La det swinge: Norway's First Win After Years of Humiliation

MAY 15 1985 · 12:00

Bobbysocks! · "La det swinge" · Norway · 1985 Placement: 1st · Language: Norwegian · Composers: Rolf Løvland · Venue: Scandinavium · Host: Gothenburg, Sweden · Type: winner · Broadcast: color crt On the evening of May 4, 1985, inside the Scandinavium arena in Gothenburg, two Norwegian singers in matching bobby-sock skirts — Hanne Krogh and Elisabeth Andreassen, performing as Bobbysocks! — took the stage with a saxophone-driven 1950s-pastiche pop song called 'La det swinge' and by the end of the voting had won the Eurovision Song Contest by a decisive margin. The song was an unabashed tribute to rock 'n' roll on the radio, its lyric a celebration of dancing to old records, its arrangement deliberately retro. Krogh and Andreassen were both established Norwegian singers — Krogh had represented Norway in Eurovision before, in 1971; Andreassen, Swedish-born, had competed in Melodifestivalen — but Bobbysocks! was a new pairing assembled specifically for the 1985 Norwegian selection. Their victory was Norway's first ever at Eurovision after twenty-five years of participation during which the country had famously earned a reputation as the contest's most persistent last-place finisher, with multiple 'nul points' finishes branded onto the Norwegian national memory. The Scandinavium crowd, roughly half Swedish and half Norwegian, reacted to the result with the kind of cathartic roar that only makes sense when a long, public national losing streak finally breaks. Rolf Løvland, the song's composer, would return ten years later in a very different guise. Context Eurovision 1985 was held in Sweden following Herreys' 1984 win with 'Diggi-Loo Diggi-Ley' and was the first contest broadcast from Gothenburg. The mid-1980s contest was in a relatively stable commercial-pop register — English-language entries dominated, production values were rising toward MTV-era gloss, and the old chanson traditions of the 1960s had largely faded. Norway's participation record up to that point was a running joke within Eurovision fan culture: the country had finished last four times, including twice with zero points (1963, 1978, 1981). 'La det swinge' was performed in Norwegian, which gave it a degree of Nordic-language solidarity appeal in a voting bloc that included Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and Iceland. Bobbysocks! had been assembled partly in response to Krogh and Andreassen having each tried solo Eurovision routes without success. Legacy Norway's 1985 win transformed the country's relationship with Eurovision almost overnight — from national punchline to legitimate contender. Bobbysocks! became a permanent fixture of Norwegian pop culture and continued to perform together at anniversary events for decades. Rolf Løvland returned to Eurovision in 1995 as composer of Secret Garden's 'Nocturne,' giving him two winning entries for Norway — a composer record tied with several others and often cited as one of the contest's most remarkable author-level achievements. Elisabeth Andreassen would herself return to Eurovision for Norway in 1994 and 1996, placing second and sixth. The 1985 win also effectively ended the 'Norway is always last' joke that had structured Eurovision fan-discourse through the 1970s, though it would take Alexander Rybak's 2009 landslide to fully rewrite Norway's contest identity. Mythology Bobbysocks! is sometimes described as a pre-existing duo that had been performing together for years before Eurovision; in fact the pairing was effectively assembled for the 1985 Norwegian selection. The win is occasionally credited as ending all of Norway's last-place finishes, but Norway would go on to finish last again in subsequent contests, including twice more with zero points. Elisabeth Andreassen is sometimes described as Norwegian; she was born in Gothenburg, Sweden, and represented Sweden in Eurovision 1982 before representing Norway.