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Nobel Prizes awarded in curtailed local ceremonies

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Having to adjust to the dictations by the global coronavirus pandemic, winners of the 2021 Nobel Prizes received their awards in local ceremonies scaled to pandemic specifications. For a second year, COVID-19 has scuttled the traditional formal banquet in Stockholm attended by winners of the prizes in chemistry, physics, medicine, literature, and economics. As reported by the AP:

The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded separately with its own ceremony in Oslo, Norway

LONDON (AP) — Winners of the 2021 Nobel Prizes began receiving their awards on Monday in scaled-down local ceremonies adapted for pandemic times.

Abdulrazak Gurnah, a Tanzanian-born novelist and emeritus professor who lives in the UK, poses for photographs with his 2021 Nobel Prize for Literature medal after being presented it by the Ambassador of Sweden Mikaela Kumlin Granit in a ceremony at the Swedish Ambassador’s Residence in London, Monday, Dec. 6, 2021. The 2021 Nobel Prize ceremonies are being reined in and scaled-down for the second year in a row due to the coronavirus pandemic, with the laureates receiving their Nobel Prize medals and diplomas in their home countries. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham)

For a second year, COVID-19 has scuttled the traditional formal banquet in Stockholm attended by winners of the prizes in chemistry, physics, medicine, literature, and economics, which were announced in October. The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded separately in Oslo, Norway.

Literature laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah was first to get his prize in a lunchtime ceremony Monday at the Swedish ambassador’s grand Georgian residence in central London.

Abdulrazak Gurnah, a Tanzanian-born novelist and emeritus professor who lives in the UK, is presented with the 2021 Nobel Prize for Literature medal and diploma by the Ambassador of Sweden Mikaela Kumlin Granit, during a ceremony at the Swedish Ambassador’s Residence in London, Monday, Dec. 6, 2021. The 2021 Nobel Prize ceremonies are being reined in and scaled-down for the second year in a row due to the coronavirus pandemic, with the laureates receiving their Nobel Prize medals and diplomas in their home countries. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham)

Ambassador Mikaela Kumlin Granit said the U.K.-based Tanzanian author had been awarded the Nobel Prize in literature for his “uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents.”

“Customarily you would receive the prize from the hands of His Majesty, the king of Sweden,” she told Gurnah at the ceremony attended by friends, family, and colleagues. “However, this year you will be celebrated with a distance forced upon us because of the pandemic.”

Abdulrazak Gurnah, a Tanzanian-born novelist and emeritus professor who lives in the UK, poses for photographs with his 2021 Nobel Prize for Literature medal after being presented it by the Ambassador of Sweden Mikaela Kumlin Granit in a ceremony at the Swedish Ambassador’s Residence in London, Monday, Dec. 6, 2021. The 2021 Nobel Prize ceremonies are being reined in and scaled-down for the second year in a row due to the coronavirus pandemic, with the laureates receiving their Nobel Prize medals and diplomas in their home countries. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham)

Gurnah, who grew up on the island of Zanzibar and arrived in England as an 18-year-old refugee in the 1960s, has drawn on his experiences for 10 novels, including “Memory of Departure,” “Pilgrims Way,” “Afterlives” and “Paradise.” He has said migration is “not just my story — it’s a phenomenon of our times.”

Later Monday, Italian physics laureate Giorgio Parisi is due to receive his prize at a ceremony in Rome. U.S.-based physics laureate Syukuro Manabe, chemistry laureate David W.C. MacMillan and economic sciences laureate Joshua D. Angrist will be given their medals and diplomas in Washington.

Abdulrazak Gurnah, a Tanzanian-born novelist and emeritus professor who lives in the UK, receives the 2021 Nobel Prize for Literature medal and diploma from the Ambassador of Sweden Mikaela Kumlin Granit, during a ceremony at the Swedish Ambassador’s Residence in London, Monday, Dec. 6, 2021. The 2021 Nobel Prize ceremonies are being reined in and scaled-down for the second year in a row due to the coronavirus pandemic, with the laureates receiving their Nobel Prize medals and diplomas in their home countries. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham)

More ceremonies will be held throughout the week in Germany and the United States. On Friday — the anniversary of the death of prize founder Albert Nobel — there will be a celebratory ceremony at Stockholm City Hall for a local audience, including King Carl XVI Gustav and senior Swedish royals.

A Nobel Prize comes with a diploma, a gold medal and a 10-million-krona ($1.15 million) cash award, which is shared if there are multiple winners.

The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded in Oslo because Nobel wanted it that way, for reasons he kept to himself. A ceremony is due to be held there Friday for the winners, journalists Maria Ressa of the Philippines and Dmitry Muratov of Russia.

The Norwegian news agency NTB said the peace prize festivities would be scaled down, with fewer guests and participants required to wear face masks. Norway has seen an uptick in cases of the new omicron variant, and a spokesman for the Norwegian Nobel Committee told NTB that it was “in constant contact with the health authorities in Oslo.”

By JILL LAWLESS

Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen contributed to this report from Copenhagen, Denmark.

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