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164-605: The Nobel Prize in Literature , here meaning for Literature, ( Swedish : Nobelpriset i litteratur ) is a Swedish literature prize that is awarded annually, since 1901, to an author from any country who has, in the words of the will of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel , "in the field of literature, produced the most outstanding work in an idealistic direction" (original Swedish: den som inom litteraturen har producerat det utmärktaste i idealisk riktning ). Though individual works are sometimes cited as being particularly noteworthy,
328-445: A common gender with the definite suffix -en and the definite article den , in contrast with the neuter gender equivalents -et and det . The verb system was also more complex: it included subjunctive and imperative moods and verbs were conjugated according to person as well as number . By the 16th century, the case and gender systems of the colloquial spoken language and the profane literature had been largely reduced to
492-470: A guttural or "French R" pronunciation in the South Swedish dialects ; consequently, these dialects lack retroflex consonants . Swedish is a stress-timed language, where the time intervals between stressed syllables are equal. However, when casually spoken, it tends to be syllable-timed . Any stressed syllable carries one of two tones , which gives Swedish much of its characteristic sound. Prosody
656-478: A car model which is said to be a particular favourite of his, as well as a vintage Volvo PV444 , a Ferrari 456 M GT, an AC Cobra and other cars. The first pictures taken of him and his future wife were of them sitting in his Porsche 911. In the summer of 2005 he was involved in a traffic accident in Norrköping . The accident was described as a "fender bender", with no serious personal injuries claimed. Nevertheless,
820-522: A change from tauþr into tuþr . Moreover, the øy diphthong changed into a long, close ø , as in the Old Norse word for "island". By the end of the period, these innovations had affected most of the Runic Swedish-speaking area as well, with the exception of the dialects spoken north and east of Mälardalen where the diphthongs still exist in remote areas. Old Swedish (Swedish: fornsvenska )
984-518: A conversation. Due to the close relation between the Scandinavian languages, a considerable proportion of speakers of Danish and especially Norwegian are able to understand Swedish. There is considerable migration between the Nordic countries , but owing to the similarity between the cultures and languages (with the exception of Finnish ), expatriates generally assimilate quickly and do not stand out as
1148-595: A figurehead, he also voluntarily abstains from voting in Swedish elections. King Carl Gustaf holds the highest ranks in the three branches of the Swedish Armed Forces ; this is due to the fact that he was, as stipulated by § 14 of the 1809 Instrument of Government in effect at the time of his accession to the throne in 1973, the Commander-in-Chief ( Swedish : Högste Befälhavare ; not to be confused with
1312-677: A group. According to the 2000 United States Census , some 67,000 people over the age of five were reported as Swedish speakers, though without any information on the degree of language proficiency. Similarly, there were 16,915 reported Swedish speakers in Canada from the 2001 census. Although there are no certain numbers, some 40,000 Swedes are estimated to live in the London area in the United Kingdom. Outside Sweden and Finland, there are about 40,000 active learners enrolled in Swedish language courses. In
1476-609: A large proportion of the remaining 100,000 in the Scandinavian countries, France, Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Canada and Australia. Over three million people speak Swedish as a second language, with about 2,410,000 of those in Finland. According to a survey by the European Commission , 44% of respondents from Finland who did not have Swedish as a native language considered themselves to be proficient enough in Swedish to hold
1640-425: A more abstract sense, such as that set of fish; while fisken means "the fish". In certain cases, the definite form indicates possession, e. g., jag måste tvätta hår et ("I must wash my hair"). Adjectives are inflected in two declensions – indefinite and definite – and they must match the noun they modify in gender and number. The indefinite neuter and plural forms of an adjective are usually created by adding
1804-437: A non-democratic form of government it is still an open country. Both statements made public support for the monarchy reach the lowest numbers in many years. Public trust increased, however, after the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami where many Swedes died. The Swedish prime minister Göran Persson then failed to carry out his constitutional obligation to inform the king on matters of state which resulted in criticism of
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#17330855506271968-455: A notion as "literature for dummies." The Swedish Academy awarded the next two prizes to non-Europeans, Chinese author Mo Yan and Canadian short story writer Alice Munro . French writer Patrick Modiano 's win in 2014 renewed questions of Eurocentrism; when asked by The Wall Street Journal "So no American this year, yet again. Why is that?", Englund reminded Americans of the Canadian origins of
2132-435: A noun. They can double as demonstrative pronouns or demonstrative determiners when used with adverbs such as här ("here") or där ("there") to form den/det här (can also be "denna/detta") ("this"), de här (can also be "dessa") ("these"), den/det där ("that"), and de där ("those"). For example, den där fisken means "that fish" and refers to a specific fish; den fisken is less definite and means "that fish" in
2296-579: A number of controversial statements considered political. In his critique of Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland and her Norwegian seal hunt policy, he questioned whether someone who could not take care of the seal problem really could take care of the Norwegian people. In 2004, after a state visit to Brunei , he praised Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah and called Brunei a really open country, despite Brunei's controversial human rights history. In 2023 Carl Gustaf said that while he understands that Brunei has
2460-557: A recipient. However, there were concerns that the academy was not in any condition to credibly present the award. The New Academy Prize in Literature , not affiliated with either the Nobel Foundation or the Swedish Academy, was created as an alternative award for 2018 only. The first and only New Academy Prize in Literature was won by Maryse Condé , a writer from Guadeloupe noted for her novels Segu , Tree of Life: A Novel of
2624-500: A renewed Academy changed focus and began to award literary pioneers like Hermann Hesse , André Gide , T. S. Eliot , and William Faulkner . During this era, "the greatest benefit on mankind" was interpreted in a more exclusive and generous way than before. Since the 1970s, the Academy has often given attention to important but internationally unnoticed writers, awarding writers like Elias Canetti and Jaroslav Seifert . Beginning in 1986,
2788-598: A response the Saudi Arabian Ambassador to Sweden was recalled and a military co-operation agreement between the two nations was ended. The Swedish government then reportedly asked for the king's help in solving the crisis. He then wrote a letter to the Saudi Arabian king and shortly thereafter diplomatic relations went back to normal. Carl Gustaf's role in solving the crisis, and his statement regarding said role during which he claimed to have "good relations" with
2952-441: A result, Carl Gustaf no longer performs many of the duties normally accorded to a head of state in parliamentary regimes, such as the formal appointment of the prime minister, signing legislation into law, and being commander-in-chief of the nation's military. The new instrument explicitly limited the king to ceremonial and representative functions, while he retained the right to be regularly informed of affairs of state. As head of
3116-703: A similar manner to the Nobel Prize in Literature, it recognises the lifetime achievement of writers, though the Andersen Award focuses on a single category of literary works (children's literature). Swedish language Swedish ( endonym : svenska [ˈsvɛ̂nːska] ) is a North Germanic language from the Indo-European language family , spoken predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland . It has at least 10 million native speakers, making it
3280-667: A special branch of the Research Institute for the Languages of Finland has official status as the regulatory body for Swedish in Finland. Among its highest priorities is to maintain intelligibility with the language spoken in Sweden. It has published Finlandssvensk ordbok , a dictionary about the differences between Swedish in Finland and Sweden. From the 13th to 20th century, there were Swedish-speaking communities in Estonia , particularly on
