poulhoxbro.dk
2006
Classcd 670
December 2005
Højerup Church, Denmark
poulhoxbro.dk
2006
Classcd 670
December 2005
Højerup Church, Denmark
1 - Húsdrápa (arr. Miriam Andersén)
[2:53]
Attributed to Úlfr Uggason, Iceland, c 985. Melody: trad. Iceland
2 - Gýgjarslagr (arr. Poul Høxbro) [2:41]
Breton dance from The Mahé Manuscript after an anonymous French source
c 1825
3 - Bretlandsslagr (arr. Poul Høxbro) [2:11]
Breton dance from The Mahé Manuscript after an anonymous French source
c 1825
4 - Drömbuðr (arr. Poul Høxbro) [3:14]
Herding tune after Länsmans Kerstin Larsdotter (1859-1926) and herding
signal after Anders Otter (1877-1942), Dalarna, Sweden
5 - Darraðarljóð (arr. Miriam Andersén) [6:13]
Anon. Iceland, beginning of the eleventh century. Melody: trad. Iceland
6 - Gorrlaust (arr. Poul Høxbro) [2:19]
After Knut Jonsson Heddi (1857-1938), Setesdal, Norway
7 - Rammaslagr (arr. Miriam Andersén) [2:21]
After Dreng Ose (1896-1990), Setesdal, Norway
8 - Jötna sláttr (arr. Poul Høxbro) [3:37]
Herding tune after Anders Frisell (1870-1944), Dalarna, Sweden, and
melodies to the Danish ballad about Magnus and the troll after
Christian Sørensen Thomaskjær (1841-1919)
9 - Grógaldr (arr. Miriam Andersén) [6:48]
Anonymous Edda poem, Iceland, date uncertain. Melody: trad. Iceland
10 - Vetrarslagr (arr. Miriam Andersén) [3:28]
Trad. Iceland / Miriam Andersén
11 - Hjarrandaljóð (arr. Poul Høxbro) [2:54]
Breton dance from The Mahé Manuscript after an anonymous French source
c 1825
12 - Leikar (arr. Poul Høxbro) [3:09]
Bagpipe melodies from Rågøerne, Swedish Estonia. After Adam Söderström
(1850-1927) and J. Pulk (? - c 1910)
13 - Höfuðlausn (arr. Miriam Andersén) [8:07]
Attributed to Egill Skalla-Grímsson (c 910-990), Iceland. Melody:
Miriam Andersén / anon. chanson de geste c 1090
14 - Gorrlaust (arr. Poul Høxbro) [2:06]
After Gunnar Liestøl (1889-1927), Setesdal, Norway
15 - Hornaslagir [2:52]
Herding tunes after Tommos Kerstin Andersdotter (1854-1931), Björs Olof
Larsson (b. 1887) and Nöstmo Halvar Halvarsson (1852-1949), Dalarna,
Sweden
Miriam Andersén • voice (#1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 10, 13), eirharpa
(#1, 5, 9, 10, 13), cow horn (#15), cowbell (#7, 8, 12)
Poul Høxbro • gaita (#2, 6, 8, 12, 14), ram’s bone flute
(#4, 10), bones (#2, 7, 8, 12), hornpipe (#3, 11), cow
horn (#15), cowbell (#8)
THE VIKING SKALDS
created some of the most heroic and complex poems of the time. Many of
these verses were part of a musical tradition in that they were also
sung, and this recitation of poems was undoubtedly the noblest form of
entertainment in the Viking community. Archaeological findings of
instruments such as lyres, horns, bone flutes, and reed pipes clearly
show that certain instruments also played an important role in the
music that was created and heard in the Viking period. But we have no
means of knowing what was actually performed on these instruments,
whether as accompaniment to the poems or as independent instrumental
music.
To us, two Scandinavian musicians working full time on medieval music,
the thought of the tones that carried these poems and the sounds of the
instruments became ever more fascinating and it was this fascination
that took us on a voyage of discovery among the extant records of
traditional music from areas settled by the Vikings. Here we found
archaic melodies which were linked to certain Old Norse metres, and old
notations of minimalistic and suggestive music from isolated regions
where instruments similar to, or identical with those found in Viking
excavation sites were still played.
