Her Majesty Queen Sonja of Norway concluded her visit to Minnesota for the first time in a decade. The four-day trip highlighted bilateral relations between the United States and Norway.
Governor Tim Walz first welcomed the Queen on Thursday for the 49th anniversary of the Minnesota National Guard’s exchange program with the Norwegian Home Guard.
Eline Gro Knatterud, 4, greets Queen Sonja of Norway as she arrives to Den Norske Lutherske Mindekirke, the Norwegian Lutheran Memorial Church in Minneapolis, Sunday Oct. 16, 2022.
(AP Photo/Giovanna Dell’Orto)
“There are at least 900,000 Minnesotans who show their ancestry back to Norway, the importance of those cultural ties cannot be understated in Minnesota,” Walz said. “The people of Minnesota take great pride in this relationship. We take great pride in the accomplishments, from the arts, to the sciences and to economics that Norwegian Minnesotans have added.”
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The troop exchange program between Minnesota and Norway is the longest-running military partnership between two nations. As part of the exchange program, 100 members of the Minnesota National Guard travel to Norway each year to train and 100 Norwegian Home Guard members come to Minnesota to train at Camp Ripley.
Queen Sonja of Norway arrives at Den Norske Lutherske Mindekirke, the Norwegian Lutheran Memorial Church in Minneapolis, Sunday Oct. 16, 2022.
(AP Photo/Giovanna Dell’Orto)
After their visit with the governor, the Queen toured St. Olaf College, a 175-year-old liberal arts college founded by Norwegian pastors, where she met President David R. Anderson and Student Government Associate President Sebastian Pham.
The Queen participated in a ribbon cutting ceremony at the new Special Collections Vault within the college’s Rølvaag Memorial Library. The vault contains printed materials from the 15th century onward including letters…
Source : foxnews
