After participating in Frøken Norge 2008 and placing first runner-up, she was selected in a separate competition to be her country's representative to the 2008 Miss Universe pageant held in Nha Trang, Vietnam on July 14, 2008.
Birkedal competed and won the 2010 Frøken Norge pageant celebrated in Noresund on June 26, gaining the right to represent Norway in Miss World 2010.
As the official representative of her country to the 2010 Miss World pageant, held in Sanya, China, she won the Miss World Top Model fast-track event on October 23, and automatically became one of the Top 25 semifinalists, the first Norwegian woman to place in Miss World since 2003.
[5] There were some suggestions that Beijing might have pressured the judges to provide low scores for Birkedal, Miss Norway, because the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to one of its political prisoners, Liu Xiaobo.
[6][7] This biographical article about a contestant in a beauty pageant is a stub.