Image courtesy of FIKA(S)
FIKA(S) Festival
Montréal, Quebec
Presented by
FIKA(S) Festival
FIKA(S) creates bridges between Nordic and Scandinavian cultures and Quebecers and Canadians by offering intimate and unifying cultural and artistic events.
This 4th edition takes place in Montréal in various locations around the city, for 7 days of events and activities. From music to cinema to workshops and encounters, the multidisciplinary festival once again invites the public to celebrate the Nordic and Scandinavian cultures in their various forms.
Founded in 2015, the “Diffusion culturelle FIKA(S) organisation” inaugurated its first event in March 2016: the Immersive Festival of Scandinavian and Nordic Kultur and Art – FIKA(S). The name FIKA(S) is a French acronym for Festival Immersif de Kultur et d’Art Scandinave / Nordique. Since then, three editions (2016, 2017 and 2019) have been presented. The events of the last edition brought together over 35,000 people.
See Nordic participants below.
Event Supporters
Rebecca Bergcrantz aka Raindear is a producer, songwriter and artist from Sweden, who grew up immersed in music, inspired by her parents who are both reputable musicians from the jazz and classical world. Absorbing all she could from them, Raindear sang and wrote songs from a very young age, and eventually went on to write and self-produce her albums ”Embers”(2016) and «Skies to My Name» (2019). Both albums received excellent reviews from key tastemakers and blogs worldwide such as Billboard, Noisey, CLASH, and The 405 to name a few. Raindear has a keen sense of style mixing boho, rave, retro synths and worldly beats, which brings her to craft something very unique both musically and visually.
Norwegian singer and keyboardist, Marte Eberson, has made a big impact with her music in a lot of different genres. With a long resume she has received prices and acknowledgements for a lot of different projects and music styles. Marte Eberson has a broad range as a musician and performer, taking on different roles and mastering several genres. Referred to as a synth wizard, Marte brings her own feelings into the soundscape through the many different expressions a synth can produce. Collaborating with her father, the famous Norwegian jazz/rock/prog guitarist Jon Eberson, in the project “Eberson”, Marte has recorded two studio-albums which both received massive positive reviews. In her solo project Marte uses her beautiful singing voice, expressing even more relatable feelings through her precise writing and relatable storytelling. Her established position as a master of several music arts has given Marte memorable performance opportunities. She played with Alan Walker at the prestigious Coachella festival in Los Angeles, as well as performing together with Ane Brun at Øyafestivalen in Oslo.
Dina Liberg is the Director of shesaid.so Sweden – a community for women, gender minorities
and allies in the music industry. She is also a project coordinator at the Swedish Society
of Composers and the founder of Lionberg Music – a sync and consultancy agency.
Cathrine Heen is the Co-Director of shesaid.so Norway. Cathrine works as a label manager, A&R, and with promotion in Grappa Musik-
kforlag, one of Norway’s oldest and largest independent record labels. She is also lea-
ding the group FONO Development.
Oslo, Norway-based indie-rock artist Tuvaband (Tuva Hellum Marschhäuser) is a critically-acclaimed artist with an impressive international profile that, to date, has earned 40 million cumulative streams on Spotify. Tuvaband is the wildly eclectic brainchild of fearless songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer Tuva Hellum Marschhäuser. Tuva previously earned a Norwegian Grammy nomination. Her song “Irreversible” was remixed by beloved dub icon Lee «Scratch» Perry. Tuva’s intrepid artistry has garnered favorable comparisons to Kate Bush, Cocteau Twins, David Lynch, and Coco- Rosie. Her songwriting exudes an indie-pop mystique, easing through delicate, piano-led folk, softly-soaring post-rock, and carefully-crafted sound design. Floating over these carefully-composed songs and densely textured soundscapes are Tuva’s fluttery vocals which manage to be both visceral and vulnerable. Tuvaband’s upcoming album, New Orders —her fourth overall—is a bold exploration of the many facets of her creativity. It marks the first time she did everything on an album, including playing all the instruments (except trombone and drums, though she programmed these beforehand and additionally kept parts of it), recording, producing, and mixing. It’s a pure transmission of Tuva’s full- bloom artistry.
Salóme is a composer, singer and pianist. She won the Kraumur Music Award in 2020 for her EP Water and was also nominated for Newcomer of the Year at the Icelandic Music Awards 2021. Since debuting her music and performance to the public in 2019, the 24-year-old has garnered great praise from music fans and professionals alike, building a steady buzz that has seen her perform to packed crowds at solo shows, living room concerts, clubs and at local festival: public have seen her opening for the well-known band Of Monsters and Men.
