AUDIO EXAMPLES OF PLAUSIBLE RECONSTRUCTIONS OF NORSE MUSIC BELOW: This is a very basic, general and introductory overview of what little we do know of the music of Scandinavia during the Viking Age. Here is the link to the Ensemble Mare Balticum's recordings which I mention in the video, in which you will hear historically and archeologically informed reconstructions of what Norse music may likely have sounded like using scientific methodology (it's mostly the first ten minutes that deals with the Viking age, as the rest is centred on post-Christianisation Scandinavian music, I especially recommend starting at the 7th minute as the first parts are only demonstrations of war horns and military calls using lurs): th-cam.com/video/g8N3eG0u_OU/w-d-xo.html Here is also my humble attempts in which I illustrate all the historical elements talked about in this video, from the instrumentation to the heterophonic, and heptatonic-diatonic melodic framework with pentatonic tendencies: Lyre improvisation: th-cam.com/video/CfYfdb0oHfE/w-d-xo.html Thrymskvida Song: th-cam.com/video/wtTPbkvxY6k/w-d-xo.html This is my previous video on the subject of overtone throat singing in Norse culture: th-cam.com/video/gr9586Dlq4E/w-d-xo.html Sources: "What did they sound like? Reconstructing the music of the Viking Age by Chihiro Larissa Tsukamoto" www.academia.edu/31493503/What_did_they_sound_like_Reconstructing_the_music_of_the_Viking_Age "People and Their Soundscape in Viking-Age Scandinavia Critical Reflections in a Music-Archaeological Perspective" by Cajsa S. Lund www.academia.edu/31773185/Cajsa_S_Lund_People_and_Their_Soundscape_in_Viking_Age_Scandinavia_Critical_Reflections_in_a_Music_Archaeological_Perspective_Studien_zur_Musikarch%C3%A4ologie_VII 00:00 Intro 01:58 The “Viking” genre isn’t historical 04:45 What we do know: the instruments 10:54 The Norse were not culturally separate from the rest of Northern Europe 15:20 Heptatonic and diatonic music 17:20 Pentatonic music 18:52 Heterophony 22:40 Conclusion
Really enjoyed the video and the information relayed, thank you for putting in the work to present it to us. As an aside, the first time I heard the Sámi language, and songs I immediately thought of North American Indigenous language and song, more specifically North Central U.S. to Northern Canada. It's not an exact match, but the sound is similar to my ear. The clothing and color patterns of their clothes and items are also similar. Have you listened to much of the language and song of North American Indigenous people?
To me there are 2 songs from the Ensemble Mare Balticum link that reminds me of what I would associate with a bit older traditional folk music from Sweden. The very first song, the one played on bone flute (starts at 00.00), sounds very much like the kind of melodies I would hear when people played cow horn at "fäbodar". There were gatherings to show the traditional fäbod-life where people would show kulning and play cow horns. Then the song Grímur Á Miðalnesi around 47 minutes in, this is a faeroese folk song. And if I remember right it is one of the kvaðdansur, and could be seriously old.
As a Norwegian schooled in old Norwegian instrument making I think I can provide some insight from the Norwegian perspective. Our folk music is distinguished from the other Nordic countries in that the most common scale used is based on the "willow flute" . It has two interlocking natural tone scales which gives you a scale so cool the Vikings definitely must have liked it. And the oldest Norwegian folk songs I know uses the scale. There's still people in the dark, remote forests that keep teaching the old songs and ways of singing them..
