Princess Christina is 65 today!

Many years have passed since a young and wild Carl Gustaf chased his youngest sister Christina through the halls of the palace with a stick in hand or a glass of water to drown her in. But even if they are both older, wiser and living completely different lives nowadays – the two of them are still the very best of friends. Ever since the early childhood years when little “Titti” from the depth of her heart welcomed a brother to the world with the words “Oh, finally a prince!”, to the day that her brother became the King of Sweden at tender age of 27 with her by his side, her years as Sweden’s acting first lady in the lack of a Queen, and later as a family mother and working Princess supporting her brother – Christina has always been King Carl XVI Gustaf’s closest sister, his biggest support and someone to ask for advice whenever needed.

Christina Louise Helena was born on 3 August 1943 at Haga Palace in Solna Municipality outside Stockholm as the fourth daughter of Prince Gustaf Adolf and Princess Sibylla. After loosing her father in a plane crash at a very young age in 1947, she grew up together with three older sisters (Margaretha, Birgitta, Désirée) and a younger brother (Carl Gustaf) under the care of a loving nanny and a mother who tried to do her job to the best ability, but never again mentioning their father. Since a very early age it was the arts that draw her attention. In the comfort of the family home a young Princess Christina began to draw, write and do crafts, and during her childhood she took classes in music, ballet, figure skating and ballroom dancing. Today the arts is still her passion and the Princess often attends premieres of ballets and operas, awards prizes or just shows up at a performance for the mere pleasure of watching.

In school, where she no longer had to fight for the spotlight next to her brother who was always the family’s centre of attention, Christina found that she had no problem being that person too and used her stature as princess to “hold court” among her female friends during breaks. But it has always been her sociable way, quick wit and smartness that has made her popular in whatever circles she moves. On 13 May 1963, the academic smartness paid off as Princess Christina became the first Swedish princess to walk out of school with a student’s cap and a high school degree. Next to herself, the happiest person on that day was her grandfather King Gustaf VI Adolf, who walked around with a big smile on his face all day and rejoiced for his grandchild. Off she went into the world, Christina’s first time as a grown up woman was spent in the USA where she studied at Radcliffe College and after that studies in art history followed at Stockholm University.

Between 1972 and 1976, between the death of Princess Sibylla and the entering of a new Queen (Silvia), Princess Christina often acted as Sweden’s first lady. All of her life she has been a working princess, supporting her grandfather and later her brother in their roles as monarchs. Since the marriages of the sisters, Christina has remained the only one of them who takes on official engagements and who has a supporting role to the Royal Family in representing the monarchy. Together with her grandfather King Gustaf VI Adolf, she often spent summers in the Mediterranean helping him with the archaeological excavations that was his greatest passion, and in the autumns as he returned to Sweden she sometimes accompanied him on official engagements connected to their common interests around the arts, archaeology and history.

Princess Christina has throughout the years been active in supporting many different social, humanitarian and artistic causes by taking on active working roles or patronships for many different organisations. Three of her causes stand out from the crowd, roles that have led her to long-lived commitments which have has gained her great respect and a great amount of life experience…

The first cause started in the 1970’s when Countess Estelle Bernadotte af Wisborg, widdow of the world famous diplomat Folke (grandson of King Oscar II) who was assassinated by a Zionist group in 1948, suggested to Christina that she should contact the Swedish Red Cross to see if they needed her help. That became the start of long passionate commitment for their cause as Christina started to work for them and eventually became the working Chairman between 1993-2001 and later served as a member of the Standing Commission of the Red Cross and Red Crescent in Geneva between 1995-2003.

The second cause is a passion, Sophiahemmet in Stockholm, which with its three branches the Queen Sophia Hospital, the non-profit Sophiahemmet Association and the Sophiahemmet University College, is one of Sweden’s most distinguished private medical institutions. Christina has been Honorary Chairman of the Sophiahemmet Association since 1973 and in 1999 she opened the Christina Clinic, consisting of the mammography and breast surgeries and the department for medical treatment, at the hospital’s facilities. The third cause is The Salvation Army which Christina has been working with for twenty-five years as the Chairman of their Council and Jubilee Committee until now that she has just stepped down.

Princess Christina has received numerous national and international prizes, medals and honorary doctorates for her work.

Christina fell in love with her husband already in her late teens, they first met at a luncheon at the Skansen Open Air Museum, they later started socializing and became a couple. He, Tord Magnuson, is the son of a well-off managing director and grew up at a mansion, and today works at the representative of Air Mauritius in Sweden and is the island’s appointed Consul-General in Sweden. Many years ago Christina outed that she was the one who popped the question, the engagement was declared and on 15 June 1974 the second last of the Haga-children walked up the aisle as they married in the Royal Chapel.

