Last night, Professor Nina Witoszek was awarded Fritt Ords Pris for her more than two decades’ long contribution to Norwegian and international public debate, all through her valuable utilisation of the freedom of expression she left Poland in the early 80s to regain. Ever since, and through both her fictional and academic writing, she has been among the most prolific, original and interesting participants in numerous debates, especially on cultural myths and national identity. (11-MAY-05)
Due to HRH’s close cooperation over several years with the institution Fritt Ord (Free Word), HRH was invited to the ceremony, and both Executive Director Maria Dahle and Project Manager Niels Jacob Harbitz attended.
-I wanted to know Norwegian ‘purity’
Witoszek originally worked as a translator and editor for underground publishers in Poland when she realised she would have to leave her country. In the early 80s, Poland was still a member of the communist world, with very limited freedom of opinion and expression, association and the media and a deeply dictatorial regime to guard these and other limitations to democracy and human rights. What particularly triggered her escape, apparently, was her translation of George Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm,’ an unmistakeable satire on any rigidly authoritarian regime. At the time, Norway was among the countries who received political refugees, among other places from Poland, and Witoszek opted to come here, in her own subtly ironic words, because of her attraction to Norwegian ?purity?.
-Hard to miss the irony
In her own acceptance speech, Witoszek jokingly said that she was half repared for the prize to be withdrawn, as it happened when she was named the winner of an Irish literary award a good decade back. Her fictional debut, a collection of short stories discussing Irish cultural myths and national identity, was published under a pseudonym, a very Irish sounding name, but when the jury learned that this was not the real author’s name and that the author wasn’t even Irish, the prize had to be withdrawn, according to the prize’s own statutes. Witoszek, always arguing in favour of reducing the significance and negative political consequences of national identities, could barely miss the irony then, and took the opportunity now to remind her audience that her main contribution to Norwegian public debate is exactly her repeated challenges to all the cultural myths serving to maintain and nurture such increasingly unfounded and anachronistic identity foundations.
