Ari Behn

Ari Mikael Behn (; , or ; 30 September 1972 – 25 December 2019) was a Norwegian author, playwright, and visual artist, best known for his marriage to Princess Märtha Louise of Norway from 2002 to 2017. He held no title or special status, and he remained a private citizen during the marriage. Known as Mikael Bjørshol until 1996, Behn achieved modest literary success with his 1999 short story collection Trist som faen ("Sad as hell") which received several favorable reviews in Norwegian newspapers, and which remains his best known work. His engagement to Märtha Louise sparked additional interest in the book, and by 2020 it had sold a total of nearly 100,000 copies since publication. Following his 2002 marriage to Märtha Louise, he wrote four novels, two short story collections, one play and a book about his wedding, although his later work received less favorable reviews than Trist som faen. He took part in other creative and artistic endeavours such as the design of a china set named "Peacock". In the 2000s and 2010s his public activity and art were met with mixed reactions in Norway, and Behn acknowledged that many people regarded him as a "fool" and an amateur artist. From 2013 until his death he was active as a visual artist, painting in a neo-expressionist tradition inspired by Jean-Michel Basquiat. Behn's artwork, described as "highly narrative", was widely exhibited internationally in 2017–18. Background and early life Behn was born as Ari Mikael Bjørshol in 1972 in Aarhus, Denmark, to Olav Bjørshol (b. 1952) and Marianne Rafaela Solberg (b. 1953), Norwegians who were both Waldorf teachers and who married in 1973. The family lived in Aarhus, then in Plymouth, England, where his father trained as a photographer, and then in Tennevoll in Northern Norway where his mother worked as a teacher at the local school from 1977 to 1978. In 1978 the family settled in Moss in South Norway. Bjørshol was baptized and confirmed in The Christian Community and attended the Waldorf School in Moss from 1979. In 1983, his parents divorced and married a couple who had been among their friends, Jan Pahle and Tone Bjerke, who had previously been married to each other. Tone Bjerke had family connections to several prominent cultural figures; she was the daughter of the well-known poet André Bjerke, and her extended family included people like writer Jens Bjørneboe (father's cousin), actress Henny Moan (stepmother) and singer Ole Paus (stepmother's new partner).