Photo: Simen Løvberg Sund / The Royal Court

Crown Princess Mette-Marit has carried out an engagement celebrating a school in one of her passions: literature and reading. 

Her Royal Highness visited Lillehammer’s Nordre Ål primary school on Saturday, 27 May. There, she took part in an activity carried out every week during which pupils write down letters to express their feelings. 

This activity is considered key in learning how to put letters and words together to externalise emotions, making it easier to assess students’ mental health. 

The Crown Princess was “very impressed” by the pupils’ “nice letters,” according to a Royal House. 

During the activity, students were also invited to bring “cuddly toys” to the session, many of which were introduced to the Crown Princess. 

After visiting the school, Her Royal Highness moved to Kulturhuset Banken in Lillehammer’s city centre. The facility is currently hosting many of the events for the Norwegian Literature Festival. 

The Crown Princess was greeted at the entrance door by the Manager of the Festival, Marit Borkenhagen, who then escorted her inside, where she sat down to listen to a roundtable discussion. 

Titled “The road to authorship,” the conversation between Argentinian-American Hernan Diaz and Dane Solvej Balle was moderated by journalist Karin Haugen and was centred around the job of being an author. 

Nordre Ål School was among the best in the country in a national survey on reading skills. This is thanks to their programmes specifically focusing on teaching not only reading (and therefore writing) but also developing side skills that help in this process. 

Furthermore, the school dedicates a portion of the school hours to reading aloud, which in turn is supposed to encourage students to develop good reading habits outside of their school day. 

The final pillar of the school’s programme is centred around early identification of potential difficulties in reading and/or learning, with teachers being trained to adapt their methods to the issues each student presents with. 

Literature and reading are one of the key elements of Crown Princess Mette-Marit’s work ever since entering the Royal Family and has remained one of her focuses even now that the number of her engagements has been significantly reduced, following her diagnosis of pulmonary fibrosis.