In 1999, Mette-Marit was 25, an unmarried single mother without any noble status.
Then she met Norway's then-Crown Prince Haakon at the Quart music festival in Kristiansand, her home city – and everything changed.
Haakon, who became King Haakon VIII of Norway on Friday upon the death of his father, King Harald V, later described the moment in his autobiography.
“I just looked at her. She was like a light,” he wrote.
The pair managed to date in secret for several months prior to their relationship becoming public knowledge.
Later, Mette-Marit resisted the media’s attempts to frame her as a real-life Cinderella, saying: “What has happened between Haakon and I has happened between two normal people.”
The initial press coverage pursued distinctly negative angles, demanding details regarding her lifestyle during her time in Norway's house music scene and questioning the appropriateness of someone with that past joining the royal family.
Haakon and his father King Harald, who had himself married a commoner, stood by her. However, this was merely the first in a line of deeply painful clashes between her private and public life.
"The discomfort from that year is still with me. To feel hunted is an overwhelming feeling," she was quoted as saying in Haakon's book.
"I can promise you, there is nothing romantic about being washed clean of your sins in full public view. It is terrible."
Mette-Marit ‘crossed boundaries’
Norway's new queen was born Mette-Marit Tjessem Hoiby in Kristiansand on 19 August 1973, the daughter of a journalist and a bank clerk. Her parents divorced when she was a child and she lived with her mother and her siblings.
Of her partying years, Mette-Marit told journalists in 2001: “At that time, it was important for me to live against what was accepted. That also led to me living quite a wild life.
“I was in an environment where things were tested and we crossed boundaries.”
She married Haakon that year, and initially struggled to adapt to her position. But “with time she found herself more at home in the role, and became more herself”, Trond Noren Isaksen, a historian and author of several books on the Norwegian monarchy, said.
Her strengths lay in "her great personal warmth" and her ability to connect with people, he added.
Upon her marriage, she became just Mette-Marit, as the royal family does not use surnames.
Between 2000 and 2002, she studied ethics at the University of Oslo. In 2003, she took courses at London's School of Oriental and African Studies, focusing on international development, HIV/AIDS and refugee issues.
She went on to focus on literature, promoting Norwegian authors such as Karl Ove Knausgaard abroad and encouraging children to read.
She settled into the life of a royal spouse: acting as patron to several charities, attending events, raising her children – her first-born, Marius Borg Høiby, and the children she had with Haakon: Ingrid Alexandra, who is next in line for the throne, and Sverre Magnus.
Abroad she campaigned on global health issues, focusing on women's empowerment and reproductive health, and acted as a goodwill ambassador for the UN's programme on HIV/AIDS.
That work brought her into further contact with high society donors and fund-raisers and other international jet-setters, including an introduction to convicted US sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
‘Manipulated’ by Epstein
In January 2026, Mette-Marit was back under the intense glare of the media when private emails between her and Epstein were released by the US Justice Department.
The correspondence continued after his conviction. In one released email from October 2011, Mette-Marit wrote to him that she had googled him and that she agreed “it didn't look too good”, followed by a smiley face.
She later apologised to the royal family, which took its own hit from the scandal. Around 60 per cent of Norwegians said they supported the monarchy in a poll in February 2026, down from 70 per cent the previous month.
A total of 47.6 per cent said that she should not become queen in another poll for broadcaster TV2, while 28.9 per cent said she should, the first time data on that question had been collected.
Seven weeks after the news broke, she told public broadcaster NRK she wished she had never met Epstein. “I was manipulated and deceived,” she said in a tearful interview.
Firstborn son convicted of rape
The Epstein scandal came as Mette-Marit’s oldest son Marius, 29, was standing trial for rape and domestic violence. He denied those charges but admitted to some lesser offences.
In June, he was found guilty of two out of four counts of rape and one count of domestic violence and sentenced to four years in prison. Both he and the prosecution have appealed the sentence.
Mette-Marit made no public statements about the trial, leaving her husband to speak to the media.
On top of everything else, Mette-Marit was dealing with challenging health problems that forced her to reduce her workload.
She suffers from chronic pulmonary fibrosis, a condition that makes it harder for her to breathe and leaves her exhausted.
Two days after Marius was convicted, the palace said Mette-Marit had undergone a successful lung transplant, without specifying when the procedure took place.
After several weeks of recovery in hospital, she returned home and celebrated her silver wedding anniversary with Haakon in August.
