PHOTO ESSAY
The Nobel Peace Prize
The Nobel Peace Prize has been called
the world’s highest and most prestigious
honor. Each December, it is awarded at
a stately ceremony in Oslo, Norway.
Photos and Text
by Scott London
The Nobel Peace Prize is widely regarded as the world’s most prestigious award. Over its 125-year history, ninety-two men, twenty women and twenty-eight institutions have been given the prize for their contributions to world peace. They include statesmen, diplomats, mediators, experts on international law, champions of nonviolence and defenders of human rights.
Since the first Nobel Peace Prize was awarded in 1901, recipients have included Theodore Roosevelt, Albert Schweitzer, the Dalai Lama, Bishop Desmond Tutu, Mikhail Gorbachev, Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela, Jimmy Carter, Malala Yousafzai and more than one hundred others who have championed the cause of peace in some extraordinary way.
The Nobel Peace Prize and some of the laureates.
The Peace Prize makes headlines twice a year: first, when the winner is announced in October and, second, when it is presented at a formal ceremony in December. Unlike the Nobel prizes for medicine, chemistry, physics, literature and economics which are all awarded in Stockholm, Sweden, the peace prize is given out in Oslo, Norway, in accordance with Alfred Nobel’s famous will of 1895.
The award ceremony is just one of a series of Nobel Peace Prize events that take place in Oslo each December. The program also includes a formal banquet, news conference, museum exhibition, academic forum, torchlight procession through the city, and globally-televised pop concert. Over the course of three full days, heads of state, diplomats, humanitarians, celebrities and activists come together for what has become the world’s highest-profile gathering of international peace leaders.
The Nobel Peace Prize gold medal was designed by the great Norwegian sculptor Gustav Vigeland. This replica is on display at the Nobel Institute in Oslo.
The award ceremony takes place in the spacious auditorium of Oslo City Hall, a palatial building that houses not only the city council and the city administration but also some of the most impressive art in Norway, including an exhilarating 85-foot mural by Henrik Sørensen, “The People at Work and Celebrating.” The auditorium can accommodate more than one thousand people.
Seated on the podium are the laureates, the five members of the Nobel Committee and its permanent secretary. Invitations are sent to the cultural and political leaders of Norway and to members of the diplomatic corps, who typically fill the first rows of the hall. Other guests attend by special invitation of the Nobel Institute. In recent years, the list has included international celebrities and pop stars taking part in the globally-televised Nobel Peace Prize Concert. Between the presentations and the speeches, musical selections are performed by a noted artist or orchestral ensemble.
The award ceremony is scheduled to last ninety-five minutes, a little longer when the prize is shared. Each laureate is given a limit of twenty-five minutes for the acceptance and Nobel lecture, which is often exceeded, but the ceremony is concluded by the early afternoon, in time to return home or to the hotel and watch the telecast of the prize awards in Stockholm.
The Nobel Field is an interactive exhibition at the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo, Norway. Designed by David Small, the installation consists of a thousand points of light and sensor-equipped flat screens displaying each of the Nobel Peace Prize laureates and their achievements.
In the early evening there is usually a torchlight procession honoring the laureate organized by a local group or organization. Hundreds of people, many carrying banners and torches, walk through the streets of Oslo to the Grand Hotel where the laureates usually stay. The procession has become a cherished part of the Nobel festivities, an opportunity for the laureates to greet the people of Oslo and for the public to pay homage, demonstrate its support and, on a few occasions, to protest.
The day’s events conclude with a formal banquet for the laureate or laureates in the ballroom of the Grand Hotel, a glittering black-tie affair attended by the social and political elite of Norway. The event, which is hosted by the Norwegian Nobel Committee, is widely regarded as the high point of Oslo’s winter social season.
The Nobel Peace Prize makes headlines twice a year — first, when the winner is announced at a news conference at the Norwegian Nobel Institute on the second Friday of October, and secondly, when the prize is presented at an award ceremony at Oslo City Hall on December 10, the date that Alfred Nobel died in 1896.
