His Majesty King Harald of Norway owns stocks with a value of £18. It is the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet (English: The Daily Magazine) that can report this today. Dagbladet is one the few magazines that has a negative attitude towards the royal house in Norway. They have in the recent years been on a perpetual quest to find out how much the Norwegian Royal Family owns and how much the Norwegian monarchy cost Norway each year.
The Kings stocks were one of the magazine’s great news yesterday because the Norwegian castle’s communications manager, Marianne Hagen said in 2015 that neither the King nor the Queen owns stocks in Norway. Now it appears that both the King and the Queen owns 18 stocks each in an extremely insignificant firm that has a value equivalent to £18. This corresponds to the King owning 0.0008 % of the company. The shares are registered in a company that was started by one of the King’s close friends, and it is probably so that the King and Queen have owned stocks since the firm was created in 1984. Then the King was the Crown Prince.
The castle “Gamlehaugen” in Bergen is one of the residences the King disposes who is owned and operated by the government. Photo. Aqwis via Wikimedia Commons.
Constantly, Dagbladet has behaved intrusive about members of the Royal Family and asked questions about their finances even when the Royal Family is on official missions. They do this despite the fact that the Royal Family, every year, releases a publicly detailed budget on how much money they get, what they have, and for what the money is being used. These reports are confirmed by the Norwegian Ministry of Finance, and they have stated that the Norwegian Royal Family is one of the royal houses in the world which is cheaper to maintain.
Of the royal estates in Norway is the Royal Palace in Oslo, Oscarshall Castle and numerous other properties owned by the Norwegian government and the Royal Family has only a permanent right to use the property as their own. The Norwegian Royal Family owns several private properties as well, and all the private properties are operated by the Royal Family’s own wealth. The Norwegian state does not pay anything for the operation of these properties.
