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The House of Bernadotte came together Thursday for the annual opening of the Swedish Parliament, the Riksdagen.
 View more photos here at Svensk Damtidning In the morning, the royal family took part in a church service before the actual opening of the Riksdagen. Everyone was there, from Their Majesties to all three of their children: Crown Princess Victoria with her noticeably growing baby bump, Prince Carl Philip who was taking a day away from his agricultural studies, and Princess Madeleine, who had flown in from New York. Even Prince Daniel was there, on the very day he marked his 38th birthday.
But duties comes first for royalty. After the service, the royals sat through the first day of Sweden’s Parliament session for the political year.
The reason why the royals wear black during the opening of Riksdagen is because that color was the hue for the ladies of the court starting in the late 18th century during the reign of King Gustaf III. It is to upkeep the tradition these days for the royal women.
 See more pics at Svensk Damtidning But black is an option later in the day when an opera is performed and the royals attend. Crown Princess Victoria wore a silvery knee length dress that hid her pregnancy. But her sister, Princess Madeleine wowed many fashion followers by wearing a rather sexy gown – and yes, the color was black.
Source: Svensk Damtidning, Wikipedia
Up in Stockholm Tuesday, members of the House of Bernadotte attended what is considered to be the Nobel Prize of music: the Polar Music Prize.
 Click here to see more photos. King Carl XVI Gustaf, Queen Silvia, a radiant Crown Princess Victoria and Prince Daniel all turned up for the ceremony, in which American rock legend Patti Smith and the U.S. classical group Kronos Quartet were all being honored.
His Majesty personally gave the awards to the honorees. Patti Smith said she felt “humbled and inspired” to win the prize. But in her acceptance speech, she also told the audience to focus on the famine in East Africa.
Both Smith and the Kronos Quartet took home a prize money worth one million kroner.
After the awards were given out, both acts entertained the audience with their performances.
The Polar Music Prize began in 1989 by Stig Anderson, the manager of Swedish pop group ABBA. Former honorees include Paul McCartney, Bob Dylan and opera singer Renee Fleming. Each year, a classical act and a more mainstream act is honored.
Click here to see the arrival of Victoria and Daniel.
Source: BBC News
On Monday, the whole royal family of Sweden gathered to mark the country’s National Day. June 6th is the day Sweden adopted a constitution, and although the vast majority of Swedes do not celebrate National Day is any sort, the House of Bernadotte was all smiles for those that do mark the day.
 Click here to see more photos of National Day At 10am, Crown Princess Victoria and Prince Daniel ceremoniously opened the royal palace at the South Gate, Slottsbacken. That is when the public can get a tour of the palace.
Later at around 11am, King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia visited the town of Eslöv.
At 2pm, Victoria and Daniel handed out prizes at a citizenship ceremony at Stockholm City Hall.
At close to 6pm, the entire family – including Princess Madeleine who had just flown in from the United States – got into carriages and rode through Stockholm towards Skansen for more celebrations. The royal women dressed in traditional Swedish attire while the men wore their suits and ties.
In Skansen, a star-studded entertainment at Solliden stage included performances by Charlotte Perrelli, Magnus Carlsson, Erik Hassle, Gunilla Backman and Peter Jöback and group Timoteij and tenor Markus Pettersson. The house band was the Svante Persson orchestra.
In the evening, the royals held the reception at the royal palace.
Sources: Royal News Examiner, The Royal Forums
A new poll says more than half of the Swedish people want King Carl XVI Gustaf to step down in the next ten years as more stories about his extramarital affairs and shady connections continue to circulate.
 Click here for recent photos of the King The poll, conducted by Demoskop and published in the Expressen tabloid, shows 59 percent of the people want the monarch to abdicate in favor of 33 year old Crown Princess Victoria. Only 29 percent want the King to reign till his death.
At the same time, the poll says while 73 percent have strong confidence in Victoria, only 39 percent was said about her father.
The survey was done after the television station TV4 claimed to have photos of the King at a strip club. It is reported that some of his friends tried to contact a mafia boss to negotiate with the club owner to prevent the photos becoming public.
While TV4 has yet to show the photos, the Swedish royal court is demanding that they do.
“TV4 must show what it is they are talking about. Where’s the substance? For now, as far as I can tell, there is no substance to this,” court information chief Bertil Ternert said, adding the report had put him in the “impossible situation … of being asked to react to something we have not seen.”
“There needs to be some form of justice here. You cannot just attack the royal court and the king without disclosing what the substance is,” he insisted.
The King’s popularity has plummeted since last fall when an unauthorized biography was published. In it, the book went into detail if Carl Gustaf’s womanizing and hard partying.
On April 30th, King Carl Gustaf turned 65, the age of retirement in Sweden. He has said he has no intentions of stepping down for his daughter.
Source: AFP
Their Majesties, the King and Queen of Sweden, began a state visit to Poland Wednesday, at the invitation of President Bronislaw Komorowski. King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia traveled to Warsaw with Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, Minister for Enterprise and Energy Maud Olofsson and Minister Cathy Elmsäter-Sword, plus many members of Sweden’s business sector.
Following a welcoming ceremony, the King and President Komorowski met for talks on such issues as political, economic and cultural relations between the two countries. Poland takes over as EU president starting July 1st, so that topic might have come up.
After the talks came the laying of a wreath in a ceremony at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier. That was followed by lunch with the presidential couple.
