Norway’s crown princess speaks publicly about Jeffrey Epstein ties

Norway’s Crown Princess Mette-Marit has publicly addressed her years-long association with late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, describing herself as “manipulated and deceived.”

She said she “did not know he was a sex offender or an abuser,” despite an email she sent in 2011 mentioning that she had recently Googled him, the Guardian reports.

The revelation comes after the release of the Epstein files by the U.S. Justice Department, which named multiple high-profile Norwegians, including Mette-Marit and a former prime minister. On March 17, Norway’s parliament voted unanimously to establish an independent commission to examine links between the country’s foreign office and Epstein.

Mette-Marit, who appears nearly 1,000 times in the files between 2011 and 2014, acknowledged poor judgment. In one email, she asked whether it was “inappropriate for a mother to suggest two naked women carrying a surfboard for my 15-year-old son’s wallpaper?”

After weeks of pressure, the crown princess and her husband, Crown Prince Haakon, sat down for a 20-minute interview with broadcaster NRK on March 19, the day of her son Marius Borg Høiby’s trial. She has pulmonary fibrosis and may require a lung transplant.

“I am the mother of a young man who has been in a very demanding situation,” she said. “In addition, I have health that requires a lot of rest. And it has developed even more.”

She added: “It is incredibly important for me to take responsibility for not checking [Epstein’s] background more carefully. And to take responsibility for being so manipulated and deceived as I was.”

She also expressed anger over the lack of justice for Epstein’s victims: “At the same time, it’s important for me to say if I’ve done something that has contributed to giving him legitimacy in some way.”

Mette-Marit described Epstein as “a close friend of a good friend of mine” whom she met in 2011 while serving as a UN Aids Programme special envoy. She denied any intimate relationship.

Regarding a 2011 email where she wrote, “Googled you after the previous email. Agreed, it didn’t look good :)”, she said, “I spent a lot of time trying to figure that out myself. I wish I had the rest of that email correspondence… But if I had found information that made me realise that he was an abuser and sex offender, I wouldn’t have written a smiley face.”

The files also revealed that Mette-Marit stayed at Epstein’s Palm Beach home in January 2013.

She explained: “A mutual friend of ours had borrowed the house… It is one of the things I have spent the most time processing after the serious abuses became known in 2019… The fact that I have been there and, not least, have a sense of guilt for the victims. I have spent a lot of time processing this. So it is very difficult for me personally.”

By Sabina Mammadli