"They were tall as date palms, painted from head to toe in strange markings, with strange leather armor with studded iron bolts for no reason. Their hair is even more bewildering, shaved at the sides but jutting out like a chicken crest with an unecessary amount of braids otherwise. Their clothes seem all entirely grey or brown and devoid of color, not to mention covered in shit. There is a blue mist that oppresses these lands, and only Allah knows why. The heathens never even wear helmets to battle, but are successful in every fight. Their swords were forged in witchcraft for I have seen them slice through mail and helm as though they were made of butter." -An actual account by Ibn Fadlan
As a Danish history buff I just want to say THANK YOU for calling out the atrocities "Hollywood" has done to the image of Scandinavia in the Viking period. Also, to anyone who don't know, the people of the same lands in the same times who never went on raids or trading trips were not Vikings. To "go viking" was an activity. Not a title or a culture in and of itself.
As a Faroese person im also glad that this video tells about that we are very different musically. We the Faroese are have things like Chain dance and Singing Kvæði which has been a thing for us for hundreds of years and ive never heard that anyone else in Scandinavia still do it today
It’s also the wave edgy neo-pagans who have grudges against their Christian parents and use that identity to rebel, yet their only concept comes from Hollywood and videogames 😆
@@hitrapperandartistdababy "Vinland Saga is a Japanese historical manga series written and illustrated by Makoto Yukimura." Really? Modernized mumbo jumbo about the Nordic people written by someone from the other side of the planet :P
@@Schmorgus You are really saying this under a video from someone just as removed... in fact you are likely only a little less removed than someone in Japan as the fact it has been over a millennia is way more relevant than someone's geographical location. Any Modern person in the Western world is so far removed from the life of people in that Age... You are also judging the accuracy of it off something as insignificant as the ethnicity of it's writer, which has no bearing on their historical knowledge nor the people they may have consulted with for the historical aspects. And again you are saying all of this under this video where a Canadian talks about Norse music...
@@slappy8941 Anyone with a minimal English education can appreciate Luci Micle’s inadvertent play on words without stumbling over the word wonder, as the writer’s intent is obvious. Maybe you are the one here who needs to dedicate more time to reading…and etiquette
*Arabic version of Farya Faraji added to collection* This is one of the many reasons why you are the best music composer, your likeability is limitless. You are also one of the few who, in addition to putting passion into your content, have the pleasure of sharing knowledge with all of us. Even if it is music belonging to my enemies I will watch this video because I already know that there will be interesting things, since music it is a universal way of communication.
On bowed instruments: there are clear indications in archaeological finds from the 7th and 8th century in Norway and Sweden that there was close contact with central eurasian nomads in the iron age/migration age. Horse gear in turkish style and horse burials etc.
@@faryafaraji Being Swedish I remember something of being taught in history class that while old norseare most know for their viking raids into Europe, they had a (now) lesser known trade network that was pretty damn huge for it's time in the east. The kinda stuff that eventually led to Kiev being founded around year 400. Correction after a short wiki dive. Kiev was probably founded 400 CE by trade between the east and Scandinavia, this is a few hundred years before the "Viking age" which began around 800 CE.
@@faryafaraji To further this, many proto-norse and even proto-germanic words as well as the runic system are EERILY similar to Turkic runes and words and names from Tengriism. It seems highly likely that a lot early proto-Germanic culture actually came via present day Ukraine. What was then the Scythian and Circassian areas, perhaps as early as the Yamanaya peoples. Turkic nomads who found themselves in northern Europe, rather than the standard theory of: It migrated upwards from the mediterranean slowly.
@@grumpycup4762 Norse and Germanic people likely have a common ancestor with some Turkic nomads, NOT that Turkic nomads migrated to northen Europe and became the Germanic and Norse people.
It’s true as well the Welsh bowing as early as the early 600s. One of the string instrument bridges found in Scotland from the Iron Age in cranog is flat. For bowing? I think strong, common dna and culture between parts of Europe and Central Asia / Eastern Europe continued passed the original Yamnaya migrations. Not to mention just long term traditions, musical stylings and syntax surviving. very similar to rural Britain to the Appalachia.
