Queen Silvia of Sweden was in Belgium on a private visit when she redirected her itinerary toward something considerably less ceremonial: the front lines of the country’s largest wildfire in recorded history.
In photos shared by the Swedish Royal House, the Queen was seen ditching the royal formalwear for earth-toned pieces and white sneakers. The 82-year-old queen was seen climbing aboard one of the water bombers her country had sent to help extinguish the blaze, quizzing the Swedish crews on how the aircraft, and the mission, actually worked.
The fire has been burning in Belgium’s High Fens nature reserve, near the German border, since mid-August. By the time of Silvia’s visit, it had burned about 3,000 hectares — already the country’s worst wildfire on record — forced roughly 600 people to evacuate from Waimes and Bütgenbach, and was threatening to spread across the border near Monschau.
A queen who went looking for the crews, not a photo op
Sweden answered Belgium’s call for help through the European Union’s Civil Protection Mechanism, sending water-bombing aircraft to join reinforcements from the Netherlands and the Czech Republic. It was that Swedish deployment that drew Silvia’s attention. Rather than settle for a courtesy briefing, the queen made her way out to where the aircraft was stationed, climbed aboard, and spent time talking with the crews about their equipment and the work of putting the fire down — an unusually hands-on stop for a royal visit, let alone one made by an octogenarian queen.
It’s a portrait that doesn’t line up with most people’s mental image of a queen in her ninth decade: functional clothes, sturdy shoes, and curiosity for the machinery of firefighting, delivered with the same attentiveness she might bring to a state dinner.
Europe’s brutal fire season
Belgium is far from alone this summer. Portugal, Greece, France, Germany and Spain have all been fighting significant wildfires through an unusually dry, hot season, and the European Commission has been mobilizing personnel and equipment across member states after both Belgium and Spain activated the EU’s Civil Protection Mechanism
Against that backdrop, Silvia’s stop had the feel of a thank-you as much as a fact-finding mission: a chance to see, in person, what the Swedish crews sent to a foreign country were actually up against, and to tell them so directly.
© Iwi OnoderaFrom golden anniversary to fire line, all in one summer
The image is a sharp turn from the one Silvia was projecting weeks earlier, when she posed amid flowers and pastoral scenery to mark fifty years as Queen of Sweden. June 19 marked half a century since her wedding to King Carl XVI Gustaf, whom she met while working as an interpreter and protocol officer at the 1972 Munich Olympics.
Fifty years into her role in the Swedish royal family, Silvia is still keeping up with a demanding public schedule. Evidently, she’s still also willing to trade a palace reception room for a jump seat on a water bomber. It’s not the image most people expect from a queen in her eighties, which is exactly what makes it one of the more memorable snapshots of her summer.
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