greeted on arrival by the priest who performed the funeral. Following a quick introduction to the Rønneberg family, the funeral began in the full church with the song “You Raise Me Up”.
Norway’s current Defence Chief, Håkon Bruun-Hanssen said: “He was a patriot, a true officer and a friend of the Norwegian defence”.
Minister of Finance, Siv Jensen also spoke in the funeral. She said: “When we say goodbye to Joachim Rønneberg today, we also take goodbye to a person completely out of the ordinary. Even though he would not be called a hero, it was exactly what he was; a hero who put others in front of himself all his life”.
Joachim Rønneberg, photo taken in earlier this year. Photo: Handout by Norwegian TV NRK on the occasion of the announcing of Rønneberg’s death.
Labour Party leader, Jonas Gahr Støre and Defence Minister, Frank Bakke-Jensen were also among those who praised the deceased resistance fighter.
Joachim Rønneberg (99), who was a member of Kompani Linge from 1941 to 1945, is best known for leading the famous heavy water operation at Vemork in February 1943. Operation Gunnerside resulted in Rønneberg and his soldiers placing explosive charges on the massive water electrolysis chambers of the Vemork plant. A Thompson submachine gun was purposely left behind to indicate that this was the work of British forces and not of the local resistance, to try to avoid reprisals.
The raid was considered successful. The entire inventory of heavy water produced during the German occupation, over 500 kg was destroyed along with equipment critical to the operation of the electrolysis chambers. Although 3,000 German soldiers were dispatched to search the area for the commandos, all of them escaped; five of them skied 400 kilometres to Sweden, two proceeded to Oslo where they assisted Milorg, and four remained in the region for further work with the resistance.
Rønneberg received several Norwegian and foreign awards, including the War Cross with Sword and the royal St. Olav Medal. The funeral was held at the expense of the state, as an honorary gift usually given to leading political leaders, politicians and soldiers.
Featured image: Joachim Rønneberg´s funeral (Press Office of the Norwegian office of war veterans from World War II)
NordenBladet – Crown Prince Haakon has spoken out for the first time since it was announced that his wife, Crown Princess Mette-Marit is suffering from chronic pulmonary fibrosis. The Norwegian Crown Prince said that the couple has received a lot of support from the people and that it will help them in the future.
On Thursday, Crown Prince Haakon stepped out for the first time since the announcement of Crown Princess Mette-Marit’s disease, to visit a school and meet with the police at Søndre Nordstrand, Oslo. The Crown Prince was warmly welcomed with applause as he visited the school and learned more about the local community. Crown Princess Mette-Marit was also scheduled to attend, but her presence was cancelled the day before right after the announcement.
The day before, the Norwegian Royal Court announced that Crown Princess Mette-Marit had been diagnosed with chronic pulmonary fibrosis, “a lung disease that occurs when lung tissue becomes damaged and scarred. This thickened, stiff tissue makes it more difficult for your lungs to work properly. As pulmonary fibrosis worsens, you become progressively more short of breath,” according to the Mayo Clinic. This disease will eventually limit the life of the Crown Princess. The illness has, however, been discovered in its early stages, and therefore, the Royal Court is “optimistic” about the prognosis.
During the visit on Thursday, Crown Prince Haakon made some remarks on his wife’s disease as he met up with the press after his visit. His Royal Highness said: “I find that there is a lot of support out there. It is very nice and good to take with us on the way forward. We have known about this for quite some time, so this is a situation that continues, as we have lived with it for some years already, but now we finally know a little more about the cause.
“I think it was right to tell about this at the current time, as the Crown Princess’ programme needs to be adjusted here and there once in a while, but I think we can manage.”
In the evening, the Crown Princess did join the others of the Norwegian Royal Family at a parliamentary dinner at the Royal Palace of Oslo.
NordenBladet – This year marks 200 years since Karl Johan became King of Norway and Sweden. This has been celebrated with significant events in both nations, now separated from each other, each having its own royal house. Although, both King Harald of Norway and King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden descended from King Karl Johan. One of the very last events in celebrating Karl Johan is now taking place in November in Norway.
