#silvía night

[enter-the-phantom]

Silvia Night tried to warn us about the EBU journalists and we didn’t listen 😔

[eurovision-revisited]

Eurovision 2006 - Number 16 - Silvia Night - "Congratulations"

It is time.

Possibly the most booed act at Eurovision until 2024. Almost certainly the most chutzpah ever seen on a Eurovision stage - only Polina Gagarina comes close. Silvia Night/Silvía Nótt is here to save us all. Where to even begin with this?

Starting with who she is - Silvia is actress, singer and comedian Ágústa Eva Erlendsdóttir. Silvia was a comedy character she played on the show Sjáumst með Silvíu Nótt (The Silvia Night Show). She was a TV interviewer who outraged people by acting offensively when doing her job, insulting interviewees, using slang and acting in a way some have described as vulgar. Effectively she is the female, Icelandic, waspishly insulting Ali G.

Entering Söngvakeppni Sjónvarpsins 2006 was a continuation of her act. It was also part of a broad trend towards countries not only parodying Eurovision itself (much to the annoyance of the fans), but also entering songs that appeal directly to their home country only, just like We Are the Winners. Acts you needed to be in on the joke for. The Icelandic version of the song is called Til hamingju Ísland - Congratulations Iceland and the lyrics are considerably different.

The chorus is

Til hamingju Ísland með að ég fæddist hér Ég er Silvía Nótt og þið haldið með mér Eurovision nation fær sko flog er ég kem Ég er fædd til að vinna þetta… tremma í hel

or

Congratulations Iceland for being born here I am Silvía Nótt and you are with me Eurovision nation will have a seizure when I come I was born to win this… damn it

She wasn't wrong.

Silvia was determined to be as offensive as possible at Eurovision. Not only did she insult other contestants, the event staff and fans, but the English translation originally had the line

The vote is in, I'll fucking win

which caused complaints and the EBU to insist that it was changed. Silvia's response was

I'll fucking say what I fucking like

She still changed it though. In 2024, her behaviour would have easily been enough to have got her disqualified.

The song was written by Þorvaldur Bjarni Þorvaldsson who had previously written both of Selma's Eurovision entries. It's a simple Europop singalong thing that is being deliberate sung in a thick accent and relatively poorly. It's high camp (despite being 'not too gay') and without the offensiveness of the character is a contender for most Eurovision-y Eurovision song ever written.

The staging is incredible and almost always overlooked amidst the controversy. There are props Silvia has to interact with including a slide, and two 'showers' from one of which she has to catch a falling phone receiver. There's the paper screens her dancers burst through. There's the costume change. There's the choreography. It's the most complex staging in Eurovision history to this point by far and once again it's Iceland pushing the boundaries of what's possible on stage.

And of course it's all in character - not only the stage performance, but the entire Eurovision week was Ágústa acting her socks off and all to achieve thirteenth place in the semi-final having landslided the televote at Söngvakeppni Sjónvarpsins 2006. At the time, most Eurovision fans were ecstatic that she hadn't made it and some of that still lingers today. Yet, Silvia Night and Congratulations were a massive dose of self-awareness that Eurovision needed to grow and to address the bad feelings that were lurking underneath the show in many of its constituent countries.

Earlier in 2006 Silvia Night had been voted Iceland's sexiest woman. Ágústa Eva Erlendsdóttir came fourth in the same poll. The character was semi-retired after Eurovision, but Ágústa continued with much success in TV and in music. Safe to say she's still a big name in Iceland. She's performed many times, and is also (of course) the voice of many Disney films in Iceland.

In fact she's Elsa from Frozen. Here is Ágústa singing Let it Go in Icelandic to a bunch of rat puppets which I think only Icelanders can possibly explain.

[hatari-translations]

I was just looking up Silvía Nótt since you mentioned Til Hamingju Ísland and on Wikipedia it says her name is Silvía Nótt Sæmundsdóttir and then has next to it in brackets “(see Icelandic naming conventions)” but then it just sends me to the Wikipedia page about Icelandic names in general. Is there something satirical in her name/is it just a nonsense name in Icelandic or something else? I’m curious.

Nah, the "(see Icelandic naming conventions)" is just for explaining that Sæmundsdóttir is not a family name. The name Silvía Nótt was sort of a very typical 'trendy' baby name for the time; Silvía is sort of a rare, fancy-sounding name and Nótt and other single-syllable words were the fashion in second names. (Nótt means night, so the Eurovision branding as Silvía Night was just translating it.)

