1,049 shades of gray
As if the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race doesn’t have enough problems being pursued by animal-rights activists, all the buzz in the small world of long-distance sled dog racing this week was swirling around the race’s new billionaire benefactor: 67-year-old Norwegian Kjell Inge Røkke, the race’s first-ever “Expedition Musher.”
And now he’s popped up in the massive Epstein files release along with Norwegian billionaire Gunnhild Stordalen, the owner of Scandinavia’s largest hotel chain; his wife Gunhild, a model turned physician; former NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg; Jonas Gahr Store, now serving as Norway’s prime minister, and someone whose name is blacked out.
Iditarod, as is the norm, did not respond to a request for comment on Røkke.
All of the above-named Norwegians, it should be noted, have shown up only once in the Eptsein files to date. There is only one email containing all their names. And Gahr Store was on record as publicly backing a thorough investigation of Epstein’s known Norwegian contacts before this email was released.
Gahr Store’s comments came because Norway has big Epstein problems.
What to make of this latest document to trickle out of the Epstein files is hard to say, given the salacious and seemingly far-fetched claims in the missive sent to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
In it, the unidentified author writes that she had “been molested by lawyers, judges, royalties, politicians and presidents, policemen and others. I was sold to Jeffrey Epstein several times.”
The email goes on to claim that the Norwegian royals and “others tried to put me into coma and they wanted to make me disabled. I was a billionaire and people stole this fortune and tried to disqualify me. There is no help to get; I need help. I have been involved with Joe
Biden and Hillary Clinton.”
Neither former President Joe Biden nor former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have been directly connected to Epstein, although Clinton’s husband, former President Bill Clinton, had a well-known association with the New York financier and convicted sex offender.
The latest email, which can be found attached below, is dated Nov. 12, 2020, a year and three months after Epstein’s body was found hanging in a New York City jail cell. Had the e-mail been made public then, it would likely have been dismissed as the bizarre ramblings of someone making a crazed attempt to cash in on Epstein’s death by implicating high-profile members of Norway’s ruling class.
And that could be the case.
Norwegian mess
France’s respected LeMonde reported Monday that Norwegian police have now “launched an ‘aggravated corruption’ investigation against a high-profile diplomat, Mona Juul, and her husband Terje Rod-Larsen, over the couple’s links to late U.S. sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.”
“Norway’s Crown Princess Mette-Marit has also come under scrutiny for her relationship with Epstein, which on Friday she said she ‘deeply regretted.'”
Mette-Merit’s former bodyguard, Anne Grete Eidsvig, married Røkke in a secret 2004 ceremony shortly after her pregnancy made the news in that country.
Dagens Næringsliv (DN), Norway’s largest newspaper, reported the couple split in 2018 when “Røkke bought out…Eidsvig from her private company for an estimated 400 million kroner,” or approximately $42 million.
Mette-Marit isn’t reported to have met Epstein until seven years after Eidsvig married Røkke and left the police escort service. By then, though, as the wife of one of Norway’s richest men, she was in the same social circles as Mette-Marit and other upper-crust Norwegians.
Could Røkke have had a connection to and a relationship with Epstein? Well, endless things could be, but at this point, there is no solid evidence that Røkke and Epstein were buddies.
Not that Røkke is any sort of choir boy. Leaders League, a Paris-based business services company describes him as someone with “a brash, blingy side to his personality that is at odds with a nation where Lutheran values still hold sway.
“Boasts that his private villa was more beautiful than Norway’s Royal Palace ruffled the feathers of the establishment and his subsequent quest to build the world’s biggest super yacht and his relocation to Switzerland have provided fodder for those who see him as little more than a self-centered tycoon. In 2002, he spent 23 days in prison for attempting to bribe maritime officials to obtain a licence to pilot his 55-foot private yacht, the Celina Bella.”
At this point, all that can really be said in fairness about Røkke in connection to the Iditarod – no matter what is being said on social media – is that the lone accusation that has surfaced against him cannot be compared to the multiple accusations leveled against Iditarod champ Brent Sass in 2023.
Actions and consequences
The Iditarod banned Sass amid multiple reports from unidentified women that he had made unwanted sexual advances. Sass insisted the accusations were untrue, but the Iditarod decided to dump him for violating a “Personal Conduct” rule that says mushers can be removed from the race for any behavior “recklessly injurious to the Iditarod, Iditarod competitors, sponsors or anyone associated with the race.”
Sass has never been charged with any sex crimes, and no women have emerged to publicly accuse him of anything.
But neither has Sass filed a defamation suit against Rose O’Hara-Jolley, the Alaska director of the Planned Parenthood Alliance, who opened the door on the Sass allegations by mailing the Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race a request that it disqualify Sass from further competitions because multiple women had told her he’d made unwanted sexual advances.
Sass has repeatedly ignored requests for interviews to answer questions about his behavior and has instead used social media to continue to press the case that he was falsely accused.
What Sass did or didn’t do may never be fully known, although two Alaska-based reporters in early 2024 told Alaska Public Media that they’d talked to “two women who say Sass sexually assaulted them within otherwise consensual sexual relationships that took place more than a decade ago.”
Sass in May 2024 announced on Facebook that he “be stepping away from racing sled dogs,” but he has since returned. When he tried to enter this year’s Yukon Quest, however, a social media firestorm erupted, and he was informed he wasn’t welcome.
The Quest – once a 1,000-mile, world-class, sled-dog marathon from Fairbanks to Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, Canada – is now an event in even worse shape than the struggling Iditarod. Canada is now gone from the course and the mileage has dropped from 1,000 miles to 750.
The race around a loop in the Alaska Interior started last week with only six competitors.
The Iditarod is doing better. Thirty-nine mushers, counting Røkke, are scheduled to start up the trail early next month. That’s a far cry from the 80 to 90 who showed up to toe the starting line in the early years of the new millennium, but it’s six and a half times more participants than the Quest.
There’s no reason to believe Røkke won’t be among them when the race starts March 7, but then again, the Epstein files have fueled a scandal that is still growing. Who knows what could happen next?
NBC today reported that police in the United Kingdom are investigating whether one-time Epstein buddy Prince Andrew, Duke of York shared “confidential trade documents” with the dead financier. Andrew has already lost his title as a prince and duke because of his Epstein-linked sexual misbehavior.
“Their Majesties’ thoughts and sympathies have been, and remain with, the victims of any and all forms of abuse,” the statement said.
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