The Norwegian Royal Family has decided to end the Karl Johan anniversary with four lectures on the life of King Karl Johan. The lectures will be on Tuesdays in November at the Royal Palace in Oslo.
There will be a total of four lectures, and they are:
– Historian and Senior Europe Correspondent for Royal Central, Oskar Aanmoen will, on 6 November, talk about his last book, Karl Johan’s Coronation Journey in 1818.
– Historian Bård Frydelund, on 13 November, is to speak about Karl Johan as a strategist.
– Professor Emeritus Thomas Thiis-Evensen, will on Tuesday 20 November, talk about King Karl Johan and the heritage from Rome.
– Cultural historian Nina Høye, will, on Tuesday, 27 November, discuss the House of Bernadotte’s plans for royal homes in Christiania.
Those who visited the Royal Palace in Oslo this summer saw a brand new exhibition on King Karl Johan in the main rooms of the palace. The original uniform Karl Johan wore during the coronation in 1818 was exhibited together with Karl Johan’s bed as he used during his visits to Oslo during his reign and some of his personal belongings.
King Karl Johan (1763-1818-1844), originally Jean Baptiste Bernadotte, was born in the south of France and became a soldier 17-years-old. In 1810 there was a political and constitutional crisis in Sweden. The Riksdag chose Jean Baptiste Bernadotte to be King Carl XIII’s successor. It happened in Örebro in August 1810.
Karl Johan had to go to war in Norway in 1814 to get Norway to accept the union. After a short military campaign, the convention in Moss was signed, and on 4 November 1814 Carl Johan’s adoptive father, Carl XIII, was elected Norwegian King as King Carl II. Carl II died in 1818, and his adoptive son became King of Norway and Sweden.
On August, His Majesty King Carl XVI Gustaf and Her Majesty Queen Silvia of Sweden attended a seminar at Ørebro Castle in Sweden in connection with the 200th anniversary of King Karl Johan’s ascension to the throne. The workshop “The Coronation year of 1818” was held in the main hall at Ørebro Castle in Sweden. The guests where mainly historians and politicians from the Nordic countries as well as Russia, France and Great Britain.
Royal Central’s Senior Europe Correspondent, Oskar Aanmoen has published his book this autumn about King Karl Johan’s journey in Norway in 1818. He had the honour to hand over a copy of the book to Their Majesties the King and Queen when they left the castle. Aanmoen describes the royals as “very nice and warm people who showed great interest in the book”.
Featured image: King Karl Johan (Photo via Wikimedia Commons)
NordenBladet – It was during the annual solemn parliament dinner, held at the Royal Palace yesterday, that King Harald of Norway spoke about both gender equality and the #MeToo movement.
His Majesty spoke about the historical high gender equality in Norway, and said:
“This year’s dinner is actually historic: Never before have we had women cover the positions of Parliament President, Supreme Court Justice and Prime Minister. Times are changing. For the better, many will rightly claim. I feel that I am in the right place. In addition, when I am surrounded by both the Queen and the Crown Princess, I find myself in the middle of the gold.”
His Majesty also addressed the #MeToo campaign. The King said:
“The year that has passed since we met last time, has, in various ways, been characterised by change. Stories and special women’s revealing stories – not only in Norway but over much of the world – have been told, and we have listened. That some people have the courage to show their most vulnerable experiences, creates room for reflection. I am touched by all of the stories.
“Stories of abuse of power and lack of respect awaken all of us. To go into ourselves. To learn. To be better people.”
It is Their Majesties the King and Queen who, once every year, receive the parliament representatives for a dinner at the Royal Palace. This is a tradition dating back over 100 years. The dinner was established as a permanent tradition by King Haakon in 1906. The dinner has been held every year – except for the years during World War II and when major maintenance work at the palace made it impossible.
The Palace’s own gardeners and flower decorators are responsible for the table decorations. Photo: Kjartan Hauglid, The Royal Court.
