Scandinavian Music
Wardruna captured their audience with their first album release “gap var ginnunga” in 2009, the first part of their trilogy. With special concerts performed in the surroundings of the mystical 1100-year-old Gokstad ship, situated in Norway at the Viking Ship Museum.
With lyrics written in Norwegian, Nordic instruments and poetic phrases with historical meaning, a whispering sound of the deer-hide frame drums, tagelharpe, mouth harp, goat horn and the elements of the earth, water, trees and rocks. Wardruna is the no 1 band to re-establish traditional Scandinavian music with a current culture following and theme for the 21st Century.
Instruments found such as the Lur, has shown the importance of music in Norway dating back to the Vikings. Composures such as Johan Svendsen and Edvard Grieg combined the Norwegian tones with the European traditions within the symphony concerts that supported the 19th Century opera scene in Norway.
As the music scene grew with the radio and gramophone becoming more available to the Scandinavian population, indigenous music was revived; Norwegian folk music consisted of a vocal and instrumental combination. The ethnic population within the Nordic country is separated into two main categories “Sami” and “North Germanic”. A traditional vocal styled called “Joik” is the Sami music style; some compare the American Aboriginal culture chanting and inspiration to have come from Sami. The North Germanic Norwegian music, often-improvised songs (stev) and (kvad) short ballads, this is the distinctive separation, with the Hardanger fiddle (hardingfele) the most used instrument in Norwegian folk music, dating back to around the 1700’s.
The young music artists of today have gone back to the traditional and ancient history of folk music, with instruments to maintain and withstand the history of Scandinavian music and heritage.