3444-522: A speech on 6 August 2011 at the closing ceremony with more than 40,000 people watching. The band Europe also performed for him singing "The Final Countdown". King Carl Gustaf made an appearance at the 2013 Boy Scouts of America National Jamboree in West Virginia. So empowered as head of the House of Bernadotte , King Carl Gustaf since he was enthroned in 1973 has made a number of personal decisions regarding
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#17330855506273608-442: A suffix ( -t or -a ) to the common form of the adjective, e. g., en grön stol (a green chair), ett grönt hus (a green house), and gröna stolar ("green chairs"). The definite form of an adjective is identical to the indefinite plural form, e. g., den gröna stolen ("the green chair"), det gröna huset ("the green house"), and de gröna stolarna ("the green chairs"). Swedish pronouns are similar to those of English. Besides
3772-413: A village, Gammalsvenskby ("Old Swedish Village"). A few elderly people in the village still speak a Swedish dialect and observe the holidays of the Swedish calendar, although their dialect is most likely facing extinction. From 1918 to 1940, when Estonia was independent, the small Swedish community was well treated. Municipalities with a Swedish majority, mainly found along the coast, used Swedish as
3936-403: A work in relation to its contribution to humanity's pursuit of the "ideal." Leo Tolstoy , Henrik Ibsen , Émile Zola , and Mark Twain were rejected in favour of authors who mostly are little read today. Later, the prize has often been controversial due to the Swedish Academy's Eurocentric choices of laureates, or for political reasons, as seen in the years 1970 , 2005 , and 2019 , and for
4100-686: Is also inscribed on the reverse. Between 1902 and 2010, the Nobel Prize medals were struck by the Myntverket , the Swedish royal mint , located in Eskilstuna . In 2011, the medals were made by the Det Norske Myntverket in Kongsberg . The medals have been made by Svenska Medalj in Eskilstuna since 2012. Nobel laureates receive a diploma directly from the King of Sweden . Each diploma is uniquely designed by
4264-693: Is co- official language . Swedish was long spoken in parts of Estonia , although the current status of the Estonian Swedish speakers is almost extinct. It is also used in the Swedish diaspora , most notably in Oslo , Norway, with more than 50,000 Swedish residents. Swedish is an Indo-European language belonging to the North Germanic branch of the Germanic languages . In the established classification, it belongs to
4428-492: Is frequently seen as an indicator of who may be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Gabriel García Márquez (1972 Neustadt, 1982 Nobel), Czesław Miłosz (1978 Neustadt, 1980 Nobel), Octavio Paz (1982 Neustadt, 1990 Nobel), Tomas Tranströmer (1990 Neustadt, 2011 Nobel) were first awarded the Neustadt International Prize for Literature before being awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Another award of note
4592-477: Is generally seen as adding specific Central Swedish features to the new Bible. Though it might seem as if the Bible translation set a very powerful precedent for orthographic standards, spelling actually became more inconsistent during the remainder of the century. It was not until the 17th century that spelling began to be discussed, around the time when the first grammars were written. Capitalization during this time
4756-491: Is included). In 2009, Horace Engdahl , then the permanent secretary of the Academy, declared that "Europe still is the centre of the literary world" and that "the US is too isolated, too insular. They don't translate enough and don't really participate in the big dialogue of literature." In 2009, Engdahl's replacement, Peter Englund , rejected this sentiment ("In most language areas ... there are authors that really deserve and could get
4920-550: Is inscribed " Inventas vitam iuvat excoluisse per artes " ("It is beneficial to have improved (human) life through discovered arts"), an adaptation of " inventas aut qui vitam excoluere per artes " from line 663 of book 6 of the Aeneid by the Roman poet Virgil . A plate below the figures is inscribed with the name of the recipient. The text "ACAD. SUEC." denoting the Swedish Academy
5084-538: Is marked primarily through suffixes (endings), complemented with separate definite and indefinite articles . The prosody features both stress and in most dialects tonal qualities. The language has a comparatively large vowel inventory. Swedish is also notable for the voiceless dorso-palatal velar fricative , a highly variable consonant phoneme . Swedish nouns and adjectives are declined in genders as well as number . Nouns are of common gender ( en form) or neuter gender ( ett form). The gender determines
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5248-563: Is often one of the most noticeable differences between dialects. The standard word order is, as in most Germanic languages , V2 , which means that the finite verb (V) appears in the second position (2) of a declarative main clause . Swedish morphology is similar to English; that is, words have comparatively few inflections . Swedish has two genders and is generally seen to have two grammatical cases – nominative and genitive (except for pronouns that, as in English, also are inflected in
5412-613: Is one of the official languages of the European Union , and one of the working languages of the Nordic Council . Under the Nordic Language Convention , citizens of the Nordic countries speaking Swedish have the opportunity to use their native language when interacting with official bodies in other Nordic countries without being liable for interpretation or translation costs. The Swedish Language Council ( Språkrådet )
5576-609: Is possible for "Swedish professors ... [to] compar[e] a poet from Indonesia , perhaps translated into English with a novelist from Cameroon , perhaps available only in French, and another who writes in Afrikaans but is published in German and Dutch...". As of 2021, 16 of the 118 recipients have been of Scandinavian origin. The Academy has often been alleged to be biased towards European, and in particular Swedish, authors. Nobel's "vague" wording for
5740-675: Is probably best known as the presenter of the Nobel Prizes each year; the first Nobel laureate who received the prize from his hands was Leo Esaki . He also hands over the Polar Music Prize . The King holds honorary doctoral degrees from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences , KTH Royal Institute of Technology , the Stockholm School of Economics and from the Åbo Akademi University in Finland. Carl Gustaf has made
5904-475: Is termed nusvenska (lit., "Now-Swedish") in linguistics, and started in the last decades of the 19th century. It saw a democratization of the language with a less formal written form that approached the spoken one. The growth of a public school system also led to the evolution of so-called boksvenska (literally, "book Swedish"), especially among the working classes, where spelling to some extent influenced pronunciation, particularly in official contexts. With
6068-761: Is the Spanish Princess of Asturias Award (formerly Prince of Asturias Award) in Letters. During the first years of its existence, it was almost exclusively awarded to writers in the Spanish language, but in more recent times, writers in other languages have been awarded as well. Writers who have won both the Asturias Award in Letters and the Nobel Prize in Literature include Camilo José Cela , Günter Grass , Doris Lessing , and Mario Vargas Llosa . The non-monetary America Award in Literature presents itself as an alternative to
6232-517: Is the predominant language; in 19 municipalities , 16 of which are located in Åland , Swedish is the sole official language. Åland county is an autonomous region of Finland. According to a rough estimation, as of 2010 there were up to 300,000 Swedish-speakers living outside Sweden and Finland. The largest populations were in the United States (up to 100,000), the UK, Spain and Germany (c. 30,000 each) and
6396-450: Is the regulator of Swedish in Sweden but does not attempt to enforce control of the language, as for instance the Académie française does for French . However, many organizations and agencies require the use of the council's publication Svenska skrivregler in official contexts, with it otherwise being regarded as a de facto orthographic standard. Among the many organizations that make up
6560-407: Is the sole official language of Åland (an autonomous province under the sovereignty of Finland), where the vast majority of the 26,000 inhabitants speak Swedish as a first language. In Finland as a whole, Swedish is one of the two "national" languages, with the same official status as Finnish (spoken by the majority) at the state level and an official language in some municipalities . Swedish
6724-621: Is the term used for the medieval Swedish language. The start date is usually set to 1225 since this is the year that Västgötalagen ("the Västgöta Law") is believed to have been compiled for the first time. It is among the most important documents of the period written in Latin script and the oldest Swedish law codes . Old Swedish is divided into äldre fornsvenska (1225–1375) and yngre fornsvenska (1375–1526), "older" and "younger" Old Swedish. Important outside influences during this time came with
