Fairytale: Rybak Breaks the Eurovision Points Record

MAY 15 2009 · 12:00

Alexander Rybak · "Fairytale" · Norway · 2009 Placement: 1st · Score: 387 · Language: English · Composers: Alexander Rybak · Venue: Olimpiysky · Host: Moscow, Russia · Type: winner · Broadcast: HD On May 16, 2009, at the Olimpiysky Arena in Moscow, a 23-year-old Belarusian-born Norwegian violinist named Alexander Rybak performed a folk-pop song of his own composition — 'Fairytale' — with a fiddle, a choreographed troupe of modern-dance-meets-Scandinavian-folk-jumping dancers, and a vocal performance that landed somewhere between Nordic folk singer and Disney prince. Forty-one other songs competed. Rybak won with 387 points — the highest total in Eurovision history under any scoring system at that time — and received maximum 12 points from 16 separate national juries/televotes, a degree of pan-European consensus the contest had never seen. He won by 169 points over second-place Iceland. The result was, in the word used repeatedly by commentators the following morning, a landslide. Context Eurovision 2009 was hosted by Russia following Dima Bilan's 2008 win and arrived against a backdrop of the 2008 financial crisis, the August 2008 Russo-Georgian war (which had led Georgia to withdraw their submission after the EBU objected to its political content), and the gradual normalization of televoting across all participating nations. Norway had participated since 1960 with two prior wins (1985, 1995). Rybak had immigrated to Norway with his musician parents as a small child and had trained classically on the violin since age five. His Norwegian-language pre-submission had been recorded but the English version was chosen for the final as international appeal was prioritized. The 'Fairytale' chorus and dance break were designed specifically to function as televisual spectacle on a stadium stage. Legacy The 387-point record stood until the 2016 scoring system overhaul that inflated totals. Rybak's performance became a Eurovision reference point for how folk-pop fusion could achieve pan-continental jury-and-televote consensus — a rare alignment. He returned to Eurovision as Norway's representative in 2018 ('That's How You Write A Song') and finished 15th, a decline that itself became a cautionary tale about the Eurovision difficulty-of-repetition problem. Norway's subsequent submissions followed various templates but none matched the 2009 consensus. The song became a staple of Eurovision retrospective compilations and remains among the most-streamed Eurovision winners on Spotify. Mythology The margin of victory is sometimes reported as 200 points in popular retellings; it was 169. Some accounts credit the dance break as choreographed by an international name; it was developed within the Norwegian delegation. Rybak's Belarusian origin is occasionally erased in 'Norway's native son' framings; he was a naturalized Norwegian citizen but Belarusian-born. The claim that his fiddle was a centuries-old family heirloom is inaccurate — it was a modern concert-grade violin.