[babolat85]

MY FAVOURITE EUROVISION ENTRIES: DAY 22 - Iceland

Okay, this is a total guilty pleasure because it’s so wrong that it’s right. Plus all the booing from people that didn’t get that it was a total joke entry.  I remember watching the whole series of "The Silvia Night Show” back when this came out in 2006/2007, and was centred on the whole diva personality of Silvía Night. 

Anyway, on a more serious note, Iceland had produced some amazing entries over the year including Yohanna - Is It True & Greta Salóme - Hear Them Calling nor to mention others including Hatari and  Daði Freyr (Daði & Gagnamagnið) – Think About Things

Edit: I feel like I haven’t done Iceland justice, so I also present another of my alltime favourites from the country.

PREVIOUS COUNTRIES:

Albania

Andorra

Armenia

Australia

Austria

Azerbaijan

Belarus

Belgium

Bosnia & Herzegovina

Bulgaria

Croatia

Cyprus

Czech Republic

Denmark

Estonia

Finland

France

Georgia

Germany

Greece

Hungary

[antialiasis]

What was that Iceland 'Silvia Night' 2006 entry on EV? Is she a celeb or someting there?

Silvía Nótt was a parody character played by actress and musician Ágústa Eva Erlendsdóttir - think Sacha Baron Cohen's characters like Borat or Ali G. She had a TV show where she would interview people, in character as this incredibly ditzy, self-important diva. Her Eurovision entry was also thoroughly in character, and featured men in sunglasses and suits as backup dancers dramatically pulling off their pants at the climax and it was hilarious.

One way or another, the English translation of the song and the actual staging in the contest kind of lost a lot of the humour. I can sort of see what they were going for with the weird unicorn thing and costumes and all, but it was just not as funny when they weren't wearing suits and sunglasses, and stuff like turning "Congratulations, Iceland, on me being born here" into "Congratulations, I have arrived" just kind of muted the actual humorous audacity of it into nothing much. On top of that, of course, nobody outside of Iceland was aware of this character, and despite her over-the-topness Europe seemed to broadly not quite get the parody element and just assumed she was an actual ditzy self-important diva. So all in all, although I enthusiastically voted for her in the Icelandic national contest I was pretty disappointed in how it wound up being translated and staged in the actual contest, and as an entry it was a total dud when nobody really got the joke.

[vogelmeister]

I’m a person who wouldn’t care if any song from the top 40 was played at the club but would lose my shit if they started playing congratulations by Silvía Night and that’s on (weird) taste

[lyricsliamlikes]

“Oh my god it’s a golden shower!”

Silvía Night - Congratulations Iceland 2006 13th place (DNQ) - 62pts

[terminalpolitics]

Þetta er nóg/Let it go (Icelandic version)

Performed live by Ágústa Eva Erlendsdóttir/Silvía Night

With puppets.

[magilou]

FOREVER I HAVE WISHED

UPON

A STAR

[hatari-translations]

Are there any songs that have competed in Eurovision for Iceland in English that you preferred the Icelandic version of? I honestly like Raddirnar quite a bit more than Hear Them Calling from 2016

Honestly the only one I can think of with both Icelandic and English versions where I prefer the English is "Think About Things", where the Icelandic lyrics are throwaway. I like listening to Icelandic, and songs tend to just kind of sound more generic in English.

But some particularly worth mentioning include:

I was asked to translate "Klukkan tifar" from Söngvakeppnin 2020 once and was baffled to find the official English version of that song translated the first line and then immediately veered off into a generic love song that had nothing to do with the original lyrics at all. Deeply dislike that.

Diljá's "Lifandi inni í mér" is a genuinely interesting song whose Icelandic lyrics at least read to me as being about getting out of an abusive relationship. The official English translation is a translation of the Icelandic version this time, but feels to me like it dampens the sense of that and sounds a bit more like she's just letting go of someone she was obsessed with, which feels like a significant loss.

Silvía Nótt's "Til hamingju Ísland" was much funnier in Icelandic. The whole point of her (a satire character from a TV show where she would interview unsuspecting people, in the vein of Ali G) is to be this ridiculously unpleasant character who's convinced she's amazing and everyone loves her, but the absurdly self-absorbed, gross, mean-spirited audacity of the song was just kind of muted in the English version into a much milder sort of pompousness that took all the bite out of it. So, for instance, the first lines of the chorus originally go, "Congratulations, Iceland, that I was born here / I'm Silvía Nótt and you're rooting for me" but the translation is just "Congratulations, I have arrived / I'm Silvía Night and I'm shining so bright". You see what I mean.