Norway’s Queen Sonja to be fitted with pacemaker

OSLO (AFP): Norway’s 87-year-old Queen Sonja will be fitted with a pacemaker this week after recently suffering from arrhythmia, the royal palace announced on Tuesday.

The queen was briefly hospitalised in Lillehammer in southeastern Norway at the weekend after suffering from an irregular heartbeat while cross-country skiing.

The insertion of a pacemaker, a procedure that will take place on Thursday, “is a result” of that incident, the palace said.

Sonja’s husband King Harald, Europe’s oldest reigning monarch at 87, was also fitted with a pacemaker in March after contracting an infection that left him in a weakened condition during a private vacation in Malaysia.