2025
Speech to the award winners by Chair of the Board Grete Brochmann

Dear prize laureates, dear guests,

Welcome to the presentation of the Fritt Ord Prize for 2025, where May Linn Clement, Marvin Halleraker and Morten Mørland will be awarded the foundation’s highest honour, as eminent representatives of satire art in Norway.
In bestowing this prize, Fritt Ord wishes to emphasise drawings as a form of expression. Drawings are like comments devoid of words. They can be ambiguous and open to interpretation, and the ownership of the interpretation can have far-reaching consequences. This year marks the 20th anniversary of the caricature controversy, as well as the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attack on Charlie Hebdo. These two dramatic events revamped public opinion in our part of the world.
Drawings can be more powerful than words. They communicate effectively, sometimes transcending tense situations. Complicated issues are expressed in simple and striking ways, through visual expression, often featuring artistic quality and belying a strong sense of humour.
Satirical cartoons have pierced the veils of power, double standards and hypocrisy, at times playing a pivotal role throughout the history of democracy. Falling between fine art and journalism, newspaper cartoons help to enlighten, amuse and entertain the public. They are a tool for liberating emotions, thoughts and doubts, while promoting debate and reflection.
The genre plays on familiar contemporary phenomena and issues. As such, it helps to shape a country’s collective identity, while also representing a corrective or a skewed view of society’s values.
This year’s three award winners excel within this genre in different ways. They represent a plethora of ideas and artistic qualities. Collectively, they represent the diversity and distinctiveness of Norwegian newspaper cartoonists.

Marvin Halleraker (62), who lives in Bergen, is an established cartoonist in the Norwegian public sphere. His satirical drawings have graced the pages of several newspapers, and he worked for Bergens Tidende before joining Aftenposten in 2018. Halleraker has also drawn for Vårt Land, Klassekampen and Morgenbladet. He combines a dualistic western Norwegian perspective with a sense of insistent detail, humour and an elegant, superb line. He often offers piquant messages, tempered with a great deal of subtlety. Halleraker is a highly prolific and respected newspaper illustrator.
Morten Mørland (46), currently living in London, draws political satire in the classic form, illustrating social conditions and trends in British and international politics with a sharp, humorous and unsentimental eye. In Norway, he has drawn for VG and Agderposten. Mørland has achieved international success like few other Norwegian cartoonists: For 20 years, he has been supplying satire regularly to the British Times and Sunday Times. He also draws for a number of other editorial boards and international magazines, such as BBC Four, The Spectator and The Economist.
May Linn Clement (39) is a regular contributor to Dag og Tid, where she combines soft watercolours with sharp lines. She portrays important Norwegian and international politicians, but she can also write and draw openly and exploratively about fundamental aspects of being human in a (slightly overly) modern world. Clement has developed a distinctive style in which she combines humanism and satire in expansive ways. Based in Austevoll, she represents a younger generation and is one of the few female newspaper cartoonists in Norway.

Satire art is a fast-paced art form with tight deadlines. Cartoonists take an immediate approach that appeals to the public’s emotions. In terms of expression, satire art has therefore become a genre that has developed in parallel and in interaction with the factual, rational and textual aspects of the public sphere. “Newspaper drawing is the midwife of the text,” writes cartoonist Siri Dokken in Dagsavisen. “It lifts the essence, the content, up to the readers, enabling it compress an entire narrative into the blink of an eye.” Satire art can promote a “collective, emotional realisation”, she writes.
“It is the type of satire that criticises authority, raises awareness and creates debate that we want to showcase with this year’s prize. Like all other forms of expression, the power potential of satire can also be used for darker, propaganda-promoting purposes, e.g. the spreading of racism and hatred against minorities, like through the caricatures of Jews presented by the German Nazi regime in the last century.”
Nowadays, many people talk about satirical cartoons being pressured from two sides; they are in a precarious financial position in media characterised by restructuring and cutbacks. Cartoons may be one of the first things to go when times are tough. And they are under political pressure as they are subject to attempts at censorship and control by governments or other authorities. Over the past 20 years, religious and extremist groups have exerted the greatest pressure. Erle Marie Sørheim describes satire art as “an endangered art form” in her book ‘The History of Caricature’, published in 2021.
The critical role of satire drawing in relation to power makes it vulnerable in troubled times. In recent years in the US, we have witnessed prominent newspaper cartoonists being sacked for challenging their own power structures, or the prevailing political climate. The traditional liberal newspapers The New York Times and The Washington Post have both bowed to political pressures and dismissed cartoonists. Elsewhere in the world, there are long traditions of repressing and persecuting satirical artists, a number of whom have had to flee their home country’s regime.
Satire can be an especially suitable tool for targetting authoritarian leadership. Laughter can be dangerous. It can be subversive in subtle, unmanageable ways, setting in motion movements that are hard to control. Satire taps into people’s emotions and perceptions directly, and can itself manifest the ridiculous by prohibiting criticism. Vain despots fear the laughter of the people. The scathing collection of Trump cartoons published since the US election are probably more on target than verbal condemnations. Once a cartoon has gained traction, it takes on a life of its own.

