Crown Princess of Norway Mette-Marit celebrates the 43-th birthday

Norwegians have acquired tradition to celebrate the birthdays of members of royal family at the national level while the significant dates are called as flag-days. Mette-Marit is the spouse of Crown Prince of Norway Haakon who is considered as the heir apparent the Norwegian throne. The first time when Mette-Marit met her future husband happened at one of the rock-festivals at the end of 1990s in Kristiansand city. At that point in time she had already had a child, and this fact afterwards caused a negative reaction of community. Then, Crown Princess applied to mass media asking not to invade her privacy. In 2004, Mette-Marit gave birth to a daughter, Princess Ingrid Alexandra who is the second in the line for the throne after his father. In 2005 Mette-Marit delivered the third baby, Prince Sverre Magnus, the third in the succession to the throne.

Mette-Marit has been dedicating a lot of time to study the problems of human immunodeficiency virus and AIDS. She has been appointed as the special representative of UNAIDS regarded as the United Program of United Nations on the questions of HIV and AIDS. Due to her humanitarian mission, Crown Princess of Norway has been awarded with Olav Vs Centenary Medal, Bulgarian Order of Stara Planina, Estonian Order of the Cross of Terra Mariana of the first class, Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic, Japanese Order of the Precious Crown, Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland, Portuguese Grand Cross of the Order of Infante D. Henrique, Spanish Dame Grand Cross of the Order of Isabella the Catholic, Swedish Commander Grand Cross of the Order of the Polar Star, as well as Lithuanian Grand Cross of the Order of Vytautas the Great.