The latest winner of the Barbershop Harmony Society’s quartet competition is Swedish.

Ringmasters, from Sweden, is the first quartet from outside North America to win the Society’s gold medal. Barbershop singing is a quintessentially American music and the Swedish singers spent years learning and refining their technique.

Ringmasters won the competition in Portland, Oregon earlier this month at the Barbershop Harmony Society’s International convention.

The editor of The Harmonizer magazine, Lorin May, called their victory “unprecedented”.