§ 1. General Provisions

The Nordic Council's Literature Prize has been established by the governments of the Nordic countries in accordance with Nordic Council recommendation no. 1/1961.

Funding for the prize will be provided by the Nordic Council of Ministers within the budget for Nordic cultural co-operation.
The size of the Literature Prize is determined along with the budget.

§ 2. The prize-winning work

The prize will be awarded once a year at a Nordic Council event. The prize is awarded for a work of fiction written in one of the Nordic languages.

For the purposes of the prize, a work of fiction is defined as a novel, play, poem, short story or essay collection or other work which meets the high literary and cultural requirements.

In order to be taken into consideration, a work must have been published for the first time during the previous two years, or in the case of a language other than Danish, Norwegian or Swedish, during the last four years.

§ 3. The Adjudication Committee

The prize-winning work will be chosen by an Adjudication Committee composed of 10 ordinary members, two each from Denmark, Finland (one for each language), Iceland, Norway and Sweden. If works are nominated from the Faroe Islands, Greenland or the Sami language area, representatives from these areas become co-opted members on the Adjudication Committee.

The ordinary members and a substitute from each country are appointed by the Nordic Council of Ministers for four years at a time. Half of the members and all the substitutes will be replaced after four years. No member or substitute may sit on the committee for more than two four-year periods.

Members and substitutes must be experts in the literature of their own country and, as far as possible, also in the literature of their neighbouring countries. It is assumed that the committee will colect informatoin on literature from the language areas which are not directly represented in the committee, and maintain contact with the relevant bodies within the respective language areas.

§ 4. Activities

The committee appoints its own chairperson and vice-chairperson.
The two ordinary members with the substitute make up the national adjudication committee in each country.

The Adjudication Committee has a quorum when representatives from all the participating countries, and where appropriate, the co-opted member according to point 5 below, are present.
The committee makes its decisions based on a simple majority. Each member has one vote. In the case of parity of votes the chairperson has the deciding vote, except when voting for the prize which must then be decided by lot.

The Adjudication Committee usually meets once a year.
Minutes will be taken at the meeting. They will be approved by the chairperson.

§ 5. Nomination procedure

The Adjudication Committee make its decision on the prize winner based on proposals from the national committees.

Each national committee may propose no more than two works. However, in addition to these ten works, further works may be nominated, one written in Faroese, one in Greenlandic and one in Sami. The nomination of a work in Faroese, Greenlandic or Sami will be made by the respective writers' organisation in these areas.

In the case of a nomination of a Faroese, Greenlandic and/or Sami work, a representative for the respective writers' organisation will be co-opted onto the committee. In that way the co-opted member will participate in the work of the committee under the same conditions as the ordinary members.

Before 1 December each national committee and the writers' organisations in the Faroe Islands, Greenland and the Sami language area must send three copies of the proposed works to each and every committee and writer organisation in the Faroe Islands, Greenland and the Sami language area.

If the proposed work is not available in Danish, Norwegian or Swedish, the national committee or writers' organisation concerned in Finland, Iceland, the Faroe Islands and Greenland as well as in the Sami language area, must, in collaboration with their national secretariat, arrange for an immediate translation into one of the three named languages.

No later than two weeks before the time for awarding the prize the committee must announce its decision on the winner of the literature prize and justify this decision.

§ 6. Administration and finance

The Committee's secretariat is Sweden's delegation to the Nordic Council. The committee's budget year is the calendar year.
It is the responsibility of the adjudication committee to:

• determine the budget for its activities and, in co-operation with its secretariat, assume responsibility for financial administration, and

• produce annual budget proposals and present them to the Nordic Council of Ministers.

Reporting and administration of finances must take place in accordance with the Nordic rules for budgeting, financial administration, book-keeping and auditing, as well as with rules laid down by the Nordic Council of Ministers.