We were left with a musical treasure that enabled us to accentuate and
wreathe these sophisticated poems with music that could do the poems
and the instruments full justice on both historical and modern terms.
What had at first seemed to be insuperable barriers could now suddenly
be turned into musical enrichment.
The Blood of Kvasir is the artistic outcome of these dreams,
longings, and explorations.
THE BLOOD OF KVASIR
Snorri Sturluson's Edda tells the following story about how the
skaldic art came into being: The gods, the Æsir, were at
loggerheads with a people called the Vanir, but at a meeting they made
a peace agreement and decided to seal it by each going forward to spit
into a large jar. However, both parties thought the substance too
precious to waste, so they formed a man, Kvasir, from the spittle. He
was so wise that no one could ask him anything which he could not
answer.
Kvasir travelled far and wide to teach humans wisdom, but was finally
killed by two malevolent dwarfs. The dwarfs poured Kvasir's blood into
a cauldron and mixed the blood with honey to make mead, which possessed
the quality of turning all who drank it into a skald or sage.
However, Odin succeeded in stealing the mead from the giant Suttung,
into whose possession it had come, and in the shape of an eagle Odin
brought the mead home to Asgard and gave it to the gods and to selected
humans...
ABOUT THE INSTRUMENTS
Eirharpa (track 1, 5, 9, 10, 13)
Reconstruction after a find from Novgorod.
Harps are mentioned in the Eddaic poems and the Volsunga Saga, but
there is no archaeological or iconographical evidence that they existed
in Viking Scandinavia. However, the fragment of a lyre has been found
in Hedeby and two bridges which could have come from lyres have been
found in Birka and Gotland. All dating from the Viking period. Most
probably, 'harp' was a general term for a stringed instrument and the
Viking harp was a kind of lyre like the bowed harp. Medieval pictures
in Setesdal, Norway, and Bohuslän, Sweden, depict Gunnar of the saga
playing a lyre.
Amongst the many sensational findings of medieval musical instruments
in archaeological excavations in Novgorod is a handful of lyre-like gusli
dating from the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries. The gusli
is a kind of psaltery, closely related to the Balto-Finnic kantele
and is still an instrument used for playing folk music in Russia.
Several of the guslis were decorated with elegantly carved, stylised
motifs of animals. Also found were pieces of bronze wire, which could
very well have been used as strings for these instruments. Two similar
instruments have been unearthed in Poland – the oldest dating from the
eleventh century.
The Novgorod excavations are interesting from our point of view,
because Novgorod (Holmgård) is known to have had a Scandinavian
population right from the time it was founded in the ninth century and
to have had close contacts with Sweden. It was a very important centre
for Gotland merchants on the trade route to Byzantium.
Voice (track 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 10, 13)
There is no separate word in Old Norse for singing. One speaks,
utters, chants, or delivers a poem. In other words, no
difference is made between reciting solemnly and rhythmically and
singing. Delivery of a strophic poem in a certain metre requires a
melodic formula more than a specific melody. That is how Old Norse
poetry has been sung in the Icelandic tradition and one can see that a
melody could exist in different versions, which fitted different
metres.
The singing of incantations, galdr, is described in the sagas,
but this is not a tradition that has survived – naturally, as this was
a thoroughly pagan practice. The word galdr comes from gala (to
crow, cry, scream, sing incantations) and implies singing in a shrill
voice.
Cow horn (track 15)
The two oldest music horns with finger holes so far discovered in
Scandinavia are well preserved, and both are made of horn from heifers
about three years old. They were found in Sweden, one horn dates back
to the sixth century and the other to about 950 A.D. The Swedish custom
of playing calls and melodies on such horns has carried on unbroken
right up to our own time. The Viking horn from 950 is completely
intact, and the 'Riksspelman' (state musician) Pelle Jacobsson, who has
been permitted to play on it, told us when we first met him that only a
slight adjustment was needed before he could play all his melodies on
this horn that is more than one thousand years old!
