Mary and Henrik arrive for King Carl Gustaf's 60th birthday state lunch

30 April 2006. Continuing with the birthday celebrations, today, Crown Princess Mary and Prince Consort Henrik of Denmark arrive at the City Hall in Stockholm for a State Lunch in honor of King Carl Gustaf of Sweden on his 60th birthday. Crown Princess Mary and Prince Henrik look as though they are having a good time representing Denmark at the birthday festivities. Unfortunately, we miss seeing Queen Margrethe at these events because she became ill with a bad cold just before they were due to leave for Sweden. This is quite a pity as she is a first cousin to King Carl Gustaf through her mother Queen Ingrid (who was a princess of Sweden). You can read our post about Queen Ingrid here. There are at least several royal babies in Stockholm which we know of, Prince Christian and Prince Sverre Magnus, so hopefully they are getting to know each other behind the scenes.

Already today the birthday guests have been to a Te Deum service at the Royal Chapel at 10.30am, witnessed a changing of the guard at 11.30am, attended an orchestral and choral musical celebration before going to the State Lunch in honour of King Carl Gustaf's 60th in the City Hall. This evening there will be a concert followed by a gala dinner in the Drottningholm Palace.

Mary and Henrik attend King Carl Gustaf's birthday celebrations

29 April 2006. Crown Princess Mary and father-in-law Prince Consort Henrik of Denmark arrive for King Carl Gustaf's private dinner birthday celebration at the Drottningholm Palace outside Stockholm, Sweden. Three hundred guests were invited to the party for the king's 60th birthday.



guestlist (confirms Christian will be with Mary)
Swedish Royal Court (offical site in English)
The Swedish Royal Family (official site in English-- links to members of the family)
CG's birthday program

Frederik at Rolex Farr 40 sailing competition in Capri

28 April 2006. Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark and his crew sailing the NANOQ yacht during the second edition of the Rolex Capri Sailing Week, a week of one-design racing in the Bay of Naples, off Capri, southern Italy. The regatta will run from 27 April to 1st May 2006.



Rolex Capri Sailing Week
Yacht Club Costa Smeralda

Crown Princess Mary launches Heart Week 2006

Today Crown Princess Mary has launched Heart Week, an intitiative of the Danish Heart Association, which is one of Mary's patronages (and in Danish Hjerteforeningen). Mary will also launch the Heart Association's drive advocating initiatives for a healthy heart as part of their Heart Week 2006 program. The launch was in Copenhagen.



TV 2 Click on Se også for TV 2's photo gallery

ADDED! Here is a video clip of Mary opening the Heart Association Heart Drive from the Association's website: Kronprinsesse Mary åbner hjerteugen. The video clip is 5 mins 18 secs long. The clip begins with Mary's arrival, short speeches by the president of Codan and the vice president of the Danish Heart Association and then Mary speaks followed by the ribbon cutting and inspection of one of the mobile vans which will be used in the association's 2006 Heart Health drive. (Thanks Lasse!)

Press release and on Heart Association site (in Danish from the Heart Association)
Crown Princess Mary's speech (in Danish)

On another note: Hello! magazine 'Princess Mary shows off her flexible fashion sense'

ADDED - Speech given by HRH Crown Princess Mary Elizabeth of Denmark at the opening of the Heart Week

We must take care of the hearts of the Danes.

Each of us must. And we must do so together. Both in helping each other to prevent heart disease, and in helping those who have already fallen ill.
This year’s Heart Week reminds us that heart diseases are sadly still the most common cause of death in Denmark. Every third Dane is struck and killed by a cardiovascular disease. This is a grave and painful message.

Today, we mark the opening of this year’s Heart Week with a present for all of those willing to help. Both to those who wants to help themselves and to those who want to help others.

The 'heart cars' are a new health initiative, meant to make it easier to remember the health of the heart in everyday life.

As of today, the 'heart cars' will drive around the country and meet people where they go about and meet. This might be at the market or at the stadium and not least, at places of work.
The 'heart cars' will visit Danish cities and Danish work places with the help to prevent cardiac disorders in everyday life. In this way, the cars are a gift to all Danes.

The gift comes from the Danish Heart Association and from Codan Care who has made the initiative possible though their sponsorship. Other companies also support the good idea.

The cause of fighting heart disease depends on far-seeing companies seeing it as their task to take responsibility for the public health by giving support to both the prevention and treatment of cardiovascular diseases.

