On a September morning in Oslo, the world paused to mark the passing of King Harald V of Norway, a man who had reigned for more than three decades through some of history's most turbulent turns. Royal families and heads of state — among them Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky — gathered in a cathedral to observe a ritual older than most of their governments, a rare convergence of the living and the weight of the dead. The ceremony was at once a national farewell and a quiet measure of Norway's place in the world, a reminder that mortality and continuity are the oldest diplomacy of all.