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For the third time in four song festivals are some of our northern neighbors managed to qualify for the final of the Eurovision Song Contest. The 23-year-old Douwe Bob Palma sang themselves with Slow Down to the show from Saturday evening. (Photo: Thomas Hanses, EBU)

Tonight was the first semifinal of the 61st Edition of the song festival. Eighteen countries participated and ten of them were given a ticket to the final, no strings attached, on the basis of jury vote (50%) and televoting (50%). The finalists were announced in random order, and are included in the table below, on running order, using a Q Qualifiedfor:

There were some surprises at the announcement of the finalists. Greta Salóme from Iceland and Dane from Bosnia & Herzegovina, two ex-candidates, not qualified. Iceland is so for the second year in a row, sent home, and Bosnia will still last in the finals in 2012. The biggest surprise is that Greece, for the very first time since the introduction of the semi-finals for the first time since 2000 was killed and not take part in the final-ironically found the song contest also when in the Globen Arena place.

On the other, more successful Central European side took out the Czech Republic for the very first time in Eurovision history are the final and we welcome Croatia for the first time since 2009 back on Saturday night. Also Freddie from Hungary, Iveta from Armenia, Sergey from Russia, Minus One from Cyprus, ZOË from Austria, Samra from Azerbaijan and Ira from Malta were given green light.

The second semifinal takes place the day after tomorrow. Our Laura Tesoro takes part for Belgium.