Town fan Arnt H Nodeland has been named Norway’s Supporter of the Year by the country’s Supporterunionen for Britisk Fotball and television channel TV2.
Arnt, 45, founded the Ipswich Town FC Supporters Club of Norway, which now has more than 500 members, as an 18-year-old back in 1989 and is now its president.
He also started the award-winning fanzine for Norwegian supporters, the News of the Blues, which he initially produced on his own.
"It was very unexpected. I was told Monday and realised nothing. I am thankful and really appreciate it,” Arnt told TV2 in an interview - which can be found auto-translated into English here - in which he also reveals that during a spell living in Ipswich without a fixed postal address he had letters delivered to him at Portman Road.
ITSCON chairman Ole Bernt Krogstad paid tribute to Arnt, who visits Town between five and eight times a season: "Since creating the Supporters Club in 1989 he has supplied thousands of match tickets to other Norwegian fans without taking any profit.
"He paved the way for other supporters to start travelling to Ipswich. He wrote the fanzine at first on his own before other people also got involved and it recently won the Fanzine of the Year.
"He started the trips in which loads of members participate and his connections to Portman Road are tremendously good. Almost every single Ipswich fan in Norway knows Arnt’s name.
"Before Arnt fellow Town fans Lasse Lorentzen [1994], Geir Ingvald Jacobsen [2006] and Inge Haug [2010] also won the prize, which is really tough to win. That means that our Supporters Club is definitely doing something right!”