The Holberg Prize and the Nils Klim Prize conferred

08.06.2016

Today, the Holberg Prize was officially conferred upon American author, scholar and literature Professor Stephen Greenblatt by H.R.H. Crown Prince Haakon.

At a prestigious award ceremony in the University Aula in Bergen, Dr. Stephen Greenblatt today received the international research award from H.R.H Crown Prince Haakon of Norway. Greenblatt is presently John Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University. The Holberg Prize is worth NOK 4.5 million (appr. EUR 485.000 or $540.000) and is awarded annually for outstanding contributions to research in the arts and humanities, social sciences, law or theology. 

“I am profoundly grateful to those who have chosen me to be the 2016 Holberg Laureate,” Greenblatt said.  “My gratitude is personal, of course, but it extends beyond the sphere of my own life and work."   

Watch the ceremony here.
Greenblatt's speech at the Award Ceremony on 8 June, 2016

Knowing yourself and others through Shakespeare 

Greenblatt receives the Prize for his distinctive and defining role in the field of literature and his influential voice in the humanities over four decades. He is regarded as one of the most important Shakespeare and Renaissance scholars of his generation.

“When I fell in love with Shakespeare a long time ago, it was because his works made me feel closer to those around me and to people I did not know,“ the Laureate said in his acceptance speech. “Shakespeare seemed to be offering me not simply a heightened closeness to people I did not know; it was greater proximity to parts of myself that lay hidden in the darkness.”  

Greenblatt also underscored how the award honours scholarship in the Humanities at an important time: “[O]ver the last few years, collective confidence in the significance of the Humanities has sharply declined, along with a belief in the worth of a liberal arts education,” the Laureate said. “Despite the absorbing interest of the subject and ample statistical evidence that studying the Humanities is a valuable preparation for a wide range of professions, many students and their parents have evidently concluded that it is a perilous waste of time and money.”

Climate change and the role of law

Also today, the Nils Klim Prize was conferred upon Swedish law-scholar Sanja Bogojević for her research on EU’s environmental laws and emissions trade. The Prize, worth NOK 250.000 (EUR 27.000), is awarded annually to a Nordic scholar under the age of 35 and covers the same disciplines as the Holberg Prize. 

Bogojević said in her acceptance speech she was tremendously honoured by the award. About her research, she said: “How we understand the world and frame environmental problems ultimately shapes environmental laws.” “In brief,” Bogojević explained, “what my work shows is that law is always embedded in a particular narrative, so that individual laws are dependent on their context for meaning.”