Today with three grown up boys flown out of the home – Victor, Oscar and Gustaf – she and her husband moved from the idyllic Villa Beylon on the Ulrikdal Palace Estate to an apartment in a building opposite the Royal Palace of Stockholm two years ago. The proud mother is happy that all of her sons have found their own places in life with jobs and apartments of their own:
- I have tried to get my boys to devote themselves to what they are good at and what they find interesting and fun. The greatest thing in life is to be with one’s family and see one’s children grow up, follow how their lives shape and rejoice with them when it goes well and support them when it doesn’t go so well, she says in an interview with Svensk Damtidning.

From day to day Princess Christina lives quite an ordinary life. Turning 65 isn’t more than just that, the Princess has no day job to retire from but continues with her royal representation, even if she has scaled down on the amount of commitments in recent years. Being able to shop for food, cook (preferably spicy and Indian), wash the dishes and their clothes and iron her husband’s shirts is something she sees as a privilege.
- But then once in a while I step into a nice dress and put a tiara on my head, and that is another world, she said to Swedish news agency TT in an interview recently.

Princess Christina opened porcelain exhibition

This past Saturday Princess Christina Mrs Magnuson opened the exhibition Kungligt Porslin (Royal Porcelain) at The Gustavsberg Porcelain Museum in Värmdö municipality, Stockholm County.

The exhibition, a joint project of the museum and The Bernadotte Library at the Royal Palace of Stockholm, aims to put the spotlight on and vitalise the relations between the Royal House and Gustavsberg from the 17th century until today. It shows pieces of porcelain from both Gustavsberg’s own collection and The Royal Collections together with photographs and documents from The Bernadotte Library.

Focus has been laid on a number of Swedish royals: King Karl XV, Princess Eugenie, Prince Eugen, King Oscar II, King Gustaf V and King Gustaf VI Adolf. King Karl XV visited Gustavsberg in 1863 after which he ordered a big official dinner set the Royal Palace which is still in use today, and he spent periods in his life on Värmdö where he gathered many motifs for his landscape paintings. Another very well-known example from Gustavsberg porcelain factory is Prince Eugen’s beloved Waldemarsudde flower pot, found in many homes both in Sweden and abroad and still a top seller. King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia are also represented in the exhibition, mainly in the form of a royal dinner that has been set up with 18th century china designed by Karin Björquist.

Princess Christina in Norrköping today

Today Princess Christina was a guest at the Wilhelm Stenhammar International Music Competition in Norrköping, Östergötland County. This year singing is the category and she started by having lunch together with the jury before listening to the second round of the competition at the concert hall of the Louis de Geer Concert & Congress. This evening she enjoyed dinner at the Elite Grand Hotel before returning back home. One picture can be found here.

Royal cousin gets into furniture design

Oscar Magnuson, son of the King’s youngest sister Princess Christina, will design furniture for the Swedish people it was announced yesterday. It is the nationwide furniture chain EM that has hired Oscar, a successful eyewear designer who runs Oscar Magnuson Spectacles, to develop a design platform which will shape into a brand of its own within the company and in the future function as a framework for guest designers. The company, with furniture stores in all corners of the country, wants to build a clearer profile and extend their commercial expression to attract broader groups with a new lifestyle message. On top of developing the new platform for design, Oscar has also been hired to actually design the two first collections for it and after that the company plans on hiring guest designers regularly to create the brand’s new collections.

Oscar is the second of Princess Christina’s three sons and thus cousin to the King and Queen’s children Crown Princess Victoria, Prince Carl Philip and Princess Madeleine. The two families have always been close, they have celebrated holidays together and the Princess’ family has always received invitations to royal events on special occasions every now and then. After growing up with his parents and two brothers in a villa situated in lush beautiful nature on the royal estate of Ulriksdal just outside Stockholm, with a mother with a clear social pathos and passion for the arts, Oscar has pursued a career as an eyewear designer. After his degree in industrial design and two years at Electrolux, Oscar founded his company about two and a half years ago and has since become a well renowned name in the business.

About what we can expect from his new side-venture in furniture design, Oscar said to Dagens Industri:
- In my home we’ve had lots of shapes, colours and especially art. But also a great mix of new and old. It’s something that I find exciting and which will probably return in my own design of furniture.

Another Swedish Royal Wrap-Up

Another wrap-up of royal news and current affairs.

