Paths to Peace, Page by Page

The Norwegian Nobel Institute is best known as the place where the Norwegian Nobel Committee holds its confidential meetings and selects the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. However, the building also houses an impressive collection of nearly 200,000 books. A significant number of them focus on peace.

A peaceful collection

The Institute’s library was established in 1905, at the same time as the Institute itself. Its collection was intended to cover international political history from 1800 onwards, international law, the peace movement, and international economics. The effort to build the collection was led by Christian Lous Lange, the first secretary of the Nobel Committee (and himself a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1921). Lange devoted a substantial portion of the Institute’s resources to acquiring books, with a particular emphasis on peace literature. As a result, according to Vangen, the Norwegian Nobel Institute likely possesses one of the most comprehensive collections of peace literature in the world.

The books now on display in Paths to Peace are drawn from this peace literature collection. The exhibition’s curators selected works that include the word “peace” (in one language or another) in their titles. The idea behind the installation is to give visitors a visual impression of just how much thought and writing have been devoted to peace.

“Although the installation contains only about one-tenth of the Nobel Institute Library’s peace collection, it hopefully conveys how many reflections on peace have been committed to paper for others to read and be inspired by,” says Vangen.

“When visitors can also browse facsimiles of historical peace pamphlets and read what people were writing and thinking about peace more than a hundred years ago, I hope it encourages reflection.”