The Sproing Award is awarded by Norsk Tegneserieforum (NTF), an organisation to promote interest and understanding for comics in Norway. Since 1987, the award has been presented for the Best Norwegian Strips, a comic strip or comic book by a Norwegian, and Best Translated Strips, an international comic strip/comic book translated into Norwegian. Since 2003, there has also been awarded a Sproing for Best Comics Debut.
At NTF's annual meeting, a jury is selected which reads all publications of the year and choose five nominees for the national and international classes, and three nominees for the debut class. Initially, voting was exclusive to NTF members, but has been opened to the public in the 2000s.
Knut Ødegård is a Norwegian poet.
Pondus is a comic strip created by the Norwegian cartoonist Frode Øverli. Since its start in 1995, it has become one of the most successful comic strips in Scandinavia. It has been translated to several languages, including Danish, English, German, Finnish, French, Icelandic, Latin, Sami, Swedish and Esperanto.
Kongsvoll is a historic mountain lodge built on the site of a former inn located in the Drivdalen valley in the municipality of Oppdal in Trøndelag county, Norway. The original inn dated to the 12th century. The oldest buildings of the present mountain lodge date from the 18th century.
Mads Eriksen is a Norwegian cartoonist, best known for the comic strips M and Gnom.
Karine Haaland is a Norwegian comic strip creator, animator and illustrator, known for the comic strip Piray.
Henriette Bie Lorentzen, born Anna Henriette Wegner Haagaas, was a Norwegian journalist, humanist, peace activist, feminist, co-founder of the Nansen Academy, resistance member and concentration camp survivor during World War II, and publisher and editor-in-chief of the women's magazine Kvinnen og Tiden (1945–1955).
Sofie Stange Cappelen is a Norwegian actress.
Jan Erik Vold is a Norwegian lyric poet, jazz vocal reciter, translator and author. He was a core member of the so-called "Profil generation", the circle attached to the literary magazine Profil. Throughout his career as an artist, he has had the ability to reach the public, both with his poetry and his political views. He has contributed greatly to the renewal of Norwegian poetry, and created interest in lyrical poetry. Jan Erik Vold is currently living in Stockholm.
Lars Gule is a Norwegian philosopher. He has graduated with a doctorate in philosophy, and is an associate professor. From 2000 to 2005 he was secretary general of the Norwegian Humanist Association. Gule became known to the general public in 1977 when after having joined the DFLP group, Gule was arrested in Beirut, Lebanon with Semtex in his luggage intended for Israeli targets leading to a six-month conviction and subsequent deportation. He remains active as a anti-Israel activist. Gule is often used by Norwegian media as an authority on questions regarding the Middle East, Islam and extremism.
The Brage Prize is a Norwegian literature prize that is awarded annually by the Norwegian Book Prize foundation. The prize recognizes recently published Norwegian literature.
Henrik Grue Bastiansen is a Norwegian historian who specializes in media studies.
Jahn Otto Johansen was a Norwegian journalist, newspaper editor, foreign correspondent and non-fiction writer.
Albin Konrad Eines was a Norwegian newspaper editor and politician for the Labour and Communist Labour parties. He later became a Nazi, working for Norwegian and German Nazis during the World War II.
Semic Press is a Swedish comic book publishing company that operated from 1963 to 1997. Known for original comics as well as translated American and European titles, Semic was for a long time the country's largest comic book publisher. For many years, Semic published the official translations of American (mostly) superhero comics produced by DC Comics and Marvel Comics. The Semic Group had divisions in a number of European countries — mostly to distribute translated American comics — including Spain, Finland, the Netherlands, Norway, France, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary.
Einar Hoffstad was a Norwegian encyclopedist, newspaper editor, writer and economist. He remains best known as the editor of the encyclopedia Merkantilt biografisk leksikon and the business periodical Farmand. Although initially a classic liberal, Hoffstad embraced fascism and collectivism at the beginning of the Second World War.
Øyvind Strømmen is a Norwegian author, translator and freelance journalist. He is known for his books on rightwing extremism and many contributions in Norwegian social- and mainstream media.
Steffen Kverneland is a Norwegian illustrator and comics writer. He was born in Haugesund, and settled in Oslo from 1987. He has specialized on creating comics series based on classical literature. Among his early albums are De knyttede never from 1993 based on a novel by Øvre Richter Frich, and four volumes of Amputerte klassikere.
Nina Hemmingsson is a Swedish cartoonist. She draws foremost shorter comics, often single-panel cartoons featuring political and social criticism. An example of Hemingsson's work is Bäst i början. Her work has been published in the magazines Galago and Bang, the Uppsala student newspaper Ergo, and the newspaper Aftonbladet. She has also released three books, Hjälp! ("Help!"), Jag är din flickvän nu, and Demoner - ett bestiarium for the publisher Ruin. Ahead of the 2010 wedding of Victoria, Crown Princess of Sweden, and Daniel Westling she made an anti-royalistic cartoon called "Prinsessan & Gemålen" for Aftonbladet.
Inga Bostad is a Norwegian philosopher, writer and educator. She served as prorector of the University of Oslo from 2009 to 2013 and as director of the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights from 2014 to 2017.
Interpresse, later known as Semic Interpresse, was a Danish comic book publisher that operated from 1954 to 1997. Known for original comics as well as translated American and European titles, it was an innovative and creative publisher with a dominant position in the Danish market especially from the early 1970s — when interest in comics culminated — until the mid-1980s — when competition from home video, computer games, and computer animation changed the marketplace. The company had foreign branches in Belgium and Norway ; it also acquired a number of Danish competitors in the 1970s and '80s.