Iceland have chosen their entry for the Eurovision Song Contest 2017. They closed off the national final season by picking Svala with her song Paper. Svala will now travel to Ukraine to represent her home country in the Eurovision Song Contest 2017.
A seemingly easy victory
Svala had a seemingly easy victory tonight. The jury already gave her the highest score, over 2,500 points ahead of the runner-up. Iceland used a rather remarkable voting system where the winner of each juror’s vote received about 3,900 votes. Televote however made their preference clear from the start. In the first round, Svala received 45,258 votes. Runner op Daði Freyr received 25,195. Both of those acts moved on to the superfinal, where Paper was announced as the winner. They did however have a new round of voting before announcing the winner.
Svala the early favourite
The favourite of Söngvakeppnin 2017 was clear from the moment the entries were released. Svala is one of the most popular singers in the country. The fact she even considered entering Söngvakeppnin made her a clear favourite. The song, Paper, gave her the final push. RÚV have not revealed the televoting statistics of the superfinal yet, but one could expect Svala had a fairly big margin in that one too.
On the way to Kyiv
RÚV will now start planning the road to Kyiv. The Icelandic entry will have to perform in the second half of the first semifinal. Iceland will be hoping to get back into the final, after two consecutive years of not making it to Saturday’s show. Last year, Iceland were considered an outsider for victory, but eventually, Hear Them Calling finished in fourteenth place in the semifinal. The gap to tenth place, Croatia, was 82 points. Svala will obviously be hoping to do better than that in Kyiv.
What do you think of the Icelandic entry for Kyiv? Is ‘Paper’ a good way to end the national final season? Let us know below in the comments section, on Facebook or on Twitter!
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