During the dinner this year the menu consisted of the following:
Starter: Halibut with roe, artichoke, cucumber and hazelnut milk.
First main course: Crayfish Taco with pickled vegetables and marinated tomatoes.
Second main course: Moose from Sikkilsdalen, served with onion, thyme, rutabaga, grilled pear with a sauce of cranberries
Dessert: Warm apple pie with room and rosins.
Featured image: The large dining room is used during the parliamentary dinner. Photo: Kjartan Hauglid, Det kongelige hoff / The Royal Court
NordenBladet – This week Crown Princess Victoria and Prince Daniel of Sweden were in Solna to attend a Gen Pep Forum at Karolinska Institutet. Organised by Generation Pep, the seminar and workshop brought together more than 800 representatives from politics, industry associations, research bodies and internship schemes to discuss and commit to changing and improving the health of children and young people.
The Crown Princess opened the event with a keynote speech which highlighted the importance of the UN’s Global Goals, for which she is an ambassador. She said:
“The point of the UN’s global goal is that they are just global; that they are about us all. And in order to achieve the goals by 2030, in order to achieve sustainable development, we must all contribute. In big and small [ways].
“And now I’m coming back to that Swedish schoolyard: It can be empty because the kids are indoors watching funny clips. Or, it may be full of children in motion, because the school organizes fun weekend activities. That choice, and that responsibility, are not the children’s. It’s ours. ”
Topics covered during the course of the full-day event included the general health picture in Sweden, the Scapes survey, the commitment to giving all children the opportunity to participate in sport, and factors that motivate positive change.
Prince Daniel provides closing remarks, summing up the findings of the forum and highlighting the importance of a coordinated commitment from people, businesses and organisations from all walks of life in society.
Generation Pep was launched by Prince Daniel – together with Swedish companies, foundations and non-profit organisations – in July 2016 with a vision of giving all children and adolescents in Sweden the opportunity (and inspiring a willingness) to live an active and healthy life. Generation Pep works to spread knowledge, inspiring and supporting children and young people as well as parents and other adults to institute positive change.
Featured image: Swedish Crown Princess couple attend Gen Pep Forum (Raphael Stecksén, The Royal Court, Sweden)
NordenBladet – Already this Saturday I will commence a major road trip to Finland with my children, planning to round practically all of Finland. I have arranged many meetings, also there are Estella Elisheva’s several photoshoots in the schedule for her Instagram account (@Estella.Elisheva), her homepage (EstellaElisheva.com) as well as for OHMYGOSSIP teen platform (see the website HERE, the Instagram account HERE).
The travel program will include various SPA visits, plenty of restaurants and hotels, meetings with friends and business partners, visits to offices, supervision of estate (there is a tiny plan to buy land and estate in Northern Finland), and on top of that a loooot of driving.
Now that the first Elisheva & Shoshana care cosmetics series products have been launched for the market, I am hoping already during this journey to discuss various cooperation opportunities. The product wrappings (stamping, print, final touch for the boxes) were ordered from Tallinn from the printing company Joon.eu and they should be arriving any day now. Then I need to complete the wrapping of the handmade soaps into the boxes, to be taken with me along to the journey. While E&S products are all premium class and targeted for a consumer that will seek classical style and high quality, then I would first and foremost consider apothecaries as the resellers. We have enormously emphasized the choice of ingredient compounds and we see the products as belonging to the series of apothecary cosmetics. Our products would be described by key words such as honesty, efficiency, and quality. We have also indicated possible allergenes on the product cover, which in some cases would be 0.0001% probability of being contained in it. Most of our products already on the market and those to be launched any minute have been created for people with gentle and sensitive skin. Our slogan is: “So Gentle, So Pure!”. Keeping this in mind, we create and compile all our recipes. The key ingredients are natural and have been grown, collected and dried by us in most part.
