The King and
the Christmas
Tree by A N
Wilson is
published by
Manilla Press
at £9.99DECEMBER 2021 • 125escape with the Germans in
hot pursuit—in a suitably
exhilarating way. But he also fills in
the fascinating historical background
to Haakon’s reign, which began
in 1905 when Norway became
independent from Sweden and
established itself as an unusually
committed liberal democracy.
The book does acknowledge that
not all Norwegians approved of
Haakon’s refusal to surrender—among
them the country’s would-be Fuhrer,
Vidkun Quisling. At heart, though, this
is a moving study in heroism, from
both monarch and people.
And as for how that Christmas-tree
tradition began...When Haakon reached his 70th
birthday in August 1942, there
was an outpouring of affection and
admiration, from Norwegians in
Norway, in Britain and all over the
world. The exiled Prime Minister,
Johan Nygaardsvold, broadcast in
Norwegian from the BBC, ‘I believe
we must go back far in time before
we find—if we do—a Norwegian
king who stood so high in the esteem
of the entire Norwegian people as
Haakon VII does today.’
It was a particularly gruesome
year of the war, with the Barbarossa
Campaign causing tens of
thousands of Russian and German
deaths, the battle for North Africa at
its fiercest. In February, Singapore
had surrendered to Japanese forces,‘‘
‘the worst disaster in British
history’, according to Churchill.
On the Burma-Thailand Railway,
British prisoners of war were
compelled to work as slaves of their
Japanese conquerors.
This year of horrors was a very
dark time world-wide, but towards
the end there occurred one of those
seemingly small events which shone
a light in the darkness. A brave
Norwegian resistance fighter, Mons
Urangsvåg, was taking part in a
commando raid on the tiny island
of Hisøy. In the 1890s Dr Christian
Heitmann had come here and
established an arboretum, so it is a
densely forested place, today popular
as a bathing resort. Urangsvåg cut
down a Norwegian pine, intending
it as a gift to his exiled King. It
was taken on board a tanker and
transported to the British Isles.
The King’s decision, taken jointly
with his Government, that a free
Norway still existed, in defiance of
the miserable observable realities at
home, had at the time been regardedREADER’S DIGEST