Royalty in the News

The Swedish Royals are overseeing the 200 year celebration of Finland’s secession from Sweden. King Carl XVI Gustaf and Finnish President Tarja Halonen held a gala in Stockholm on Thursday to formally mark the occasion.

The King escorted Halonen to the event, while his wife, Queen Silvia behind them with Finland’s speaker of parliament Sauli Niinisto. Crown Princess Victoria was in attendance, wearing a gown she wore at a Nobel Prize dinner some years before. Her younger sister, Princess Madeleine was also there. Brother Prince Carl Philip was not.

Also in attendance was Sweden’s Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt and his Finnish counterpart Matti Vanhanen. Business and cultural representatives of both countries were at the gala too.

“We usually do not celebrate divorces, but today we do,” said Sauli Niinisto during the gala.

It was in the defeat of the war in 1809 that Finland was lost by Sweden and instead became a Russian Grand Duchy. The defeat also was the opening for a Swedish coup d’etat when the military displaced the King Gustav IV Adolf. A new royal house and system of government was installed.

A major turning point for Swedish history indeed, but one guest at the gala noted it does go unnoticed.

“In Finland, a country with a more dramatic history than Sweden, the memory is more alive. In Sweden, the large oblivion prevails”, Horace Engdahl, Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy, remarked in his oration.

“1809 is an important date in our history, but for most people the year do not ring any bells,” he said according to news agency TT.

For Sweden, the September 1809 peace treaty with Russia meant the loss of a third of its territory and a fourth of the population – a traumatic event.

For Finland, the events of 1809 are more easily remembered since Finland became an autonomous Grand Duchy within the Russian Empire, and was to declare independence in 1917, he said.