Lillebjørn Nilsen
Norwegian singer-songwriter
Lillebjørn Falk Nilsen (born Bjørn Falk Nilsen; 21 December 1950 – 27 January 2024) was a Norwegian singer-songwriter and folk musician. He was considered by many to be a leading "voice of Oslo", alongside Ole Paus, thanks to numerous classic songs about the city from the 1970s and onwards.
Life and career
Bjørn Nilsen was born in Oslo and became known as "Lillebjørn" in the late 1960s when he and his namesake Bjørn Morisse performed as the folk duo The Young Norwegians. Because Morisse was the taller of the duo, he was nicknamed "Storebjørn" (Big Bjørn) while Nilsen was "Lillebjørn" (Little Bjørn), a stage name he kept throughout his career.
Nilsen was also a member of the Norwegian supergroup Gitarkameratene with Jan Eggum, Halvdan Sivertsen and Øystein Sunde.
In 1987 he received the Fritt Ord Honorary Award.
Nilsen collaborated with his friend and idol Pete Seeger on numerous occasions. He adapted Pete Seeger's song My Rainbow Race into Norwegian as Barn av regnbuen ("Children of the Rainbow").
Nilsen died in Oslo on 27 January 2024, at the age of 73.
Discography
Albums
with The Young Norwegians
1967: Things on Our Mind
1969: Music
with Ballade!
“Lillebjørn Nilsen” enters the record as norwegian singer-songwriter. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Lillebjørn, Nilsen and Norwegian can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1825205. VIAF identifies the subject as 203829089. The Library of Congress control number is n2012023643. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1950, 2024, 1987 and 1967.
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This entry incorporates text from “Lillebjørn Nilsen” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.