References to music horns from the Viking period are known from the
riddles in the Anglo-Saxon manuscript, The Exeter Book, which
dates from the last half of the tenth century. The famous Bayeux
Tapestry, which was woven shortly after 1066, depicts a horn player
playing at a feast. Other and more detailed pictures from the eleventh
century also show a technique of playing completely identical with the
one traditionally used in Sweden, where one hand partially stops the
bell, exactly like the modern French horn.
Bone flutes
Bone flutes from the Viking period have been found in large numbers all
over the North. Most of them were made of sheep's bone, but some were
made of bone from deer, pigs, dogs, geese, eagles, swans and cranes.
Vulture's bone flute (track 2, 6, 8, 12, 14)
Traditional Gaita (three-hole flute) from the province of Salamanca,
Spain.
The Roblea gaita is an overblowing flute with only three holes. It
represents the only living European bone flute tradition, which is
today carried on by José Maria Valiente, who lives in the Spanish
province of Salamanca. Made of bone from the griffon vulture and
mounted with a mouthpiece of goat's horn, the construction of the flute
could shed new light on the secret behind preserved crane bone flutes
from the Viking period. Few holes at the lower end and lack of a lipped
mouth-hole – characteristics of this type of flute – have always led to
the conclusion that these flutes had been discarded, but when compared
with the vulture bone-gaita, they could suddenly be seen as overblowing
flutes, perhaps mounted with a mouthpiece of some material other than
bone – a material that has not been preserved in the earth.
Ram's bone flute (track 4, 10)
The ram's bone flute is a reconstruction of the most common bone flute
played in Viking times. A small recorder or flageolet-like
construction, where overblowing is only partly possible and where the
number and the size of the finger holes determine the range and the
chromatic potential. This type of flute was still made and played by
Norwegian and Swedish shepherd boys in Oppdal and Västergötland far
into the nineteenth century.
Hornpipe (track 3, 11)
The wooden part is a copy of an earth find on Falster, Denmark, c
950.
Chanters of this kind from Viking times have also been found in Lund,
York, and Frisia. The pipe quite clearly belongs to the shawm family,
as the tones in the pipe are produced by means of a reed, probably in
the form of a rush with a single cut beating reed. The pipe may have
been constructed as a hornpipe with air blown directly through a horn
thus shielding the reed – just as Kaj Kok and we have chosen to
interpret it.
However, it could also have been a chanter of a bagpipe construction
with air drawn in through a separate tube into a leather sack or as a
melody pipe in a so-called bladder pipe, where air is drawn in through
the bladder of a pig or some other animal.
Cowbells (track 7, 8, 12)
Esk uses two antique cowbells of hammered sheet iron. Miriam Andersén
plays on one, which her grandfather, kicked out of the earth in a
forest in Dalarna. Poul Høxbro uses a cowbell purchased from Degeberga
antiques market.
Big and small bells of hammered sheet iron have a long history in
Europe. Animals wore bells of metal and wood and a completely intact
specimen, identical with ours, was found in a toolbox from the tenth
century on the Swedish island of Gotland.
Bones (track 2, 6, 7, 12)
Traditional Irish bones.
Clappers / castanets of bone are to the percussionist what the bone
flute is to the wind player, namely one of the oldest instruments.
Beautifully carved specimens dating from c 3000 BC have been found in
Egypt and popular playing traditions are known in almost all European
countries. In Sweden the tradition is known from medieval murals and
also from folk music. In the nineteenth century Swedish musicians
switched to carving the 'bones' in wood and calling them
'snatterpinnar'.
Translation: Rosemary Sorensen
Instruments:
Eirharpa by Roland Suits, Estonia
Gaita by José Maria Valiente, Spain
Ram's bone flute by Gustaf Ailing, Sweden
Hornpipe by Kaj Kok, Denmark
Cow horns by Börs Anders Öhman and Hornper Pettersson, Sweden