The Dazzling Tiara Legacy of Sweden’s Princess Ingeborg

Our story today begins in August 1896 in Denmark, where young Princess Ingeborg, the second daughter of Crown Prince Frederik and Crown Princess Lovisa, had just turned 18. Princess Ingeborg’s royal connections were impeccable. Her paternal grandfather, Christian IX, was King of Denmark, and her maternal uncle, Oscar II, was King of Sweden. Her aunts and uncles included the Princess of Wales, the Dowager Empress of Russia, and the King of the Hellenes.

The summer that Ingeborg turned 18, two of her siblings made excellent marriages. Their grandmother, Queen Louise of Denmark, had arranged a match between Ingeborg’s older sister, Princess Louise, and a second cousin, Prince Friedrich of Schaumberg-Lippe. They married in May 1896. And a few weeks later, in July 1896, Ingeborg’s brother, Prince Carl of Denmark, married their cousin, Princess Maud of Wales, who was a granddaughter of Queen Victoria.

Princess Ingeborg was one of the bridesmaids at the wedding, which was held in the private chapel at Buckingham Palace. The British press described Ingeborg as “a fair, rather shy-looking girl” in their coverage of the royal wedding. On the way back from London, Crown Prince Frederik and Crown Princess Lovisa took their daughters to Paris, where they stayed for ten days at the Hotel Meurice. The family spent August 2, 1896—Princess Ingeborg’s 18th birthday—exploring the Palace of Versailles.

Now that Ingeborg was eighteen, her mother began working to secure a glittering marriage for her, too. She made her official debut in society at a ball given by her grandparents at Amalienborg in February 1897. By then, rumors had already begun to circulate in the press that she was privately engaged, possibly to Hereditary Prince Wilhelm of Wied. But Crown Princess Lovisa, who was born a Swedish princess, had different ideas for her daughter. She wanted Ingeborg to marry into her own Bernadotte dynasty, not another German noble family. Crown Prince Frederik and Crown Princess Lovisa reached out to her uncle, King Oscar II, to inquire about a marriage between Ingeborg and one of his sons.

King Oscar and Queen Sofia had four sons, all of whom were Ingeborg’s first cousins once removed. The eldest, Crown Prince Gustaf, was already married to a German princess, Victoria of Baden, and the second, Oscar, had given up his title to marry a courtier, Ebba Munck. The two youngest princes, 35-year-old Carl and 31-year-old Eugen, were still unmarried. In January 1897, Princess Ingeborg and her siblings joined her parents on a visit the Swedish royals in Stockholm. By the time they returned, the Swedish press had caught wind of a possible engagement between Prince Carl and Princess Ingeborg.

The reports were correct this time. The Danish royals made another visit to Stockholm in May, and a few days later, the world knew about Ingeborg’s upcoming marriage. On May 27, 1897, the official announcement of Carl and Ingeborg’s engagement was made at Bernstorff Palace, the Danish family’s summer residence. Prince Carl, now 36, was almost 18 years older than his prospective bride. The match had been brokered by the couple’s fathers, but Ingeborg was reportedly pleased and relieved that Carl had been the final choice for her hand. (Prince Eugen, a talented artist, was never a good candidate—though it was never made public during his lifetime, he was gay, and he never married.)

Press reports in Europe immediately trumpeted that Carl and Ingeborg’s engagement had been the result of “pure affection on both sides.” The truth was simpler: though the couple would grow to share a deep love, they barely knew each other. It didn’t matter. Personal feelings were secondary to dynastic concerns for royals in those days, and soon Swedish and Danish flags were flying merrily in Copenhagen, with preparations for a royal wedding in full swing.

The couple were married at two o’clock in the afternoon in the chapel at Christiansborg Palace in Copenhagen on August 27, 1897. They were surrounded by their very royal relatives, including the King and Queen of Sweden, the Crown Prince and Crown Princess of Sweden, the King and Queen of Denmark, the Crown Prince and Crown Princess of Denmark, the King of Greece, the Dowager Empress of Russia, and the Princess of Wales.

