Instruments
Today the musician Finn Coren releases his album På jorden et sted – Utvalgte nordiske dikt (‘Somewhere on Earth – Selected Nordic Poems’), where I appear on some tracks with Hardanger fiddle and kankle. Finn Coren has composed music to poems by famous Nordic poets, including Inger Hagerup, Tarjei Vesaas, Tor Jonsson, Hans Børli, Karin…
During last week’s meeting at ICTMs Study on Music Archaeology (Biskupin, Poland) Polish researchers presented what appears to be the oldest keyed fiddle found. This was the find of a soundboard of an instrument – from excavations in Wolin, at the Baltic coast. The find dates from the period between the end of the twelfth…
Today is “The day of Archaeology”, which originated in England. In addition to that, Great Britain celebrates the “Festival of Archaeology” (12th to 27th July). For those of us with special interest in archaeological finds of musical artefacts, today is the perfect day to recall one of the most interesting discoveries of recent years: a…
Issue No. 5 of the popular magazine Aftenposten Historie is on sale today. There you will find my article on the earliest history and evolutionary roots of music. The article is accompanied by a lot of illustrations and fills eight pages. I focus on the first archaeological finds of musical instruments in the earliest period…
I forbindelse med boka mi, Jordas skjulte toner. Musikk og instrumenter fra steinalder til vikingtid (som blir lansert 13. november på Kulturhistorisk museum i Oslo) har jeg vært med i to radioprogrammer, begge i NRK P2. Først i Museum, med klokkesteiner som tema, og så Spillerom, med et videre utgangspunkt. I Museum, som ble sendt…
This summer I have worked with instrument building. One of the projects was to build a reconstruction of the lyre from a font in Norum Church, Bohuslän, Sweden. It is dated to the 12th century, and is part of several depictions of Gunnar in the snake pit, found in Scandinavia. This stone carving does not…
The magnificent lurs of the Scandinavian Bronze Age have got a lot of attention from archaeologists as well as musicologists, since their discovery in the end of the 18th century and onwards. My contribution to this research tradition is the article “The Ritual Significance of the Scandinavian Bronze Age Lurs: An Examination Based on Ethnographic…
The jew’s harp was one of the most popular instruments in the last millennium. Old lexical truths telling about Vikings, Saxons and Romans playing the jew’s harp are left. These are among the results of my research on jew’s harps. During a period of about ten years I worked with jew’s harps from archaeological contexts.…