The Norwegian Storytelling Festival
Fortellerfestivalen - The Norwegian Storytelling Festival presents an international programme of high quality oral storytelling performances, workshops and events every spring in Oslo, Norway.
The festival is organised by Fortellersentrum - The Norwegian Storytelling Centre, which works to celebrate, sustain, and renew the traditional art of oral storytelling by presenting artistically ambitious storytelling performances with a range of expressions and formats; from folk tales to storyslam, multilingual performances and site-specific work. Through partnership with a range of venues we seek to grow audiences and highlight different aspects of the artform, including tradition and intangible cultural heritage, dramaturgy and stagecraft, improvisation, personal stories and social connection.
Beyond the festival, a year-round professional programme of workshops, coaching, storytelling and networking events creates opportunities and inspiration for artistic development. Through participation in the national Network for Oral Storytelling in Norway and FEST - Federation for European Storytelling we work to promote and develop storytelling nationally and internationally.
Fortellerfestivalen was started in 2004 and became a foundation in 2013. The organisation expanded to form Fortellersentrum in 2023. The foundation is currently run by a board of directors, a part time Executive Director and an artistic council responsible for programming and artistic development. The board is appointed and supported by a general assembly consisting of representatives of the organisation’s founders.
Fortellerfestivalen 2025
The open call for programme suggestions for Fortellerfestivalen 2025 is now closed. We received a total of 151 suggestions, from Norway and all over the world. We are overwhelmed with the response and humbled that so many of you want to come and share your stories at our festival! Our artistic council and programming committee will now go through all the proposals. As our budget only stretches to 2-3 international guests this will be a difficult job, but we may also keep some suggestions for the future. All respondents will be contacted by the beginning of October. We expect to launch a new call for the 2026 festial next June.
The Norwegian Storytelling Festival 2025 will take place from 3-6 April in Oslo.
The theme is Ignite.
Fire is an important symbol in many storytelling traditions, including mythical, religious and folk tales. Fire can represent passion, destruction, transformation, anger, drive. Our programme will be inspired by this symbol, as we ask how the art of storytelling can contribute to inspire hope and action in the face of both collective and individual challenges. What role can storytellers have in a time of rising temperatures, explosive conflict and heated debate?
We look forward to presenting stories and storytellers with a literal or metaphorical spark, whether it be tales of fictional, historical or contemporary trailblazers; stories of warmth, fever, eroticism, inspiration; or happenings around a hearth. Many festival guests will be socially engaged storytellers who create work through co-creative and participative methods.
The programme will include various types of activities, and for all age groups, related to the theme. While performance storytelling is our primary focus for festival programming, we are also interested in projects that use storytelling within educational, cultural heritage and social contexts. In addition to full length performances you can expect workshops, interactive events, lectures/presentations, seminars, work-in-progress sharing, open mics and story circles. While most of our programme is in Norwegian, there are always a few events in English and sometimes other languages as well. The programme will be published in January.