It’s time to share our final interview with an artist from Norway’s Melodi Grand Prix 2024! After three weeks of Semi Finals in Oslo, it’s off to Trondheim for the Grand Final of MGP on Saturday, and leading the way with the bookmakers are this week’s guests on the podcast — Gåte!

We managed to catch up with Gåte’s lead singer Gunnhild Sundli as well as their drummer Jon Even Schärer as they were getting ready to head to Trondheim to prepare their performance for the big stage.

Gåte’s style has been described as Norwegian folk music mixed with metal and electronica — a sort of Scandinavian progressive folk-rock. Interestingly, Norway has only sent one song to Eurovision in the Norwegian language in the past 25 years. In fact, Norway has sent lyrics in Swahili more recently than in Norwegian!

As Gåte were preparing for the Final, news broke that broadcaster NRK asked the group to change the lyrics of Ulveham, in case the EBU disqualify the song, should it win MGP. Since the lyrics are taken from a thousand-year-old medieval ballad, that might break the EBU’s rule about original songs.

“When we had to cut down our song to three minutes because that’s the limit in Eurovision, we already had to cut the story [a lot] and I kind of thought that we lost something in that […] When this happened we also understood that this could be a conflict with the rules […] now we have actually got new lyrics with the same story and same feeling but I think the story now comes better and more clearly!”

– Gunnhild Sundli

While neither Gunnhild nor Jon were stressed or upset about the change, lead vocalist Gunnhild is now left with just a few days to memorize the new lyrics.

If you want a sneak peak of the new introduction to the song, we were lucky enough to receive a special serenade from Gunnhild as she practiced the new lyrics of Ulveham. Be sure to check that out in the full interview (link above)!

We wish them the best of luck on in the MGP Final Saturday!

Photo: NRK/Espen Solli