Queen Margrethe of Denmark is awarded the Nordic Association’s language prize for her effort to strengthen the Scandinavian language community and she will receive the accolade from her good friend, Queen Sonja of Norway.
The prize will be presented in a ceremony in Oslo later in September. Preparations are now being made for a large-scale celebration of the language award winner.
Queen Margrethe of Denmark has been an important voice for Nordic cooperation, community and language. One of Queen Margrethe’s messages has long been that younger people in the Nordic countries should use Scandinavian languages when meeting each other.
The Danish Royal Court has issued the following comment: “The Queen is honoured by the award and will gladly receive the Nordic Association’s Language Award.”
Queen Margrethe herself speaks fluent Danish and Swedish. She has previously said: “It is maddeningly unfortunate when you resort to a non-Nordic languages to be able to understand each other. It is important that we are aware of this in the future as well.”
Every year, the Nordic Association awards its language prize to a person who has done something exceptional for the Nordic language community. Queen Margrethe speaks with pride about the Nordic languages, and has been given the award for her passionate commitment to preserving language understanding in the Nordic countries.
The jury’s reasoning states, among other things: “Queen Margrethe has on several occasions supported the Nordic languages. The Queen has put the language issue in the spotlight and created attention to one of the Nordic Association’s core issues, namely using Scandinavian languages in meetings with each other in the Nordics. This work is of inestimable value.”
In the Scandinavian languages, 80-90% of the vocabulary is the same. More than 27 million people can speak to each other in a Scandinavian language.