Here Thorbjørn Jagland, then chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, reveals the winner of the 2013 award — the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), a U.N. watchdog group. Each year, the announcement consists of a short written statement. The chairman then takes a few questions from the international press corps.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee, a distinguished panel of five selected by the Norwegian parliament, chooses the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, in accordance with Alfred Nobel’s will of 1895. The committee comes together here, at the Nobel Institute, to consider the nominees and select the winner or winners. For much of the year, the institute is a calm and quiet place. But in early December, when Oslo hosts its annual Nobel festivities, the offices are teeming with visitors, security personnel, and members of the international press.
Al Gore and the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize “for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change.” Gore arrived in Oslo on December 8, 2007, to accept the prize and take part in a three-day series of festivities.
Al Gore and Rajendra Pachauri, chairman on the IPCC, spoke with members of the press, joined here by Geir Lundestad, then director of the Nobel Institute (left), and Ole Danbolt Mjøs, then chairman of the Nobel Committee (right). The briefing was held in the Grand Hall of the Nobel Institute, a space previously used for the actual award ceremony.
The Nobel Peace Prize for US president Barack Obama in 2009 generated more news coverage than any other peace prize before or since — along with a fair share of controversy. President Obama traveled to Oslo in December 2009 to accept the prize in person, but he declined to take part in the traditional press conference at the Nobel Institute. A 2009 exhibition at the Nobel Peace Center — titled “Obama: A Call to Action” — showcased his disarmament efforts and diplomacy work before and during his presidency and featured large photographs by Callie Shell and Pete Souza.
The Peace Prize for 2006 was awarded to Muhammad Yunus, a Bangladeshi economist and founder of the Grameen Bank. Ahead of the award ceremony, he spoke with the media about the bank, the microcredit movement, and what he sees as the close connection between peace and basic economic security.
The 2005 prize was awarded to the International Atomic Energy Agency and its director general, Mohamed ElBaradei, for their efforts to control the spread of nuclear weapons. Here ElBaradei talks with journalists about the threat of nuclear weapons spreading to international terrorist groups and states like Iran and North Korea.
The Nobel Peace Prize award ceremony is held at Oslo’s City Hall. It’s one of the Norwegians’ most beloved structures, housing some of the most impressive art in Oslo, including an 85-foot wall painting by Henrik Sørensen, a mural by Edvard Munch, and a host of tapestries, frescoes and sculptures. Completed in 1950, the building was designed in the National Romantic style, which was popular in Scandinavia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, featuring red brick construction, decorative elements, and a distinctive clock tower.
About one thousand guests are invited to the award ceremony each year, including heads of state, dignitaries, pop stars, Hollywood celebrities, and a who’s who of Norway’s social and political elite.
The trumpet call, sounded as Norway’s royal family arrives at Oslo City Hall, is the first of many elaborate and carefully orchestrated rituals at the Nobel Peace Prize award ceremony.
The Norwegian royal family generally attends the award ceremony each year. Here King Harald, Queen Sonja, Crown Princess Mette Marit and Crown Prince Haakon are seated front and center, facing the podium, at the 2007 ceremony honoring Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The ceremony begins with a set of prepared remarks by the chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee. In 2006, Ole Danbolt Mjøs made the case that the award to Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank was aimed at focusing attention “on dialogue with the Muslim world, on the perspective of women, and on the fight against poverty.”
The five-member Norwegian Nobel Committee and its permanent secretary are seated on the dais during the award ceremony. The committee chair sits to the far left (as he or she is the first to lecture). The recipient of the prize is traditionally seated second from the left. But in 2010 the chair was empty, as the winner of that year’s prize — the jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo — was barred from traveling to Oslo. 2010 marked the first time in more than 80 years that a laureate, or close relative of the laureate, had been unable to accept the prize in person.
Children play an important part of the annual Nobel festivities each December. Here the Children’s Chorus of the Norwegian National Opera and Ballet pose for a photo before performing at the 2010 award ceremony in honor of Liu Xiaobo.
