Åge Bernhard Grutle is a Norwegian diplomat and royal servant.

In his early diplomatic career he was stationed at the embassies in South Korea

South Korea

The Republic of Korea , , is a sovereign state in East Asia, located on the southern portion of the Korean Peninsula. It is neighbored by the People's Republic of China to the west, Japan to the east, North Korea to the north, and the East China Sea and Republic of China to the south...

 and the Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

. In 1987 he was declared as expelled from the latter country, during a minor diplomatic crisis. He was a deputy under-secretary of state in the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs

The Royal Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs is the foreign ministry of the Kingdom of Norway...

 from 1999 to 2003, and the Norwegian ambassador to Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

 from 2004 to 2009. In 2005 he led the insight committee on how the Ministry of Foreign Affairs responded to the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami. In 2009 Grutle was appointed as the Lord Chamberlain at the Norwegian Royal Court.