Ever since the mid-1970s, when the Norwegian People's Peace Prize was awarded to the peace movement headed by Mairead Corrigan and Betty Williams - a grassroots pressure that eventually gave them the "real " peace prize from the Nobel Committee the following year - people here have been following closely the developments in Northern Ireland.

Surprisingly so, because the Norwegians have difficulties understanding what are the precise roots and causes at the core of the Northern Irish conflict.

Norway itself is a very homogeneous society, with no marked religious divisions and no similar past history to help them understand why some 3,500 people have died over the past 30 years in a country just across the North Sea.

Even so, Norwegian media have been giving close coverage of the developments in Northern Ireland during these past decades.

Norwegians being Anglophiles in their bones and hearts, major Norwegian news media have their correspondents based in London.

Norway is a small country, but the 4.5 million Norwegians like to see themselves as a peace-loving and peace-making people.

Few forget the breakthrough of the Oslo Accords in the Middle East peace process five years ago, and many often cry out for Norwegian engagement and mediation in various conflicts around the world.

Though Norway had little to offer in the Northern Ireland peace process, the Oslobased Nobel Committee in its statement announcing this year's peace prize to Mr John Hume and Mr David Trimble expressed its hope that "the foundations which have now been laid will not only lead to lasting peace in Northern Ireland, but also serve to inspire peaceful solutions to other religious, ethnic and national conflicts around the world".

By awarding the prize to two of the politicians at the forefront of the Northern Ireland peace process, the committee has followed its own risky trend over the past years, awarding this prestigious prize to a still ongoing process hoping it will push the participants further forward in the right direction.

The committee did this with the Middle East peace process, with the conflict in Guatemala, with East Timor, and it did so last year with the peace prize awarded to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines and its campaign co-ordinator, Jody Williams.

By omitting Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams from this year's laureates, the committee is taking a cautious line, the middle road, in order not to provoke.

However, it is making a stand and taking a risk in the hope that the prize will eventually bring lasting peace to the people of Northern Ireland.

Elisabeth Randsborg is a correspondent for Aftenposten, a leading Oslo daily newspaper