The Nobel Peace Prize award ceremony often includes performances by celebrated classical musicians and opera singers, such as Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli who sang Schubert’s “Ave Maria” in 2004, or cellist Yo-Yo Ma who performed two suites by Bach in 2005. Here the noted American soprano Renée Fleming performs a section from Mozart’s “Exsultate, jubilate,” accompanied on piano by Christian Ihle Hadland, at the 2006 award ceremony.
Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank were jointly awarded the 2006 prize. Here Mosammat Taslima Begum, representing the Grameen Bank, accepts the diploma and gold medal from Norwegian Nobel Committee chairman Ole Danbolt Mjøs.
After accepting the 2009 award, Barack Obama smiles for the television cameras and the Norwegian royal family, displaying the official Nobel Peace Prize diploma and gold medal.
Al Gore and Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, display their diplomas and gold medals after accepting the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize
In a forceful acceptance speech, Al Gore drew a parallel between leaders who ignore the climate crisis and those who failed to act as Nazi Germany rearmed before World War II. “Too many of the world’s leaders are still best described in the words Winston Churchill applied to those who ignored Adolf Hitler’s threat: ‘They go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all powerful to be impotent,'” Gore said. He likened the current “planetary emergency” to wartime. “We must quickly mobilize our civilization with the urgency and resolve that has previously been seen only when nations mobilized for war.”
Some observers described Mohamed ElBaradei’s Nobel Lecture as one of the best they had heard. Norway’s leading evening paper, Aftenposten, described it as “stirring” and “visionary,” saying that it brought to mind the lyrics of John Lennon’s classic song “Imagine.”
Barack Obama’s acceptance speech in 2009 was less favorably received. Much of it was given to explaining and even justifying why war is sometimes necessary. Some said the address seemed calibrated to respond to his critics at home and to assure voters that he was a realist — not, like many laureates before him, a mere idealist.
Former US president Jimmy Carter received the Peace Prize in 2002 “for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.” After accepting the prize and delivering his address, he exits Oslo City Hall with Gunnar Stålsett, then deputy leader of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, at his side.
At the close of the 2009 award ceremony, Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama exit Oslo City Hall, followed by members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee.
An internationally-televised interview with the Nobel Peace Prize laureate or laureates takes place after the award ceremony. Here Al Gore and Rajendra Pachauri sit down for an hour-long interview with CNN’s Jonathan Mann. Gore and Pachauri seemed especially comfortable and relaxed in front of the television cameras. In a poignant moment, Al Gore revealed that despite his initial doubts about Pachauri, he had come to respect and admire the IPCC chairman and now considered him a personal friend.
In the evening, a crowd of over 1,000 people, many carrying banners and torches, walked through the streets of Oslo to the Grand Hotel where the laureates were lodged. The torchlight procession has become a cherished part of the Nobel festivities, an opportunity for the laureates to greet the people of Oslo and for the public to pay homage, demonstrate its support and, occasionally, to protest.
Following the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize award ceremony for imprisoned Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, a crowd of several hundred people marched in a procession, many carrying banners and torches, down Oslo’s main boulevard, Karl Johans Gate, to the hotel where the laureates usually stay during their visit to Norway. In Liu’s absence, a portrait of him was projected on the facade of the hotel.
The winners of the 2005 prize — Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and Yukiya Amano, chair of the agency’s governing board — salute the crowds from the balcony of the Grand Hotel in a ritual that has become an integral part of the annual Nobel celebrations. It was a cold night and ElBaradei and Amano seemed less than thrilled to be standing outside waving at the people for a full five minutes. But at least they weren’t asked to put on a dance, as Shirin Ebadi had done in 2003, or stand behind a protective glass barrier as Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres and Yasser Arafat were required to do in 1994.
In the evening, the laureates and their families along with about 200 distinguished guests attend the Nobel banquet, a black tie affair held in their honor at Oslo’s Grand Hotel. Here John Hume, winner of the 1998 Nobel Peace Prize, attends the 2001 banquet celebrating the United Nations and its secretary general Kofi Annan, who had accepted the award earlier in the day.