So there is a lot to be packed for the journey. Two weeks clothing for three people, bags, footwear, also samples of the products (several boxes/baskets), school books (assignments are to be completed despite being away from school), the violin, training kits and SPA garments, hiking equipment, skiing supply, Ivanka’s toys, laptops, small vehicle TV screens, etc… the list is so long. Besides I will be taking a big box full of food and beverages for picnics. And then for myself Saku GO non-alco light beer – this is among my favourites lately! One enormous suitcase is already full and I even haven’t properly started packing yet. I have decided to travel with the smaller car (it consumes less petrol, considering the long distances that we will cover), yet the downside is that there is less space in it.
As of today, our journey trajectory would be the following: 20 October – we will stay in Tampere overnight, in Original Sokos Hotel Ilves, 21 October in Vöyri near Vaasa (I have rented an entire house there from the Finnish Swedes), 22 October in Oulu Bereak Sokos Hotel Eden, 23-24 October in Sirkka Levi Hotel SPA, 25-27 October we are in Rovaniemi (haven’t decided yet, whether I will rent an entire house or we will be staying in the hotel… I’ll decide when we get there), 27 October I am planning to stay overnight in Kajaani or Iisalmi in a quality hotel (again, I’ll decide when we get there, whether I bother to drive that long), 28-29 October we’ll stay in Kuopio ovenight, in Original Sokos Hotel Puijonsarvi, 30 October is still an open end, however I believe that we’ll be in Jyväskylä, 31 October will be a day spent in Helsinki and we’ll be heading back to Tallinn on Viking Line. Those of you who will be travelling in the same places at the same time and wish to discuss our cooperation, make sure to contact me – write to me on FB or drop me an email to info@nordenbladet.com! Lots of sunshine! Hugs!
NordenBladet – Last ten years I have thought that my life is a non-stop spurt – I have been working in media (have managed the web pages of NordenBladet and OHMYGOSSIP, that are operating in 17 different countries), at the same time being active at all levels – I have written and translated news, interviewed a lot of people, visited and reflected on various trade fairs and events, organised galleries, retouched photos, designed banners, sold advertising spaces, written promotional articles, enlisted cooperation and found cooperative partners, advertised all the trademarks belonging to the brand, built, designed, developed webshops and web pages, represented all the trademarks in international trade fairs, given interviews and held conferences, given lectures, developed the social media of various brands, designed and planned a clothing and accessories brand, signed some contracts with shops and department store chains… this list is very very long!
In short, I have had 15-17-hour-long workdays, working in two computers at the same time and at a pace in and such hard to exceed. And doing all this in a way that my kids are my first priority. My timetable is set in strict compliance with my daughters’ lesson plans and trainings – however, there are quite many of these recreational activities – I spend about 2-3 hours in my car every day, either as being a driver or just waiting for one hobby activity to finish in order to take my daughter(s) to the other one. The alternative would definitely be to take a driver or sign a contract with a taxi driver, but I like to drive a car – I think and plan my activities, invent new ideas, give my brain and eyes a different work. Moreover, I want to be with my children when they come from their activities and have the most powerful emotions – when they want to talk about what or how they did. I love my daughters very much, and I want them to know and feel that I am always there for them. I wish that besides the knowledge they actually felt that they are the most important ones in my life.
As you can imagine, this kind of motherliness affects children greatly. My older daughter Estella Elisheva is talented on all fronts, in everything she undertakes. She studies in Russian-speaking school (Tallinn Jewish School), thus she clearly speaks both Estonian and Russian, she already speaks English at a normal level too (it means that she can express herself well and say what she needs to say, though she could expand her vocabulary) and she also works on her Hebrew (she has studied it for 5 years). Estella has 3-7 trainings a week, depending on a week, she goes to music school, where in addition to the violin she started to take piano lessons, she plays in a band and in an orchestra. She wakes up at 6.16, and she is at school until 3 p.m., she finishes with her trainings and music school at 8 p.m., after which she studies and practises until 10 o’clock. Ivanka Shoshana, who is autistic, and was really as 5 kids in her childhood, has made great success by now. I have actively taken her to concerts, events, recreational activities – involved her in everyday life, taken care of and loved her – and it all has borne fruit! In other words, the non-stop spurt in dealing with kids and professionally.
