Danish Award Ceremony 2018
On 11 March 2018, the History Teachers' Association of Denmark awarded the winners of the 2018 National History Competition during the historical festival »Historiske Dage« in Øksnehallen in Copenhagen, which was visited by thousands of people.
Under this year’s topic "My family – from where I come" 45 young people participated and handed in 38 contributions. It is the 12th time the competition was carried out in Denmark.
Historian Dr. Phil. Thorkild Kjærgaard, head of the Danish jury, handed out the diploma to the winner of the competition, Jakob Johannes Heyn. On behalf of the committee Kjærgaard said:
"Jakob Johannes Heyn's story about his family stretches from 1659 to 2017. It begins at the grave of his 7x great-grandmother on a cold December day in 1659 and ends with the author himself in December 2017, 358 years later. Meanwhile, through a series of examples from more than 350 years of family-history, we have been presented with the marvelous interaction between fate and coincidence, between societies and individuals bearing the genus - in this case a Baltic Sea family with the center of the Danish South Sea, but with outflows to Sweden, North Germany and the Holstein - over the stormy seas of the time. We do not doubt that this answer demonstrates amazing knowledge of both the history of literature and what is found in the archives and deserves to be rewarded with the first prize in the Gymnasium's History Competition 2017/2018."
The Judges’ Comitteee:
The historians Thomas Oldrup, Christian Vollmond and Thorkild Kjærgaard (chair of the committee).
Overview of the 2nd and 3rd prize winners 2018:
Second place:
Annika Rønne Schmidt, Vestjysk Gymnasium Tarm (VGT): »Therefore I became suicide bomber«
Annika was not able to attend the ceremony in Copenhagen, but the 2nd prize was justified in the following way: "(…) On a more generalised level, the author demonstrates the intimate and often overlooked interaction between past, present and future. An excellent job which we have no doubt deserves to be rewarded with the second prize."
Third place:
Anton Lykketoft, Robert Dunker Pedersen, Mads Lauritsen, Rysensteen Gymnasium: »The American First Family«
"With a number of highly-skilled film clips from the years 1935 to 1990, the 3rd prize winners demonstrate the mutual reflection between the American president family ("first family") and changing family ideas in the United States from Franklin D. and Eleanor Roosevelt's time in the 1930s over the iconic Kennedy family in the 1960s to Nancy and Ronald Reagan's time in the White House in the 1980s. A fashionable and elegant work (…)"
In addition to the diplomas the award winners received financial rewards.