Half-Moroccan Jonas Benyoub is a Muslim, and is one of the main attractions at Olavsfest in Trondheim, what was Norway’s largest Christian festival. The rapper is allowed to borrow Norway’s national shrine, Nidaros Cathedral, for a night concert during Olsok, the feast of St Olav. Afro-curl activist Auriane Hoza Ntihabose from Rwanda is a new public face.
When Jonas Benyoub performs in Nidaros Cathedral, an artist and a space meet that both have room for doubt, faith and truth, writes Olavsfest in the programme.
– It will be natural to take the audience on my journey from leisure clubs, T-bane stations and football pitches at Ellingsrud to the most holy of all in Nidaros Cathedral. Through themes such as identity, family, love, pride and shame. All of this belongs naturally in the church space, Jonas Benyoub believes.
Muslim after his father
According to the description in the programme, Benyoub comes from hiphop and a soundscape with a lot of drums and bass. But even though he has planned active use of the space in St Olav’s burial church, he promises not to make too much noise. Via a video clip shared by Olavsfest and in the programme interview he makes no secret of the fact that he is a Muslim, but on the contrary says that he wishes to become more Muslim than he is today, and that he wishes to be both one hundred per cent Norwegian and one hundred per cent Moroccan. Jonas Benyoub has a Norwegian mother and a father from Morocco, a country where he has spent a month or two every summer.
He himself has a Muslim faith that he has inherited from his father.
– There was never any coercion, but I took the faith with me further in life and have found a belonging there. I also have great respect for all other religions, and greatly appreciate the traditions I have received through mum’s Norwegian family, says Benyoub.
– Even though I fast every year, I am probably not the most practising Muslim. But I strive to practise more, for it is an important part of me and my journey in this life.
Church festival since 1963
Olavsfest is still officially called the Olav Festival Days, and the festival was from 1963 until recently a church music festival with a strong connection to the Christian faith and its centre in Norway: Nidaros Cathedral.
Jonas Benyoub himself apparently finds it a bit strange for a Muslim to have a concert there. He talks about this in a video clip that the festival has shared on Facebook several times since they began marketing the concert with Benyoub, already on 17 December 2025.
Muslim with a show in the church
“I find it enormous to stand inside there. Almost a bit like awe. I am a Muslim who is going to play in the church. That too has played with my head. I think it will be exciting to show a different show here in Nidaros Cathedral”, says Benyoub in the video.
Olsok celebration since 1031
Show is not exactly what has been the practice through the nearly thousand years that have passed since the Olsok celebration in Norway started, and precisely at Nidaros Cathedral, when it was gradually built.
«Olsok is a share certificate for the Christian nation Norway», wrote dean Knut Andresen in Adresseavisen in December 2008.
The Church owns the Olsok celebration in Nidaros Cathedral
“It is the Church that ‘owns’ the share certificate of the Olsok celebration in Nidaros Cathedral. We have been going since 1031. The Church has in more recent times chosen to administer this in a collaboration with other actors – both public bodies and cultural institutions. The Olav Festival Days therefore have in their statutes from 1998 a clear ecclesiastical purpose (to restore and strengthen Trondheim as a national ecclesiastical and cultural power centre), an ecclesiastical task (the ecclesiastical Olsok celebration in Nidaros Cathedral) and OFD’s main arena is Nidaros Cathedral and the Archbishop’s Palace”, wrote Andresen.
The dean was then outgoing deputy chairman of the ecclesiastical festival, and he was indignant at the development. He had already then had a contribution about the Church being thrown out of its own festival, a coup by public contributors such as the municipality and the county having demanded that they should get to appoint the board going forward, and that the Church should become a minority. The requirement that statute changes required a unanimous board was also removed.
«Unanimity for statute changes was a historically conditioned safeguard mechanism to protect the festival’s ecclesiastical profile», wrote the dean, who had also been acting bishop.
Atheist as festival director
All these changes have in a few years made the ecclesiastical Olav Festival Days into something entirely different. Many will perhaps say its complete opposite. In 2022 the atheist Steinar Larsen was employed as director, and he is on an equal footing with Arild Kalkvik, chairman from 2017 to 2025 and now deputy chairman. The two have simply decided that the festival from 1963 is not something Christian or ecclesiastical, but a “values-based festival”, without saying what kind of values this in that case is based on.
