At 6:35 in the morning on 28 August, in Oslo, Harald V, King of the Norwegians, died. The following day, at exactly 19:00, his son stood before the cameras as Haakon VIII and delivered the first speech of his life in which he could not afford to be only a son. He was 53 years old. Of those 53, he had spent almost all of them waiting for precisely that day.

What he said was not a protocol statement. It was the speech of a man trying to steady his voice. "I will miss his laughter. His warmth towards people, in every situation. My father always managed to make those around him feel at ease," the new king said. Then he described images that have nothing to do with a crown: his father in a sailing boat, in a cap and sunglasses. His father in a hammock in the Amazon, where he finally fulfilled a childhood dream of spending a few days with the Yanomami people.

A monarchy that apologises

There is one sentence in the speech worth more than the whole ceremony. Haakon recalled that his father apologised to the Sami people for the injustices committed against them - on behalf of everyone. An apology from a head of state to a minority, spoken while that head of state was still in office, not in a memoir forty years later. How many such apologies have we heard in the Balkans, and from whom?

Harald also travelled to comfort those hit by a hurricane, dressed in a jacket and rubber boots - not in uniform. And he wept alongside Norwegians after the massacre on Utoya and in the government quarter. That is a monarchy that defined its own job as presence rather than representation.

An inheritance that does not run backwards

Haakon openly admitted he has "a great task ahead of him" and that the family kept repeating to each other that everyone should do things their own way. He succeeded his father Harald, who succeeded Olav, who succeeded Haakon. The same order, a fourth time. He kept the motto unchanged: "All for Norway".

What has changed is the world around the throne. The new king said it himself - the world is once again more uncertain and less predictable than it was for most of his father's reign. Norway grew from the country of an eight-year-old boy stepping onto the quay after the Second World War into a welfare state. Now that state has to work out what it means to be a peaceful country on a restless continent.

An anniversary in the middle of mourning

There is one detail the agency reports rarely catch. On 29 August itself, the day of the speech, it was 58 years since Harald and Sonja's wedding. Haakon did not pass over it: "Happy anniversary, dear mother!" Said before the whole nation, a day after the death of the man she spent those 58 years with.

Queen Sonja is now a queen dowager - a position Norway has not had for centuries. King Haakon VIII will reign with Queen Mette-Marit beside him and with Crown Princess Ingrid Alexandra, who will herself be the first woman to swear the oath to the throne in Norwegian history.

The speech ended with a plea, not a command: with God's help and with the support of the people. When a monarchy has to address people with a plea, it means it knows how little power it actually has - and how much depends on people wanting it to exist.