For the people who didn’t spend their education memorizing the Norwegian counties as yours truly did; Norway is divided into 19 counties – which in turn is divided into municipalities. (If you’re interested in random factoids; there are 430 municipalities.)
The royal family has made a habit of making special visits to the counties, so they can meet people who may not normally get a chance to meet the royals. These county visits roughly follow the pattern of a state visit; they’re three days long, usually, and the royals tend to do two of them a year. (Haakon and Mette-Marit does one, and Harald and Sonja one.)
Haakon and Mette-Marit last visited the county of Telemark in October. They celebrated their 6th anniversary in Tromsø last year, before going on to visit Troms. The year before, in 2006, they visited Sogn og Fjordane. While the couple, with Mette-Marit heavily pregnant with Sverre Magnus, visited Buskerud in 2005. They will visit Finnmark in February, 2009.
King Harald and Queen Sonja visited Nordland in June this year. (And crossed the Polar circle.) They visited Nord-Trøndelag in 2004.
From 16. to 18. June, 2009, the King and Queen will visit the county of Hordaland. (Where Bergen is the largest city.) The trip to Hordaland was originally planned for 2005, but was postponed when King Harald fell ill.
They will visit the municipalities of