Aurora Aksnes (born 15 June 1996), known mononymously as AURORA (stylised in all capital letters), is a Norwegian singer, songwriter and record producer. Known for blending electropop, folk, and art pop, she has been described as a pioneer of the Norwegian art pop scene and dubbed the "Fairy of Pop". She started writing songs and learning dance at age six, and gained recognition as a teenager after a classmate posted her music online without her knowledge. Initially trained on the piano, she later learned percussion and production.
Aurora signed with Petroleum, Decca, and Glassnote Records in 2014, and released her debut extended play (EP), Running with the Wolves, in 2015. Its lead single, "Runaway", gained massive popularity years later after going viral on TikTok. Her debut studio album, All My Demons Greeting Me as a Friend, was released to positive reviews in 2016, topping the Norwegian VG-lista and earning international success. Aurora followed her debut with a two-part concept album: Infections of a Different Kind (Step 1) (2018) and A Different Kind of Human (Step 2) (2019).
Her fourth studio album, The Gods We Can Touch (2022), marked her first top-10 entry in the UK. In 2024, she released her fifth album, What Happened to the Heart?, which charted highly across Europe. In 2025, Aurora shifted towards a more electronic-focused sound when she formed the musical project Tomora with Tom Rowlands of The Chemical Brothers, releasing the album Come Closer the following year. Beyond her solo work, Aurora has collaborated with a range of artists, including Jacob Collier, Wu Qing-feng, Sondre Lerche, Tom Odell, Askjell, Bring Me the Horizon, and Hans Zimmer.
Her contributions extend to soundtracks for numerous films, television series, and video game franchises, such as Frozen 2, Wolfwalkers, the live-action One Piece series, Kaiju No. 8, FIFA, Sky: Children of the Light, Assassin's Creed, and Genshin Impact. With 10 billion streams, Aurora is the most-streamed female Norwegian artist of all time, and she has toured in more than 50 countries across Europe, the Americas, Asia and Oceania. Her accolades include four Spellemann Awards, an EBBA Award, and the P3 Prize at the P3 Gull. At age 21, she became the youngest person to earn a stone on the Bergen Walk of Fame, later receiving a spot on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list.
Early life
Aurora Aksnes was born on 15 June 1996 at Høle in Sandnes, Norway, the youngest of three daughters to midwife May Britt Froastad and garage door salesman Jan Øystein Aksnes. Her eldest sister, Miranda, is a makeup artist and former teacher, while her other sister, Viktoria, is a fashion designer, stylist, and blogger. Aurora spent her early years in Høle, a small town where her parents had lived for 15 years, fostering her love for nature and traditional clothing, such as hats and long skirts, before the family relocated to Drange, a remote village in the woodlands of the Os mountains in Hordaland, near Bergen and Lysefjord. She described her childhood home in Drange as a quiet, car-free area with abundant trees and poor internet connectivity.
Growing up surrounded by nature, Aurora identified as a "forest person", enjoying activities like climbing trees, and valuing the isolation and safety of her environment. At school, her sisters worried she might face bullying due to her eccentric personality and distinctive style of dress, but she preferred solitary moments in forests, which she credited with helping her philosophise and discover her own mind. As a child, she was uncomfortable with physical affection and had an unusual hobby of collecting dead insects, such as moths, which became a symbol for her debut album. At age 11, she attended a funeral on Christmas Eve, an event that contributed to her developing dysphemia, prompting her to learn sign language. The loss of a friend from her sign language class in a car accident and two close friends—one to suicide and another in the 2011 Utøya massacre—deeply affected her, inspiring the song "Little Boy in the Grass", released in 2015.
One of her earliest musical memories is finding an electric piano in her parents' attic, previously owned by her sister Miranda. At age six, she began learning piano, initially imitating classical music before composing her own melodies by age nine, influenced by artists like Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Enya, and the Chemical Brothers.
Career 2012–2013: Career beginnings
Initially, Aurora kept her music private, as her parents did not encourage it as a career or hobby. She also explored other ambitions, including becoming a doctor, physicist, or dancer, and trained in dance from ages 6 to 16, performing in a contemporary dance group at the Norwegian Youth Festival of Art to songs like Paramore's "Decode" and Michael Jackson's "Ghosts".
Her dislike of her own voice initially deterred her from considering a singing career.
Aurora's earliest known composition was "The Lonely Man", followed by "I Had a Dream", which addressed global challenges. Although she considered it a "really long and boring song about world peace", she performed it once at her high school's leaving ceremony. Before pursuing music, Aurora worked briefly washing the exterior of a pizza restaurant. Her breakthrough came unexpectedly when a classmate uploaded a recording of her song "Puppet"—originally a Christmas gift for her parents—and a video of her school performance of "I Had a Dream" to the internet without her permission, sparking her anger. The uploads quickly gained thousands of views in Norway, building her an early fan base on Facebook. In early 2013, a representative from Made Management, a Norwegian management company, discovered her work and invited her to their office. Though initially hesitant, Aurora was persuaded by her mother to consider sharing her music, recognising its potential to resonate with others.
