Every year, after extensive and harrowing discussion, six prizes are awarded to people and organisations who have dedicated their minds, skills and years of hard effort to advancing in their field and providing "the greatest benefit to humankind". As stated in inventor, entrepreneur and businessman Alfred Nobel's will, Nobel laureates have been awarded for their work in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature and peace since 1901. In 1969, the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel was established and is awarded alongside the Nobel prizes of physics, chemistry, medicine and literature in Stockholm, Sweden. Meanwhile, the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded in Oslo, Norway as per Nobel's request.

It's the honour of a lifetime, an ode to hard work and the sweet fruit of success it yields. As Nobel week commences and laureates pour in from all corners of the world into Stockholm to celebrate, the city is literally alight with excitement.

Another is 'De Aderton', nine wooden pavilions connected together for people to walk through and a main pavilion with coloured glass portraits of women who have been awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. The title means 'the eighteen', referring to the eighteen women who have received this honour (as opposed to the one hundred three men) but also alludes to the eighteen members of the Swedish Academy, who are responsible for selecting the Nobel Prize laureates in Literature.

As the stream of human traffic thinned in one pavilion, my friends and I took this opportunity to sit down, where we encountered one of the master students at the KTH School of Architecture who worked on the pavilions. She and her classmates had been roaming around the exhibit, chatting amongst themselves and watching the public interact with their artwork. She told us how the placement of the wooden planks on the benches is meant to simulate nature, almost like a flowing waterfall.

Soft light emanated from within the structure, creating a warm and cozy atmosphere as we walked through. It welcomed the audience inside, giving them a sense of awe at the Nobel laureates' work but also posing them a question, especially with its striking title: why are there only eighteen women laureates for literature? While we celebrate existing laureates and their accomplishments, it is also crucial that we remain critical of past biases or systematic roadblocks that may have prevented marginalised voices from being heard, such that we can start dismantling these systems and paving the way for a more diverse community of great thinkers. It is heartening to note that this year's Nobel laureate in literature is Han Kang, a South Korean woman, 'for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life'.

The next day was the day of the prize ceremony so we visited the Nobel Prize museum, with many artifacts donated by previous Nobel laureates that inform and entertain. Deep within old relics like childhood toys, textbooks and gifts lay humorous anecdotes and touching stories about laureates' lives and what they went through to get to their life's successes. 

Altogether, it was an enlightening stop on our journey that really hammered home the hard work and dedication of these laureates and how they've spent their lives working towards the greatest goal of helping others and making other lives better.