Peer Gynt Prize Peer Gynt Prize The Peer Gynt Prize or the Peer Gynt Award ("Årets Peer Gynt" or "Per Gynt-prisen") is a private Norwegian prize presented annually by the private commercial company "Peer Gynt AS" during the Peer Gynt Festival, also organised by the same company. The Peer Gynt Prize is named after the main character in "Peer Gynt" (1867), a five-act play in verse by Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen. The prize is awarded to people or institutions who has marked themselves in a positive way nationally and internationally. However, the prize has received criticism for misrepresenting the Peer Gynt character, who
Peer Gynt than what is to be found in Asbjørnsen's "Norwegian Folktales" (in the section entitled 'Stories from the Mountain')." In those stories, Peer Gynt rescues the three dairy-maids from the trolls and shoots the Bøyg, who was originally a gigantic worm-shaped troll-being. Peer was known to tell tall tales of his own achievements, a trait Peer in the play inherited. The "buck-ride" story, which Peer tells his mother in the play's first scene, is also from this source, but, as Åse points out, it was originally Gudbrand Glesne from Vågå who did the tour with the reindeer stag and finally shot