Norway Travels - Discovering the Peace Laureates
We had already walked through Oslo's main sights including the Royal Palace and Theatre. But we still had some time before we boarded the bus that would take us to the airport, so we decided to visit the Nobel Peace Museum.
 It was sitting facing the harbour, a place we new well by now. It seemed deserted today compared to the flurry of yesterday’s sun and play.
In order to get in to the museum we had to traverse the gift shop, which as far as gift shops go, wins a gold star in my book. There were earth-friendly souvenirs, bright T-shirts with peaceful messages, and shelves of books about the enlightened and the philanthropic.
Inside the museum we learned first of the 2006 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. I was absolutely taken aback by the work of Muhammad Yunus, who won the Prize for "his efforts to create economic and social development from below". Mr. Yunus founded Grameen Bank in Bangladesh with the vision to help people escape poverty by educating them on basic financial principles and loaning them money with terms suitable to them.
He started out by making personal loans to basket weavers in Bangladesh. These basket weavers had to borrow money from loan sharks in order to buy the raw materials for their baskets. Whatever money they made from the selling of these crafts had to be used to pay back the loan sharks, leaving them with virtually nothing. Having acquired a PhD in Economics from Vanderbilt, Yunus was more than prepared to help out these people who were sinking themselves more and more into poverty.
He quoted one particular phrase from Nelson Mandela that has stuck with me ever since: “Poverty is not natural. It is man made and can be overcome by the actions of human beings.”
We roamed around the museum and learned about the peace laureates since the prize was first given out in 1901 by Alfred Nobel. Their incredible stories made me shrink back in awe and humility, so much so that my eyes stung with tears. I felt I had a lot to learn of the strength, dedication, and will that a single idea can provoke in a man. Like the dream of Martin Luther King, or the chains of Nelson Mandela, or even the prayer beads of the Dalai Lama. A curious piece of trivia: Mahatma Ghandi was nominated five times to win the Peace Prize but never did. Rumour has it that the Nobel Authority was likely to have awarded him the prize in 1948, the year he was assassinated. The committee considered a posthumous award to Ghandi but decided against it, choosing not to give out the Nobel Peace Prize that year.
Alfred Nobel had been a Swedish scientist, known not only for instituting the Nobel Prize but also for inventing dynamite. Before he died he donated is immense fortune to establish the Nobel prizes to be awarded every year, without distinction of nationality, to eminence in physical science, chemistry, medical science, literary work, economics, and the last is to be given to a person or group that renders the greatest service to the cause of international fraternity, better known as the Nobel Peace Prize. All prizes are handed out in Stockholm with the exception of the Peace prize which is done in Oslo.
The museum had an astonishing display of technology like a hologram book which would turn its page when you moved your arm as if you were turning the page yourself. There was an interactive digital wall which you could touch to bring up the bio of the laureate you selected. Then we walked in a dark room illuminated only by the tiny scintillating lights of fibre optics strands which faded into different shades of blue, red and purple. Amid this forest of small lights there were stands with small screens displaying more biographies of Nobel peace winners. On our way out, the wallpaper of the hall was made up of different colored stamps of the faces of the laureates, which I thought was a cute touch.
All in the entire museum had been a success. It had made me cry, smile, think, and gasp. Not to mention the feeling of hope and the message of love that was captured. Just by knowing the work of the laureates alone was enough to inspire anyone into rethinking their lives, their actions, their thoughts. Was enough to ask oneself 'what am I doing to serve peace?'
As I walked out of the museum with Ed and Peggy, I already knew my answer.
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