Ingrid Victoria Sofia Louisa Margaretha Princess of Sweden was born on March 28, 1910 at the Royal Palace in Stockholm, Sweden, as the third child and the only daughter of Crown Prince Gustaf Adolf of Sweden (since 1950 King Gustaf VI Adolf) and Princess Margaret of Connaught. She had four brothers: Gustaf Adolf (1906-1947), the father of the present King Carl XVI Gustaf), Sigvard (1907), Bertil (1912-1997) and Carl Johan (1916). The little Princess Ingrid grew up in Sweden. Her mother died in May 1920 when Ingrid was only ten years old. Her father remarried in 1923 with Lady Louise Mountbatten.
On May 24, 1935, Ingrid married Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark in the Storkyrkan in Stockholm. The royal yacht the Dannebrog on which the couple travelled to the Danish capital Copenhagen two days after the wedding arrived in Copenhagen surrounded by tens of smaller boats. Her father-in-law, King Christian X, was the first to welcome her in Denmark. Thousands of people stood along the route to the Amalienborg Palace to greet the newlyweds.
After almost five years of marriage, a few days after the beginning of World War II, Crown Princess Ingrid gave birth to her first child, Margrethe. A second daughter, Benedikte, was born in 1944, and Anne-Marie followed after the war in 1946. In 1947 King Christian X died and Frederik IX became the new King. Ingrid became the Queen, which she stayed until the death of King Frederik IX on January 14th, 1972.
Queen Ingrid was the patroness of some tens of organisations. She also has fought very hard for the modernisation of the Royal Palaces and Gardens. Already since shortly after her marriage her favourite Castle was Graasten, which stayed her summer residence until her death. She loved travelling, gardening and was a superb embroideress.
Queen Ingrid always has been the centre of the family being the one who arranged hundreds of family meetings. Her oldest daughter, who became Queen Margrethe II of Denmark in 1972, married French Henri de Laborde de Monpézat in 1967 and got two sons: Frederik (1968) and Joachim (1969). Princess Benedikte married Prince Richard zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg in 1968. They have three children: Gustav (1969), Alexandra (1970) and Nathalie (1975). Princess Anne-Marie was the first to marry in 1964 with King Constantinos II of Greece. They had to leave their country in 1967. The couple has five children: Alexia (1965), Pavlos (1967), Nikolaos (1969), Theodora (1983) and Filippos (1986). All together Queen Ingrid was great-grandmother to five great-grandchildren: Maria Olympia (1996), Constantine Alexios (1998) and Achileas Andreas (2000) – children of Pavlos and his wife Marie Chantal Miller – Nikolai (1999, the son of Joachim and his wife Alexandra Manley) and Richard (1999, the son of Alexandra and her husband Jefferson-Friedrich Count von Pfeil und Klein-Ellguth).
Queen Ingrid died after a short illness on November 7, 2000 at the Kancellihuset next to Fredensborg Palace, surrounded by her three daughters and her grandchildren.