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6888-457: The Gustav Vasa Bible , a translation deemed so successful and influential that, with revisions incorporated in successive editions, it remained the most common Bible translation until 1917. The main translators were Laurentius Andreæ and the brothers Laurentius and Olaus Petri . The Vasa Bible is often considered to be a reasonable compromise between old and new; while not adhering to
7052-572: The Crown Prince and Crown Princess of Denmark (his paternal uncle and aunt), the Crown Prince of Norway , Princess Juliana of the Netherlands , the King of Sweden (his paternal great-grandfather), the Hereditary Prince of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (his maternal uncle), the Crown Prince and Crown Princess of Sweden (his paternal grandfather and step-grandmother), and Count Folke and Countess Maria Bernadotte of Wisborg . Prince Carl Gustaf
7216-656: The East Scandinavian languages , together with Danish , separating it from the West Scandinavian languages , consisting of Faroese , Icelandic , and Norwegian . However, more recent analyses divide the North Germanic languages into two groups: Insular Scandinavian (Faroese and Icelandic), and Continental Scandinavian (Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish), based on mutual intelligibility due to heavy influence of East Scandinavian (particularly Danish) on Norwegian during
7380-463: The French vous (see T-V distinction ). Ni wound up being used as a slightly less familiar form of du , the singular second person pronoun, used to address people of lower social status. With the liberalization and radicalization of Swedish society in the 1950s and 1960s, these class distinctions became less important, and du became the standard, even in formal and official contexts. Though
7544-429: The House of Bernadotte , Carl Gustaf has also been able to make a number of decisions about the titles and positions of its members. In June 1976, Carl Gustaf married Silvia Sommerlath . They have three children: Victoria , Carl Philip , and Madeleine . The King's heir apparent , after passage on 1 January 1980 of a new law establishing absolute primogeniture , is his eldest child, Crown Princess Victoria. Before
7708-874: The Neustadt International Prize for Literature , the Jerusalem Prize , Franz Kafka Prize , the International Booker Prize , and the Formentor Prix International . The journalist Hephzibah Anderson has noted that the International Booker Prize "is fast becoming the more significant award, appearing an ever more competent alternative to the Nobel". However, since 2016, the International Booker Prize now recognises an annual book of fiction translated into English. Previous winners of
7872-639: The Special Council held during a change of Government ( Swedish : skifteskonselj ), holds regular Information Councils with the Prime Minister and the Cabinet ( Swedish : informationskonselj ), chairs the meetings of the Advisory Council on Foreign Affairs ( Swedish : Utrikesnämnden ), and receives Letters of Credence of foreign ambassadors to Sweden and signs those of Sweden to foreign nations. As
8036-576: The Swedish Army , the Royal Swedish Navy , and the Swedish Air Force . During the winter 1966–1967, he took part in a round-the-world voyage with the mine-laying vessel Älvsnabben . The Crown Prince received his commission as an officer in all three services in 1968, eventually rising to the rank of captain (in the army and air force) and lieutenant (in the navy), before his accession to
8200-511: The United States , particularly during the 19th and early 20th centuries, there was a significant Swedish-speaking immigrant population. This was notably true in states like Minnesota , where many Swedish immigrants settled. By 1940, approximately 6% of Minnesota's population spoke Swedish. Although the use of Swedish has significantly declined, it is not uncommon to find older generations and communities that still retain some use and knowledge of
8364-523: The Wall Street Journal , Joseph Epstein wrote, "You might not know it, but you and I are members of a club whose fellow members include Leo Tolstoy , Henry James , Anton Chekhov , Mark Twain , Henrik Ibsen , Marcel Proust , James Joyce , Jorge Luis Borges and Vladimir Nabokov . The club is the Non-Winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature. All these authentically great writers, still alive when
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#17330855506278528-517: The fourth most spoken Germanic language , and the first among its type in the Nordic countries overall. Swedish, like the other Nordic languages , is a descendant of Old Norse , the common language of the Germanic peoples living in Scandinavia during the Viking Age . It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish , although the degree of mutual intelligibility is dependent on
8692-517: The heir apparent of Sweden. Carl Gustaf was seven years old before he was told about his father's death. He expressed his feelings about growing up without knowing his father in a speech in 2005. Carl Gustaf's earliest education was received privately at the Royal Palace . He was then sent to Broms school, and then on to Sigtuna boarding school . After graduating from high school in 1966, Carl Gustaf completed two-and-a-half years of education in
8856-581: The nationalist ideas that emerged during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the languages have separate orthographies , dictionaries, grammars, and regulatory bodies. Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish are thus from a linguistic perspective more accurately described as a dialect continuum of Scandinavian (North Germanic), and some of the dialects, such as those on the border between Norway and Sweden, especially parts of Bohuslän , Dalsland , western Värmland , western Dalarna , Härjedalen , Jämtland , and Scania , could be described as intermediate dialects of
9020-410: The object form) – although it is debated if the genitive in Swedish should be seen as a genitive case or just the nominative plus the so-called genitive s , then seen as a clitic . Swedish has two grammatical numbers – plural and singular . Adjectives have discrete comparative and superlative forms and are also inflected according to gender, number and definiteness . The definiteness of nouns
9184-769: The 100th Anniversary of World Scouting 2007 World Jamboree held in Hylands Park, England . He also attended the 1981 National Scout Jamboree in Virginia , United States, and was awarded the Bronze Wolf , the only distinction of the World Organization of the Scout Movement , awarded by the World Scout Committee for exceptional services to world Scouting, in 1982. He also attended the 22nd World Scout Jamboree . He gave
9348-426: The 18-member academy, who select the recipients, is technically for life. Until 2018, members were not allowed to leave, although they might refuse to participate. For members who did not participate, their board seat was left vacant until they died. Twelve active/participating members are required for a quorum. In 1989, three members, including the former permanent secretary Lars Gyllensten , resigned in protest after
9512-399: The 1950s, when their use was removed from all official recommendations. A very significant change in Swedish occurred in the late 1960s, with the so-called du-reformen . Previously, the proper way to address people of the same or higher social status had been by title and surname. The use of herr ("Mr." or "Sir"), fru ("Mrs." or "Ma'am") or fröken ("Miss") was considered
9676-419: The 1960 laureate Saint-John Perse was nominated several times by the 1948 laureate T. S. Eliot . Although the Nobel Prize in Literature has become the world's most prestigious literature prize, the Swedish Academy has attracted significant criticism for its handling of the award. Many authors who have won the prize have fallen into obscurity, while others rejected by the jury remain widely studied and read. In
9840-412: The 2023 Nobel Prize Ceremony the Nobel Foundation announced that they intended to invite ambassadors from Russia , Belarus and Iran to attend the event. This sparked mass criticism and the royal court issued a statement saying the king was still deciding on whether or not to attend the ceremony, as has been tradition since it was first held. Many leaders of political parties also threatened to boycott
10004-422: The 8th century, the common Germanic language of Scandinavia, Proto-Norse , evolved into Old Norse. This language underwent more changes that did not spread to all of Scandinavia, which resulted in the appearance of two similar dialects: Old West Norse (Norway, the Faroe Islands and Iceland) and Old East Norse (Denmark and Sweden). The dialects of Old East Norse spoken in Sweden are called Runic Swedish , while
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#173308555062710168-448: The Academy acknowledged the international aspect in Nobel's will, which rejected any consideration of the nationality of the candidates, and awarded authors from all over the world, such as Wole Soyinka from Nigeria, Naguib Mahfouz from Egypt, Octavio Paz from Mexico, Nadine Gordimer from South Africa, Derek Walcott from St. Lucia, Toni Morrison , the first African-American on the list, Kenzaburo Oe from Japan, and Gao Xingjian ,