What is more, the genre can create its own sovereignty: Morten Mørland recounts that in an interview, former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown complained to a newspaper editorial team that he had been represented as fat. After that, everyone started drawing him even fatter. Very recently, Mørland was due to be represented at an exhibition of caricature artists in London, but it was cancelled at the last minute for fear of offending someone. However, as in the case of Gordon Brown, the initially modest, local exhibition morphed into a large gathering in response to the censorship. There are currently plans for it to reopen in central London, and possibly for a tour after that.
Such autonomous mechanisms have not been uncommon in our liberal-democratic part of the world; they fall into the category of ‘dialectics of power’. Meanwhile, major political conflicts and autocratic trends go further than suggesting that this cannot be taken for granted, underscoring the importance of protecting the right to create caricatures, the right to be reckless, the right to laugh at what you want. “Liberalism is also a fighting creed,” says philosopher Charles Taylor, i.e. we must also fight for liberal values.

In Norway, there are few current examples of obvious political muzzling, but self-censorship is an issue that should be taken seriously. The complicating thing about self-censorship is that it is insidious. It builds up over time and is often not even recognised by the individual. It refers to ‘current norms’, to the ‘zeitgeist’ or to what is ‘politically correct’. It can be internalised without conscious resistance. Certain topics are clearly sensitive and difficult to deal with even as cartoons. Marvin Halleraker points out in an interview that the list of things that are complicated to draw is getting longer and longer. The Prophet Muhammad – obviously – but also the Israel-Palestine conflict, abortion, gender identity, immigration, etc. Citing offence has become an instrument of power in the public sphere. Signs are sometimes not read as intended. When self-defence is not an option, exclusion and cancellation can be the result. Fear has become a real consideration in this country as well. Threats of violence, direct and indirect, affect freedom of expression, as the caricature controversy clearly demonstrated.
Fritt Ord has organised events where we have required police protection to discuss freedom of expression. Unfortunately, we are not alone in this.

Over time, satire artists may, consciously or unconsciously, avoid drawing things that might offend certain groups on the right or the left. “Censorship is never satisfied,” writes Lars Saabye Christensen. “In the end, he eats between the lines too.”
Interestingly, we have a recent example of a reversal due to offensive content, in broad daylight, so to speak. During the pandemic, Aftenposten used its editorial responsibility to stop a cartoon made by Halleraker because the editors feared could be interpreted as discriminatory against immigrants. The cartoon suggested that the majority acted responsibly by wearing face masks, while a chador-clad immigrant woman was more concerned with hiding her body than preventing infection. However, shortly afterwards, Aftenposten published the drawing, accompanied by a caption that explained the decision: “I think it was right, but I fear it was wrong,” read the headline written by political editor Kjetil Alstadheim. The change of heart, which came as a surprise to many of us, was thus used to generate debate about a difficult decision. “Being the subject of satire is a form of inclusion. No one can be protected against being offended,” was the nuanced reflection. It is not Aftenposten being honoured today, although those editors definitely merit a sort of double-edged salute for the interesting twist they put on a perceived publishing dilemma: reasonable consideration versus fear of offence.
In an interview, May Linn Clement comments that satirical cartoonists are particularly vulnerable to being interpreted in the worst sense: “A cartoon doesn’t necessarily say ‘this is what I think’. It often says ‘this is one way of looking at this issue’.” “The consensus on what is permitted in public statements can be narrow. We have to keep pushing the boundaries and opening the valves.” But Clement’s drawings also show that humour can be a tool for dealing with difficult differences and that it can have a mitigating effect on conflict. Humour can be used to accentuate humanity through universal experiences.

The caricature crisis, which started in 2005, was a wake-up call for the whole world, and it was subsequently reinforced by the terrorist attack on Charlie Hebdo in 2015, as well as by the beheading of the French teacher Samuel Paty, who showed the Muhammad cartoons for educational purposes in 2020. All these incidents took place in our liberal-democratic part of the world. They were the clearest contemporary examples of what historian Timothy Garton Ash calls “the assassin’s veto”. Hardly anyone draws the Prophet Muhammad today. Violence and threats of violence are imperative, and no one can blame actors for ‘cowardice’ if they respond by refraining. Digitisation and internationalisation have intensified the threats, and cartoonists are no doubt particularly vulnerable because of their universal, but context-sensitive language.
Our three award winners reflect openly on their reluctance to enter the Muhammad minefield. Public acknowledgement of fear and self-limitation are powerful manifestations in themselves, and discussions of consequences in the wake of the caricature controversy have become an exercise in raising awareness. In the words of author Nick Cohen: “If you are frightened, at least have the guts to say so. The most effective form of censorship is one that nobody admits exists.”

In any event, the years since 2005 and 2015 have brought to light a major paradox. In our part of the world, we have witnessed both a heightened awareness of the importance of freedom of expression and an affirmation of the violent man’s veto.
Times change, and the zeitgeist can result in a political or ideological bias in favour of norm-setting and a penchant for censorship. The hesitation to cause offence originated as a bulwark against discrimination and exclusion, but it risks ending up in the same predicament. In today’s international situation, the far right is on the rise, meaning that sensitivity towards vulnerable minorities is unlikely to dominate. The list of banned words is being replaced. Opportunism has changed stripes. Cancellation and counter-cancellation.
This does not diminish the importance of satirical cartoonists. This political turn underscores the point: the importance of the freedom to draw what you want, the freedom to critically interpret authority, zeitgeist and oppression, and the freedom to use humour as a tool.
Dear prize laureates, thank you for putting the news in perspective, for conveying intuitive knowledge we were not even aware of, and for representing a critical brand of humanism that brings joy and anger in times of political uncertainty and unrest.
Congratulations on winning the Fritt Ord Prize.