Uppsala University’s former Vice-Chancellor Stig Strömholm has been awarded the Swedish Academy’s Grand Prize. The medal is the Academy’s most distinguished award, given as recognition of particularly outstanding efforts in one of the Academy’s areas of interest.
Photograph: Mikael Wallerstedt
Stig Strömholm is an internationally recognised lawyer who served as Vice-Chancellor of Uppsala University between 1989–1997. He has also authored a range of jurisprudential journals, particularly in the fields of copyright law and the history of legal ideas, alongside some twenty novels and essay collections.
He has also received several awards and honorary distinctions, including the Seraphim Medal which he received in 2012. Strömholm is an honorary doctor of law and philosophy at six European universities.
The Swedish Academy’s Grand Prize was established by king Gustav III in 1786. It originally consisted of two gold medals that were first prize in the Academy’s annual oratory and poetry competitions. The competitions eventually came to an end, but the gold medal remained, being awarded on rare occasions as recognition of particularly outstanding efforts in one of the Academy’s areas of interest. Previous recipients of the prize include Esaias Tegnér, Jacob Berzelius, Fredrika Bremer, Selma Lagerlöf, Astrid Lindgren, Evert Taube and Ingmar Bergman. The prize was most recently awarded in 2014 to Lennart Hellsing.
Åsa Malmberg
