the opulent dinner at Stockholm City hall ~ Nobel Dinner !!

11^th Dec marks the Birth anniversary of the Greatest Poet – Mahakavi Subramaniya Barathiyar.  At Thiruvallikkeni where he lived and breathed his last, there was Jathi Pallakku. 

10^th Dec marked something else ~ the dress code for Gentlemen :  white tie and tails, while ladies should be dressed in an evening gown. This is the perfect time to dress up and look like royalty! Wearing your national costume is an alternative to white tie and tails or evening gown.  It was an exhibition of opulence as Swedish royals dusted off dazzling jewels for magnificent banquet – the dinner was hosted by Swedish royal family at the magnificent Stockholm's City Hall decked out with 20,000 white, yellow and orange flowers donated by the Italian city of San Remo.

It was an exotic menu : Turbot and scallop with sea plants, brown butter and bleak roe; Ember bed roasted veal wrapped in mushrooms with celeriac and apple, roasted celeriac jus and potato pithiviers; Coffee and almond flavoured cherry blossom.  Wine : Champagne Taittinger Brut Millésimé 2008; Château Mont-Redon Châteauneuf-du-Pape Rouge 2010.

Wonder, what this is all about – 10^th December is Nobel Day, both in Sweden and in Norway. For the prize winners, it is the climax of a week of speeches, conferences and receptions. At the Nobel Prize Award Ceremony in the Stockholm Concert Hall that day, the winners in Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, and Literature receive a medal from the King of Sweden, as well as a diploma and a cash award. The ceremony is followed by a gala banquet.  The Nobel Prize Award Ceremony takes place at the Stockholm Concert Hall, Sweden, on 10 December every year – the anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death.

MailOnline reports that – if  there is an international award for the sheer magnificence of its glittering white tie events, on the evidence of tonight's spread Sweden would bag first prize. The Nobel Prize Banquet held at Stockholm's City Hall was a blaze of gold candelabra, rows of hand-tied floral arrangements, and richly attired royals hosting the world's biggest brains and brightest talent after the Nobel Prize ceremony at the city's concert hall tonight… and the women of Sweden's royal family pulled out all the stops - along with the family jewels - to look their best for the splendid occasion with Crown Princess Victoria, 38, Princess Madeleine, 33, and their sister-in-law Princess Sofia, 30, dusting off the Bernadottes' most eye-catching tiaras to wear with their floor-length evening gowns.

The ceremony was decked out for the occasion with 20,000 white, yellow and orange flowers which were donated by the Italian city of San Remo, where Swedish scientist and prize creator Alfred Nobel died on December 10, 1896. The ten laureates received their Nobel diplomas and gold medals from the hands of Sweden's King Carl XVI Gustaf, in a ceremony interspersed with classical music and presentations by the prize-awarding institutions. The ceremony took place in front of 1,600 specially-invited guests at Stockholm's Concert Hall.

China's Tu Youyou, William Campbell of the US and Satoshi Omura of Japan received the medicine prize for revolutionary treatments of malaria and roundworm. Takaaki Kajita of Japan and Arthur McDonald of Canada were given the physics prize for determining that neutrinos have mass. Sweden's Tomas Lindahl, Paul Modrich of the US and Aziz Sancar, a Turkish-American, won the biology prize for work on how cells repair damaged DNA. Belarussian writer and dissident Svetlana Alexievich was given the literature prize for her work chronicling the horrors of war and life under the repressive Soviet regime. Poverty expert Angus Deaton, a US-British microeconomist, took home the economics prize for groundbreaking work using household surveys to show how consumers, particularly the poor, decide what to buy and how policymakers can help them.

Each female member of the Swedish royal family descended the sweeping staircase of the vaulting hall on the arm of the Nobel laureates, all clad in white tie and tails. Michiko Kajita, wife of Nobel prize winner Takaaki Kajita, wore traditional Japanese evening dress including a delicate silk kimono and a brocade obi decorated with a bearl brooch, a pair of white 'tabi' socks and wedged flip flop-style footwear; she was escorted down the marble steps by King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden in white tie and tails

The vast hall was bisected by the immense top table, with other guests on tables situated in rows to along the sides.  Waiters paraded the desserts down the marble stairs and light up the way with the sparkler detailing decorating the course as Guests dined on suitable opulent gold plates inside the packed city hall while dressed in their finery !

The  date is no coincidence. Ever since the first Nobel prizes were awarded in 1901, they have been conferred on Dec. 10 in what the Nobel Committee calls an “established tradition.” That date was not specified in the will of Nobel !  Earlier on the same day, the winner for the prestigious Nobel Peace  prize was revealed as the National Dialogue Quartet, which won the Prize for helping build democracy in the birthplace of the Arab Spring. They accepted the prize at a ceremony in Oslo held under tight security following the armed attacks in Paris.

With regards – S. Sampathkumar

11^th Dec 2015.

Credits : MailOnline and nobel.org