Knutsen is a Norwegian surname. It origin was as a Patronymic name (-sen/-søn/-son/-zen) derived from the first name Knut. Knutsen may refer to:

Venke Knutson (born 20 October 1978) is a Norwegian singer. Since 2003, she has had six top 10 hits in Norway.

Venke Knutson was born in Birkeland, in 1978. She was the youngest of three sisters, in a musical family, and she got inspired to sing by her elder sisters.

Early in her life she lived with her family in the United States.

She joined the school choir. Inspired by two older sisters, she applied for music at the Vågsbygd skole (Vågsbygd school), when the family was about to go back home to Norway.

She used to be an elementary teacher in Norway. She was earlier married to Svenn Kåre Liodden, but they divorced. She married Thomas Wold in 2008.

She debuted in 2003 with the single "Panic", followed by her first album Scared and the singles "Scared" and "Kiss".

Venke Knutson entered the qualifying rounds of the Melodi Grand Prix 2010 (the Norwegian selection process for the Eurovision Song Contest) on 16 January and was voted through to the national "second chance" program, with the song "Jealous 'Cause I Love You", where she was voted through to the national final.

Kurt Erik Kleppe Nilsen (born September 29, 1978) is a Norwegian pop/country singer. He won the first season of the Norwegian version of the reality television show Pop Idol, which aired on TV 2 in May 2003. He then won a one-off international version of Pop Idol, called World Idol on January 1, 2004, featuring winners of the various national Idol shows.

Upon leaving school, Nilsen made his living as a plumber. Nilsen became the lead singer in the Norwegian band Fenrik Lane. He is a left-handed musician and plays his guitar with the strings upside down. He appeared on and won Norwegian Idol with 54% of the votes against Gaute Ormåsen. He is one of only seven contestants in the Idol (Norway) history who succeeded in staying out of “bottom three/two” places in weekly votes.

His subsequent single, "She's So High", written by Tal Bachman, went straight to number one in the Norwegian singles chart and is among the biggest-selling singles in Norway to date. His debut album was simply called I.

He subsequently won the vote for the World Idol title on January 1, 2004, singing the hit "Beautiful Day" by U2, beating competitors from ten other nations, including the more famous Idols, Britain's Will Young, and favourite Kelly Clarkson of the United States, and scoring the first place in 10 out of 11 countries eligible to vote for him (Norwegian voters being unable to vote for him).

Brian Knutson is currently an Associate Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Stanford University and director of the Symbiotic Project on Affective Neuroscience. His research focuses on the neural basis of emotion, and has been covered in multiple news sources.

He earned a dual Bachelor's degree in Psychology and Comparative Religion from Trinity University in 1989 and a Ph.D. in Psychology from Stanford University in 1993.

He has published over 80 peer-reviewed articles which have received over 8000 citations.[1] His most cited work, "Anticipation of Increasing Monetary Reward Selectively Recruits Nucleus Accumbens", was published in Journal of Neuroscience in 2001.[2]

Gaute Ormåsen (born 20 April 1983 in Brumunddal, Hedmark) is a Norwegian singer and was the Idol runner-up to Kurt Nilsen in 2003. He was offered a contract by BMG. He has also had a supporting role in the long running Norwegian television series "Hotel Cesar". In 2010, he took part in Melodi Grand Prix, the Norwegian preselection for the Eurovision Song Contest, singing "Synk eller svøm".

Albums:

Singles: