FEW Swedes have been as influential as the bearded chemist and inventor of dynamite, Alfred Nobel. Yet his countrymen appear reluctant to promote him. And this is not because they think it outrageous that Leo Tolstoy and Mark Twain never won the Nobel Prize for literature, but Eyvind Johnson and Harry Martinson (who just happened to sit on the Nobel panel) did. Rather, it is more a question of indifference to history.
Take the kerfuffle over a plans for swanky new center in Stockholm, the Nobel Centre or Nobelhuset. Since 2011 the city of Stockholm and the Nobel Foundation, the non-profit group which administers the prizes, have been discussing a sea-front edifice to serve as a new prize-giving venue and research center. In April Stockholm’s municipal council approved its construction; the county council will decide later this year, with building due to start in 2017.
David Chipperfield, a British architect, won the commission over several Swedish bidders. His design is a shimmering block of copper, glass and stone in Blasieholmen, an area which faces the…