The first day, at the rock-carving site Madsebakke, was devoted to lurs. No fewer than five bronze lurs were in use, alongside other metal lurs and lurs made of wood. I myself brought a couple of my short lurs, which in Norway have traditionally been called ‘stuttlurer’ or ‘bjønnatuter’.

We investigated, among other things, different playing techniques, acoustic reflections in the landscape and vegetation, and the ritual use of the instruments—including the effect of dissonance and interference.

The second day focused on the human voice, at Rispebjerg—an archaeological area with ancient remains from the Stone Age and Iron Age. One of the themes we explored was Tacitus’ description of the Germanic peoples’ use of shields as voice amplifiers; another was ceramic jars used as voice maskers.

In addition, I was part of a small group that tested mouth bows, based on a Danish Mesolithic find from Mullerup (ca. 9000 BP). It is a quiet instrument and was probably not meant to entertain many listeners. It sounds better inwardly in the body of the person playing—like a meditative overtone instrument.

On the last day we were in Ekkodalen (the Echo Valley) in the middle of the island—one of the biggest tourist attractions, both because of the cliff faces that answer back and the beautiful scenery. We held a successful sound walk open to the public, with different stations along the trail in the valley. I also took part in acoustic measurements together with my colleague Julia Shpinitskaya.

Thanks to Eva Fock in Ears Wide Open for a wonderful initiative!

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The book arose from an international symposium that took place in 2016 at Linnaeus University’s Department of Music and Art, in Växjö, Sweden. It is edited by my Finnish colleague Riitta Rainio and myself.

The contributors represent Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Austria, England, Scotland, The Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, Finland and Norway. I am really proud of the result, thanks to all the interesting articles. All the contributions are sincerely appreciated!

To orient a bit about the volume you can read the contents and introduction.

The book is Vol. 3 in the series Publications of the ICTM Study Group on Music Archaeology, and can be ordered directly from the publisher Ekho Verlag in Berlin.

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The project centres around the unusual song source Samuel Hellen (1813–1892), who sang forty songs for the folk music collector Ludvig Mathias Lindeman. Hellen has been virtually unknown until now, despite being one of Lindeman’s largest sources.

Singer and writer Ann-Turi Ford is the woman behind the project. Her book, Samuels sang, is a biography about Hellen’s life and songs that also places the songs into a larger cultural context. The book gives facsimiles of Lindeman’s transcriptions, as well as lyrics, which were a bit tricky to find. Lindeman’s main interest was the melodies, and he wrote down only one text verse for each song.

In addition to the book, Ann-Turi has re-interpreted and recorded all the forty songs, and collected them on the CDs Samuels sanger I–III. Many musicians are involved, and there is some musical diversity among the songs. For example, you can hear the organ, brass quintet, electronica and a folk-rock band accompanying the songs. I play a variety of instruments myself, for instance violins, the viola, rebec, lyre, kankle, zither, jew’s harp and melodeon.

In this video (with English sub-titles) Ann-Turi Ford tells a bit about Samuel Hellen and her project:

A bit more about Samuel Hellen: He was born on Nøtterøy (Vestfold) and lived as a vagabond during his first thirty years. After a troubled life with some criminal activity, he was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1843, and served in the slavery at Akershus Fortress. At the slavery he came into contact with the ideas of N.F.S. Grundtvig. Hellen made a complete change in his life, and was pardoned in 1852. As a free man and blacksmith in Christiania (which was the name of Oslo at that time), he met another follower of Grundtvig: Ludvig Mathias Lindeman, the organist and folk music collector. Lindeman wrote down the forty tunes in 1968 and 1869.

Hellen’s material consists of both religious and vernacular songs. Many of the melodies are unusual and some of them are not known from other sources. There are strong indications that Hellen relied on textual sources, and that he might have owned popular song books of the time, such as the Danish Kjempeviseboka. Another interesting point is that Hellen does not represent the typical image of a local performer representing a local tradition, since he picked up tunes several places.

Both the book and the CDs are published by Grappa Musikkforlag, and can be ordered directly from the publisher in physical format. In addition, the forty tunes are available on streaming services.

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In addition, Aksenty published the sound tracks from the video. They consist of improvisations with different instruments, like the jew’s harps, lyre, gusli, hardingfele and rebec. Download here: Aksenty.ru/novgorod2019.zip (seven tracks with a total length of 10:46).

