If the name Princess Märtha Louise isn’t one you recognise, we certainly think her recent marriage to Shaman Durek Verret may pique your interest.
This love story sees a Norwegian Princess fall in love with a Californian guru, and while their relationship was believed to be a passing phase, the pair tied the knot in August 2024 and Durek officially became the son-in-law of Norway’s King Harald V and Queen Sonja.
Continue reading to learn about their fascinating relationship…
Little unsettles the five million hardy subjects of King Harald V of Norway, but on June 7 2022 a surprise proclamation from the Royal Palace in Oslo brought the country to a near standstill.
“His Majesty the King and Her Majesty the Queen send their most heartfelt congratulations to Princess Märtha Louise and Mr Durek Verrett on the occasion of their engagement,” it read, “and wish them all the best for the future.”
Märtha Louise, the King’s only daughter, is fourth in line to the throne. Her husband-to-be is a self-taught “shaman to the stars” from California, who says he previously lived as a pharaoh in ancient Egypt, claims to be able to split atoms with his mind power, and for $2000 an hour promises to lead his clients down the spiritual superhighway to happiness.
Certainly, Märtha Louise, 51, a fourth cousin of Queen Elizabeth II, sounded happy.
“I am so pleased,” she declared, “ to announce that I’m engaged to Shaman Durek, the one who makes my heart skip, the one who makes me laugh and who I can be vulnerable with. Love transcends and makes us grow. And I am so happy to continue to grow with this beautiful man.”
The level-headed Norwegians, who have watched the romance unfold with growing scepticism, appeared less thrilled. Royal observers and politicians denounced Durek, 47, as a “charlatan” and “conman”, while the country’s leading newspaper, Morgenbladet, described his claims of mystical power as “the ravings of an unstable man”.
Given early indications from within the traditionalist court that 85-year-old Harald was out to prevent a marriage, the royal announcement came as a shock. Not that Durek is without admirers. One is Gwyneth Paltrow, who apparently calls him her “soul brother” and who, he says, was given a sneak preview of Märtha engagement ring.
“She said it was the most fantastic ring she’s ever seen,” Durek assured a US TV station, “and she loved how much thought and care I’d put into designing it.”
Much as the prospect of Durek – his shiny bald pate radiating what he calls “transcendental download” – becoming a fixture at state occasions fills many Norwegians with apprehension, others are intrigued, even excited by his engaging presence and somewhat opaque backstory.
“I think he’ll have to tone it down a bit, and stop saying outrageous things like he can cure cancer,” says prominent Scandinavian royal chronicler Johan Lindwall.
“But he’ll make the royals more fun to follow, and maybe give the family a bit of a vitamin injection.”
Who is Durek Verret?
As the shaman tells it, he was born in San Francisco to a West Indian mother and a father of Haitian descent, who he says came from a “voodoo lineage”. He discovered that he possessed paranormal powers at the age of two, when his mother put him into a trance during which he travelled back in time and met his ancestors.
The realisation that he could enter the spirit world made it, perhaps understandably, difficult for him to have a normal childhood, and led to him getting into trouble.
At 17, he and some friends broke into what they thought was an abandoned house, and threw an all-night party, which somehow resulted in the house being burned down. Durek was wrongly fingered as the culprit, and given five years’ youth custody, of which he only served one. He says he later worked in various jobs including modelling and as a television actor, and then went travelling.
The travels took him to London and Turkey, and then to a post at the renowned Shamir Medical Center in Israel, where he claims to have discovered that his shamanic powers could help reverse cancer. The hospital denies all knowledge of him.
Back in California, he teamed up with a masseur, Hank Greenberg, who became his business manager. The pair launched themselves into the lucrative market for alternative medicine and New Age style through a company called Heaven & Earth. Among other services, Durek would “read your frequencies” and deploy a “body shocking” technique “to drive out the hurt and unhappiness within”.
The relationship ended badly, with Hank accusing the shaman of being manipulative.
“The people who surround him are like a kind of sect,” says Hank, who now lives in Phoenix, Arizona. “They’re completely brainwashed, and they live and breathe his teaching. I was lucky to get out. I wish Durek well, but I don’t have anything nice to say about him.”
Durek and the princess were introduced in 2019 by Millana Snow, a Los Angeles-based actress and “energy healer”, over a takeaway vegan lunch. Millana says she detected that Märtha Louise had unusually high energy levels and thought she should meet her “beautiful friend Durek”.
