Weddings are usually a joyous occasion, and a royal wedding is doubly so, but at this weekend’s nuptials of Princess Märtha Louise of Norway and her controversial, self-proclaimed shaman partner, bisexual African-American Durek Verrett, several family members will be urging her to say “No.”
Such condemnation is unlikely to deter 52-year-old rebel princess Märtha Louise, who chose her lover not on the basis of royal blood. Instead, this is a marriage based on the bizarre idea that the couple, who both claim to have mystical powers, met in a past life in Ancient Egypt.
It is the latest unusual and, to many, alarming choice by the self-described medium, fourth in line to the Norwegian throne, who ran an alternative therapy centre from 2007 to 2018 that he called his “angel school”, claiming to be able to help heal by communicating with angels.
The eldest child of Crown Prince Harald and Crown Princess Sonja, Märtha Louise has often shocked her nation with such revelations. Perhaps strangely, this makes her the perfect match for Verrett, 49, who boasts that he first realised he had shamanic powers when he was three years old when he saw his deceased ancestors in the room. He will go down in history as the first black man to marry into a modern European royal family.
But the response to the 2023 engagement has been overwhelmingly hostile. “We’ve gotten comments like, ‘It’s not going to last,’” Verrett says. She’s even been accused of “casting a spell.” [Märtha Louise] make her fall in love with me and [that] “I do black magic” and people sent death threats on Instagram. Märtha Louise added: “As a white person, I don’t face racism every day, so I don’t know what it’s like. It was shocking.”
Verrett admits that he occasionally overdoes his “crazy shaman” reputation. “I’ll call Märtha and say, ‘I told everyone today that I was a creep,’ and she’ll say, ‘Oh, here we go…'”
But many people have a hard time seeing the funny side of her marriage to a man accused of lying about his origins, spreading dangerous conspiracy theories and mistreating his ex-wife.
While Märtha Louise spent her childhood in the royal palaces of Norway, Verrett grew up in the Bay Area of San Francisco, allegedly born to a wealthy architect father named David, who had servants and a private jet.
But his mother, Veruschka Urquhart, and his aunt, opera singer Shirley Verrett, are vehemently opposed to this. They say David is actually a contractor who has gone bankrupt twice, Urquhart said in an interview with the magazine. Se and Hor Last year, she said her estranged son was a dangerous, lying manipulator who had “brainwashed” his royal bride.
Enraged, Verrett sent his mother a cease and desist letter, threatening her with a million-dollar lawsuit and telling her she wasn’t invited to the wedding.
What is not in doubt is Verrett’s criminal past. In 1991, she was sentenced to five years in prison for felony arson and trespassing after hosting a party at a vacant house that was set on fire. She was arrested again in 1993 and 2011 for wage evasion and threatening to murder and “black magic” her Los Angeles landlord. In 2015, she was charged with assault and battery after a domestic violence attack on her then-fiancé, masseur Hank Greenberg.
But what’s most alarming are Verrett’s wild health claims, which he wrote in his 2019 book Soul HackingIn this book, which has not been published by the publisher Cappelen Damm, he says that children get cancer if they are unhappy, chemotherapy is a scam and women should buy his exercises to “cleanse” their vaginas because casual sex attracts underground spirits.
Verrett sold a medallion that he promised would cure Covid until Norwegian authorities shut it down in 2022. He whines about 5G and the Illuminati, says he rose from the dead and knew the 9/11 attacks were going to happen but chose not to intervene. Verrett also claims that naughty children and suicidal people are possessed by evil spirits.
You might have thought that this particularly gruesome statement would have deterred Märtha Louise, given that her first husband, the writer Ari Behn, committed suicide, but she has been dating and working with Verrett since May 2019. Although they believe they met centuries ago: “We have memories in Egypt,” Verrett said. “She was my queen and I was a pharaoh.”
Märtha Louise stepped down as a senior member of the Norwegian royal family in November 2022, but senior figures have continued to criticise the union. In 2023, politician Ole Henrik Krat Bjørkholt called Verrett an “unscrupulous and dangerous charlatan”, while many in the Norwegian media called for Märtha Louise to be stripped of her “princess” title. Most recently, she used the title and royal monogram on a specially made gin for the wedding, but was forced to withdraw it following an uproar.
But that was just one element of the elaborate New Age event, which began with a meet-and-greet at Hotel 1904 in the coastal Norwegian town of Alesund on Thursday. The couple wore matching, custom-made bubblegum pink outfits by Märtha Louise’s brand Hest. The princess wore a heart-shaped hair clip symbolizing the phrase “love conquers all.”
On Friday, guests were ferried by boat to the four-star Hotel Union in the village of Geiranger (a UNESCO World Heritage Site) with waterfalls and mountain views. This was followed by a glamorous Latin American-themed cocktail party with salsa dancing. The wedding ceremony will take place on Saturday around 1pm, followed by afternoon tea and a gala dinner and party (the bar is open until 3am). Finally, there’s a post-wedding brunch on Sunday, reportedly featuring performances by Stevie Wonder and the Black Eyed Peas.
The wedding will feature seven bridesmaids and seven groomsmen. The bridesmaids are likely to include Märtha Louise’s daughters Maud Angelica, 21, Leah Isadora, and Emma Tallulah, 15. The Rev. Margit Lovise Holte will officiate the wedding. The Rev. Michael Beckwith, whose church in Los Angeles is also attended by Oprah Winfrey and Meghan Markle’s mother Doria Ragland, will also attend the wedding.
Instead of the country’s national broadcaster and news agency broadcasting the wedding, as is customary for royal events, she and Verrett struck lucrative deals with Netflix (which is making a documentary about them) and Hello! Guests must adhere to a social media ban – but Märtha Louise is already sharing details on her Instagram account.
Guri Varpe, the communications chief at the Norwegian Royal Palace, has confirmed that the rest of the royal family – including Märtha Louise’s parents King Harald and Queen Sonja, and her brother Crown Prince Haakon, who are all staying on the Royal Yacht – will refrain from being photographed or filmed, as this would be a risk to Netflix and other companies… Hello! unfair access.
But this decision perhaps also reflects her serious reservations about this marriage. Although Märtha Louise tells Telegram She admits that her parents “loved Durek very much” and says that this union was “terribly, terribly unusual.”
Other signs that this won’t be “just another wedding,” as Verrett puts it, include the dress code for the pre-wedding party, which is “sexy and cool,” a departure from royal protocol. For the ceremony, women are asked to wear long ball gowns but avoid all white, all black, all pink and gold, while men are encouraged to think “Oscars red carpet.”
The 350-person guest list includes celebrities and social media influencers such as American reality TV star Cynthia Bailey and body positivity model Margie Plus. Oscar winner and Goop founder Gwyneth Paltrow may also attend: Paltrow has called Verrett her “soul sister” and Paltrow and Märtha Louise holidayed with the actress in the Hamptons in 2019.
One notable absence is Marius Borg Høiby, 27, a son of Crown Princess Mette-Marit from a previous relationship who was arrested earlier this month on suspicion of physically assaulting a woman and damaging her apartment. He admitted to being in an “alcohol and cocaine stupor”.
Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden and Prince Carl Philip are confirmed to attend the wedding, along with Prince Constantijn and Princess Laurentien of the Netherlands, but many are staying away. Isaksen predicted that foreign royal houses are “not too keen on being part of this circus”.
But with such a colourful couple now at the heart of the establishment, this lavish wedding is just the beginning of a dangerous acrobatics for the Norwegian royal family. A recent poll suggests 36 per cent of the public have had a less favourable view of them in the past year. The madcap and the shaman could reduce a stately institution to a clown car.