1. The Nordic Mathematical Contest (NMC) is a competition organized annually for secondary school students in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. The competition is jointly arranged by the organizations in the participating countries responsible for the selection and training of the national teams participating in the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO). These organizations will be called national organizations. The primary aims of the contest are to
2. The representatives of the national organizations meet annually at the IMO to set the date of the next NMC and to discuss matters related to the contest.
3. Each participating country can enter a maximum of 20 competitors. The competitors should be eligible to participate in the IMO of year of the competition as members of the team of their country. Also other students of secondary schools of the participating countries are allowed to compete. The participants are chosen by the national organizations.
4. Each year, one of the national organizations, called the host, is responsible for the general arrangements of the contest. The order is as follows (year mod 5): 0: Finland, 1: Denmark, 2: Sweden, 3: Norway, 4: Iceland. The national arrangements in each country are carried out by the national organizations.
5. The contest takes place in March or April on a date agreed by the participating organizations. The preferred time of the contest is suggested by the host. The competition problems should be kept confidential until the day after the contest. In the contest, the participants solve four problems in a time of four hours. The only allowed tools are paper and writing and drawing instruments. The contestants can write in their own language. The problems are marked on a scale from 0 to 5. Only integers are used.
6. The mathematical content covered by the problems is the one used in the IMO; their intended difficulty level is slightly below that of the IMO.
7. The host prepares the set of the problems of the competition in English on the basis of proposals submitted by the national organizations, the host included. The national organizations prepare translations of the problems into the languages of the participants. The host may review the translations before the contest. The final problem sets should be ready for mailing to the sites where the exam is given well in advance of the competition date.
8. The national organizations are responsible for the necessary arrangements in their countries. The students make the exam in their schools or at other suitable sites. The national organizations collect the answers, mark them preliminarily according to a marking scheme provided by the host, and send the papers with sufficient comments and necessary translations to the host. The host performs the final marking of all the papers and informs the national organizations of the results. The decisions of the host are final. The national organizations are free to publish the results after receiving them from the host.
9. The host informs the national organizations on deadlines for sending in problem suggestions and sending in the answers. The aim is to have the final results well before the end of the school year. The host issues diplomas for all participants and decides on the number of participants whose diplomas indicate the rank of the contestant. No other prizes are given. The national organizations are responsible for distributing the diplomas to the participants or their schools.
10. The host can decide on minor deviations from these rules, if necessary.