Name: Ingrid Frivold
Nationality: Norwegian
Occupation: Musician, composer, improvisor
Current Release: Ingrid Frivolt's Blitz 191119 is still available from Olivias Rekorder. A new release with Petr Vrba is out now via Prague-based label A.n.t.i.m.o.t.h.e.r.

If you enjoyed this Ingrid Frivold  interview, visit her on Facebook, twitter, and Soundcloud. We also recommend our earlier Ingrid Frivold interview about improvisation.

For more information on Sami culture and joik, we also have an interview with Marja Mortensson.



You come from three different minorities: Being of sami-heritage, growing up in a fringe cult and coming out as transgender. How do these different aspects combine – with potentially still other ones – to create your sense of identity?

In a way I think that set me up for being quite a loner as a child, seeking refuge in ideas. Music also came as a sort of free space.

Playing with the local school-band, growing up in the 70-80s, there wasn't much room for talking about gender-non-conforming things. Although I did not learn much about sami culture when I was a kid, I was always aware of the roots though. It was also something I learnt from an early age that I had to be quiet about, learning to weigh my words and how use them. Not to say the wrong thing in church, and not the wrong thing about it.

Taking ownership in who I am and where I come from has helped me relax more in my own skin, both on and off stage.

Why was it important for you to reconnect with your sami heritage as an adult? What does that concretely entail for you in daily life?

Reconnecting with my sami heritage is a process, It has given me friends and connections where I can speak about spirituality in a more at eased setting.

The language barrier is still a limiter for connecting fully, but it help me find a community that in large parts have accepted me.

Can you please tell us a bit about how this sense of identity motivated you to take an artistic path?

Music was probably one of the most important things that I was encouraged to do by my parents. I first started with piano-lessons at five, later joining the school-band and finding a place in the music world where I wasn't the quirky kid from that church.

So I guess my motivation to work with the arts more came into being involved with it from an early age. Having always done something music-related, school-bands with the musical director Heidi Hesselberg Løken that developed the band to one of the leading youth brass bands in Norway, and joining the National Youth Brass Band at 15.

Experiencing music as something I had to do was a evolving process, though.

You wrote that you transitioned while on stage. What do you still remember about that moment? Why did the stage seem like the right place to take this step?

I wouldn't say that was a specific moment. But after a while it seemed natural to include that part of me also when performing.

With the frequent and regular gigs that especially Frank Znort had, there was a certain kind of visibility. It helped me in a way, as I'm someone that sturggled with words, that I no longer needed to explain that much verbally. Only inviting the right questions to clarify.

As you need to show intent with real life experiences before you are allowed to get treatment, being visible on stage has also gradually brought me into the larger discussion of being trans. Discussions about bathroom-access at venues, especially those I have visited most regularly, and the heart-warming messages from people having seen me giving them courage to be open in their own lives.

There have often been claims that artists from different groups approach music differently. How do you see that yourself and what are some of your conclusions/observations in this regard?

Probably the most obvious example of that is how joik is seperate from song.

A poem or song might portray a swan, a river or a human being. But a joik IS the swan and the river that human with the everfleeting difference life and nature has.

Which has been a artistic revelation when seeing how masterjoikers can elaborate melodies and use ornamentation to give the melodies even more of the characters of what the joik is.

In which way do you feel your identity concretely influences your creativity?

Having a more normative outlook in life might have given me easier access to certain things that most people take for granted, but not taking it has also given me impulses and ways of seeing that are the roots of my ideas.

I'm not often cast for positions. But one of them has been composing and performing with the norwegian production of «Gospel according to Jesus, Queen of Heaven».

After having worked with improvisation as my main-focus the last few years, I now feel the urge of more structured pieces. As it turns out, most of my ideas deal with how we see identity and the words we use to describe our realities.

Up until very recently, if I understood correctly, you would rather not discuss your identity in connection to your music. Can you talk a bit about reasons for that – as well as the decision to now open up more?

This is a question with several answers. Early on in the process I was asked to talk but the issue was that I didn't have confidence in my own voice. Later, I learnt about editing in studios and how fast and kind some media-channels are as to leave things out, and making it a good interview, as they are in the business of keeping people wanting to listen.

In many ways I've also felt that me getting in the way of the presentation of the music was a factor. And to actually be allowed to talk about something not trans related. Although there had been requests for interviews earlier, I first spoke about being transgender in the media in 2015.

