She’s standing on scaffolding in a dark green work suit, a protective mask over her face and a spray gun in hand, putting the finishing glaze on a towering yellow-orange pot. It isn’t the kind of picture royal courts usually release of a queen. But on Thursday, the Norwegian Royal House shared that image of Queen Sonja, and it may be the most telling portrait yet of how she’s facing life after the death of her beloved husband, King Harald V.
© Det Norske KongehusetThe occasion was the arrival of two new pieces at the Queen Sonja Art Stable, the gallery that bears her name in Oslo. Each pot weighs around 800 pounds, and according to the Royal House, they’re the largest Sonja has ever made.
The queen created both in Denmark, and they’ll now stand permanently in front of the gallery’s entrance. Her inspiration, the palace noted, came from a much smaller pot in Queen Maud’s collection, displayed in the 2025 exhibition “At the King’s Table.”
The setting gives the moment its emotional weight. The Art Stable, housed in the Royal Palace’s restored 19th-century stables, was King Harald’s gift to his wife for her 80th birthday in 2017. According to Norway’s TV 2, the gallery had been closed since the king died on August 28, and it reopens on Friday with the exhibition “Threads in Time: From the National Tapestries to the King’s Tapestry."
Seen that way, Sonja’s monumental pots read as more than decoration. Installed at the door of a place Harald built for her, they feel like a quiet way of keeping his memory close through art, the passion that has guided most of her life.
© Det Norske KongehusetArt has filled a large part of Queen Sonja's public calendar throughout her decades as queen. She has worked in ceramics for years, and in the hardest of times, the studio has been both a passion and refuge. Her return to that world marks the start of a new chapter, one that comes with a different position at court.
In the weeks since Harald’s death, there had been open questions about what role his widow would play under her son, King Haakon VIII. Some of those answers have now arrived, and not all of them are small. Sonja keeps her title of queen, but in Norway she’s no longer officially styled “Her Majesty." The royal court’s website has also moved her out of the Royal House, which now includes only the king, the queen and Crown Princess Ingrid Alexandra.
Queen Sonja now enters the category of the wider royal family, alongside her grandson Prince Sverre Magnus and her daughter, Princess Märtha Louise.
None of it has kept her from the work. The official mourning period ended on October 9, and Sonja has been gradually stepping back into her public schedule, representing the family at Norway’s National Archives earlier this week.
© Det Norske KongehusetWhat comes next for the Queen
Next, her resilience goes international, with a stop in Spain. On October 29, the queen will open “Munch–Picasso” at the Museo Picasso Málaga, putting her love of art center stage once again.
Curated by art historian Paloma Alarcó, the exhibition is the first to bring Edvard Munch and Pablo Picasso into direct dialogue, with more than 100 paintings, drawings and prints exploring the themes the two masters shared: love and desire, illness, death, solitude and existential anxiety.
© Det Norske Kongehuset