10332-408: The Academy awarding its own members, as happened in 1974 . The prize's focus on European men, and Swedes in particular, has been the subject of criticism, even from Swedish newspapers. The majority of laureates have been European, with Sweden itself receiving more prizes (8) than all of Asia (7, if Turkish Orhan Pamuk is included), as well as all of Latin America (7, if Saint Lucian Derek Walcott
10496-411: The Academy by 1 February, after which they are examined by the Nobel Committee , a working group within the Academy comprising four to five members. By April, the committee narrows the field to around 20 candidates. By May, a shortlist of five names is approved by the Academy. The next four months are spent reading and reviewing the works of the five candidates. In October, members of the Academy vote, and
10660-581: The Academy has been reluctant to award shared prizes, because divisions are liable to be interpreted as a result of a compromise. The shared prizes awarded to Frédéric Mistral and José Echegaray in 1904 and to Karl Gjellerup and Henrik Pontoppidan in 1917 were, in fact, both results of compromises. Shared prizes are exceptional, and more recently, the Academy has awarded a shared prize on only two occasions, to Shmuel Yosef Agnon and Nelly Sachs in 1966, and to Eyvind Johnson and Harry Martinson in 1974. Nobel Prize Laureates in Literature are awarded for
10824-449: The Caribbean and Windward Heights . The scandal was widely seen as damaging to the credibility of the prize and its authority. As noted by Andrew Brown in The Guardian in a lengthy deconstruction of the scandal: "The scandal has elements of a tragedy, in which people who set out to serve literature and culture discovered they were only pandering to writers and the people who hang around with them. The pursuit of excellence in art
10988-414: The Don , he has given expression to a historic phase in the life of the Russian people". Nominations are kept secret for 50 years until they are publicly available at The Nomination Database for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Currently, only nominations submitted between 1901 and 1973 are available for public viewing. What about the rumours circling around the world about certain people being nominated for
11152-420: The International Booker Prize who have gone on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature include Alice Munro , Olga Tokarczuk , and Han Kang . The Neustadt International Prize for Literature is regarded as one of the most prestigious international literary prizes, often referred to as the American equivalent of the Nobel Prize. Like the Nobel Prize, it is awarded not for any one work but for an entire body of work. It
11316-433: The King at the head of the Swedish delegation to the World Exposition in Osaka , Japan. Since his youth the present monarch has been a strong supporter of the Scout Movement in Sweden. Carl Gustaf has dyslexia , as do his daughter Crown Princess Victoria and his son Prince Carl Philip. On 15 September 1973, Carl Gustaf became King of Sweden upon the death of his grandfather, Gustaf VI Adolf. On 19 September, he took
11480-426: The Miguel de Cervantes Prize include Octavio Paz (1981 Cervantes, 1990 Nobel); Mario Vargas Llosa (1994 Cervantes, 2010 Nobel); and Camilo José Cela (1995 Cervantes, 1989 Nobel). José Saramago is the only author to receive both the Camões Prize (1995) and the Nobel Prize (1998) to date. The Hans Christian Andersen Award is sometimes referred to as "the Little Nobel". The award has earned this appellation since, in
11644-407: The Modern Swedish period were the gradual assimilation of several different consonant clusters into the fricative [ʃ] and later into [ɧ] . There was also the gradual softening of [ɡ] and [k] into [j] and the fricative [ɕ] before front vowels . The velar fricative [ɣ] was also transformed into the corresponding plosive [ɡ] . The period that includes Swedish as it is spoken today
11808-754: The Nobel Foundation to take care of Nobel's fortune and organise the prizes. The members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee that were to award the Peace Prize were appointed shortly after the will was approved. The prize-awarding organisations followed: the Karolinska Institutet on 7 June, the Swedish Academy on 9 June, and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on 11 June. The Nobel Foundation then reached an agreement on guidelines for how
11972-627: The Nobel Foundation) and Jean-Paul Sartre in 1964. Alfred Nobel's guidelines for the prize, stating that the candidate should have bestowed "the greatest benefit on mankind" and written "in an idealistic direction," have sparked much discussion. In the early history of the prize, Nobel's " idealism " was read as "a lofty and sound idealism." The set of criteria, characterised by its conservative idealism, holding church, state, and family sacred, resulted in prizes for Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson , Rudyard Kipling , and Paul Heyse . During World War I , there
12136-960: The Nobel Prize and that goes for the United States and the Americas, as well") and acknowledged the Eurocentric nature of the award, saying that, "I think that is a problem. We tend to relate more easily to literature written in Europe and in the European tradition." American critics are known to object that those from their own country, like Philip Roth , Thomas Pynchon , and Cormac McCarthy , have been overlooked, as have Latin Americans such as Jorge Luis Borges , Julio Cortázar , and Carlos Fuentes , while in their place Europeans lesser-known to that continent have triumphed. The 2009 award to Herta Müller , previously little-known outside Germany but many times named favourite for
12300-560: The Nobel Prize in Literature would once again be awarded, and laureates for both 2018 and 2019 would be announced together. The decision came after several changes were made to the structure of the Swedish Academy as well as to the Nobel Committee members selection, in order to "[restore] trust in the Academy as a prize-awarding institution". The Nobel Prize in Literature is not the only literary prize for which all nationalities are eligible. Other notable international literary prizes include
12464-534: The Nobel Prize in Literature. Members of the Academy, members of literature academies and societies, professors of literature and language, former Nobel literature laureates, and the presidents of writers' organisations are all allowed to nominate a candidate. It is not allowed to nominate oneself. Between the years 1901 and 1950, around 20 to 35 nominations were usually received each year. Today thousands of requests are sent out each year, and as of 2011 about 220 proposals were returned. These proposals must be received by
12628-462: The Nobel Prize should be awarded. In 1900, the Nobel Foundation's newly created statutes were promulgated by King Oscar II . According to Nobel's will, the prize in literature should be determined by "the Academy in Stockholm", which was specified by the statutes of the Nobel Foundation to mean the Swedish Academy . Each year, the Swedish Academy sends out requests for nominations of candidates for
12792-426: The Nobel Prize this year? – Well, either it's just a rumour, or someone among the invited nominators has leaked information. Since the nominations are kept secret for 50 years, you'll have to wait until then to find out. Nominated candidates are usually considered by the Nobel committee for years, but it has happened on a number of occasions that an author has been instantly awarded after just one nomination. Apart from
12956-547: The Nobel Prize, re-ignited the viewpoint that the Swedish Academy was biased and Eurocentric . The 2010 prize was awarded to Mario Vargas Llosa , a native of Peru in South America, a generally well-regarded decision. When the 2011 prize was awarded to the Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer , permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy Peter Englund said the prize was not decided based on politics, describing such
13120-632: The Nobel Prize. Peter Handke , Harold Pinter , José Saramago , and Mario Vargas Llosa are the only writers to have received both the America Award and the Nobel Prize in Literature. There are also prizes for honouring the lifetime achievement of writers in specific languages, like the Miguel de Cervantes Prize (for Spanish language, established in 1976) and the Camões Prize (for Portuguese language, established in 1989). Nobel laureates who were also awarded
13284-510: The Nobel committee are elected for a period of three years from among the members of the academy and are assisted by specially appointed expert advisers. The award is usually announced in October. Sometimes, however, the award has been announced the year after the nominal year, the latest such case being the 2018 award . In the midst of controversy surrounding claims of sexual assault, conflict of interest, and resignations by officials, on 4 May 2018,