In the 'heart cars', we have all received an important tool for promoting cardiac health every day. It is my hope that enterprises and employees around the country will welcome the cars, and avail themselves of the fine offer that they are.

I am happy to be able to declare this year’s Heart Week open by letting the first 'heart cars' drive out on duty.

Finally, I would like to wish all of those who, together or individually, help fighting cardiovascular diseases a very happy 'Heart Week'.

Thanks to Lasse for the translation!

Mary presents the Crown Princess Mary Scholarship

Today Crown Princess Mary presents the Crown Princess Mary Scholarship 2006 at Copenhagen University. The Crown Princess Mary Scholarship is an exchange student scholarship established for a five-year period (this is the second year of awards) and is to be awarded to students from the University of Copenhagen’s Australian exchange partner institutions in Australia.The scholarship is presented to two Australian students each year and is worth 10,000DKK. This scholarship is a wedding gift to Frederik and Mary from the University of Copenhagen.

This year the scholarships are to be awarded to Danielle Conlan from the University of Tasmania who will study at the Faculty of Law, and, Joseph Kelly from the Queensland University of Technology who will study in the Faculty of Mathematics. Crown Princess Mary will be recieved by the head of the University of Copenhagen and then after the presentation of the scholarships the two recipients will be able to talk with Crown Princess Mary.

ABC News Online 'Scholarship winner looks forward to meeting Princess Mary'
University of Copenhagen

Mary and Frederik receiving the wedding gift from the University of Copenhagen in 2004.









Crown Princess Mary's speech (in Danish)
speech in English

Danish royal roundup # 2

TV 2 and B.T. report on the traditional torchlight procession by local Fredensborg residents to welcome Queen Margrethe and Prince Henrik back to Fredensborg Palace for their summer residency (although it didn't look very summery!). You can see a Ritzau video on the B.T. site.



For those of our readers who want to see Princess Alexandra, here she was on 22 April 2006 at an engagement in Copenhagen for the beginning of a weekend seminar with participants in 'Junior Achievement Young Enterprise' at Danish Industry House.




Here's a rundown on the stories in 'Denmark's royal magazine' Billed Bladet this last week.

The last issue of Billed Bladet has a story 'When Mary sat as a model' about her sitting for Jiawei Shen at the Shangri-La Hotel in Sydney in March last year. It says Jiawei Shen was nervous as he went up to Crown Princess Mary's suite, but that soon disappeared. He worked very fast to produce sketches in the three hours he had with Mary which he then took back to his studio to complete there. A Danish documentary maker is making a program about Jiawei Shen to be shown in 2008.


On the Joachim and Marie front Billed Bladet says they had a private vacation together over Easter. Joachim is said to have left Schackenborg Manor in secret the Wednesday before Easter to keep his date with Marie somewhere in central Europe after both have had some very busy weeks. Billed Bladet repeats earlier reportage of Marie's wish for the relationship to develop and that she had been stunned by her experience with the Danish media.


According to Billed Bladet Princess Alexandra has also had an Easter vacation. Together with her boyfriend Martin Jørgensen and the princes Nikolai and Felix, Princess Alexandra sought out the sun and had to fit the 11 day vacation in with Nikolai's Easter break from school. Also, this is the first time the little princes have not been to Marselisborg Slot with the rest of the Royal Family for Easter and nor did they celebrate their grandmother's birthday with their little cousin Prince Christian. It is agreed between Alexandra and Joachim that they take turns with the boys for holidays and in his gentlemanly way he has no objection to them spending time with Martin Jørgensen. (Note there is no real information about where Alexandra went and this is probably an old photo.)

Billed Bladet also reports on Queen Margrethe's birthday celebration with Christian at Marselisborg, where she was able to give him his first lessons in being royal. Christian behaved perfectly as he was passed between his grandmother the Queen and his parents.

In other snippets:

Princess Benedikte leaves for Kuala Lumpur tomorrow in the hope of winning the presidency of the International Equestrian Federation.

And,a little something to look forward to this coming weekend. The Swedish Royal Court is putting on its party tiaras (well, the ladies will) for the 60th birthday of King Carl Gustaf.

Prince Joachim will stay in Denmark as regent and Frederik will be on his quest in Nanoq in a Farr 40 regatta (he does need to be a worthy representative of Denmark for next year's Farr 40 World Championship he helped win for Copenhagen). Going off to Stockholm for the party will be Queen Margrethe, Prince Henrik and Crown Princess Mary, and, probably Christian will go along too (as he always seems to go where his Mummy is!)