Thank you Aksenty for a professional and top produced video!

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For a long time it has been a dream to come to Novgorod, ever since I in the 1990s first heard about the magnificent finds of musical instruments from the excavations there and the work of Vladimir Povetkin (1943–2010). He was a pioneer as an instrument builder, performer and researcher. He used a kind of experimental archaeology in his work to recreate the sound and music of the instruments of the black earth of Novgorod.

In 1990 Povetkin founded The Novgorod Center for Music Antiquities (http://centrpovetkina.ru). Here his reconstructed instruments are exhibited and used in research as well as popular lectures of Novgorod’s early music and Russian traditional folk culture.

The material in the excavations dates from the period from the 10th to the 15th century. Objects of wood are often surprisingly well preserved, thanks to good preservation conditions in marshy, oxygen-poor soils. Among the many instrument finds, there are several discoveries of gudoks, which are among the earliest bowed instruments we know of in Europe (see photo). The parallel in Western Europe is the rebec. Novgorod also has several important finds of the the string instrument gusli, which is the relative of the Finnish and Baltic kantele, kankle, or kokle. A five-string gusli from the 11th century has the inscription “slovisha”, which may have either referred the instrument itself or, alternatively, to the owner of the instrument.

The inscription has thus given the name of the festival, which is built around the finds in Novgorod, in combination with folk music from Novgorod and the surrounding areas, from different sides of modern national borders. Historically, there were many connections from Novgorod to Scandinavia, and in the Viking Age the city was known as Holmgard. Later, Novgorod became part of the Hanseatic trade. You can read more about Novgorod’s interesting history on this website: https://visitnovgorod.com/novgorod/discover_novgorod/The_birthplace_of_Russia.html

Slovisha was a very interesting and rewarding festival. It had a good mix of lectures and musical performances, and a nice geographical balance, with a focus on the area historically belonging to the Novgorod region. It provided an opportunity for exciting explorations of similarities and differences in the folk traditions. Furthermore, cultural and scientific exchange is in itself a good thing. Meetings crossing modern political borders, like this, are more important than ever.

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Among the instruments I have made is the lyre depicted at the well known stave church portal from Hylestad, Setesdal. At the original portal, from round 1200 AD (displayed at the Museum of Cultural History, Oslo), the instrument is equipped with about twelve strings. We do not know if the artist really had an instrument with twelve strings as a model, or if this was a choice made by artistic reasons. Neither do we know how the instrument was constructed, and the material of the strings.

However, the two reconstructions I have finished now are made from my own artistic freedom, in combination with knowledge of lyres from other places and periods. These two lyres are stringed with, respectively, steel and nylon. Sound and music samples will follow soon, with more information on my experimental project of reconstructing lyres found in depictions on artefacts from Southern Norway, ca. 1100–1400 AD.

Another lyre, which has been shown to belong to a later, post-medieval period, was found at the farm Kravik in Numedal. Unlike the portal from Hylestad and the other iconographies, this is a real instrument, preserved the farm until it arrived at the Museum of Cultural History in Oslo in the 19th century. The lyre was partly broken, and the sound board was not preserved at all. The original number of strings is estimated to seven. 

Two of the images show my reconstruction of the lyre from Kravik. I used metal strings.

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The article, in Norwegian language, describes tendencies such as education, professionalization and perfection. The trends and developments, among a variety of partly contradicting tendencies, are not meant to be a complete picture of reality, but rather tools for reflection and analysis.

In addition to introducing two musicians who represent a new generation of folk musicians, I discuss the establishment of the organization FolkOrg and The Norwegian Hub for Traditional Music and Dance in Oslo, Riksscenen. Both have meant much the new folk music movement in Norway during the last decade.

Folk och music is a Finnish academic journal focusing on folk music and folk dance in the Swedish part of Finland as well as the rest of the Nordic region. This is an e-journal published by Svenska litteratursällskapet i Finland, and published in open access in the publishing service journal.fi.

The figure above is made by Ann-Turi Ford.

