King Carl XVI Gustaf at the Stockholm Concert Hall, handing out Nobel medal and diploma. Queen Silva, Prince Carl Philip, Prince Daniel and Crown Princess Victoria look on. Photo: Dan Hansson/SvD/SCANPIX

Watched by millions on television, and with all its elegant pomp and pageantry, the Nobel ceremony could easily be mistaken for a royal wedding.

Except instead of royals exchanging nuptials, the guests of honor are leading scientists, professors, and writers who’ve traded lab coats and offices for tuxedos and ballroom gowns.

Here are 11 Nobel things to keep you up-to-speed about the big day.

1. The story of the Nobel Prize, plus a few numbers

Named after the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel (1833-1896) who made his fortune by inventing dynamite, the Nobel Prize has been awarded since 1901 to individuals and organizations that have made significant contributions in the fields of physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, and peace.

In 1968, an additional prize for economic sciences was added by the Swedish Riksbank. The prizes are awarded in Stockholm, with the exception of Peace, which is awarded in Oslo, Norway.

Alfred Nobel, who had no children, signed his will in 1895, little over a year before he died. His wishes were for his estate to be turned into a fund to be given out as prizes to people paving the way in select academic fields.

Sweden and Norway were still in union at the time of Alfred Nobel’s will, and exactly why Nobel wanted the Peace Prize in particular to be awarded by a Norwegian committee remains unclear.

Nobel Day — when the laureates are officially presented with their prizes and enjoy a lavish banquet in their honor — is always on December 10, the date of Alfred Nobel’s death in 1896.

However, some Nobel-related festivities begin as early as December 5, when the laureates start arriving in Stockholm, and they conclude with an invitational dinner at the Royal Palace on December 11. Between these two dates there are lectures, more dinners, and receptions organized by embassies and hosting institutions.

Each Nobel Prize is currently worth SEK 10 million.

For more information:
Alfred Nobel: The Man behind the Prize
Alfred Nobel Timeline

2. The King's speech 

Not a mass viewing of the Oscar-winning movie, but an actual speech — more like a few words — given by Sweden’s monarch Carl XVI Gustaf.

King Carl XVI Gustaf is tasked with handing each of the laureates their awards, which includes a diploma and medal to acknowledge their achievements in their respective fields. At some point during the festivities, he will give a toast in Alfred Nobel’s memory.

It’s important to note though, that the opening address is usually given by the Chairman of the Board of the Nobel Foundation, Marcus Storch.

For more information:
Opening Addresses at the Nobel Prize Award Ceremony   

1,300 guests are fitted into Stockholm City Hall for the Nobel Banquet. Photo: Fredrika Berghult/Nobel Media AB

3. Venues for the ceremony and banquet

Since 1926, the prize award ceremony has been held at the Stockholm Concert Hall. It is here that King Carl XVI Gustaf hands each laureate their diploma and medal. The celebration then moves to Stockholm City Hall, where a banquet awaits 1,300 guests, 250 of whom are students from various Swedish universities.

The Nobel banquet has been held at City Hall since 1934. It was held at the Grand Hotel’s Hall of Mirrors for its first 29 years before being transferred to City Hall’s Golden Hall to accommodate a longer guest list. In 1974, the banquet was moved to the Blue Hall, which is the banquet’s venue today.

For more information:
The Nobel Banquets — A Century of Culinary History  

4. The Who’s Who of Swedish government and society

The Nobel ceremony and the banquet are among the few events in Sweden that usually bring out the entire Royal Family — King Carl XVI Gustaf, Queen Silva, Crown Princess Victoria, Prince Carl Philip, and Princess Madeleine — as special guests of honor.

In addition to the celebrated laureates, who each get to invite 16 personal guests, notable appearances are made by representatives of the Swedish government and parliament, including the prime minister.

Other guests include foreign dignitaries from the sciences, arts, culture, and other branches of academia, as well as patrons and other Nobel Foundation staff and supporters.

Princess Madeleine will not be present this year — she's expected at The New York Academy of Sciences, which is celebrating the 100th anniversary of Marie Curie’s second Nobel Prize.

Poet Tomas Tranströmer on the day of the Literature Prize announcement. Photo: Dan Hansson/SvD/Scanpix

5. Literature Laureate Tomas Tranströmer

I have to admit I knew absolutely nothing about Tomas Tranströmer and I suspect I wasn’t the only one to quickly google his name when he was announced as the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in October.

According to a poll on the official Nobel website, 88 percent of site visitors had never read his poetry, yet the 80-year-old’s works have been translated into more than 60 languages.

You'll find a good introduction to his poetry here.

In the early 1990's, Tranströmer suffered a stroke which left him partially paralyzed and unable to speak. At the press conference held after the announcement, his wife Monica answered questions on his behalf.  

Tranströmer is the eighth Literature Laureate from Sweden but the first since Eyvind Johnson and Harry Martinson shared the award in 1974. In 1909, Selma Lagerlöf became the first woman to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Awarding the Literature Prize hasn’t come without controversy. Both Johnson and Martinson happened to also be on the Nobel panel, and many still question why children’s author Astrid Lindgren never won a Nobel Prize for her impressive body of work, including the Pippi Longstocking series.

