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03-02-2026
OSLO: When Marius Borg Hoiby stands up in room 250 at Oslo district court on Tuesday, at the start of Norway’s biggest trial in years, he will have no moral support from his closest relatives. His mother Crown Princess Mette-Marit will not be there, nor will the man she married when her son was four, the heir to the Norwegian throne, Crown Prince Haakon.
For the next seven weeks there will be no pictures of the blond 29-year-old either inside the court or outside, the court has banned them but the world’s press is here in numbers and the palace is keeping well away.
Hoiby is accused of 38 charges, including the rape of four women, assaulting and threatening a girlfriend and damaging her flat, as well as drugs charges and driving offences. If found guilty he could face more than 10 years in jail.
The palace stresses Marius Borg Hoiby is not part of the royal family, and that he is not a public figure but he is considered a close member of the family, by his stepfather the crown prince who sees him as a son, and by Norway’s much loved King Harald V, 88, who he has known for much of his life as his grandfather.
“It’s a very dangerous moment, because the royal family should be role models,” says Ulf Andre Andersen, who broke the story for celebrity-focused magazine Se og Hor (See and Hear) in early August 2024 when police were called to a woman’s flat in Frogner on the west side of Oslo after reports of a violent incident.
Marius Borg Hoiby has admitted some of the lesser offences, and after his arrest admitted physical abuse and destroying objects. The indictment alleges he tore down a chandelier, threw a knife at the wall and shattered a mirror, calling the woman words such as whore.
The four rape charges date from 2018, at his parents’ official residence on the Skaugum estate outside Oslo, to November 2024, after his initial arrest. One of the four, dating back to 2023, involves intercourse while the woman was asleep. The other three also involve sexual assault while the women were incapacitated, which also counts as rape in Norway.
“This is the biggest scandal the Norwegian royals ever had,” says Andersen’s colleague and current Se og Hor editor-in-chief Niklas Kokkinn-Thoresen, who covered the arrest with him at the time. “They’ve never had to deal with anything of this measure.”
Known to Norwegians since his mother married into the royal family, Marius has admitted to years of struggles with substance abuse and spoken of “several mental illnesses” since childhood.
Approached for comment by media, his lawyers pointed to a previous statement by defence counsel Petar Sekulic: “Hoiby is absolutely taking the accusations very seriously, but doesn’t acknowledge any wrongdoing in most of the cases especially the cases regarding sexual abuse and violence.”
Evidence will emerge from a number of women, not just those he is alleged to have raped.
Only one can be identified. Former girlfriend and social influencer Nora Haukland had sought anonymity but the courts rejected her appeal. The allegations she made in public after his arrest form part of the indictment against him, that he punched her in face, kicked her and choked her, shouting at her that she was a “whore”.
These are among the very serious charges denied by his defence as is a charge of transporting 3.5kg of marijuana that was added only last month but it is the rape and sexual assault allegations that will be the focus of much of the case and the testimony of the women involved.
An emotional Crown Prince Haakon addressed the women and their families when he spoke to reporters ahead of his stepson’s trial. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