That also introduced me to getting more politically involved. First through planned media-presentations, then by being elected as deputy to the national board for the Sami Peoples party in 2021 and the governing board of the largest Norwegian LGBT-organisation, “FRI - the organisation for sexual and gender-diversity” in 2022. That was a year where I also was part of a diversity council for sexual minorities for the National Art Museum of Norway.

Art can be an expression or celebration of identity, but it can also be an effort to establish new ones or break free from them. You mentioned that you learned "to challenge ideas and conventions to co-create a more inclusive societies, opening up the conversation to make people with dis-advantaged voices feel safe to get heard." How can music do that? What have been some of your approaches in this regard?

A year after we originally got in touch, the poet, editor and awesomeness Sumaya Jirde Ali said this far better:

“I aim to widen every table where I'm invited, to give room for disadvantaged voices”

And think she in her youth had been far better at doing this than I ever could hope for. But being trans and visible, you learn both personally and by hearing people in similar situations.

Being present and visible on stage, in the media, on the screen and in everyday life reduces xenophobia. It might enrage a small fraction of people to learn that Sapmis and Norwegian is not the same culture, and certainly seems to enrage some zealous conservative politicians that have a minority to wave as smoke-screen about what are more valuable discussions such as how do we take care of each other in society.

There is a fine line between cultural exchange and appropriation. What are your thoughts on the limits of copying, using cultural signs and symbols and the cultural/social/gender specificity of art?

Exoticism is at the root of this. Also how you make the world and in what context you use cultural symbols.

Being inspired by techniques and ways of doing things should not be limited, but actually calling what you are doing a joik, duodji, or at all representing a different culture without being initiated in the subtextual language is blatant apropriation.

Someone might make a dress that look like a gakti (the traditional sami clothing) but there is strong traditions about even who you could borrow a gakti from, as the gakti for a trained eye communicates where you are from, your postition in the family and a number of other social indicators.

As for the joik, it is something to do with techniques, but also the mentality of doing a joik. I could use techniques I've learned in joik without calling it joik. But to actually say that something is joik there has to be a route of initation. And that would be hard to find without achieving the respect either through roots or genuine interest in the culture.

The discourse around the use of symbolism and cultural signs, has to be treated with respect, and agreement with those that are the carriers of the traditions.

If applicable, tell us about a work of yours which deals with (your) identity in an overt – or possibly more subtle - way: What were some of the ideas behind it, how did you develop them and what were some of the responses?

For the most part I've focused on doing instrumental work, avoiding using words and keeping less descriptive titles.

Of my own works there is one performance I premiered in Oslo in Kulturkirka Jakob earlier this year. In 2022 the clothes I called “Rebirth through resillience” which consists of a top that I painted firebirds on back and front and a coat that was torn when I was hit down at a kiosk on my way home. As the possibilities of hate-crime were not present as transgender people were not included in the bill in Norway at that time (2016).

Together, with a journalist there was an article that was printed in the Norwegian daily Aftenposten, that helped the political track and in January 2017 the inclusion was proposed to parliament, but was not implemented into law before 2021.

The coat itself has been part of the touring exhibition “Queer Spirit” and I am in discussion with venues interested in taking that performance to other places.

For interested readers, what are books, websites, articles or other sources of information you recommend for them to educate themselves on the topic?

For Sami issues, Liisa-Ravna Finbog would be a good person to follow for increased awareness.

An incredibly active academic, curator and communicator and duoddja. Beaska Nilas, that Liisa-Ravna amongst otheres curated the Sapmi pavillion at the Venice Bienale 2022 has together with the musician and actor Elle Maria Hætta Isaksen been one of the most marked voices in the occupation of the Norwegian ministerial buildings spring 2023.

Other artists that might be worth looking into include Maret Anne Ante Sara, Anders Sunna and Timimie Märak is another person that could be followed, a poet focusing on queer and indigenous issues.

Regarding trans, to limit myself to english language I'd suggest Contrapoints and the comics “Assigned Male” can give insight into the small and big problems trans people are dealing with. As the words used to disenfranchised minorities is an interesting study for anyone interested in the temperature

For those more familiar with scandinavian languages I suggest the awardwinning podcast «Trans Norge» by Luca Espesth and Aleksander Sjølie.