13448-517: The Queen have maintained their business offices at the Royal Palace of Stockholm. King Carl Gustaf and Queen Silvia have three children and eight grandchildren: Prince Carl Philip was born the heir apparent . However, a constitutional reform, which was already under way at the time of his birth, made his elder sister, Victoria, the heir apparent and Crown Princess of Sweden on 1 January 1980, according to
13612-467: The Saudi King have both received criticism. The King's Golden Jubilee was celebrated in 2023. The celebrations included tours of all of Sweden's 21 counties, a jubilee banquet at the Royal Palace and a carriage procession through the streets of Stockholm. Leading up to that year and including it, beginning already in 2018, some of the most serious criticism ever published took place about Carl Gustaf and
13776-429: The Swedish Academy announced that the 2018 laureate would be announced in 2019 along with the 2019 laureate. Some years, such as in 1949 , no candidate received the required majority of the votes, and for that reason, the prize was postponed and announced the following year. A Literature Nobel Prize laureate receives a gold medal , a diploma bearing a citation , and a sum of money. The amount of money awarded depends on
13940-527: The Swedish Language Council, the Swedish Academy (established 1786) is arguably the most influential. Its primary instruments are the spelling dictionary Svenska Akademiens ordlista ( SAOL , currently in its 14th edition) and the dictionary Svenska Akademiens Ordbok , in addition to various books on grammar, spelling and manuals of style. Although the dictionaries have a prescriptive element, they mainly describe current usage. In Finland,
14104-410: The academy refused to denounce Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini for calling for the death of Salman Rushdie , author of The Satanic Verses . A fourth member, Knut Ahnlund , decided to remain in the academy but later refused to participate in their work and resigned in 2005 in protest of the Nobel Prize in Literature awarded to Elfriede Jelinek . According to Ahnlund, the decision to award Jelinek ruined
14268-498: The administrative language and Swedish-Estonian culture saw an upswing. However, most Swedish-speaking people fled to Sweden before the end of World War II , that is, before the invasion of Estonia by the Soviet army in 1944. Only a handful of speakers remain. Swedish dialects have either 17 or 18 vowel phonemes , 9 long and 9 short. As in the other Germanic languages, including English, most long vowels are phonetically paired with one of
14432-892: The affairs of the Riksdag , Government, and Ministry for Foreign Affairs . The Crown Prince also spent time at the Swedish Mission to the United Nations and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA), worked at a bank in London and at the Swedish Embassy there, at the Swedish Chamber of Commerce in France, and at the Alfa Laval Company factory in France. In 1970, he represented
14596-555: The artistic power and truth with which he has depicted human conflict as well as some fundamental aspects of contemporary life in his novel-cycle Les Thibault "; Ernest Hemingway in 1954 "for his mastery of the art of narrative, most recently demonstrated in The Old Man and the Sea ; and for the influence that he has exerted on contemporary style"; and Mikhail Sholokhov in 1965 "for the artistic power and integrity with which, in his epic of
14760-653: The author's life work, but on some occasions, the Academy has singled out a specific work for particular recognition. For example, Knut Hamsun was awarded in 1920 "for his monumental work, Growth of the Soil "; Thomas Mann in 1929 "principally for his great novel, Buddenbrooks , which has won steadily increased recognition as one of the classic works of contemporary literature"; John Galsworthy in 1932 "for his distinguished art of narration which takes its highest form in The Forsyte Saga "; Roger Martin du Gard in 1937 "for
14924-415: The award is based on an author's body of work as a whole. The Swedish Academy decides who, if anyone, will receive the prize. The academy announces the name of the laureate in early October. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895. Literature is traditionally the final award presented at the Nobel Prize ceremony. On some occasions, the award has been postponed to
15088-452: The balcony to acknowledge gathered crowds. At the cabinet meeting, the King declared that his regnal name would be Carl XVI Gustaf, King of Sweden. He adopted "For Sweden – With the times" as his personal motto ( För Sverige – i tiden ). He is the foremost representative of Sweden and pays state visits abroad and receives those to Sweden, he opens the annual session of the Riksdag , chairs
15252-481: The candidate who receives more than half of the votes is named the Nobel laureate in Literature. No one can get the prize without being on the shortlist at least twice; thus, many authors reappear and are reviewed repeatedly over the years. The academicians read works in their original language, but when a candidate is shortlisted from a language that no member masters, they call on translators and oath-sworn experts to provide samples of that writer's work. Other elements of
15416-622: The ceremony. Eventually the Foundation backed down on its decision. The King is the honorary chairman of the World Scout Foundation , and often participates in Scout activities both in Sweden and abroad. He regularly visits World Scout Jamborees , for instance the 1979 Dalajamb World Jamboree International Encampment hosted by Sweden, the 2002 World Jamboree held in Sattahip, Thailand , and
15580-498: The colloquial spoken language of its day, it was not overly conservative in its use of archaic forms. It was a major step towards a more consistent Swedish orthography . It established the use of the vowels "å", "ä", and "ö", and the spelling "ck" in place of "kk", distinguishing it clearly from the Danish Bible, perhaps intentionally, given the ongoing rivalry between the countries. All three translators came from central Sweden, which
15744-420: The control of the Nobel Committee such as the early death of an author as was the case with Marcel Proust , Italo Calvino , and Roberto Bolaño . According to Kjell Espmark , "the main works of Kafka , Cavafy , and Pessoa were not published until after their deaths, and the true dimensions of Mandelstam's poetry were revealed above all in the unpublished poems that his wife saved from extinction and gave to
15908-401: The criteria for the prize has led to recurrent controversy. In the original Swedish, the word idealisk translates as "ideal." The Nobel Committee 's interpretation has varied over the years. In recent years, this means a kind of idealism championing human rights on a broad scale. From 1901 to 1912, the committee, led by the conservative Carl David af Wirsén , assessed the literary quality of
16072-409: The decisions by the Academy. Two former permanent secretaries, Sture Allén and Horace Engdahl, called Danius a weak leader. On 10 April, Danius was asked to resign from her position by the Academy, bringing the number of empty seats to four. Although the Academy voted against removing Katarina Frostenson from the committee, she voluntarily agreed to withdraw from participating in the academy, bringing
16236-403: The declension of the adjectives . For example, the word fisk ("fish") is a noun of common gender ( en fisk ) and can have the following forms: The definite singular form of a noun is created by adding a suffix ( -en , -n , -et or -t ), depending on its gender and if the noun ends in a vowel or not. The definite articles den , det , and de are used for variations to the definitiveness of
16400-501: The dialect and accent of the speaker. Standard Swedish , spoken by most Swedes , is the national language that evolved from the Central Swedish dialects in the 19th century, and was well established by the beginning of the 20th century. While distinct regional varieties and rural dialects still exist, the written language is uniform and standardized . Swedish is the most widely spoken second language in Finland where its status
16564-527: The dialects of Denmark are referred to as Runic Danish . The dialects are described as "runic" because the main body of text appears in the runic alphabet . Unlike Proto-Norse, which was written with the Elder Futhark alphabet, Old Norse was written with the Younger Futhark alphabet, which had only 16 letters. Because the number of runes was limited, some runes were used for a range of phonemes , such as
16728-426: The final candidates some years in the 1960s. Graham Greene was nominated for the prize twenty-six times between the years 1950 and 1971. Greene was a celebrated candidate to be awarded the prize in the 1960s and 1970s, and the Academy was criticised for passing him over. French novelist and intellectual André Malraux was seriously considered for the prize in the 1950s. Malraux was competing with Albert Camus but