Former US president Jimmy Carter was the guest of honor at the 2002 Nobel banquet, attending with his wife Rosalynn. “The President spoke eloquently today about a vision of ‘the table of friendship'” said Gunnar Stålsett, the deputy chairman of the Nobel Committee, raising a glass. “That is what this banquet symbolizes. No greater joy can be given the laureate than for all of us to make this evening a meeting of minds and hearts.”
In conjunction with the annual award ceremony, the Nobel Peace Center in downtown Oslo — one of Norway’s most popular museums — opens a major exhibition about the peace laureate or laureates.
Nancy Pelosi, then speaker of the United States House of Representatives, was in Oslo for the Nobel Peace Prize award ceremony in 2010. The following day, she spoke with members of the press at the opening of the Nobel Peace Center’s 2010 exhibition “I Have No Enemies” about the life and work of Chinese activist Liu Xiaobo.
Prior to being sentenced to eleven years’ imprisonment by the Chinese government, Liu Xiaobo — winner of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize — defended himself by saying, “I have no enemies”. These words inspired the Nobel Peace Center’s 2010 exhibition about the laureate’s struggle for basic human rights in China — from his participation in the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 to the drafting and signing of the Charter 08 manifesto of 2008.
The annual Nobel Peace Prize Concert has become the most widely covered of the Oslo events by the news media. No surprise, perhaps, given that it brings together some of the biggest names in the global entertainment world. Hosted by Uma Thurman and Kevin Spacey, the 2007 concert featured a star-studded line-up of international artists, including Alicia Keys, Kylie Minogue, KT Tunstall, Juanes, and Annie Lennox. The artists spoke with the press prior to the concert. (From left: Juanes, Keys, Thurman, Spacey, Lennox.)
Broadcast to some 100 countries and more than 300 million households worldwide, the Nobel Peace Prize Concert is the most popular and highly visible of the Nobel Peace Prize events held in Oslo. The 2010 concert honored jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo. It was held at Oslo’s Spektrum Arena before an audience of more than 3,000 people. Hosted by actors Denzel Washington and Anne Hathaway, the show featured an all-star lineup of international performers, including Herbie Hancock, India Arie, Florence + the Machine, Colbie Caillat, Robyn, Jamiroquai, A.R. Rahman, Sivert Høyem, as well as Barry Manilow, seen here performing his 1970s pop hit “Copacabana.”
After performing at the award ceremony the previous day, the celebrated cellist Yo-Yo Ma took the stage again at the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize Concert, performing Haydn’s Cello Concert in C. For some in the audience, including the laureate Mohamed ElBaradei himself, it was a brief respite from the pop and rock fare that dominated much of the evening.
Alicia Keys performed three numbers at the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize Concert, including a cover of Michael Jackson’s song “Human Nature” specially adapted for the occasion. Earlier in the day, Keys had said that it was a special honor to perform at the event. The Nobel Peace Prize underscores how the efforts of one person can make a difference in the world. “For me,” she said, “the Nobel Peace Prize is an extremely distinguished award for people who truly do serious work to make major change in the world.”
Pop legend Annie Lennox performed four numbers at the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize Concert, including a haunting version of the ballad “Dark Road.”
John Legend, the American singer, songwriter, and pianist, electrified Oslo’s Spektrum arena with his hit “Save Room” at the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize Concert.
Mette-Marit, the Crown Princess of Norway, enjoying herself in the stands at the 2009 Nobel Peace Concert.
Rihanna, the Barbados-born dance-pop sensation, performed two numbers at the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize Concert, including her megahit “Pon de Replay.”
As the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize Concert drew to a close, Al Gore took the stage and addressed the crowd with a message of enthusiasm and hope. Taking the necessary steps toward dealing with global warming is not an insurmountable problem, he declared. It’s a fully realizable goal, one that must be at the forefront of the global agenda. “Let’s get on with it,” he said. “We can do this!”