Norwegian television personality Harald Rønneberg, 53, has spoken publicly about how he and his wife, Sølvi Haugland, became parents through surrogacy, according to Nettavisen. Their son, Ludvig, was born in 2015 with the help of a surrogate mother in the United States, after the couple had spent several years trying to have a child. Rønneberg discussed the decision in an episode of Solveig Kloppen's podcast, "Min barneoppdragelse," released this week.
Nettavisen reports that the couple weighed several options before settling on a surrogate in the US, where they felt most secure. Rønneberg told the podcast that the family remains close to the surrogate, many years after Ludvig's birth.
"We are very close. Sølvi and Katie have a close relationship. We call them our American family. We have been honest from the start about the fact that he was born in the USA and told him about Katie," he said in the episode, according to Nettavisen.
Why it matters
Surrogacy remains a contested subject in Norway, and the law there restricts the practice. When a well-known public figure confirms that he built his family this way, it puts a familiar face on an arrangement that is often discussed in the abstract. Rønneberg's account also touches on a question that runs through the debate: what relationship, if any, a child born through surrogacy should have with the woman who carried him.
His answer, as described to Nettavisen, is openness. The family has not hidden Ludvig's origins from him and maintains contact with the surrogate, whom they refer to as part of their extended family. That approach contrasts with older models of surrogacy in which the arrangement was kept quiet, and it gives the public a concrete example of how one family has handled it.
A deliberate distance from the debate
Kloppen asked Rønneberg how he views the surrogacy debate, including the argument that having children is not a human right. According to Nettavisen, he said he has consciously stayed out of the discussion.
"I have stayed away from the surrogacy debate. I think that is an unsympathetic position. It is no human right not to have children either. I don't think that is an argument. It is about two people who want to have children together out of love," he said in the podcast, as reported by Nettavisen.
He added that much has changed since the 1950s and that he fully understands that some processes of this kind have not been equally fortunate, according to the outlet. The remark acknowledges that surrogacy arrangements can go wrong, without conceding ground to critics of the practice as a whole.
Rønneberg's position is notable for what it declines to do. Rather than argue the legal or ethical case for surrogacy in Norway, he frames his family's choice as a personal one, made after years of difficulty, and leaves the broader policy question to others. Nettavisen reports that he described the decision as unconventional, taken after the couple's long struggle to become parents.
A family story told on his own terms
The podcast appearance fits a pattern in which Rønneberg has been candid about his route to fatherhood. Nettavisen notes that he has been open about Ludvig's birth in the US and about Katie, the surrogate, rather than treating the details as private. In the episode he describes the relationship between his wife and the surrogate as close, and the two households as connected.
That account is likely to be read in Norway alongside the ongoing argument over whether and how surrogacy should be regulated. For now, the family's own description is one of continuity: a child born in 2015, a surrogate still in their lives, and parents who chose to explain his origins to him from the beginning.
What to watch: whether Rønneberg's comments draw a public response from opponents or supporters of surrogacy in Norway, and whether the podcast episode prompts further discussion of the law in the months ahead.