16892-540: The firm establishment of the Christian church and various monastic orders, introducing many Greek and Latin loanwords. With the rise of Hanseatic power in the late 13th and early 14th century, Middle Low German became very influential. The Hanseatic league provided Swedish commerce and administration with a large number of Low German -speaking immigrants. Many became quite influential members of Swedish medieval society, and brought terms from their native languages into
17056-419: The first laureate in 1901, Sully Prudhomme , these include Theodor Mommsen in 1902, Rudolf Eucken in 1908, Paul Heyse in 1910, Rabindranath Tagore in 1913, Sinclair Lewis in 1930, Luigi Pirandello in 1934, Pearl Buck in 1938, William Faulkner in 1950 (the prize for 1949) and Bertrand Russell in 1950. Former recipients of the Nobel Prize in Literature are allowed to nominate their candidates for
17220-600: The first laureate to write in Chinese. In the 2000s, V. S. Naipaul , Mario Vargas Llosa , and the Chinese writer Mo Yan have been awarded, but the policy of "a prize for the whole world" has been less noticeable as the Academy has mostly continued to award European and English-language writers from the Western literary tradition. In 2015, a rare prize to a non-fiction writer was awarded to Svetlana Alexievich . The Nobel Prize in Literature can be shared between two individuals. However,
17384-453: The first time the prize amount was decreased—beginning with a nominal value of kr 150,782 in 1901 (worth 8,123,951 in 2011 SKr ) the nominal value has been as low as kr 121,333 (2,370,660 in 2011 SKr) in 1945—but it has been uphill or stable since then, peaking at an SKr-2011 value of 11,659,016 in 2001. The laureate is also invited to give a lecture during "Nobel Week" in Stockholm ;
17548-407: The following year, most recently in 2018. Alfred Nobel stipulated in his last will and testament that his money be used to create a series of prizes for those who confer the "greatest benefit on mankind" in physics , chemistry , peace , physiology or medicine, and literature. Although Nobel wrote several wills during his lifetime, the last was written a little over a year before he died, and it
17712-423: The government. During a memorial ceremony held at Stockholm City Hall on 10 January 2005 the king gave a highly praised speech which restored support of the monarchy. Carl Gustaf has claimed to have played an important part in solving a diplomatic crisis with Saudi Arabia in 2015. This crisis began when Foreign Minister Margot Wallström criticized Saudi Arabia's form of government and human-rights situation. As
17876-447: The highlight is the prize-giving ceremony and banquet on 10 December. It is the second richest literary prize in the world . The literature medal features a portrait of Alfred Nobel in left profile on the obverse . It was designed by Erik Lindberg . The reverse of the medal depicts a 'young man sitting under a laurel tree who, enchanted, listens to and writes down the song of the Muse'. It
18040-516: The incident caused national headlines. The king and queen of Sweden frequently travel to the Summer and Winter Olympic Games , including in 2014, 2016, 2018 and 2024. In 2016 the king intervened in the raging debate surrounding the proposed Nobel Center at Blasieholmen in central Stockholm, near the Nationalmuseum and old town, by stating that he thought the proposed structure was “too big and in
18204-400: The income of the Nobel Foundation that year. The literature prize can be shared between two, but not three, laureates. If a prize is awarded jointly, the prize money is split equally between them. The prize money of the Nobel Prize has been fluctuating since its inauguration but as of 2012 it stood at kr 8,000,000 (about US$ 1,100,000), previously it was kr 10,000,000. This was not
18368-430: The industrialization and urbanization of Sweden well under way by the last decades of the 19th century, a new breed of authors made their mark on Swedish literature . Many scholars, politicians and other public figures had a great influence on the emerging national language, among them prolific authors like the poet Gustaf Fröding , Nobel laureate Selma Lagerlöf and radical writer and playwright August Strindberg . It
18532-531: The infinitely varied work of scores of different traditions. And why should we ask them to do that?" Although several Scandinavians were awarded, two of the most celebrated writers, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen and Swedish author August Strindberg , were repeatedly bypassed by the committee, but Strindberg holds the singular distinction of being awarded an Anti-Nobel Prize, conferred by popular acclaim and national subscription and presented to him in 1912 by future prime minister Hjalmar Branting . Paul Valéry
18696-603: The islands (e. g., Hiiumaa , Vormsi , Ruhnu ; in Swedish, known as Dagö , Ormsö , Runö , respectively) along the coast of the Baltic , communities that today have all disappeared. The Swedish-speaking minority was represented in parliament , and entitled to use their native language in parliamentary debates. After the loss of Estonia to the Russian Empire in the early 18th century, around 1,000 Estonian Swedish speakers were forced to march to southern Ukraine , where they founded
18860-484: The language, particularly in rural communities like Lindström and Scandia . Swedish is the official main language of Sweden. Swedish is also one of two official languages of Finland. In Sweden, it has long been used in local and state government, and most of the educational system, but remained only a de facto primary language with no official status in law until 2009. A bill was proposed in 2005 that would have made Swedish an official language, but failed to pass by
19024-480: The last millennium and divergence from both Faroese and Icelandic. By many general criteria of mutual intelligibility, the Continental Scandinavian languages could very well be considered dialects of a common Scandinavian language. However, because of several hundred years of sometimes quite intense rivalry between Denmark and Sweden, including a long series of wars from the 16th to 18th centuries, and
19188-612: The military professional holding the position of Supreme Commander ) and therefore he was promoted ex officio from his earlier ranks of captain (Army & Air Force) and lieutenant (Navy), to general and admiral . Under the provisions of the Instrument of Government of 1974 , which became effective on 1 January 1975, the King no longer holds this constitutionally-mandated position, but he kept his ranks à la suite since he no longer has any military command authority, except over His Majesty's Military Staff . Worldwide, Carl XVI Gustaf
19352-511: The narrowest possible margin (145–147) due to a pairing-off failure. A proposal for a broader language law, designating Swedish as the main language of the country and bolstering the status of the minority languages, was submitted by an expert committee to the Swedish Ministry of Culture in March 2008. It was subsequently enacted by the Riksdag , and entered into effect on 1 July 2009. Swedish
19516-421: The national standard languages. Swedish pronunciations also vary greatly from one region to another, a legacy of the vast geographic distances and historical isolation. Even so, the vocabulary is standardized to a level that make dialects within Sweden virtually fully mutually intelligible. East Germanic languages West Germanic languages Icelandic Faroese Norwegian Danish Swedish In
19680-424: The north. An early change that separated Runic Danish from the other dialects of Old East Norse was the change of the diphthong æi to the monophthong é , as in stæinn to sténn "stone". This is reflected in runic inscriptions where the older read stain and the later stin . There was also a change of au as in dauðr into a long open ø as in døðr "dead". This change is shown in runic inscriptions as
19844-441: The only acceptable way to begin conversation with strangers of unknown occupation, academic title or military rank. The fact that the listener should preferably be referred to in the third person tended to further complicate spoken communication between members of society. In the early 20th century, an unsuccessful attempt was made to replace the insistence on titles with ni —the standard second person plural pronoun)—analogous to
20008-727: The only son of Sweden's Prince Gustaf Adolf and Princess Sibylla. He was christened at the Royal Chapel on 7 June 1946 by the Archbishop of Uppsala , Erling Eidem . Carl Gustaf was baptised in Charles XI 's baptismal font, which stood on Gustav III 's carpet; he lay in Charles XI's cradle with Oscar II 's crown beside him. The same christening gown in white linen batiste which the prince carried had been worn by his father in 1906 and would later be worn by his three children. His godparents were
20172-402: The original Germanic three- gender system. Nouns , adjectives , pronouns and certain numerals were inflected in four cases; besides the extant nominative , there were also the genitive (later possessive ), dative and accusative . The gender system resembled that of modern German , having masculine, feminine and neuter genders. The masculine and feminine genders were later merged into