Originally from Malmö, Sweden, Malte began making music under Cikada in 2017 after a year of traveling and volunteering in South America. The experience inspired him to name his project «Cikada» after the loud vibrating insects. He released his first full album in March 2022 titled «Taking Shapes» with tracks that range from more upbeat bouncy rap tracks, to slower, electronic singer-songwriter bangers. Cikada mixes a range of different music expressions, all whilst making a clear attempt to speak openly about sensitive emotions, challenging the stereotype of masculinity often found in the genres of which he extracts tropes and frameworks and uses in his own music.
Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir’s graceful exploration of the disturbingly funny side of human fickleness sees her pursue a work of great finesse since Rosa candida which earned her the Nordic Council Literature Prize, the highest distinction awarded to a writer in the five Nordic countries. Praised by the press, she is also the winner of the Íslensku bókmenntaverðlaunin, Iceland’s most pres- tigious literary prize, for Ör, and the Prix Médicis étranger for Miss Iceland.
The Swedish Choir of Montreal / Svenska kören i Montreal performs varied Swedish and Scandinavian-rooted repertoire for women’s choir. The choir rehearses weekly and performs several times per year in the Swedish and Scandinavian community and in conjunction with the Swedish Club of Montreal.
Enjoy a moment with your family in the presence of The Swedish Choir of Montreal / Svenska kören i Montreal. Featuring a concert and introduction to Swedish songs.
Surely one of music’s best-kept secrets, Swedish composer and producer Snorri Hallgrímsson boasts an impressive list of credits both as a solo artist and as a collaborator on a wide variety projects, including ‘The Chopin Project’, ‘Island Songs’, and the BAFTA-of award winning score for ‘Broadchurch’ alongside Ólafur Arnalds. Growing up in a strong Icelandic choral tradition, Snorri began his career as a classical guitarist before falling in love with film music in his teens and going on to study composition at the Iceland Academy of the Arts and at Berklee College of Music. His compositional credits include works for mixed choirs, chamber ensembles, and others, while also having worked on both short and long-form films. 2020 saw the release of Snorri’s first soundtrack album, ‘Chasing the Present’, earning him his second Icelandic Music Award nomination as well as over 4 million streams on Spotify. The double EP ‘Landbrot’, an introspective and personal collection of instrumental pieces for piano and strings, was released in 2020-2021 to glowing reviews. Most recently, Snorri reworked Erik Satie’s ‘Avant-dernières pensées: I. Idylle’ for renowned record label Deutsche Grammaphon’s album ‘Project Fragments’.
Marthe Halvorsen is a Montréal based Norwegian artist and composer who weaves together dreamy Pop music with influences from Folk and World Music. In 2018, she released her debut album ‘All is in the Seed’, receiving great acclaim around the world. With a unique sincerity in her voice, Marthe Halvorsen has a special ability to touch something deep inside the listener.
Having grown up in Arctic Norway, nature has always been an important source of inspiration in her music. The spaciousness and the raw unpolished landscapes of the north can be traced in her sense of songwriting and taste in music production. With a love for a minimalistic and unpolished sound, Marthe seeks to write songs that carry an intention and that come from an authentic place within herself, serving as a tool for reflection and connection. The release of her debut album ‘All is in The Seed’ has been followed by an album tour in Norway as well as a series of concerts in both Norway and Canada, including a mini tour in Québec in 2019. She has played for several Montréal festivals such as Festival FIKA(S) (2019), Pop Montréal (2019 & 2020), Festival FAR (2021) and MUZ – Vision Diversité (2021). Marthe officially became a Canadian resident in 2020 and is in the process of establishing herself as an artist in Quebec and Canada.
Heta Bilaletdin is a Finnish artist working with sound, experimental music and moving image. Samples, field recordings, singing, synthesizers, computer, found objects and tape recorders are her main tools for creating compositions, unexpected pop songs, beats and music concrete, sometimes in a collaboration with wind, birds or water. Her visual work consists of experimental films, animations and installations often using spells and rituals as methods, exploring subtle connections, myths, power structures and hidden choreographies in our coexistence.
Icelandic natives HUGAR – comprised of multitalented instrumentalists and musicians Bergur Þórisson and Pétur Jónsson – have forged a musical lane all their own with a genre-defying sound. Combining a shared passion for music and an impressive resume working alongside fellow Icelandic luminaries Björk, Sigur Rós, Ólafur Arnalds and Johann Johannson, the longtime friends and natives of Seltjarnarnes began writing music together in 2013. Through a series of impromptu sessions, Bergur and Pétur recorded and released their independent self-tit- led debut Hugar the following year, making it available for free on their website. The sweepingly multilayered and ethereally ambient album quickly amassed an organic following of listeners and has since racked up over 50 million streams worldwide on Spotify alone. With acclaim from tastemakers like The Line of Best Fit, The Independent and The Guardian, Hugar now gears up for the next step in their musical jour- ney, having recently signed to Sony Music Masterworks. The highly anticipated new album RIFT is set to arrive alongside a robust touring schedule of headlining shows in Europe and Asia as well as festival appearances.
