When a king dies in a country of five and a half million people, the plan is not written that day. Norway has had one ready since 1991, when Harald V took the throne after the death of his father Olav V. It is called Operation K, after the Norwegian word konge - king. Harald died on 28 August, aged 89, and the plan was activated immediately.

What followed is a study in how a state turns grief into logistics. Oslo will be partly closed on the day of the funeral, 9 September, and the day before. Football matches are cancelled. Trams in the centre stop running. Stortinget station is closed. Part of the airspace over the city closes at precisely defined hours. Hotels have been requisitioned for state delegations, which means tourists with reservations are being moved elsewhere.

Oslo Cathedral has fewer than a thousand seats. For a funeral attended by the royal houses of Sweden, Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands and Japan, that is a mathematical problem with no elegant solution. Some will be in the church, some will not. The funeral programmes will be translated for guests who do not speak Norwegian - an idea taken from Pope Francis's funeral.

The scale of the operation is measured in aircraft. When Olav was buried in 1991, 70 planes brought world leaders to Oslo, and that was then considered the largest security operation in the country's history. This one is expected to be bigger. The British government helped with the planning - they have fresh experience from the funeral of Elizabeth II.

The new king, Haakon VIII, has declared one month of official mourning for the royal house, until 9 October. All official engagements are cancelled except constitutional duties: cabinet sessions, the opening of the Storting and a few audiences. The royal family and court staff wear dark clothing or uniforms with mourning bands. The royal estates remain closed to visitors.

In all of this, the most interesting figure is the one who says the least. Ingrid Alexandra, 22, is now the heir to the Norwegian throne. On 4 September she and her father will appear in their new roles for the first time - receiving condolences from the Council for Cooperation between Faith Communities, from military representatives, from members of the Sami Parliament and from the government. None of those events will be a spectacle. That is exactly the point.

The Norwegian monarchy is one of the least lavish in Europe, and that modesty is no accident - it is its political strategy. Even now, with the state closing half the capital, the tone stays restrained. Mette-Marit, the new king's wife, was taken to hospital after the proclamation ended; her chronic pulmonary fibrosis has been public knowledge since 2018. Unlike other courts, this is neither hidden nor dramatised.

The Balkans knows both versions - states that bury their leaders with three days of television coverage, and states that cannot organise a single step without improvising. The Norwegian approach is neither. It is a plan written 35 years ago that nobody hoped to use, and when the day came - it worked.