For more information:
Nobel Prize Winner Tranströmer: Poetry, Music and Nature
Tomas Tranströmer: Ten things you never knew about the poet you never knew
Swedish Nobel Prize Winners
2011 Nobel Prize in Literature  

The Nobel Banquet — meticulously planned down to the smallest detail. Photo: Fredrika Berghult/Nobel Media AB

6. A culinary spread fit for royalty

Duck galantine with pickled vegetables and spicy jelly; fried truffled turbot with winter salad, chanterelles and truffled oxtail gravy were what last year’s 1,300 lucky guests had the pleasure of dining on — all topped off with dessert of milk chocolate and orange Bavarian cream flavored with Gammeldansk bitter and orange salad.

Starting in September, three menus submitted by internationally-renowned chefs are presented to the Nobel Foundation for taste testing and selection, and the final menu is kept secret and only revealed at the banquet. The Nobel Foundation has a list of banquet menus dating as far back as 1901 available on its website.

Each banquet has a cultural theme which is usually reflected in the interior decor of the hall as well as in the 9,422 delicately polished pieces of cutlery, 5,384 immaculate drinking glasses, 6,730 pieces of porcelain and plate settings, more than 23,000 flowers imported from Italy, and classical music from the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Past themes have included “Nordic,” which focused on Scandinavian folk traditions.

For more information:
Menus at the Nobel Banquet
The Nobel Banquets: The First 100 Years

Of the 1,300 guests at the Nobel Banquet, 250 are students at Swedish universities. Photo: Fredrika Berghult/Nobel Media AB

 7. A very strict dress code

Sneakers and jeans are definitely not welcome. In fact, business casual attire would also be totally inappropriate.

For the prize award ceremony at the Concert Hall, guests are expected (well, required) to wear dark suits (for men) and dresses (for women).  For the banquet at City Hall, the dress code is strictly formal. White ties, tuxedos, and tails for men, while women need to pull out their very best evening gowns.

The only exception to the rule is if you’d like to wear traditional dress representing your nationality. Even the latter must check with the organizing committee to make sure they consider it formal enough for the banquet.

For more information:
Dress code at the Nobel banquet

8. Lots of royal “bling” and a baby bump

Chances are, no matter how formally a guest dresses for the event, she probably won’t be able to pull out jewelry or “bling” more expensive than Sweden’s Queen Silvia’s.

For starters, Queen Silvia will be sporting an intricate crown of jewels worth a few million kronor. Almost as iconic as her crown will be her evening gown designed to sparkle and start out amidst 1,300 patrons. Interested in seeing what the Queen has worn every year since 1976? The Nobel Foundation has an online gallery of photos here.

Crown Princess Victoria will be sporting a baby bump beneath her evening gown — she and her husband, Prince Daniel, are expecting their first child in March.

For more information:
The Queen’s Gowns
The Local — Victoria pregnant

9. Impressive logistics at work

How does one keep a hall of 1,300 guests comfortable, served on time, and attended to while making it all look effortlessly synchronized?

According to the official Nobel site, the staff responsible for making the banquet run smoothly include a catering manager, a banqueting hall manager, one head chef, eight head waiters, 210 waiters and waitresses, five wine waiters, 20 cooks, and roughly 20 cleaning staff responsible for cleaning up and transportation.

Equally impressive as the number of logistical staff is the shopping list for the banquet’s 1,300 guests. Here is a sample shopping list from a past banquet published by the Nobel Foundation:

“2,692 pigeon breasts, 475 lobster tails, 100 kilos of potatoes, 70 liters of sweet and sour raspberry vinegar sauce, 67 kilos of Jerusalem artichokes, 53 kilos of Philadelphia cheese,  and 45 kilos of lightly smoked salmon.”

Needless to say, three days before the banquet, the kitchen is a beehive of activity with staff running on a very tight and fixed schedule.

The City Hall's "Golden Hall", where the Nobel Ball takes place. Photo: Fredrika Berghult/Nobel Media AB

10. The Nobel NightCap

After-parties such as Nobel NightCap extend the celebrations well into the night. The NightCap brings together students, guests from the official banquet, as well as some Nobel laureates in a more relaxed setting.

Founded in 1978, the idea for the Nobel NightCap was conceived by a student who felt that the official banquet at City Hall usually ended too early for such a prestigious event.

Today, the NightCap is organized by the four largest student unions in Stockholm — Stockholm University Student Union (SUS), THS at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), SASSE at Stockholm School of Economics, and Medicinska föreningen at Karolinska Institute (KI) — all of which alternate hosting responsibilities.

This year, NightCap is hosted by SUS.

11. Influx of international media outlets

Major TV networks like CNN and BBC are bound to have some Nobel-themed coverage leading up to the events, including on the main day itself.

The Nobel Foundation’s official website has a comprehensive archive of videos of past events dating as far back as 1929. Swedish public television SVT broadcasts the event — and nowadays, come December 10, they also live stream on the internet.

You can also follow the event live on Nobelprize.org where there will be real-time live coverage of lectures, prize ceremonies, press conferences, and other festivities during Nobel Week.

With the ever-growing popularity of social media outlets, you can follow the event live via Twitter on the official Nobel account @nobelprize_org, or follow the online conversation through the hashtag #nobelprize. You’ll also find Nobelprize.org on Facebook. Why not participate in the online discussion, while you’re at it?

For more information:
SVT 2011 Nobel Coverage
Videos from past Nobel ceremonies  

Lola Akinmade-Åkerström

Lola Akinmade-Åkerström is a Stockholm-based freelance writer and photographer whose work has appeared in National Geographic Traveler, BBC and Vogue among others. She’s an editor with Matador Network, contributes as a photojournalist to the Swedish Red Cross and is also Sweden.se’s photoblogger.

The author alone is responsible for the opinions expressed in this article.