KEiiNO's 'Spirit in the Sky' is the Eurovision entry that won the public vote and still didn't win the contest. At the 2019 Song Contest in Tel Aviv, viewers across Europe gave the Norwegian trio a massive 291 televote points — more than anyone else, including eventual winner Duncan Laurence of the Netherlands. But the professional juries handed Norway just 40 points, and the split verdict left KEiiNO down in sixth place overall.
The song itself earned its following. KEiiNO paired singers Alexandra Rotan and Tom Hugo Hermansen with Fred Buljo, a Sámi rapper and joiker from Kautokeino in Northern Norway — a town so central to the group's identity that its name, Guovdageaidnu in Northern Sámi, inspired the band name. Buljo's joik, a traditional Sámi vocal form that traditionally evokes a person, animal or place rather than simply describing one, sits at the heart of the track rather than as decorative folklore. The song also drops in the Northern Sámi phrase Čájet dan čuovgga — 'show me the light' — and carries a stated message about equality and the right to be yourself.
The road to sixth place was rough. KEiiNO won the Norwegian selection, Melodi Grand Prix, at Oslo Spektrum on 2 March 2019, and 'Spirit in the Sky' quickly hit second place on Spotify's Global Viral 50. In Tel Aviv, a technical failure during the jury rehearsal — a brief blackout and a camera operator caught on screen — led Norway to request a rerun that was refused. Then, days after a fifth-place result on the night, the European Broadcasting Union admitted a scoring error involving Belarus's substitute jury vote. Recalculation moved Sweden up to fifth and pushed Norway down to sixth. Only Eurovision.
None of that dented the song's popularity. It topped Norway's VG-lista chart, charted around Europe, and picked up a Song of the Year nomination at the Spellemann Awards. KEiiNO stuck together too — a rarity for contest-assembled acts — returning to Melodi Grand Prix in 2021 with 'Monument' (losing to Tix) and again in 2024 with 'Damdiggida' (second behind Gåte).
For travellers, the story is a reminder that Sámi culture is living and contemporary, not a museum exhibit. Buljo's hometown of Kautokeino, deep in Finnmark, remains one of the best places to hear joik and learn about Sámi life firsthand — and Eurovision gave that tradition an audience of nearly 200 million. Life in Norway
