Eurovision Victory for Sweden

Today (well actually yesterday by now) was the Eurovision final (from the UK) and Sweden won. For those who don’t know, Eurovision is the largest song contest in the world. Countries compete against each other, and the final typically has as many viewers as the Superbowl, about 200 million. You are allowed to sing in your native language or in English. Not all participating countries are European, for example, Turkey, Israel, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Cyprus are frequent participants, but they are not European countries, and this year Australia participated, The Eurovision is a huge cultural phenomenon that is not well known in the United States. I’ve noticed that the natively English-speaking countries often miss out on big worldwide cultural phenomena that are not entirely based on English. Typically, famous music groups do not participate, but many famous music groups got started or were propelled by the Eurovision, for example, ABBA (waterloo 1974) and Celine Dion (1988).

Anyway, this is a Leonberger blog but sometimes I post about other things and my home country Sweden winning the Eurovision is a big deal for me, so I made a post about it. I am also posting number two (Finland) and number three (Israel). Which one do you think is best? I won’t be offended if it is not Sweden.

Photo from Swedish Eurovision celebration from New York Times.
Sweden in the Eurovision
Sweden, Eurovision 2023
Finland, Eurovision 2023
Israel, Eurovision 2023

Russia was banned from participating this year, and some other countries that usually do like Turkey, Bulgaria, and Hungary did not participate. These were the top seven.

  1. Sweden
  2. Finland
  3. Israel
  4. Italy
  5. Norway
  6. Ukraine
  7. Belgium
Map of Europe with countries getting to the Eurovision final 2023 in green and participating countries that did not in red and countries that did not participate but usually do in yellow.
Finalists in green, participants not making it to the final in red, in yellow countries that typically participate but didn’t.

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Author: thomasstigwikman

My name is Thomas Wikman. I am a software/robotics engineer with a background in physics. I am currently retired. I took early retirement. I am a dog lover, and especially a Leonberger lover, a home brewer, craft beer enthusiast, I’m learning French, and I am an avid reader. I live in Dallas, Texas, but I am originally from Sweden. I am married to Claudia, and we have three children. I have two blogs. The first feature the crazy adventures of our Leonberger Le Bronco von der Löwenhöhle as well as information on Leonbergers. The second blog, superfactful, feature information and facts I think are very interesting. With this blog I would like to create a list of facts that are accepted as true among the experts of the field and yet disputed amongst the public or highly surprising. These facts are special and in lieu of a better word I call them super-facts.

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