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The book Norges lyder: Stabbursklokker og storbykakofoni (‘The Sounds of Norway: Village Bells and Urban Cacophony’) which is now out, provides some answers to these questions. This is the first scholarly book on Norwegian aural history. It is published by The Norwegian Institute of Local History. The eight contributions, written in Norwegian, are edited by Frank Meyer – historian and leader of the The Norwegian Labour Movement Archives and Library.

My article ‘klokkene ringer for deg – et glimt inn i bøndenes, gårdsarbeidernes og gjeternes klangunivers’ (‘For whom the bell tolls – a glimpse into the soundscapes of the farmers, farm workers shepherds’) is a study of rural bells and animal bells in Norwegian tradition, about how they were meaningful in the man-made soundscapes they were part of.

On this blog post you can read a bit more about rural bells.

A radio programme on rural bells in Norwegian radio from August 2018, is available online here. I participated with Frank Meyer and people in Nes, Romerike.

The book Norges lyder can be ordered from The Norwegian Institute of Local History, from regular bookstores, or from online bookshops, such as Haugenbok.

Traditional village bell placed on the store house of the farm. Vinju, Veldre, Hedmark. Photo by Gjermund Kolltveit

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At the conference I presented my interpretations along with my own reconstruction of the megaphone, based on the drawings in the publication by Shetelig and Johannessen from 1929. Below some photos from the work with the reconstruction. If anyone has any information on megaphones or sound communication at sea, I would be delighted to be informed. First, here is the abstract for my paper:

Sound communication in non-reverberating acoustical spaces

Acoustic spaces or sound spaces are natural or man-made structures used for sound, or with sound as an integral part of religious ceremonies, gatherings or feasts. As shown in an increasing number of archaeoacoustic studies, some of these designated spaces, such as caves, megaliths – and later – theatres, churches, halls and other man-made structures, are used or constructed specifically because of their acoustic properties.

However, in many situations and places, people could neither make benefit from architectural structures nor natural spaces for acoustic communication. Some natural environments are especially unsuitable or demanding for communication purposes, with few hard surfaces that naturally reverberates and amplifies sound waves. People have therefore made use of certain techniques or specially designed contrivances of for communication purposes. One such place is at sea or in costal landscapes where the ocean and/or wind is the «keynote sound» of the soundscape.

In a ship excavated in Kvalsund, Sunnmøre, on the west coast of Norway, the archaeologists found a wooden funnel-shaped 72,5 centimetre long object, interpreted as a megaphone. The ship, which probably was a seagoing vessel, was dated to the 7th to 8th century AD. Based on reconstructions and experiments, this paper will discuss the acoustical function of the possible megaphone. It will also discuss other methods of communication at sea – with sound producing devices, or with other means, such as the whistling language used in whale hunting by the Siberian Yupik people, south of the Bering strait.

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At this interesting and inspiring conference, music researchers and other contribute with ideas about music and democracy from various perspectives, for example linked to power structures in music streaming services. Keynote speakers include David Hesmondhalgh (University of Leeds) and Deborah Wong (University of California).

Here is the abstract of my own paper:

Political activism and the green musical wave in Norway

The 1972 referendum on Norwegian membership in the European Community created an enormous political engagement. Notably the “No-side” used music for spreading their message and mobilizing people. The appropriate political music had a green, environmental-friendly appeal, associated with the arguments against membership in EEC, which was seen as a capitalistic project that would threaten Norwegian nature and fishery resources. The green wave was connected to broader countercultural movements in the 1960s and 1970s, such as anti-war campaigns, folk revivals, feminist and left-wing ideas, in which various forms of music always was a central means for social and political activism.

The green political activists had a notable interest in local culture, and amateur-driven musical activities were cherished. Singer-songwriters and folk-musicians were as a rule considered to be more political relevant and authentic than rock musicians, since rock and other popular genres were considered to be expressions formed and manipulated by the commercial music industry. However, which music forms were considered to be most appropriate became increasingly debated in the green political movement.

In this paper, based on interviews and written sources, I will introduce some voices from the green political music scene of the 1970-ies, and ask how music became a tool for political activism among environmentalists. Was this music movement really a democratic grassroots movement, driven by engaged people in local communities? Finally, I will ask whether there is such a thing as “green music” or music associated with the ecological political movement today. Are green politicians and and activists concerned at all about music as a tool in their political work?

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