523/917 Halla Margrét: Haegt og hljott (Iceland 1987)

During the last 20 years we've had new countries flooding to the Eurovision Song Contest, but in the 1980's it was a completely different story. During that decade only two new countries debuted in the Eurovision Song Contest, Cyprus and Iceland. It took a while for Iceland to establish themselves in the Eurovision family, but from the beginning they took part with ambition and, most importantly, with good artists and songs.

Iceland's second Eurovision entry ever was a tender ballad sung delicately by 23 years old Halla Margrét. I considered this song as a nice but forgettable piece of music, but since 1987 it has grown on me and I believe that the juries (or the televoting audience) would have treated the song better 10 or 20 years later.

In 1987, when the eurovision songs did not circulate in the Internet for months before the contest, the song was not given the chance to grow and it was awarded the 16th place in the final results (among the record busting total of 22 songs).

The song was more or less forgotten after the contest held in Brussels, but I remember having a surprising encounter with it 7 or 8 years later. While visiting London I heard the loudspeakers of a fast food restaurant blasting out the english version of this particular Eurovision entry. How a UK restaurant ended up playing an english version of an almost ten years old Icelandic eurovision entry remains a mystery to me. Maybe there was a eurovision geek working in the restaurant that day.

According to some information found in the Internet Halla Margrét moved from popular music to classical music and had an operatic career. Could someone confirm is the soprano in this video singing Puccini actually the same Halla Margrét that represented Iceland in the Eurovision Song Contest 22 years earlier?

My points 3/5.