2026 will forever be marked in the history of Norway’s Royal Family. Princess Mette-Marit’s lung transplant after her fibrosis, which she has lived with for nearly a decade, worsened, Queen Sonja’s health scare, and Marius Borg’s four-year prison sentence are more than enough to call it an annus horribilis, but that’s not all. Alarms have gone off at the Nordic court over the identity theft targeting Sverre Magnus, whose official presence is growing stronger and whom many already see as the new asset of a monarchy going through a rough patch.
The Norwegian Royal House made its debut on social media in 2019 and has been very active ever since. They share photos from official engagements, images from appearances that aren’t part of their formal schedule, and even material from their private archives.
© NTB/AFP via Getty ImagesSverre Magnus has joined this effort to be closer and more transparent. The third in line to the throne has supposedly opened his own Instagram account… or at least that’s what some scammers want people to believe, as they pose as him with a verified account that has gained more than 13,000 followers in just two weeks.
© Corbis via Getty ImagesTwo posts and Haaland as a key clue
The account has two posts. The first, dated June 19, features photos from his second official solo engagement: a May visit to the largest and best-preserved mining museum in Europe, the iconic Blaafarveværket. The second post is about the World Cup, specifically the match last Sunday in which Norway knocked Brazil out with a 2–1 victory. It was during that game that we saw the first photo of Mette-Marit of Norway after her surgery, as she watched the match closely from home.
© Getty Images/ElsaCuriously, the only person the account follows is Erling Haaland, one of the stars of the match and the player whom Princess Ingrid and Sverre Magnus warmly greeted in the locker room. The fact that the Manchester City forward is the only one on the following list, and not a single institutional or government account from Norway, is a key clue that has raised many red flags
© Getty ImagesThe Royal House speaks out
The Palace has warned that the account is a scam and does not belong to Sverre Magnus, but to someone pretending to be him. “This is a fake account that has appeared in recent days. We have already reported the account to Meta and expect that the fake profile will be removed shortly,” Simen Løvberg Sund, communications adviser to the Norwegian court, told Se og Hør. Sund also explained that there are many accounts that share information about the Royal Family, but that this case is very different because the person is posing as King Harald’s grandson. That makes it a crime.