Thursday will see the King and Queen take a tour of the Marie Curie Museum. Curie was born in Warsaw, and this year marks her 100th anniversary of receiving the Nobel Prize in chemistry.
King Carl Gustaf will later take part in a conference on sustainable urban design and green energy along with Poland’s environment minister and representatives of Polish and Swedish industry. While that will be going on, Queen Silvia and First Lady Anna Komorowska will visit the Foundation “Nobody’s Children”, which works to support vulnerable children and young people, including through projects for online safety. Protecting children from sexual predators matters a lot to Silvia, and this would be a function she would be interested in.
On Friday, the King and Queen will head to o southwestern Poland and the cities of Wroclaw and Swidnica to see historical landmarks linked between Poland and Sweden. They will also see the construction of a stadium in Wroclaw for next year’s European Football Championship, plus businesses with Swedish links.
After that, Carl and Silvia will return to Stockholm.
Source: regeringen.se
Over the weekend, it was revealed that Sweden’s King Carl XVI Gustaf paid a visit to the Swedish ISAF Force in Afghanistan. Like all other royal visits to the war torn country, the King’s trip was shrouded in secrecy for security purposes.
 Click here to see more photos The reason for this visit was for the Carl Gustaf to open Camp Monitor at Shibirghan Province. During his speech at the inauguration, the King spoke about wanting to come to Afghanistan.
“I have longed to come to Afghanistan and take part of the Swedish contribution. It is impressive to read the work you all do and it is gratifying to see. For me it is interesting to also have the opportunity to take part of your everyday life, as I have understood by all kinds of information and discussions are exposed and very stressful.
“I, like the Swedish people, are behind you, in your important mission and our continuing and great work here in Afghanistan.”
The new Camp provides a helicopter landing site which allows for the rapid evacuation of personnel who need medical care.
Besides opening Camp Monitor, King Carl also visited Mazar e Sharif where 500 Swedish troops are stationed.
According to the royal court, His Majesty arrived in the country on Thursday and left Saturday.
The last time a member of the Swedish royal family went to Afghanistan was in late 2010 when Crown Princess Victoria and then-fiancee Daniel Westling spent a few days with the troops.
Source: Swedish Royal Court, The Local
 Image via Wikipedia
The King of Sweden was in Gothenburg Friday where he met with the 321National Home Guard for an update on their activities.
King Carl XVI Gustaf dressed in fatigues as he was briefed on the Home Guard and witnessed demonstrations on their military and medical exercises.
Formed in May 1940, the Swedish Home Guard originally had volunteers. But over the years, it began to have both men and women, with 120,000 members at its peak in the 1980s.
These days, there are 5,000 members of both genders.
The Home Guard’s motto is “monitor, protect, and support civil society”.
On Tuesday, King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden touched down in Gaborone, Botswana to kick off a three day state visit to the southern African country. The King is going solo for this trip since Queen Silvia is ill with the flu, and doctors felt such a long visit wouldn’t be good for her health.
 Jonas Ekströmer/Scanpix His Majesty was greeted by Botswana’s President Ian Khama at the airport. The two then held private talks over a luncheon.
Afterward, the King and the President, Khama then took the monarch to the Mattias Klum photo exhibition “Nature by Design – Exploring the Pristine Wilderness of Botswana and Sweden” in the Botswana Art Gallery.
King Carl was then shown an SOS Children’s home in Tlokweng on the outskirts of Gaborone.
Tomorrow, the Swedish monarch will visit the SADC headquarters, Princess Marina Hospital, the Red Cross Society and Botswana Baylor Children’s Clinical Centre of Excellence.
He will then attend a business seminar on sustainability and investment opportunities on Thursday before he heads for the tourist resort of Kasane near the Zambian border. King Carl will attend a presentation on sustainable tourism development at the Chobe Game Lodge in Kasane on Friday.
Sweden and Botswana have held close diplomatic ties since the latter country achieved independence in 1966. As Botswana’s economy was developed, its relationship with Sweden has changed from donor/recipient to that of partnership.
Source: Royal Court, Africa Review
This evening at the royal palace, members of the Swedish royal family hosted a gala dinner for the 150 members of the Diplomatic Corps, parliament, national government, local government plus Swedish science, culture, sports and business life. King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia were there, as well as Crown Princess Victoria and Prince Daniel.
 Svensk Damtidning The guests were greeted by the royals in the White Sea hall. The dinner took place at the Karl XI’s gallery.
The dishes served at the dinner included duck breast with Dijon dressing and fillet of monkfish with shallot crisp. For dessert, there was chocolate twist with cherry panna cotta and chocolate sorbet.
Throughout the night, the King and Queen, Victoria and Daniel sat and chatted with the guests sitting at either side of them. Those guests included El Salvador’s ambassador Mr. Martin Rivera Gómez, Sheikha Najla Al Qassimi who is the ambassador from the UAE, and the Speaker of Parliament’s wife, psychiatrist Ylwa Westerberg.
Source: Swedish Royal Court
 Jessica Gow / Scanpix King Carl XVI Gustaf spent Monday distributing gold medals to the country’s dairy farmers on behalf of the Swedish Dairy Association.
61 of Sweden’s milk farmers were awarded personally by the King. They came from all over the country, with the smallest farm having only 12 cows and the largest having nearly 200.
The oldest recipient was 73 years old while the youngest only 46 years old. Three of the farmers use organic farming.
This is the 23rd year the association has awarded dairy farmers.
Source: Swedish Royal Court
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