20336-565: The passage of that law, Victoria's younger brother, Carl Philip, was briefly the heir apparent, as of his birth in May 1979. Carl XVI Gustaf is the longest-reigning monarch in Swedish history, having surpassed King Magnus IV 's reign of 44 years and 222 days on 26 April 2018. Carl Gustaf was born on 30 April 1946 at 10:20 in Haga Palace in Solna , Stockholm County . He was the youngest of five children and
20500-553: The previous year's recipient, the Academy's desire for literary quality and the impossibility of rewarding everyone who deserves the prize. In the history of the Nobel Prize in Literature, many critical literary figures were ignored. The literary historian Kjell Espmark admitted that "as to the early prizes, the censure of bad choices and blatant omissions is often justified. Tolstoy , Ibsen , and Henry James should have been rewarded instead of, for instance, Sully Prudhomme , Eucken , and Heyse ." There are omissions which are beyond
20664-399: The principles of absolute primogeniture , which Sweden was the first recognised monarchy to adopt. King Carl Gustaf objected after the reform, not to the succession by females but to the fact that his son lost the position and title which he had had since birth. In February 2023, Carl Gustaf underwent "a surgical intervention with catheter technology in the heart area." Gustaf VI Adolf
20828-500: The prize and sometimes their proposals have subsequently been awarded the prize. The 1912 laureate Gerhart Hauptmann nominated Verner von Heidenstam (awarded in 1916) and Thomas Mann (awarded in 1929), the 1915 laureate Romain Rolland proposed Ivan Bunin (awarded in 1933), Thomas Mann nominated Hermann Hesse (awarded in 1946) in 1931, the 1951 laureate Pär Lagerkvist was proposed by both André Gide and Roger Martin du Gard , and
20992-460: The prize, claimed that Joyce's "stature was not properly recognized even in the English-speaking world," but that Joyce doubtless would have been awarded if he had lived in the late 1940s when the Academy began to award literary pioneers like T. S. Eliot . Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges was nominated for the prize several times, but the Academy did not award it to him, though he was among
21156-465: The prize, initiated in 1901, was being awarded, didn't win it." Other notable names from the non-western canon who were ignored despite being nominated several times for the prize include Sri Aurobindo and Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan . The prize has "become widely seen as a political one – a peace prize in literary disguise", whose judges are prejudiced against authors with political tastes different from theirs. Tim Parks has expressed skepticism that it
21320-504: The prize-awarding institutions for the laureate who receives it. The diploma contains a picture and text that states the name of the laureate and normally a citation of why they received the prize. The Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded 116 times between 1901 and 2024 to 121 individuals: 103 men and 18 women. The prize has been shared between two individuals on four occasions. It was not awarded on seven occasions. The laureates have included writers in 25 languages. The youngest laureate
21484-447: The process are similar to those of other Nobel Prizes. The Swedish Academy is composed of 18 members who are elected for life and, until 2018, not technically permitted to leave. On 2 May 2018, King Carl XVI Gustaf amended the rules of the academy and made it possible for members to resign. The new rules also mention that a member who has been inactive in the work of the academy for more than two years can be asked to resign. The members of
21648-480: The reform was not an act of any centralized political decree, but rather the result of sweeping change in social attitudes, it was completed in just a few years, from the late 1960s to early 1970s. The use of ni as a polite form of address is sometimes encountered today in both the written and spoken language, particularly among older speakers. Swedish is the sole official national language of Sweden , and one of two in Finland (alongside Finnish ). As of 2006, it
21812-522: The required regal assurance ( Swedish : Konungaförsäkran ) during an extraordinary meeting of the cabinet. Afterwards, he appeared before the parliament, diplomatic corps, court, etc. in the Hall of State at the Royal Palace where he was enthroned on the Silver Throne and gave a speech. Both the cabinet meeting and ceremony at the Hall were broadcast live on television. Following the ceremonies, he appeared on
21976-463: The rune for the vowel u , which was also used for the vowels o , ø and y , and the rune for i , also used for e . From 1200 onwards, the dialects in Denmark began to diverge from those of Sweden. The innovations spread unevenly from Denmark, creating a series of minor dialectal boundaries, or isoglosses , ranging from Zealand in the south to Norrland , Österbotten and northwestern Finland in
22140-454: The shared prize to Eyvind Johnson and Harry Martinson in 1974. Selma Lagerlöf was elected a member of the Swedish Academy in 1914, five years after she was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1909. Three writers have declined the prize, Erik Axel Karlfeldt in 1919, Boris Pasternak in 1958 ("Accepted first, later caused by the authorities of his country (Soviet Union) to decline the Prize", according to
22304-444: The short /e/ (transcribed ⟨ ɛ ⟩ in the chart below). There are 18 consonant phonemes, two of which, / ɧ / and /r/ , vary considerably in pronunciation depending on the dialect and social status of the speaker. In many dialects, sequences of /r/ (pronounced alveolarly) with a dental consonant result in retroflex consonants ; alveolarity of the pronunciation of /r/ is a precondition for this retroflexion. /r/ has
22468-428: The short vowels, and the pairs are such that the two vowels are of similar quality , but with the short vowel being slightly lower and slightly centralized. In contrast to e.g. Danish, which has only tense vowels, the short vowels are slightly more lax, but the tense vs. lax contrast is not nearly as pronounced as in English, German or Dutch. In many dialects, the short vowel sound pronounced [ɛ] or [æ] has merged with
22632-568: The subject in a clause, a trait that is restricted to North Germanic languages: King Carl XVI Gustaf Carl XVI Gustaf (Carl Gustaf Folke Hubertus; born 30 April 1946) is King of Sweden . Carl Gustaf was born during the reign of his paternal great-grandfather, King Gustaf V . He is the youngest child and only son of Prince Gustaf Adolf, Duke of Västerbotten , and Princess Sibylla of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha . His father died in January 1947 in an airplane crash in Denmark when Carl Gustaf
22796-445: The throne. He also completed his academic studies in history , sociology , political science , tax law , and economics at Uppsala University and later economics at Stockholm University . To prepare for his role as the head of state , Crown Prince Carl Gustaf followed a broad program of studies on the court system, social organisations and institutions, trade unions , and employers' associations. In addition, he closely studied
22960-471: The titles and positions of relatives and family members, including the demotion of a sister, elevation of several commoners to royalty, rebuff of an elderly uncle's wishes and the creation of new Swedish titles and duchies. The King married Silvia Sommerlath , whose father was German and whose mother was Brazilian, and who had grown up in both countries. They met at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, where she
23124-484: The total of withdrawals to five. Because two other seats were still vacant from the Rushdie affair, this left only 11 active members, one short of the quorum needed to vote in replacements. On 4 May 2018, the Swedish Academy announced that the selection would be postponed until 2019, when two laureates would be chosen. It was still technically possible to choose a 2018 laureate, as only eight active members are required to choose
23288-526: The two cases and two genders of modern Swedish. A transitional change of the Latin script in the Nordic countries was to spell the letter combination "ae" as æ – and sometimes as a' – though it varied between persons and regions. The combination "ao" was similarly rendered a , and "oe" became o . These three were later to evolve into the separate letters ä , å and ö . The first time the new letters were used in print
23452-517: The two natural genders han and hon ("he" and "she"), there are also the two grammatical genders den and det , usually termed common and neuter . In recent years, a gender-neutral pronoun hen has been introduced, particularly in literary Swedish. Unlike the nouns, pronouns have an additional object form, derived from the old dative form. Hon , for example, has the following nominative, possessive, and object forms: Swedish also uses third-person possessive reflexive pronouns that refer to
23616-439: The vocabulary. Besides a great number of loanwords for such areas as warfare, trade and administration, general grammatical suffixes and even conjunctions were imported. The League also brought a certain measure of influence from Danish (at the time Swedish and Danish were much more similar than today). Early Old Swedish was markedly different from the modern language in that it had a more complex case structure and also retained