Young royals join forces for their great-uncle

Crown Princess Victoria and Princess Madeleine will together open an exhibition about Sigvard Bernadotte at Sofiero on 7 June this year. The staff at Sofiero had requested all three royal siblings but Prince Carl Philip cannot come, however both his siblings Victoria and Madeleine have accepted via a letter from Court Marshal Elisabeth Tarras-Wahlberg upon the invitation, sent in August last year. The exhibition runs from 7 June to 28 September.

State Visit to Portugal announced

After recently having hosted the President of Romania, Traian Băsescu, and his wife Maria on a state visit to Sweden in March, and Grand Duke Henri and Grand Duchess Maria Teresa of Luxembourg being on their way later this April – it has just been announced that Their Majesties King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia will pay a state visit to Portugal from 5-7 May. This will be their first outgoing state visit this year, and their second official visit after the one recently held in South Korea.

The Swedish Government will be represented by the Minister for the Environment, Andreas Carlgren, and the Minister for Migration and Asylum Policy, Tobias Billström. As usual a delegation representing the Swedish business life will accompany Their Majesties, led by the Chairman of the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise, Signhild Arnegård Hansen.

The program includes a symposium about renewable energy and environment technology hosted in cooperation with official organs from Sweden and Portugal, a visit to a factory where solar panels are made and another visit to a research project around renewable energy sources.

Where is the Prince?

Although it’s not often we see him out and about officially, representing the Swedish monarchy and his father the King, Prince Carl Philip is keeping himself more than busy in his private life. First and foremost he is rounding up his elite military training which he enrolled in last year, a so called tactical program that will promote him to the rank of captain later this year. On the side of that he has just finished an especially designed course in business economy in Stockholm and in March he spent two days with his racing stable Flash Engineering testing the gears at Hockenheim in Germany for the start in Porsche Carrera Cup Scandinavia 2008.

And this summer, it has been revealed, the Prince will spend two weeks in solitude with only his camera as a companion in the archipelago of Blekinge. Living in a caravan in the midst of undisturbed nature, Carl Philip is hoping to get as close to the animal life as possible, hopefully catching a sight of some rare species, and his task is to document the animal life and vegetation of the archipelago. When he arrives and when he leaves will not be public information, this is a private undertaking that needs to be kept unofficial so that people don’t come to see him and scare off birds and other animals. When his stay is over and work processed, his photographs will be displayed at an exhibition at the news gallery Färglådan in Karlskrona sometime during the autumn.

Meet the royal eyewear star

The Swedish publication Rodeo Magazine recently publish one of their “Go See” video episodes (YouTube style) starring a meeting with Princess Christina’s eyewear designing son Oscar Magnuson. Go here to see their chat with him. At the end of the clip he shows some of his mother’s old eyeglasses (which he has previously mentioned as an inspiration) and even tries some of them on.

State Visit from Romania

In a gloomy and autumn like weather with a considerable chill in the air, His Excellency the President of the Republic of Romania, Traian B?sescu, and his wife Maria landed on Arlanda Airport outside Stockholm earlier today, marking the start of a two-day state visit to Sweden on the invitation of King Carl XVI Gustaf. On the runway to welcome the President and his First Lady was Crown Princess Victoria, standing beside the red carpet with a welcoming delegation that otherwise included Government ministers, diplomats, high dignitaries and the Mistress of the Robes, Countess Alice Trolle-Wachtmeister. Victoria was styling an elegant and timeless two-piece outfit consisting of a black dress and a matching white suit, beautifully matched with a new black hat (Fabienne Delvigne?) and a pretty black bow ribbon around her waist.

After the usual car escort to the Royal Mews, a Royal Cortège took King Carl XVI Gustaf, Queen Silvia and the Presidential Couple to the Royal Palace of Stockholm where the traditional official welcoming ceremony and review of the honorary guard took place. Afterwards the King and Queen hosted a private luncheon for their guests in Princess Sibylla’s apartment, also attended by the Crown Princess and Consul-General Tord Magnuson, in connection to which the gifts were exchanged. The Presidential Couple received a glass bowl, “Florens” by the well-known Swedish glass designer Helena Gibson (who is represented at many major museums) and a lithograph of the Royal Palace in 1860.

The luncheon menu consisted of

* Gravlax
* Fillet of beef with yellow beet syrup, picked mushroom and vegetable tartar
* Sautéed angler with shrimp bundle and shellfish sauce, potato and root vegetable symphony
* Berry mousse Solliden

After the luncheon the afternoon program continued on separate locations for the President and First Lady. While Traian B?sescu met with the Speaker of the Parliament, Per Westerberg, and held talks and hosted a press conference with the Prime Minister, Fredrik Reinfeldt, the First Lady joined the Queen for a visit to the Royal Mews. The Presidential Couple then met with the Romanian community in Sweden during a reception at The Berwaldhallen.

