QUEEN MARGRETHE II

Queen Margrethe was only 31 years old when her father, King Frederik IX, died and she was proclaimed Queen. In the years that have followed, she has firmly and carefully adapted the constitutional monarchy to make it more up-to-date.

At the more personal level the Queen has developed as an active artist and a highly respected cultural personality, promoting a lively dialogue with the people of Denmark and expressing the values and attitudes which unite the nation.

Margrethe, who is the oldest daughter of the late King Frederik and Queen Ingrid, was born in 1940 during the German occupation of Denmark. Her birth was considered to be "a ray of hope at a dark time" but the constitution gave no indication that a future queen of Denmark had been born. Female succession in the monarchy was not introduced until 1953.

Queen Margrethe's favorite subject has always been archaeology. She has been an active participant in several excavations, including one in Rome together with her maternal grandfather the late Swedish King Gustaf VI Adolf (1882-1973).

One of the most original artistic contributions that Queen Margrethe has made was a series of illustrations for the British author John R Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings", which was the result of her personal correspondence with the author. Tolkien's incredible dream world was a challenge to the Queen's fantasy and creative inspiration and under the pseudonym Inghild Grathmer she produced illustrations that impressed critics by "their frankness and combination of abstractions and stylized naturalism."

When Simone de Beauvoir's "Tous les hommes son mortels" was published in Denmark in 1981, the translation was ascribed to H.M. Vejerbjerg. The true identity of the translator emerged only some weeks later. The pseudonym concealed Queen Margrethe and her husband Prince Henrik.