The 19-year-old bride wore a gown of white duchesse satin, trimmed with lace, orange blossoms, and myrtle, with a 12-foot train. She wore a diamond fringe necklace (which could also be placed on a tiara frame) and placed another diamond rivière across her bodice as a corsage ornament.

After the wedding, Carl and Ingeborg set off for a honeymoon in Switzerland before returning to Stockholm to settle down in their new home together. The marriage had been a popular match with people in both Denmark and Sweden. The couple’s popularity was also seen as a possible way to smooth over ongoing tensions between Sweden and Norway, which were then ruled together by King Oscar II of Sweden and Norway in a personal union.

The political cartoon above, which dates to 1897, shows Carl and Ingeborg bicycling over the Scandinavian Mountains, the border between the two countries, where they’re enthusiastically received by the Norwegians, even nationalist figures like Johannes Steen and Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson. The text at the bottom represents the relief that the Swedish royals purportedly felt about the Norwegian reaction to Carl and Ingeborg: “Thanks to them, this will be a walk in the park!”

And here’s a second political cartoon from the same period, showing Carl and Ingeborg in Norway, dressed in traditional attire, with Ingeborg knitting and Carl playing a birch trumpet. The bucolic scene depicts the couple again acting as a calming influence, soothing the rams that are butting heads all around them. Historical spoiler alert: the couple’s post-marriage popularity wasn’t enough to keep the Norwegians from seeking independence from the Swedish crown. In 1905, a referendum was held in Norway, and 99.5% of voters chose to dissolve the personal union with Sweden. King Oscar II renounced his claim to the throne of Norway on October 26, 1905.

For months, various candidates had been discussed to take his place, becoming King of Norway. Prince Carl was strongly favored by many, resulting in the “Bernadotte Offer” that invited King Oscar to place one of his sons (either Carl or Eugen, but almost certainly Carl) on the Norwegian throne in his place. Had the offer been accepted, Ingeborg would likely have become Queen of Norway. But Oscar and Carl formally declined the invitation, and the Norwegians chose a different candidate: Ingeborg’s brother, Prince Carl of Denmark, who became King Haakon VII of Norway.

Meanwhile, Carl and Ingeborg’s family had been growing in Stockholm. They welcomed their first child, a daughter named Princess Margaretha, in June 1899. The young family is included in this portrait of the Swedish royal family, painted around 1900. The figures standing in the back row are Prince Oscar and Princess Ebba Bernadotte, Prince Carl, Prince Wilhelm, Prince Gustaf Adolf, Crown Prince Gustaf and Crown Princess Victoria, and Prince Eugen. Sitting in the front row are Princess Ingeborg (holding Princess Margaretha), Princess Teresia, Queen Sofia and King Oscar II, and Prince Erik.

By 1910, Carl and Ingeborg had added two more daughters, Princess Märtha and Princess Astrid, to their family. A son, Prince Carl, completed the household in 1911. Though the marriage had begun as an arrangement, Carl and Ingeborg were known and admired for their happy, close-knit family unit. Unusually for royals of their era, they brought up their children to learn how to care for themselves, doing various household tasks like cooking and cleaning.

Carl and Ingeborg also played important roles within the changing world of the Scandinavian monarchies, acting as mediators and communicators among their relatives on the thrones of Sweden (Carl’s brother), Norway (Ingeborg’s brother), and Denmark (Ingeborg’s father and, later, her brother). All three of their daughters, unsurprisingly, made important dynastic marriages. Princess Margaretha married Prince Axel of Denmark, her mother’s first cousin, in 1919. She remained a beloved member of the Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian royal families until her death in 1977.