2014–2017: All My Demons Greeting Me as a Friend
Following the success of her single "Puppet" in Norway, Aurora signed recording contracts with Petroleum, Decca, and Glassnote Records in 2014. That same year, she released the singles "Awakening" and "Under Stars", with the former earning her the title of Untouched of the Week on NRK Urørt. Her distinctive vocal style and musicality drew critical acclaim across Europe and the United States, establishing her as a promising new artist.
In May 2015, Aurora released her debut EP, Running with the Wolves, which received positive reviews from online music publications and Norwegian media. The EP's lead single, "Runaway", enjoyed a major resurgence in 2021 after going viral on TikTok, reaching number 22 on the Billboard Global 200 and number 25 on the UK Singles Chart. Later in 2015, her cover of Oasis' "Half the World Away" for the John Lewis Christmas advert peaked at number 11 on the UK Singles Chart. In December, she performed at the Nobel Peace Prize Concert, describing the experience as "an incredibly beautiful thing to be a part of." Host Jay Leno praised her performance.
In early 2016, Aurora won the Spellemann Award for Newcomer of the Year, along with a 250,000-kroner Gramo scholarship, and the EBBA Award for international breakthrough with Running with the Wolves. That January, she was featured alongside Troye Sivan on Rolling Stones "10 New Artists You Need to Know" list. Her debut studio album, All My Demons Greeting Me as a Friend, was released in March and topped Norway's VG-lista for two consecutive weeks, marking her as the first Norwegian debutant to achieve a number-one debut since Emilie Nicolas in 2014. The record wove themes of fantasy, heartache, life, and death, drawing comparisons to Björk, Florence Welch, and Enya. It earned a Spellemann nomination for Album of the Year and won in the categories of Pop Soloist and Music Video of the Year for "I Went Too Far". As of September 2018, the album had sold 500,000 copies worldwide and was supported by a year-long international concert tour that began in North America and ended in Brazil.
That same year, Aurora contributed a cover of David Bowie's "Life on Mars" to the HBO series Girls. She made her American television debut on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, performing "Conqueror"—a song previously featured in the FIFA 16 soundtrack and later included in the FIFA 23 World Cup update. She also appeared on The Howard Stern Show and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, performing "Life on Mars" and "I Went Too Far". Additionally, she partnered with YouTube for a creative content initiative and starred in the short documentary Nothing is Eternal, directed by Isaac Ravishankara and produced by The Fader.
In November 2017, Aurora performed a Christmas concert at Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim as part of the Olavsfestdagene. The event sold out its tickets in five minutes and was later broadcast on NRK1. The cathedral administration had initially objected, stating that the concert did not meet the venue's usage criteria, but an appeal to the parish council secured its approval.
2017–2020: Two-part album and "Into the Unknown"
Following the release of All My Demons Greeting Me as a Friend, Aurora announced in November 2016 that she had begun writing and producing her second studio album, describing her debut as the "first album of many." In 2017, she contributed a cover of "Scarborough Fair" for the Brazilian telenovela Deus Salve o Rei, also appearing in its opening sequence.
In April 2018, Aurora released "Queendom" as the lead single from her upcoming two-part album, followed by "Forgotten Love" in August. The album, recorded in France earlier that year with producers Askjell, Roy Kerr, and Tim Bran, saw Aurora deeply involved in the production process. The new material explored themes of politics, sexuality, and empowerment, inspired by interactions with fans during her debut tour, while maintaining some lyrical continuity with her first album. The music video for "Queendom", released in May 2018, emphasised inclusivity, particularly for her LGBTQ+ fanbase, featuring a scene where Aurora kissed a female dancer to symbolise acceptance of all forms of love. She previewed several new songs at festivals such as Lollapalooza and Coachella. The first part, Infections of a Different Kind (Step 1), an eight-track release, was released in September 2018, with Aurora describing its closing track as "the most important song I've ever written." The second part, A Different Kind of Human (Step 2), followed in June 2019. Aurora supported both releases with a headlining tour starting in Manchester in late 2018 and performances at festivals including Glastonbury, Groovin' the Moo, and Outside Lands.
In April 2019, Aurora co-wrote and provided vocals for three tracks—"Eve of Destruction", "Bango", and "The Universe Sent Me"—on No Geography, the ninth studio album by The Chemical Brothers. Later that year, she contributed backing vocals to "Into the Unknown" from Disney's Frozen 2 and performed it live at the 92nd Academy Awards in February 2020 with Idina Menzel and a chorus of international singers representing the song's translations. Her solo version of the song was released as a single in March 2020. Previously, in 2018, she performed a cover of "Baby Mine" as the final act at Disney's panel during CCXP for the soundtrack of Dumbo (2019).
2020–2023: The Gods We Can Touch
In November 2020, Aurora recorded the title track for the Norwegian Christmas miniseries Stjernestøv for NRK, under the musical direction of Gaute Tønder; she then contributed vocals to "Vinterens Gåte" and "Det Ev Ei Rosa Sprunge" for Herborg Kråkevik's album Juleroser. Backed by the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, the release preceded another film contribution. Later that December, Aurora re-recorded her 2015 single "Running with the Wolves" for the animated film Wolfwalkers.