Steadily more Islam at St Olav’s feast
There has become steadily more Islam and less Christian at the Olsok celebration at Nidaros Cathedral. The Olav Festival Days were opened by a Muslim three years in a row, and more and more Muslims and foreign-cultural persons have been employed in board and management. Such as Karim Tahir, a Muslim Iraqi who applied for asylum as a Syrian in 2016 and who is now a politician in Trondheim city council for the Labour Party. And who reported Document to the police when we wrote about him being employed as diversity adviser for Olavsfest. Something which by the way was soon shelved.
Olav representative with roots from Rwanda
New face of the year, to represent the Olav Festival Days externally, is Auriane Hoza Ntihabose. She has roots in Rwanda, which she told about when she attended folk high school in 2022, on the Focus Africa line, and is otherwise probably best known as an activist for afro curls. Since she the same year was front figure in the TV series Krøll on NRK, which dealt with hair curls from other continents. Olavsfest posted a video with her in June where she promoted buying a ticket with several concerts.
Also city council leader and Conservative politician Kjetil Reinskou has chosen to talk with her to profile this year’s Olav Festival Days, and has interviewed her in a video he posted on Facebook on 17 July. He presents the video with that “The Olav Festival Days is a very important festival for our city, where both culture, history and experiences are in focus”, and that he “had a chat with Auriane, who works in Olavsfest, about what both the people of Trondheim and visitors have to look forward to during this year’s festival, and what is the best thing about Trondheim.”
Auriane interviewed by the city council leader
In the video Auriane Hoza Ntihabose among other things tells that she has never before been in Trondheim in the summer.
“Here you are going to arrange a lot this summer. What is the most important thing that is happening for Olavsfest this summer now”? asks Reinskou.
“Oj”, answers Auriane. And further:
“The most important is very difficult to answer, because there is very much good, I think. There are among other things concerts here, in the Castle Courtyard, where we are standing now. Then we shall have concerts in Nidaros Cathedral, lots of family experiences in the King’s Manor, various conversations we shall also have. So very much exciting, then”, answers Auriane.
Never before been in Trondheim in the summer
Reinskou then tells that Auriane has moved from Langhus (in Follo) to Trondheim, something he says is fantastic. Then he asks what she thinks is the best thing about Trondheim in the summer:
“You, that is a very good question, for it is the first time I am in Trondheim in the summer. I think it is quite lovely to be here. Perhaps it is because there are more people, that one notices that the city wakes up a bit more. And one also has such a large offer here in Trondheim with culture and food and art and so on. Yes, no, I think it is very nice here in the summer, that is.”
Reinskou says that one wants even more people to experience this fantastic city, and asks Auriane what is needed for even more Norwegians and foreigners to come to the Trønder capital in the summer.
Auriane believes it is a matter of showing that Trondheim is a “complete city” and that one “can get a summer experience”:
“There are many who associate Trondheim city with history and studies, among other things. But there is much more than that. So perhaps to bring out that message. That one can go and meet people, right around the corner, for a coffee. And, yes, just have a really good time here, then.”
The city council leader then says a thousand thanks for the tips, and hopes more people come and experience the Olav Festival Days.
The programme spans from Åge to Gaza film and Hilde Sandvik
It is doubtful whether many became much wiser about what the Olav Festival is after hearing this interview. There is probably more to be gained from the programme online. Which comprises everything from two concerts with Åge Aleksandersen, also he in Nidaros Cathedral, to a series of themes about 22 July, a meeting with Hilde Sandvik, who has more than hinted that Asle Toje, traditional Christians and Trump are dangerous, if not right-wing extremists, simply. There will be an Olav meeting with Marte Heian-Engdal, Asbjørn Slettemark, Ola By Rise and Jonas Skybakmoen at the Reitan family’s New Hjorten Theatre. And there will also be Olav cinema with films such as “Hind Rajab – The Voice from Gaza”, and “A Cake for the President”, about a 9-year-old in Iraq who was given the assignment of baking a cake for Saddam Hussein.
But where is Olav?
Olavsfest 2026 lasts from 28 July to 3 August. Olsok (from Old Norse ólafsvaka) is the marking of St Olav’s day of death, 29 July.
Olavsfest had revenues of 35.6 million kroner in 2025. Ticket revenues just passed 7 million kroner, while the public subsidies amounted to 18.82 million kroner.