NORWAY: H7

In occupied Norway the symbol for defiance of Hitler’s Nazis was not Winston Churchill’s stubby-fingered V for victory, but an H crossed by the figure 7. Painted on walls, tramped out in the snow, scratched on the sides of Nazi troop trains, chalked on Gestapo command cars, perpetually erased, perpetually reappearing, the omnipresent H7 was a perennial reminder to the people of Norway and to their occupiers that the true sovereign of their indomitable spirit was their exiled King Haakon VII.

The first King to rule Norway as an independent monarch since the 14th century, Haakon (rhymes roughly with token) began life as Prince Carl, second son of the ruling house of Denmark, with little hope and even less desire of becoming a ruler. His elder brother Christian was destined to succeed his father on the Danish throne. In a desperate motherly effort to secure a like position for Carl, Denmark’s Queen Louise did her best to promote a marriage between him and The Netherlands’ young Queen Wilhelmina. Carl would have none of it. Smitten with Britain’s Princess Maud, and dedicated, like her brother—the future George V—to the sea, the strapping, 6-ft.-3¢-in. youngster married his love and embarked on a promising career in the Danish navy, achieving on his own merits the right to command any vessel in the fleet.

King by Election. In 1905, after centuries of subjugation to one or another of its neighbors, Norway effected a peaceful divorce from its current master, Sweden. Seeking a constitutional king in the relatively neutral ground of Denmark, the Norwegian Parliament offered the crown to the second son of the prolific royal House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg (whose members today include King Paul of Greece, Prince Philip of Great Britain and the Duchess of Kent). The young “sailor Prince,” as he was called, agreed only if the people of Norway confirmed his choice in a national plebiscite. This they did, and on Nov. 27, 1905 Carl of Denmark ascended the throne of Norway as Haakon VII (after a 14th century Norwegian King). A tactful, well-loved, conscientious and friendly monarch, he was not too proud to be seen by his subjects riding the trolley cars or pedaling the streets of Oslo as one of them.

To the Hills. In 1940, with the German might pouring over his beaches, King Haakon refused to appoint the traitor Quisling to the Norwegian premiership. He fled Oslo to the forbidding North, and, relentlessly pursued by the Nazis, twice narrowly escaped death. His forces held out for longer than those in any other Nazi-invaded country, and during the 62 days of resistance more Nazi soldiers were killed than there were men in the entire Norwegian army. Aboard a British cruiser, Haakon escaped at last to England, where his voice, broadcast by the BBC, carried on a clarion call for resistance to those he left behind. Thousands turned out in a driving rain to greet him when he returned home in 1945, and the re-enthroned King, sensing his people’s wishes, began his new reign by rejecting all pleas for clemency for the traitor Quisling, who was tried and promptly executed.

Last week, long ill from complications resulting from a leg accident he suffered two years ago, just before his golden anniversary, King Haakon VII, devoted ruler of his adopted country for 52 years, died at 85. His successor: Crown Prince Olav, 54, his only son, who became commander of Free Norwegian forces in Britain during World War II.