Certainly, the shaman cuts an arresting figure – tall, muscular, his super-smooth skin a testament to Gwyneth’s Goop range of potions and lotions. Usually clad in brightly coloured gowns and bedecked with strings of beads, he appears to have dialled down his look for the cheerless Norwegian climate, and has even been seen on his fiancée’s arm dressed in white tie and tails.
Who is the Princess of Norway?
Märtha Louise, the first child of Harald and his wife, Queen Sonja, has had a longstanding interest in mysticism. As a young girl she was fascinated by ancient tales of Norse mythology. She believed from an early age she possessed psychic powers.
One of her early entrepreneurial ventures was a new age centre that offered to teach students how to talk to angels, and “get in touch with your own truths through reading, healings and crystals”. Following an outcry in the Norwegian media, which noted that the school’s business address was the Royal Palace, Märtha Louise stepped down from official duties, However she kept her place in the line of succession and the title “Highness”.
In 2002 she married Ari Behn, an eccentric artist and author, known for challenging his rivals to pistol duels. They had three daughters but divorced in 2017. Two years later, Ari, suffering from alcoholism and depression, took his own life.
Is Princess Märtha Louise married?
Durek says he and the princess were friends for some months before “deciding to fall in love”. Once that had been achieved, they saw no point in trying to hide their romance.
In a social media post, the shaman declared himself to be “overjoyed at spending the rest of my life with the most pure-hearted, angelic, wise, powerhouse woman, who represents all levels of a goddess in my eyes”.
Soon afterwards they set out on a controversial $100-a-ticket, multi-city tour called “Activating Divinity”, which promised to help audiences raise their consciousness through “shamanic experience”. It didn’t go smoothly. The Bishop of Stavanger banned them from a church-owned venue. And newspapers accused Durek of suggesting in his talks that Norwegian women were “under-sexed”.
This was followed by the publication of Durek’s book, Spirit Hacking: Shamanic Keys to Reclaim Your Personal Power. Packed with outlandish claims and theories – including people get cancer because they want it, and childhood sexual molestation (of which he claims to be a victim) can have beneficial effects – it caused outrage in Norway and was pulled by its publishers. Not that the author appeared chastened.
The Norwegian Royals and Durek Verret
During the pandemic, he claimed to have refused vaccination on the advice of the spirits, and recommended a $300 “protective” medallion, available from his website. Norway’s outraged Health Minister Ole Henrik Krat Bjørkholt denounced Durek as “an unscrupulous and dangerous fraud”. He adding added: He doesn’t just cheat sick people out of money, he makes it more likely gullible people will fail to see a doctor.”
The smooth-talking shaman insists he’s misunderstood: “I didn’t feel welcomed in Norway,” he says. “It was ridiculous. All we were doing was sharing our love with the world, and all the media was doing was looking for stories to rip us apart. The only place I felt I was getting any love was from Märtha, her friends and the people who came to see us.”
The Norwegian royal family at first seemed relaxed about Märtha Louise’s new relationship. “Not anymore,” says Norwegian social historian Dag Nordrum.
“In the beginning they assumed it would blow out. Then there was a kind of deal cut that meant she could do all her New Agey stuff as long as she kept it a long way away from the palace. But if she’s actually going to marry this guy, it becomes a real problem for the royal family. He will have to be invited to family events and state occasions, and the king and queen’s worry is that they’ll be exposed to ridicule.”
A royal source outlines another aspect of the problem. “They’re clearly worried if they’re seen to be opposing the marriage, it might look as though they don’t want a black man joining the royal family. Most likely, the king thought if he couldn’t stop the marriage, he might as well endorse it and hope for the best.”
Durek himself hasn’t been shy of suggesting he’s been discriminated against.
“People are uncomfortable with a white woman choosing a dark-skinned man who’s a shaman,” he says. “Someone who’s soul-sexual, who stirs the pot. We’re changing things by being in love. We can’t get upset about it. This is a time of evolution. It has nothing to do with me or Märtha. It’s to do with them.”
Media commentators have talked of the country’s “Meghan Markle moment”, but not everyone sees prejudice at work. Abid Raja, a former Minister of Equality and one of Norway’s few senior nonwhite politicians, says bluntly: “He’s playing the race card. It’s his statements as a shaman, including about cancer and Norwegian women’s sexuality, that destroy his credibility.”
In 2022, Märtha Louise relinquished her royal duties to focus on her and Durek’s alternative medicine business, but she has kept her title.
On August 31 2024, the couple were officially married in a multiple-day ceremony in Geiranger, Norway. The nuptials included 350 guests along with the attendance of her parents, Crown Prince Haakon and his family.
