“For me, this is the gift of literature: that it transports me both outwards and inwards, that it leads me to reach higher and wider, and that it enables me to gain a better understanding of both myself and others.” – Crown Princess Mette-Marit
Norway’s Crown Princess Mette-Marit will be in Frankfurt, Germany later this week for the Frankfurt Book Fair which is taking place from 16 to 20 October 2019. She will be accompanied by her husband, Crown Prince Haakon.
Her Royal Highness, as an ambassador for Norwegian literature in the international arena, will be in Germany from Friday, 11 October to Tuesday, 15 October. She will bring famous Norwegian authors on literature trains with Deutsche Bahn from Berlin via Cologne to Frankfurt, Germany.
On the first day of the German literary venture, Crown Princess Mette-Marit will open a “major exhibition featuring the art of Edvard Munch in Düsseldorf: “Edvard Munch gesehen von Karl Ove Knausgård” (“Edvard Munch – seen by Karl Ove Knausgård”),” according to the Royal Court.
The 12th of October will see the future king and queen consort will visit the book shop Pankebuch in Berlin; the bookstore specialises in books from the Baltic and Nordic nations.
On 13 October, the Royal Court shared that “the Crown Princess will be a guest on the programme “Die Literaturagenten” at the long-established radio and TV station Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg in Berlin. The host, Thomas Böhm, will moderate a discussion of Norwegian literature based on the anthology Hjemlandet og andre fortellinger [The Homeland and other stories], which has been translated into German.”
On Monday, 14 October, the Crown Princess will travel by train from Berlin to Cologne, and the day after, the trip to Frankfurt will continue. As part of the journey, a large group of Norway’s most famous authors will attend a Frankfurt book fair.
Her final day will see the Crown Prince Couple attend the opening of the Frankfurt Book Fair later in the afternoon.
Mette-Marit is a passionate advocate for literature and promotes reading with her literature train (or literature metro for 2019) throughout Norway.
In 2014, the Crown Princess said, “I cannot imagine a life without books. Ever since I was a child, I have been read to and given the opportunity to enter a world of fantasy. The act of reading, the internal images it creates, the emotions it evokes – has made me a better, wiser and more thoughtful person.”
You can read more about the Norwegian Crown Princess’s advocacy for literature here.
The full programme for Mette-Marit’s trip can be viewed, in English, here.
