Themes for our times, reflections on the past and pointers for the future. These were the elements of the acceptance speeches by David Trimble and John Hume in Oslo yesterday.
Mr Trimble, it must be said, is still largely an unknown quantity in the Republic and farther afield. Even in Northern Ireland he can still keep both friends and enemies guessing. But after his Oslo speech we know a little bit more about the First Minister designate.
Mr Hume's odyssey, on the other hand, is well known and yesterday was in many ways the crowning moment of his life. Reiterating basic axioms until even the slowest pupil in the class has learnt them off by heart is the deliberate and unashamed stock-in-trade of this former teacher. Had his speech yesterday not contained some familiar material his admirers would have been disappointed, as with a singer who failed to perform his greatest hits.
Unlike his fellow-laureate, David Trimble's leadership and political prospects are anything but secure and it was to be expected, therefore, that his speech would contain gestures to different constituencies.
The Nobel Prize hardly rated a mention at his party conference, reflecting the suspicion aroused among the grassroots when the Norwegians or anyone else come bearing gifts.
But as hard-headed, practical folk, the unionist community knows that loyalty to the Crown doesn't mean ignoring the halfcrown. Mr Trimble pressed that button when he said, in relation to the gold medal and the cheque, "The people of Northern Ireland are not a people to look a gift horse in the mouth."
Some may have thought it cynical, others would say he was merely being realistic when he added: "The way politics work in Northern Ireland - if John Hume has a medal, it is important that I have one too."
Some observers detected a slight "dig" at his co-recipient when Trimble declared he would not be indulging in "vague and visionary statements". There was one of several flashes of humour when he referred to the politician who talked about his vision and was promptly sent to an optician.
A hard, practical realist with no time for trendy nonsense was how Trimble sought to present himself. Unlike, say, President Clinton, the unionist leader rejected the notion of the North as "a model for the study, never mind the solution, of other conflicts".
Edmund Burke, hero to conservatives and liberals alike, pragmatic progressive and progressive pragmatist, emerged as Trimble's chief intellectual beacon in his approach to Northern Ireland. As the son of a Protestant father and Catholic mother, Burke was deemed particularly appropriate.
More interestingly, perhaps, Trimble also invoked Amos Oz, "the distinguished Israeli writer who has reached out to the Arab tradition".
Trimble admired such men because they held out against fanaticism and could therefore be rolemodels in the Northern conflict, where fanatics on both sides sought to lead their respective communities into an ideological and political cul-de-sac.
The UUP leader said it was necessary for democrats to engage in "what the Irish writer, Eoghan Harris, calls acts of good authority" by dealing with the fanatics on their own side of the fence.
"In Northern Ireland, constitutional nationalists must take on republican dissident terrorists and constitutional unionists must confront Protestant terrorists."
There was a hint of possible new flexibility on the weapons issue when he said: "I have not insisted on precise dates, quantities and manner of decommissioning. All I have asked for is a credible beginning. All I have asked for is that they say that the `war' is over." He acknowledged unionism's failings in the past when it "built a solid house, but it was a cold house for Catholics". While this admission may well be appreciated by members of the Northern minority, some of them may take offence at his subsequent comment that "nationalists, although they had a roof over their heads, seemed to us as if they meant to burn the house down".
He ends his revealing, provocative and uncompromisingly highbrow oration on a proud note. Referring to the events of Good Friday when, in the view of some commentators at least, David Trimble led his people out of the political wilderness, he said: "The agreement showed that the people of Northern Ireland are no petty people. They did good work that day."
Although at 61, Hume is only seven years older than Trimble, the SDLP leader is already taking on the aura of the elder statesman, while still keeping a foothold in the world of day-to-day politics.
Not for him the austere philosophers Burke, Plato and Rousseau: Hume preferred to strike a poetic note, quoting Yeats, Louis MacNeice and the idealistic vision of Martin Luther King.
Hume's text fitted into the mould of traditional Nobel Prize orations, idealistic, aspirational and visionary. Friends have been floating the notion of Hume as next president of the European Parliament. If that came about, he might well recycle some of the references to the European ideal from yesterday's speech.
He tells the now-familiar story of how he stood between Strasbourg and Kehl, France and Germany, in 1979. "I stopped in the middle of the bridge and I meditated." His thoughts centred on how these two countries, forever at war, were now working constructively together on the European project, providing a model for conflict resolution.
Yes, Hume believes lessons from one situation can be applied elsewhere. Using perhaps the best-known line of his entire political career, he added that "they spilt their sweat and not their blood". He held up the Belfast Agreement as a similar co-operative venture, based on perspiration not recrimination.
He was generous in his plaudits for political leaders who contributed to that achievement, giving special mention to the "outstanding" Dr Mo Mowlam.
Despite the differences in content and theme and despite their contrasting personalities, Trimble and Hume are, to coin a phrase, "inextricably linked". Without Hume's groundwork over the years there would be no Belfast Agreement and David Trimble would not be First Minister-designate today. Without Trimble's continuing commitment to the Good Friday pact, Hume's vision may never be fulfilled. Edmund Burke would probably have understood that, in democratic politics, opponents both need and depend upon each other.