Nobel ceremony at the Rinkeby Library

*) Javier Claure Covarrubias

On Thursday, December 9 of this year, the Nobel ceremony, dedicated to Abdulrazak Gurnah, was held at the Rinkeby Library. The winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature did not arrive in Stockholm because of the coronavirus pandemic.

For a couple of years the project has also included the Tensta sector. Rinkeby and Tensta are two close neighborhoods, two sister neighborhoods located north of Stockholm where immigrant families from all over the world live together. It is said that one hundred languages ​​are spoken.

In these places there are problems of all kinds, but at the same time they are an example for the whole world because tolerance, communication and understanding reign here.

For the second consecutive year, precisely because of the pandemic, the event had a reduced format. Not many students participated. Therefore, the traditional welcome greeting in different languages ​​was not heard. Nor was there Lucia’s parade with Nordic Christmas songs.

Gunilla Lundgren, writer and eternal organizer of this wonderful event, opened the event by telling that the students of Tensta and Rinkeby, during the Swedish autumn, read about the life of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel. But they also spent many hours reading the novel “El Paraíso” and an excerpt from the essay entitled “Escritura y lugar” by the Nobel Prize-winning writer.

Lundgren, in addition to recounting some anecdotes of the Nobel Laureates that passed through the Rinkeby Library, said that the students recorded a video to send to Abdulrazak Gurnah. Annelie Drewse, also a writer and new collaborator of the Nobel project in Rinkeby and Tensta, spoke about the process of working with the students involved in said project. With the help of slides he gave some details about previous Nobel Prize winners in Literature.

It was recalled that many writers and poets who won the Nobel Prize and who visited the Rinkeby Library, said that the most beautiful thing about their stay in Stockholm during Nobel week was precisely the attendance at the Library. And it is understandable because it is an act full of feelings, experiences, poems, anecdotes, words, songs, etc.

Boys and girls, dressed in white and holding candles, greet each other in different languages. Texts from the brochure prepared by the students are read. The person honored is given a caricature of his or her face drawn by a student, plus the Nobel brochure in English and Swedish.

After the act, pleasant moments are shared having a coffee, a tea or a juice with Christmas pastries and from other countries. Students converse with the winner of the Nobel Prize, take photos and sometimes do interviews.

In other words, it is a more informal and familiar environment compared to the Nobel banquet and other activities that take place around the Nobel Prize. Over the past thirteen years I have seen with my own eyes how many of the Nobel visitors were deeply moved. And most importantly: the inspiration students receive to realize their dreams. It is not impossible that some student, from the College of Tensta or Rinkeby, in the future can receive the Nobel Prize.

*) He is a Bolivian poet and sociologist. He was born in Oruro, the folkloric capital of Bolivia. He is a member of the International Pen-Club, the National Union of Poets and Writers of Oruro (UNPE), the Swedish Writers Society, the World Poetry Movement, the Liceo Poético de Benidorm (Spain) and a member of number (300-ES-026) of the North American Academy of Modern Literature, Spain Chapter.

Practice cultural journalism. He has studied computer science at the Royal University of Technology in Stockholm (Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan) and at the University of Uppsala (Sweden). He also studied mathematics at the University of Stockholm, where he also obtained a Master’s Degree in Pedagogy and a Bachelor’s Degree in Sociology.