While The Queen’s Reading Room Festival at Hampton Court Palace wrapped up on Sunday, Crown Princess Mette-Marit of Norway has also been celebrating literature this week with the launch of her literary train for 2024.
An annual event, the Norwegian Crown Princess boarded her literary train again on 11 June to visit several communities and to highlight the importance of reading. Norwegian State Railways and the Oslo Public Library both work with Crown Princess Mette-Marit to share her love of reading.
The train has a different path and schedule each year, and it features a cafe, a passenger carriage, and of course a library carriage. The library features not only books from the Oslo Public Library but also books from Crown Princess Mette-Marit’s own library.
Authors and publishers join Crown-Princess Mette-Marit to speak about different topics and themes in literature and to highlight the community that reading and literature can help build.
Over 11 and 12 June, the train visited Elverum, Alvdal and Røros. The Crown Princess disembarked from the train in each municipality to meet with different community members and organisations and discuss the importance of reading.
In a speech at Elverum Cultural House, the Crown Princess explained that literature
is worth celebrating every single day. It opens the door to new perspectives, it gives us room to get to know ourselves and each other better, and it has now also been proven to lower blood pressure and increase the ability to concentrate.
The Crown Princess has made supporting literature one of her main causes and focuses much of her energy on it. In addition to hosting the literary train each year, she also serves as Ambassador for Norwegian Literature.
