No banquet, move to a smaller place ... The Nobel Peace Prize award ceremony will shrink this year because of the Covid-19 pandemic, the director of the Nobel Institute announced on Tuesday.
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The prize, which will be awarded on October 9, is traditionally awarded to the winner on December 10, the anniversary of the death of its creator, the Swedish scientist and industrialist Alfred Nobel (1833-1896), inventor of dynamite.
But unlike in past years, the ceremony will not be held in the great hall of Oslo City Hall, which can accommodate a thousand guests, but in that of a building -Aula- of the University of 'Oslo, which can accommodate a hundred guests.
And the banquet in honor of the winner, traditionally organized the same evening, has been canceled.
In July in Stockholm, the Nobel Foundation had already announced the cancellation, for the first time since 1956, of the Nobel gala dinner in Sweden, where the other prizes (medicine, physics, chemistry, literature and economics) are awarded.
Only the peace award is awarded in Oslo.
"
We wish to coordinate with Stockholm and underline that it is an exceptional year: it is therefore good to move the presentation (of the prize, editor's note) to another place
", explained the director of the Nobel Institute, Olav Njølstad , on Norwegian public broadcaster NRK.
“
Secondly, we couldn't have had more than 200 people in the Town Hall in a room that can actually accommodate 1,000, so it could have been rather sparse,
” he added.
It is far from certain that the Nobel Peace Laureate (s) can come to Oslo to receive the prestigious award this year and the Nobel Institute is considering a digital ceremony with an invitation, in person, postponed to the year next, Njølstad told NRK.
The Nobel consists of a gold medal, a diploma and a sum of 9 million Swedish crowns (approximately 865,000 euros).