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freya the clown
Freya’s clown lives in the space between laughter and vulnerability — where humour meets truth. Her performances invite audiences to see the world anew, with curiosity, tenderness, and play.
Drawing from her deep experience in physical theatre, mask, and movement, Freya’s clown work explores the poetry of everyday life — the beauty of being human in all its awkwardness and wonder. Each performance is unique, shaped by the people, the place, and the moment.
Her clown has appeared in theatres, hospitals, care homes, festivals, and public spaces, reminding us that joy and connection can be found anywhere. Whether bringing lightness to healing spaces or sparking laughter in unexpected corners, Freya’s clown celebrates empathy, spontaneity, and the courage to be open.
Freya was drawn to clowning at an early age, despite being a very shy person. She believed that this would be a great thing to do, to become a clown, at a time when her peers dreamed of becoming au pairs. It would allow her to become an introvert-extrovert, instead of being a plain introvert.
Unfortunately, there were no other clowns around in Norway at the time; therefore, she took off from Norway and travelled to Britain at the age of 18 to follow her dream, which was to become a Shakespearean actor and Clown. She quickly realised that her English was less good than she thought, and that she, in fact, couldn't understand Shakespearean texts in English.
She spent her early days in London washing up at the BBC, serving hot food at ITV, and was told to leave her glamorous reception job at ScanSat TV, as she didn't always keep up with the glamour. This has all led her to become what she is today.
Freya used to suffer from an acute allergic reaction whenever she ran past a hospital. Therefore she never stopped to join her friends for a cheap cooked breakfast in the local hospital canteen. However, one day Freya had a sudden epithany which was life changing: that she needed to go inside the hospitals with a Red Nose on, and stay there for at least a couple of decades. Freya has now ended up dedicating much of her life to clowning in hospitals and care settings.
Freya is a health care clown-actor, performing for children receiving medical treatment and vulnerable people in hospitals or elsewhere, as well as for elderly people in care homes. She was head of training for the Norwegian Healthcare clowns, Sykehusklovnene, 2019-2023, and the primary teacher on this curriculum. https://sykehusklovnene.no
She partnered on behalf of Sykehusklovnene with the European Erasmus project and created a level 4 European standard for the European Qualification Framework for HealthCare Clowning 2019 - 2022.https://www.erasmushccp.eu 2024-2025 Freya was a member of the French Healthcare Clown company Le Rire Mèdicin ceritification jury for their experienced clowns. https://www.leriremedecin.org/
Freya teaches movement, improvisation, and healthcare clowning for different clown organisations, is an artistic coach, and has given talks on Health Care Clowning at conferences (Den Haag, Lisboa 2022) and has written various academic papers for publication. Freya is in a Research and Development group for EFCHO, the European Federation of Healthcare clowning. She is an artistic member of the EFHCO Board of Directors. She was part of the EFHCO Paris annual meeting 2025 planning group and co-taught the artistic workshop on Coaching for Healthcare clowns to the European Artistic Representatives there https://efhco.eu/
The European Federation of Healthcare Clown Organizations
Erasmus+ HCCP - Health Care Clown Pathways
Royal Holloway University of London
Learning from Clowning as a Social Research Intervention. Download PDF
Families Disconnected by Prison. A Scoping Study in Barriers to Engagement. Download PDF
ISG review 2020-2021 Download PDF
Letter from the ISG director Download PDF
‘Artful language and narratives of adult learning’ Annual Conference 2019 Bergen, Norway Thursday 28th February to Sunday 3rd March 2019 Download PDF
Community-‐centric engagement: lessons learned from privacy awareness intervention design. Download PDF
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November 2025
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upcoming workshops
Renata kalivod, Managing Director,
Dr Klauns, Latvia
Freya's visit to Latvia after covid allowed us not to be stuck in our little swamp, so to speak :)
The workshop and coaching helped to improve and widen the variety of artistic techniques and methods used in our clowning work.
In Freya’s coaching, our clowns said it gave them a perfect opportunity to look at themselves with new eyes and understand more about their clown character and role in partner play. During the coaching sessions, there were interventions from Freya where individual tasks were given which provoked the clowns to search for other ways and find new opportunities within their work.
Yury Olshansky, managing director, Sorcosso Clowns, Italy
Sykehusklovnene with Freya's partnership in the Erasmus Project to create a level for professional Health Care Clown training was invaluable and helped us gain recognition for health care clowning from the European Qualifications Framework at a level 4, It was a 100% success!
Haflidi Haflidason, Clown student Sykehusklovnene 2021-23
It was a very good and safe learning environment to become a health care clown, which testifies to good teaching methods.
Very thoroughly planned and good content. It was a nice construction; with the meeting of ones own clown during module 1, and then gradually with this clown approaching the hospital clowning by the end of module 1.
It was absolutely fantastic to have the two weeks at St. Olav’s hospital during modules 2 and 3. I therefore felt very confident and equipped for clowning in the hospital during the work experience period.
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