23780-399: The way his monarchy has developed. Support for the monarchy overall remained strong in the Swedish public, however, in large part due to the popularity of Crown Princess Victoria . The king is passionate about the environment, technology, agriculture, trade, and industry. Like many members of the Swedish royal family, he has a keen interest in automobiles. He owns several Porsche 911s ,
23944-451: The world long after he had perished in his Siberian exile." British novelist Tim Parks ascribed the never-ending controversy surrounding the decisions of the Nobel Committee to the "essential silliness of the prize and our own foolishness at taking it seriously" and noted that "eighteen (or sixteen) Swedish nationals will have a certain credibility when weighing up works of Swedish literature, but what group could ever really get its mind round
24108-515: The worth of the Nobel Prize in Literature for a long time. In April 2018, three members of the academy board resigned in response to a sexual misconduct investigation involving author Jean-Claude Arnault , who is married to board member Katarina Frostenson . Arnault was accused by at least 18 women of sexual assault and harassment. He and his wife were also accused of leaking the names of prize recipients on at least seven occasions so friends could profit from bets. He denied all accusations, although he
24272-464: The wrong place” and that it “could be relocated”. Following the 2018 election the City of Stockholm abandoned the original proposal opting instead for creating new plans near Slussen . In December 2020, the king said Sweden's approach to dealing with COVID-19 had failed. Prime Minister Stefan Löfven said that "the fact that so many have died can't be considered as anything other than a failure". Before
24436-466: Was Rudyard Kipling , who was 41 years old when he was awarded in 1907. The oldest laureate to receive the prize was Doris Lessing , who was 88 when she was awarded in 2007. It has been awarded posthumously once, to Erik Axel Karlfeldt in 1931. On some occasions, the awarding institution, the Swedish Academy , has awarded the prize to its own members; Verner von Heidenstam in 1916, the posthumous prize to Karlfeldt in 1931, Pär Lagerkvist in 1951, and
24600-475: Was a policy of neutrality, which partly explains the number of awards to Scandinavian writers. In the 1920s, "idealistic direction" was interpreted more generously as "wide-hearted humanity," leading to awards for writers like Anatole France , George Bernard Shaw , and Thomas Mann . In the 1930s, "the greatest benefit on mankind" was interpreted as writers within every person's reach, with authors like Sinclair Lewis and Pearl Buck receiving recognition. In 1946,
24764-468: Was also given the title of the Duke of Jämtland . His father, Prince Gustaf Adolf, Duke of Västerbotten , was killed in an airplane crash on 26 January 1947 at Copenhagen Airport . His father's death had left the nine-month-old prince second in line for the throne, behind his grandfather, then Crown Prince Gustaf Adolf. When his paternal great-grandfather, Gustaf V died in 1950, the four-year-old prince became
24928-404: Was among the final candidates for the prize several times, but the Academy favoured other writers. In 1964 Auden and Jean-Paul Sartre were the leading candidates, and the Academy favoured Sartre as Auden's best work was thought "too far back in time." In 1967 Auden was one of three final candidates along with Graham Greene and the awarded Guatemalan author Miguel Ángel Asturias . Membership in
25092-494: Was an interpreter and host. The wedding was held on 19 June 1976 at Stockholm Cathedral , the ceremony performed by the Archbishop of Uppsala , Olof Sundby. The wedding was preceded the previous evening by a Royal Variety Performance, at which, among other performances, the Swedish musical group ABBA gave one of the first performances of " Dancing Queen ", as a tribute to Sweden's future queen. The King and his family moved to Drottningholm Palace west of Stockholm in 1980. He and
25256-484: Was during the 20th century that a common, standardized national language became available to all Swedes. The orthography finally stabilized and became almost completely uniform, with some minor deviations, by the time of the spelling reform of 1906. With the exception of plural forms of verbs and a slightly different syntax, particularly in the written language, the language was the same as the Swedish of today. The plural verb forms appeared decreasingly in formal writing into
25420-410: Was entangled with the pursuit of social prestige. The academy behaved as if the meals in its clubhouse were as much an accomplishment as the work that got people elected there." King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden said a reform of the rules may be evaluated, including the introduction of the right to resign in respect of the current lifelong membership of the committee. On 5 March 2019, it was announced that
25584-636: Was in Aff dyäffwlsens frästilse ("By the Devil's temptation") published by Johan Gerson in 1495. Modern Swedish (Swedish: nysvenska ) begins with the advent of the printing press and the European Reformation . After assuming power, the new monarch Gustav Vasa ordered a Swedish translation of the Bible . The New Testament was published in 1526, followed by a full Bible translation in 1541, usually referred to as
25748-428: Was later convicted of rape and sentenced to two years and six months in prison. Sara Danius , the board secretary, hired a law firm to investigate if Frostenson had leaked confidential information and if Arnault had any influence on the Academy, but no legal action was taken. The investigation caused a split within the Academy. Following a vote to exclude board member Frostenson, the three members resigned in protest over
25912-423: Was nine months old. Carl Gustaf became crown prince and heir apparent to the Swedish throne at the age of four when his grandfather Gustaf VI Adolf acceded to the throne in 1950. Carl Gustaf acceded to the throne upon his grandfather's death on 15 September 1973. Shortly after he became king, the new 1974 Instrument of Government took effect, formally stripping the monarchy of its remaining executive powers. As
26076-510: Was nominated twelve times between 1930 and 1945 but died just as the Academy intended to award him the prize in 1945. James Joyce wrote the books that rank 1st and 3rd on the Modern Library 100 Best Novels – Ulysses and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man – but Joyce was never nominated for the prize. Kjell Espmark , a member of the Nobel Prize committee and author of the history of
26240-519: Was not standardized. It depended on the authors and their background. Those influenced by German capitalized all nouns, while others capitalized more sparsely. It is also not always apparent which letters are capitalized owing to the Gothic or blackletter typeface that was used to print the Bible. This typeface was in use until the mid-18th century, when it was gradually replaced with a Latin typeface (often Antiqua ). Some important changes in sound during
26404-437: Was rejected several times, especially in 1954 and 1955, "so long as he does not come back to novel." Thus, Camus was awarded the prize in 1957. Malraux was again considered in 1969 when he was competing with Samuel Beckett for the prize. Some members of the Nobel committee supported a prize to Malraux, but Beckett was awarded. W. H. Auden was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature nineteen times between 1961 and 1971, and
26568-631: Was signed at the Swedish-Norwegian Club in Paris on 27 November 1895. Nobel bequeathed 94% of his total assets, 31 million Swedish kronor ( US$ 198 million, €176 million in 2016), to establish and endow the five Nobel Prizes. Due to the level of scepticism surrounding the will, it was not until 26 April 1897 that the Storting (Norwegian Parliament) approved it. The executors of his will were Ragnar Sohlman and Rudolf Lilljequist, who formed
26732-770: Was the last king to use the style " by the Grace of God , of the Swedes , Goths and Wends King" ( Swedish : med Guds Nåde Sveriges, Götes och Wendes Konung ; Latin : Dei Gratia Suecorum, Gothorum et Vandalorum Rex ). This title had been in use since its adoption by Gustav I in 1523. Carl XVI Gustaf instead chose the simpler "King of Sweden" ( Sveriges Konung ), thereby ending a centuries-old tradition. There have not been sixteen kings of Sweden named Carl/Charles. The numeral stems from an erroneous genealogy that includes fictitious kings , created by 16th-century writer Johannes Magnus . On his creation as Duke of Jämtland, Carl XVI Gustaf
26896-526: Was the sole native language of 83% of Swedish residents. In 2007, around 5.5% (c. 290,000) of the population of Finland were native speakers of Swedish, partially due to a decline following the Russian annexation of Finland after the Finnish War 1808–1809. The Fenno-Swedish - speaking minority is concentrated in the coastal areas and archipelagos of southern and western Finland. In some of these areas, Swedish
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