Prime Minister Erna Solberg finally took some summer holiday this week and last, and it turned out be sad. After what Solberg herself called “five painful months of illness,” her mother Inger-Wenche Solberg died Monday at the age of 90.
“She was always generous, positive and optimistic, even when the last five months were painful because of illness,” the prime minister wrote on her own Facebook page.
She went on to write that her mother created a home full of caring for her children and grandchildren, “which was a safe place for all of us.” Solberg also expressed gratitude for the care her mother received at the Konows nursing home in the Bergen area, where her mother had been living since April.
Solberg’s mother had long supported her daughter’s political career. When Erna Solberg became prime minister in 2013, after leading the Conservative Party for several years, Inger-Wenche Solberg told Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) that it was a result of “rising through the ranks.”
The elder Solberg noted that her daughter had been “politically active since she was 14,” so becoming prime minister “was not at all surprising.” It was what she’d “been working for all the time,” her mother said as she proudly watched Erna Solberg emerge from the Royal Palace in Oslo, leading her newly appointed conservative coalition government.
“We’re grieving, but have warm and good memories,” Erna Solberg wrote on social media. Within an hour of posting the news about her mother’s death, Solberg had already received more than 1,000 messages of condolence.
newsinenglish.no/Nina Berglund
