Nobel Prizes - Norway and Sweden

[Pamela Moberg]

I think I have written about this before - just to refresh. Nobel prizes for various disciplines are awarded by the Swedish Nobel Foundation, whereas the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded by Norway. As one speaker pointed out, these prizes are NOT in any way awarded by these governments, they are awarded by the Nobel Committe and Foundation which are independant bodies.

The Nobel day started in Oslo, Norway, awarding the Peace Prize. As the Chinese recipient is a dissident who is in jail and could not attend to receive his prize, the medal and the certificate was placed in the empty chair where he should have been seated. It was a very emotional moment.

The big Nobel gala took place in Stockholm Sweden this evening with the Royal family present. There were long and, one assumes, very interesting speeches for the laureates in economics, physics, chemistry. However, my interest is of course

in the laureate in literature. Mario Vargas Llosas from Peru. He gave the most charming speech and was wildly applauded.

He gave his speech in English.

After the three course dinner there is always a kind of "divertissement". The whole gala takes place in the Town Hall of Stockholm (a quite enormous venue) and leading down to the dining hall there is a great marble staircase. On these very steps there are always some kind of artists appearing between the dessert and the coffee. This year it was the choreographer

Birgitta Egerbladh who was responsible for the show, her chosen theme was the twenties - a rather Ginger Rogers- Fred Astaire type of thing. Very well done, very suitable and I enjoyed it immensely. It cant be easy to choreograph for a marble

staircase with a bit of landing. This was surely the best divertissement I have seen in years.

[Helene]

Thank you so much for the update and description, Pamela.

[sandik]

Thank you so much! I heard bits and pieces of the Peace Prize ceremony (especially Liv Ullman reading excerpts from the recipient's work) but hadn't heard any report yet about the rest of the awardees. Now know to look for a transcript of Vargas Llosa's comments!

[Pamela Moberg]

A lot of thanks for your interest, folks. As I really want to share this glorious event with you I have been trawling the net for some good info. The obvious channels would be the TV companies, but oh no, they had no info in English!? The mind boggles If you would be interested enough there is http://svt.2.nobel. There are pictures, text in Swedish,

but not much else. Very poor show indeed

I think I am going to write them a real stinker because I am sure a lot of people would be interested in various things -

from the translation of the speeches to pure gossip - who wore a tiara to who had a bit too much and so on...

Havent had the time myself to check, but maybe Norwegian Tv had a translation of the Liv Ullman reading - might be nrk.tv.nobel.no

[richard53dog]

Pamela, I enjoyed reading your descriptions of these ceremonies. The Peace Prize award is really a poignant situation. I really admire Liu Xiaobo for his determination in standing up to the terrifying Chinese government. Hopefully his efforts will pave the way for a better future for his country.

But thanks again for your descriptions.

[papeetepatrick]

Pamela--this is the most recent story of the bombing I've read, the first one to name a suspect that I've seen. I hesitated to put it here, but noticed that it happened the night following the ceremonies you described in Stockholm, and in each update I read I thought there might be some mention of the Nobel events. But there haven't been. Were they fully concluded the night before? I doubt that this bombing had any effect on the Nobel ceremonies if so (and also don't know if those take place in the city center, tend to doubt it), but was very sorry to hear this, as the workings of these organizations are not predictable, and do happen in the most unexpected locations (I believe old Bin Laden tapes even used to single out Sweden at the time of the beginning of the Iraq War as being one of the nations that hadn't offended them and that 'you don't see us attacking Sweden'. But that was before the 'scandal' of the Danish cartoons, which hurt all sorts of delicate feelings, really just unbelievable some of these extremists. This surprised me, though, as I'm confused on it: I did think it was a Danish matter, not Swedish. Is Mr. Vilks Swedish, and was he also publishing in Denmark? I hadn't tied in Sweden at all, during those ludicrous burnings, etc., a few years ago. I just put this link here as the latest I've read on this story, which I'm following closely:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/14/world/europe/14suspect.html?hp

This article is more comprehensive, and tells of that frightening aspect of 'luck' in which the attempt was a relative failure, considering that he was heading for that dept. store. I begin to wonder how long the relative luck is going to hold out:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/14/world/europe/14sweden.html?ref=world

[Helene]

The Nobel concert is available on medici.TV for free streaming:

http://www.medici.tv/#/playlist/