By Anthony Carew
Scandinavia's newest musical star is finding life "very strange" right now. After her debut album hit No. 1 in her native Norway, 20-year-old Aurora Aksnes admits "it's very overwhelming having fans".
"My music seems to have a bigger mission than I have, which is very soothing, but also very strange, because people see more in me than I see, which can be terrifying," she says. "Like, they call me an angel, or [tell me] that I saved them, or I know how they feel, or that I write about them, or speak for them. It's very strange. Because I'm just me. And I'm not even that big, I'm just tiny. In this big ball of people, I'm just one grain of sand on this beach."
Aurora Aksnes has been called an angel by some of her adoring fans.
On her way to Australia for a series of shows in January and February, Aksnes talks in a high, chirruping, child-like voice. And, given her prodigal beginnings — she began writing poetry at nine and songs at 11; her first single, Puppet, was released when she was 16 — her youth is a preoccupation of press coverage.
But when Aksnes talks about her songs, she intones a kind of ancient drama, of music as a natural phenomena. As a songwriter, she feels as if compositions "flow through" her, coming from a place outside of herself.
"A few of my songs are about me, but most of them are about the world, and feel like they come from the world … Music is just owned by all of us, and it's been a part of human societies for so long: we use it to celebrate, or to be in grief. It's our way, as humans, of dealing with life. Music is this divine thing, the closest that we can get to something divine. It's like this instinct we all own, and some of us have found a way to hear that music, and write it down, and share it with people."
Aksnes' debut album, All My Demons Greeting Me as a Friend, was released in March. After debuting at No. 1 in Norway, it cracked the Top 30 in Britain, buoyed by a run of strong singles. One of those, Runaway, opens the album with the line "I was listening to the ocean", setting the tone for a set filled with images of the natural world.
"I write about the water all the time," Aksnes says. "Because, to me, it seems like a really mysterious thing, something bigger than us. I like living near the ocean, because it feels like you can always escape."
Aksnes lives on the west coast of Norway. She was named after the Northern Lights and feels almost mystically connected to the landscape. "In Norway, in winter, when you're outside and the snow is falling, it's like the closest thing you can get to time standing still," she enthuses. "It's very magical."
While she keeps a studio in cosmopolitan Bergen, she likes her "lonely" house in the country. "I do not have many neighbours," she says. "It's surrounded by two mountains, and it's in a fiord. And the name of the fiord [translates as] the Fiord Of Light, which sounds almost like fantasy when you put it in English. It's almost like Narnia, actually. There's a big view over the ocean, big mountains on the other side of the fiord. It's a really quiet place, and I think silence is very hard to find these days. It's a very precious thing."
Cities, to Aksnes, are noisy places, filled with people waiting — for coffee, the bus, the phone, dreams to come true. "Where I live, there are no cars and no buses, it's not really connected to the modern life in the same way," she says. "Of course we have electricity and the internet, but it's not just that. It's the ability to find silence, to have it come to you in a special way, where you're not waiting for it. I don't think you realise you're missing it until you're there. It's so quiet that it can't even be heard, it has to be felt."
Growing up in south-west Norway, Aksnes was used to that sense of quiet. Her family rarely travelled and when she started touring in 2015, she was thrown into a whole new world. "It's very strange to go to cities like London and New York," she says. "People walk so quickly, they seem to be in a hurry all the time. And you don't say 'hi' to everyone you meet, and you don't smile to everyone you meet, because there's just so many. Which is also very strange. In Bergen, people only walk fast if the weather is bad."
As well as getting used to the hectic pace of cities, Aksnes also had to come to terms with being on stage. Performing, she feels vulnerable, overwhelmed, drowning in feelings; her early shows found her wondering "Why am I doing this to myself?"
These days, she draws energy from her audiences.
"It's like swimming," she reckons. "When you swim a lot, you learn that the ocean is not that dangerous, because you can float above the water. Each time you go on stage, and you don't die, you start to learn that maybe you won't die the next time, either. And that's how it feels, now: I'm not scared any more. I'm just floating."
Aurora plays the Metro Theatre, Sydney, on January 25, the Melbourne Recital Centre on January 31, and tours nationally with Laneway Festival.