Thor Salden (born 28 November 1997Thor's birthday blog message
on the Belgian Junior Eurovision website ), better known as Thor!, is a former child singer. Salden rose to fame in 2006, being the Belgian contestant at the

Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2006 The Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2006 was the fourth edition of the annual Junior Eurovision Song Contest for young singers aged 8 to 15. On 2 December 2006, the contest was broadcast live from Bucharest, Romania making it the second time the co ...

with "Een tocht door het donker". The song topped the Flemish

Ultratop Ultratop is an organization which generates and publishes the official record charts in Belgium. Ultratop is a non-profit organization, created on the initiative of the Belgian Entertainment Association (BEA), the Belgian member organization ...

charts for one week. Salden withdrew from the stage at the age of 11.

Life and career

Salden was born in Antwerp and lived in

Schoten Schoten () is a municipality located in Antwerp Province, Belgium. The municipality only comprises the town of Schoten proper. As of 1 January 2020 Schoten has a total population of 34,311. The total area is which gives a population density of ...

. In 2006, at the age of eight, he participated in the Belgian preselection for the

Bucharest Bucharest ( , ; ro, București ) is the capital and largest city of Romania, as well as its cultural, industrial, and financial centre. It is located in the southeast of the country, on the banks of the Dâmbovița River, less than north of ...

Romania Romania ( ; ro, România ) is a country located at the crossroads of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe. It borders Bulgaria to the south, Ukraine to the north, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Moldova to the east, and ...

. Salden won both the first semi-final of 17 September and the final of 1 October 2006 of the selection. In the opening of the shows, he performed together with Attic and

Clouseau Inspector Jacques Clouseau (), later granted the rank of Chief Inspector, is a fictional character in Blake Edwards' farcical ''The Pink Panther'' series. He is portrayed by Peter Sellers in the original series, and also by Alan Arkin in the ...

. Salden had first sung and recorded his self-written "Een toch door het donker" on a Fisher-Price toy recorder. The eventual final version of "Een tocht door het donker" ("A Journey Through The Dark"), produced by Peter Gillis was released as a single on 13 October 2006. Initially the song reached No. 1 in the

Ultratop 50 Ultratop is an organization which generates and publishes the official record charts in Belgium. Ultratop is a non-profit organization, created on the initiative of the Belgian Entertainment Association (BEA), the Belgian member organization of ...

, No. 2 in Belgium's national download music chart and No. 8 in the Radio 2 Top 30. After 16 weeks in the Ultratop 50, Thor received a golden record on 30 January 2007 as a result of over 15,000 single sales and legal downloads of the song, making him the youngest Belgian artist to receive this award. In the run-up to his Junior Eurovision participation, Salden was honoured by the municipality of Schoten for his victory in the pre-selection. Schoten city council also announced their plans surrounding the international Junior Eurovision final. Locals were able to watch the international final of the song contest on a screen on the local market square. At the contest, Salden eventually finished 7th, out of fifteenth. On 22 December 2006, Salden auctioned off the T-shirt he wore during the Junior Eurovision Song Contest for the Studio Brussel charity ''Music for life''. (Dutch) Following his Junior Eurovision participation, Salden released only one more single, "We gaan naar de zee", in 2007. The song peaked at No. 20 at the Belgian Ultratop charts. In 2008, Thor was one of the participants of the

Ketnet Ketnet is a Dutch-language public children's television channel in Belgium owned and operated by the VRT, Flemish public broadcaster. It broadcasts a mix of locally produced and imported productions on the VRT3 channel from 6am until 8pm. On 1 D ...

programme ''Ketnetpop'', in which he was coached to perform his song at a live concert. In December 2008, Salden, then aged 11, announced that he was withdrawing from performing, citing a discontinued interest in singing. In 2010, he made a short appearance during the Belgian pre-selection for Junior Eurovision 2010, being part of a jury of past contestants. In 2017, he performed at a celebratory concert of Ketnet's 20th jubileum in the Antwerp

Sportpaleis The Antwerps Sportpaleis ( eng, Antwerp's Sport Palace), also called Sportpaleis Antwerpen, Sportpaleis Merksem or simply the Sportpaleis, is an arena in Antwerp, Belgium. It is a multipurpose hall where concerts, sporting events, festivals and f ...

. It was Salden's first performance in a decade. In 2020, he co-presented one day on NRJ Radio, after the request of his cousin, who worked as a DJ at the station. Meanwhile, he told Belgian media that he was not interested in making new music and revealed that he never had musical ambitions. "I've stopped doing music. I don't even know whether I had any ambitions as a child to do something with music. I had seen a commercial on television about applying to Junior Eurovision, that's why I took part. But the dream to become a pop artist, I didn't have.".

Discography

Singles

References

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Salden, Thor 1997 births Living people Belgian child singers Belgian pop singers Junior Eurovision Song Contest entrants for Belgium People from Schoten 21st-century Belgian male singers 21st-century Belgian singers