Next, Princess Astrid married the Duke of Brabant, the elder son of King Albert I of the Belgians, in 1926. They became King Leopold III and Queen Astrid in 1934, but she tragically died a year after her husband’s accession. Finally, Princess Märtha married Crown Prince Olav of Norway, her first cousin, in 1929. She died in 1954, three years before her husband became king. The only brother of the family, Prince Carl, went in a different direction, renouncing his royal status to marry a commoner in 1937.

As their daughters married into various European royal families, Prince Carl and Princess Ingeborg continued to work in support of his brother, King Gustaf V of Sweden, who ascended to the throne on their father’s death in 1907. For various reasons, including her delicate health, Gustaf’s wife, Queen Victoria, spent less and less time in Sweden as the years went on, preferring to live at her villa in Italy. With no first lady in Sweden to support the monarch, Princess Ingeborg regularly stepped in, serving as the senior royal lady at court.

In August 1947, Carl and Ingeborg celebrated their golden wedding anniversary. The celebrations were one of the first big family gatherings held after the end of World War II. The same year, Princess Ingeborg joined other members of the Bernadotte family for a group portrait photograph, shown above. She’s sitting on the left side of the image, beside Crown Princess Louise. (The little boy in the picture is the current Swedish monarch, King Carl XVI Gustaf.) Prince Carl died four years later, in 1951, at the age of 90. Princess Ingeborg passed away in her sleep at the age of 79 in 1958.

A princess with such rich royal connections and important responsibilities at court needed major jewelry, and Princess Ingeborg left behind a truly impressive bejeweled legacy. Her daughters’ glittering marriages meant that many of those jewels are still worn regularly by royals and aristocrats in Norway, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Denmark today. Among them is this tiara of diamond and turquoise stars, worn by Ingeborg and her descendants in both simple and elaborate settings.

Here’s Carl and Ingeborg’s daughter, Princess Margaretha of Denmark, wearing the tiara at the Nobel Prize banquet in Stockholm on December 10, 1968. “Tante Ta,” as she was known by her numerous nieces and nephews, was a great supporter of her family members in Norway and Belgium after the early deaths of her sisters, and she returned often to her native Sweden to participate in royal events as well.

The star tiara ended up with Margaretha’s branch of the family. Above, it’s worn by Countess Jutta of Rosenborg (the wife of Margaretha’s grandson, Count Valdemar) during Queen Margrethe II of Denmark’s 70th birthday celebrations in April 2010.

Margaretha’s descendants also ended up with a diamond tiara acquired later by Princess Ingeborg. Above, Ingeborg wears the tiara at the wedding of her granddaughter, Princess Ragnhild of Norway, in May 1953. (She’s pictured here with her brother, Ragnhild’s paternal grandfather, King Haakon VII of Norway. The family tree from this era is not, uh, particularly branch-y. Hooray for the normalization of marriages to commoners!)

In 1953, Ingeborg was also in Norway for her brother’s 80th birthday celebrations. For a dinner at Akershus Castle, she wore yet another tiara from her collection: a diadem of diamond and pearl circles, said to have been acquired from Boucheron. (The leading historian of Norwegian royal jewelry, Trond Noren Isaksen, has recently cast some doubt on that claim.)

The tiara was later inherited by Ingeborg’s granddaughter, Princess Ragnhild of Norway. She wears the tiara above at the wedding of her brother, Crown Prince Harald, in 1968.

Today, the tiara is worn by Princess Ingrid Alexandra of Norway, who received it as a gift from Princess Ragnhild’s descendants. She made her tiara debut in the piece at her birthday gala in June 2022.

The grandest tiara in Princess Ingeborg’s jewelry box was, however, the grand diamond and emerald diadem that she received from her mother-in-law, Queen Sofia of Sweden. The early nineteenth-century tiara and its coordinating parure come from the Leuchtenberg family, descendents of Empress Josephine of France. Princess Amelie of Leuchtenberg, who was married to the last Emperor of Brazil, inherited the emeralds from her mother. She in turn bequeathed them to her sister, Queen Josefina of Sweden and Norway, who left them to her daughter-in-law, Queen Sofia.

