The prizes established by Swedish inventor and businessman Alfred Nobel in his will are generally considered the most prestigious awards in the world. Yet the Nobel Prizes almost didn’t end up existing at all. During the last years of his life, Alfred Nobel spent the summers at Björkborn, a 17th-century manor in Karlskoga in the […]
Located on Sweden’s southern coast, overlooking the Baltic Sea, the small town of Ystad is an idyllic sort of place, with flower-filled cobblestoned streets and half-timbered houses that reflect its medieval origins. It’s not the sort of place you’d associate with murder and mayhem, but thanks to author Henning Mankell’s bestselling series of crime novels about police detective Kurt Wallander, Ystad is now known as much for mystery as it is for history.
Gustav Vigeland (1869-1943) may just be Norway’s most important artist you’ve never heard of. There are very few works by this talented sculptor outside his native country, the result of an arrangement Vigeland made with the Oslo City Council in 1921. Vigeland agreed to bequeath all his works to the city in exchange for the lifetime use of a studio and apartment specially built for him at Frogner. For the last two decades of his life, Vigeland lived and worked in this space; after his death, it became the Vigeland Museum, now one of Oslo’s top attractions along with the adjacent sculpture park.
“Stieg Larsson has transformed Stockholm for many of us,” says Elisabeth Daude, my guide on the Millennium walking tour, an intimate look at Stockholm’s Södermalm district as seen through the eyes of one of Sweden’s biggest cultural sensations of all time.
One of Denmark’s most famous writers, Hans Christian Andersen was born into a poor family in Odense, Denmark, on April 2, 1805. Andersen’s classic fairy tales such as “The Little Mermaid,” “The Ugly Duckling,” “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” and “The Princess and the Pea” continue to captivate children and adults nearly 140 years after his death.
The Nobel Prizes have been awarded every year on December 10 since 1901 and are among the world’s most prestigious honors. Alfred Nobel was a Swedish industrialist who designated most of his estate to establish the prestigious prizes that bear his name.
