ABSTRACT
The Nordic Council's (NC) Literature Prize stands for a vision of Nordic cooperation and is testimony to the Nordic realities and dreams of mutual understanding between the Nordic countries. The cultural cooperation channeled through the NC is based on both official political initiatives and on voluntary initiatives between participants from the various countries. The Literature Prize of the NC is commonly seen as a focal point of Nordic cultural cooperation: since its introduction in 1962, the prize has attracted a great deal of attention in all the Nordic countries. The dreams of romantic Scandinavism for close political and economic ties were replaced by more down-to-earth cultural cooperation between Nordic authors, poets, researchers and civil servants. Romantic writers were inspired by Nordic mythology and history in modernizing research and teaching. Language philology and mythology grew into a source of modern cultural Scandinavism where a concept of the Nordics became part of the imagined national communities in Denmark, Norway and Sweden.