Princess Ingeborg inherited the emeralds from Queen Sofia in 1913 and wore them often while serving as the senior lady at the Bernadotte court. Above, she wears the set during Princess Astrid’s wedding celebrations in Belgium in 1926. (Beside her, Princess Märtha is wearing the Turquoise Daisy Bandeau, borrowed from her cousin Ingrid, and Princess Margaretha is wearing her mother-in-law’s floral tiara.)

Ingeborg made significant alterations to the emerald set after inheriting the jewels. She had the large pear-shaped emeralds removed from the top of the tiara and reset as a pair of earrings. She loaned the new earrings, plus the necklace from the set, to her daughter, Crown Princess Märtha of Norway, to wear at the baptism of Prince Harald in March 1937. A few weeks later, Märtha borrowed the entire emerald set to wear at the coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth of the United Kingdom in London.

When World War II broke out a few years later, Märtha and her three children were forced into exile. They traveled to Carl and Ingeborg’s home in Stockholm as they fled from Norway. Princess Ingeborg accompanied her daughter and grandchildren to the train station as they left Sweden on their way to America. She handed Märtha a package. Inside were the emeralds—not for wearing at gala events, but to sell in the event that she needed money in exile. Happily, Märtha didn’t need to sell the emeralds, and she brought them back with her to Norway after the war. She was able to wear them for a few gala events before she became ill and died in 1954.

The emerald tiara and jewels are now worn by the most senior royal lady in Norway. For several years, that was Princess Astrid, who served as first lady for several years during the reign of her father, King Olav V. For decades, though, the primary wearer of the suite has been Queen Sonja, the wife of Ingeborg’s grandson, King Harald V. Above, she wears the parure for another Bernadotte family occasion: the wedding of Crown Princess Victoria and Prince Daniel in Stockholm in June 2010.

And here, Queen Sonja wears the emeralds for a recent gala dinner at Amalienborg Palace in Copenhagen.

When Princess Ingeborg made her revisions to the emerald suite, she didn’t stop with the creation of new earrings. She also had the pendants removed from the set’s necklace. She distributed those emeralds to various members of the family. Three of the pendants were gifted to her third daughter, Queen Astrid of Belgium. The stones from those pendants are now set in a mid-century peacock tiara that was made for Astrid’s daughter, Grand Duchess Josephine-Charlotte of Luxembourg. She wears the tiara above at the wedding of her cousin, Crown Prince Harald of Norway, in 1968.

Here’s Grand Duchess Josephine-Charlotte’s elder daughter, Princess Marie-Astrid, wearing the tiara at the pre-wedding gala for Hereditary Grand Duke Guillaume and Hereditary Grand Duchess Stephanie of Luxembourg in October 2012.

The peacock tiara can also be worn as a necklace. Grand Duchess Josephine-Charlotte’s daughter-in-law, Grand Duchess Maria Teresa of Luxembourg, recently wore the necklace setting of the jewel for the pre-coronation reception in London in May 2023.

And speaking of Luxembourg, let’s look once more at that portrait of Princess Ingeborg wearing her star tiara. If you look at the bodice of her gown, she has a diamond and pearl brooch in the shape of a fleur-de-lis pinned to her dress.

That brooch was also inherited by the family of Ingeborg’s third daughter, Princess Astrid. Today, it’s worn by Grand Duchess Maria Teresa of Luxembourg, pictured here during the royal wedding celebrations in London in 2011.

Princess Ingeborg probably isn’t one of the better-known royals from her era. She never sat on a throne herself, so she’s considered to be something of a minor figure. In reality, though, she has one of the most important legacies of any royal lady from her time—and the fact that so many pieces of her jewelry continue to be worn prominently is excellent evidence of her enduring influence.