In the evening the King and Queen hosted a gala dinner in the President’s honour at the Royal Palace, they were additionally joined by Crown Princess Victoria, Princess Madeleine and Consul-General Tord Magnuson (all ladies were in recycled dresses). About 160 guests including the President’s entourage, the official Sweden and Swedish business, science, academia and culture as well as representatives of the Diplomatic Corps were invited.

As usual the guests were greeted in the White Sea while the dinner was taken in Karl XI:s Gallery. The King led the Romanian first lady, Maria Basescu, to the table, and had the wife of the Speaker of the Parliament, Ylwa Westerberg, on his other side. The Queen was led to the table by the President and had the Romanian Foreign Minister on her other side. The Crown Princess was lead to the table by the Minister for Small and Medium Enterprises, Trade, Tourism and Liberal Professions, and had the President on her other side. Princess Madeleine was led to the table by the Romanian Foreign Minister, Adrian Cioroianu, and had one of the President’s advisers, Catalin, Avramescu, on her other side.

The menu consisted of

* Blini with whitefish roe and chives
* Smoked salmon, poached cold salmon with youzo dressing and coriander
* Poached sole with truffle risone, fried spinach and onion foam
* Baked outer fillet of reindeer calf with almond butter, green pepper steak sauce and potato tart
* Coconut terrine with green curry crème and spicy mango spoom>

A royal Christmas with the Bernadottes

Christmas is one of the Swedish Royal Family’s favourite holidays and when it finally stands at the doors after a hectic month crowned by the Nobel Day, they celebrate it in a traditional and calm way.

When the King and Queen’s children were still young, a national television audience was invited to Drottningholm Palace to see how the whole family stuffed Christmas sausages and for many years they also posed for Christmas pictures for the press. But now that the children are grown up the royal Christmas has turned into a very private affair, the last time we got Christmas photographs was in 1999 (not counting 2004 which were on the occasion of the Queen’s 60th birthday) when they posed for New Year’s pictures for the new millennium. But since Crown Princess Victoria still resides at Drottningholm and the family makes an effort to gather for Sunday dinners together, we can presume that they still have time for at least some Christmas preparations together.

On 23 December Queen Silvia celebrates her birthday and in the Swedish Royal Family it has been a tradition to come with cake and song for the birthday boy/girl, usually waking her/him up with it in the morning as the Swedish tradition lays down.

Then on Christmas Eve the Royal Family traditionally gathers at Drottningholm Palace together with Princess Christina, her husband Tord and their two sons, and Princess Lilian comes over from Royal Djurgården together with her labrador dog Bingo.

Svensk Damtidning claims to know that the Christmas tree stands decorated with a star at the top in the Stone Hall (which is their living room) in the private quarters of the palace. They also often repeat that it is a traditional Swedish Christmas buffet table that is set up with the usual dishes but also with oysters in accordance with Madeleine’s wishes. Queen Silvia has also brought traditions from her two home countries according to the magazine, one is the Weinachtsstolle (a sweet sort of soft bread which has fruits, raisins and cognac in it, and is powdered on top) and the other is to serve dark black Brazilian coffee with the dessert.

A small part of the bible is read, but there is not much singing as there might otherwise be during a Swedish Christmas. Except for the snaps songs, which the King and Princess Christina’s husband Tord are very fond of, so those are sung very merrily. The strongest tradition of the Swedish Royal Family must be that King Carl Gustaf is Santa for the family every year. It has been said by Svensk Damtidning that the Queen tried to pause this tradition a few years ago as the children are grown up, but that Crown Princess Victoria and Princess Madeleine objected so strongly that the tradition is still kept every year. How the procedure is when Santa comes is not known. But we can only imagine how funny the King may looks in the loose beard and red costume as he steps in to distribute the gifts…

On Christmas Day the royals attend morning service in the Drottningholm Palace chapel. It is under care of a local parish so the local parishioners who come to attend can spot the royals up in the royal box above them. They enter through a private entrance, leading directly from the Mineral Cabinet in the private parts of the Palace, to the royal box. Unlike in other countries we do not usually see much of any pictures of the royals during Christmas, not even from the church service. Instead the Swedish people have to settle with listening to the King’s Christmas speech on radio (and this year for the first time on national television) on the afternoon on Christmas Day.