I sometimes feel as a super-mum and super-woman, because I really do and manage to do a lot – a large part of it thanks to my careful planning. I take my time to think through what and how to do and so lay a firm foundation for all endeavours. At the moment I am also setting on foot the brand named Elisheva & Shoshana – the trademark and company I created for my daughters already years ago, aiming to do something all together, to involve Ivanka Shoshana to the activities as well, to have our own project, something totally “ours”. Previous weeks I have been busy with starting up the care cosmetics brand named E&S. It is highly encouraging that people have a strong interest in this project. I have been contacted by Amazon England and likewise by dozens off boutiques all over Scandinavia. Currently, I feel like I am simultaneously thinking about several things – honestly, I do not know how it is possible. The first sales packages will be printed this week and on Saturday, when I am going to start a big trip around Finland with my daughters (read about it HERE and HERE), I can indeed already take along the first boxes of E&S products. So awesome! Everything happens at full speed and goes uphill – it is great to witness the success of several brands. Where is, there is more to come! Like clockwork! Yay.
Featured photo: On the way to unicorn company – from a tiny and simple home office (maybe even rather a one-person enterprise operating at the kitchen table) which during the years has grown into a considerable media monopoly and an internationally operating company that brings dozens of different brands together under one roof. My aim is to expand this privately owned company into a company worth a billion dollars, that is to say into a Unicorn company – as this start-up is named after a venture capitalist Aileen Lee.
NordenBladet – It would cost passengers just the price of a glass of wine a day if cruise ships would stop burning highly polluting heavy fuel oil (HFO) in the fragile Arctic environment. That’s according to a new report (attached)from green transport group Transport & Environment which analysed the impact on the cruise ship MS Rotterdam had it switched to marine gas oil (MGO) [1] during three summer trips to the Arctic in 2018.
Banning the use of HFO in the Arctic last summer would have increased ticket prices on the MS Rotterdam by on average 6%, based on 2018 fuel prices and assuming the additional fuel costs incurred were passed on to passengers. This equates to an additional €7 a day on ticket prices – or no more than the price of a glass of wine onboard the MS Rotterdam, which is owned by Holland America Line.
Lucy Gilliam, shipping officer at T&E, said: “Arctic cruise tourism is booming, increasing the risks of oil spills and creating more pollution. The costs per passenger of a switch to cleaner fuel are tiny. It’s more than worth it to reduce the risks to the unique environment that passengers are paying to see.”
T&E said the analysis shows the Arctic HFO ban can be implemented immediately with an insignificant impact on the cruise industry. Such trivial increases in ticket prices for this luxury business should be acceptable for cruise passengers who, in growing numbers – up by 20% in the Norwegian port of Svalbard in 2017 – are paying to see the pristine Arctic environment.
Lucy Gilliam concluded: “Cruise companies claim that an HFO ban would be a death sentence to their industry yet the figures show that the costs passed on to passengers are trivial. Cruises to the Arctic are, by any measure, a luxury yet tickets are VAT exempt.”
Last April the IMO agreed to move forward on developing a ban on HFO from Arctic waters on the basis of an impact assessment. Currently the IMO is inviting submissions on how to assess the impact of the HFO ban on communities and operators in the Arctic. It will be discussed during the next marine environment protection committee meeting (MEPC 73) in London in October.
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[1] HFO is made from the dregs of the oil refining process and is the dirtiest of all fuel types. In the event of a spill, is virtually impossible to clean up. It also produces higher levels of air and climate pollutants than other marine fuels
[2] MS Rotterdam is equipped with scrubbers. Therefore, it is assumed that the ship will continue using high sulphur HFO with scrubbers in order to comply with the 2020 global sulphur cap, as opposed to switching to 0.5% sulphur blended fuels.