Thank you for the excellent lesson. What separated the Nordic peoples and made them the Vikings (an occupation, not an ethnic group, being related to 'riever') was not their weapons, tactics, clothes, music, or alphabet, but their ships. The flat-bottomed, wide, double-teardrop ships could sail ocean coasts, be dragged or even carried short distances by small groups, and rowed or sailed anywhere there was two feet of water. This made it a latter-day helicopter, enabling attacks by surprise on settlements where the terrain would normally prevent them. When rievers can appear from nowhere, pillage and burn, and (most critically) be gone before resistance can organize, that will certainly bestow a mystique as a separate kind of creature. The fact that in every other way they are like their neighbors would get lost.
Wasn't it Saxon King Alfred the Great who built and maintained a navy himself? With their own ships serving as early warning lookouts and also to cut off any raiders' escape route, the Viking longship advantage was finally negated. It is striking in all of human history, that nations without much of a naval tradition, can catch up within a generation to build and operate a very effective (French) or even superior navy of their own (Romans).
@@AudieHolland It's absolutely true that technological advantages diminish over time as those on the losing end adapt to them. The Brits in World War II put radar on the rear of their bombers to detect fighters. It worked very well, for a while. Then the Germans learned to jam the radar, then follow it. In a short time it was a life-saver, then useless, then a liability.
This is a very standard break down. I don't go with the ghost occupation view. They had their own kings and their own ceremony. There was also something about ships also, they have ships they dug up which were iron lined and not flat, and once you include Normans as Vikings you have to leave the simple communal raids theory. Vikings were their own culture and lived along the sea traveled and had their own kings. The common people of the north were cow herders and just lived in those places.
Excellent. Einar Selvik doesn't say anything different from what you say about Wardruna's music. Also, his own interest is really in pre-Viking era cultures. I'd love to hear the two of you in conversation!
Definitely, these bands have always been very open about the nature of their music. Any of the blame concerning how people think this music is historical lies on the audience, not on them; they’ve never mislead anyone and have provided us with incredible music over the years (that said I’m probably biased because I’m a massive Einar Sevik fanboy haha)
@@sykotikmommy And yet, ironically, they worship a Satanic character (rather, that should be plural, as the bible has multiple gods, but not the trinity they pretend I'm referring to).
@@sykotikmommy Like much of Christian religion, they just overlayed their tradition, holidays etc. on top of standing pagan ones, so it is likely that the lyrics would change, but the type of music would remain similar.
About the Norse (and the Slavs and Finnic) getting the bowed instruments directly from the Byzantians. There was this old bowed instrument, the gudok, that was used in Rus (at least in Novgorod for sure). As far as I could find out, there is evidenve from the 10th and 11th century of fiddle-like instruments being used in Novgorod at least. And interestengly, it was lost for some time, but it was preserved by the Finnic Komi, who were had a cultural exchange with the Novgorodians (the Ilmen Slovenians) for a pretty long time. The Komi call it the sigudõk btw Also, my impression was that people were also scared of the Norse for not being Christian. There was something similar with the Hungarians when they just appeared (at the same time), maybe even seen as a reminiscent of the Huns
@@robinrehlinghaus1944 They were called the Magyars (which many still call them including Hungarians themselves) and they migrated from central asia like a lot, and I mean a lot, of different tribes and steppe people during the invasion of the Huns. They all used to be Tengri at that point in history and were culturally very similar because of that and the nomadic lifestyle.
@@robinrehlinghaus1944 are you joking? All slavs are basically the result of a persian woman that was assaulted by a mongol or a hun, haha. They think they are europeans but even with their aryan features they cannot fool anyone these neanderthals.
I also agree that the oldest unbroken tradition of Scandinavia vocals is the women's calling tradition. I was able to study Iron Age bone flutes this past summer. Between bone flutes, cow and goat horns and neverlur, and women's vocal music I pretty much have it all! ;) Honestly I don't think they used drums. Since there is no mention of it in later sagas and Edda, no pictorial or artistic portrayal, and no archeological evidence. We use staff and stick for rhythm in Minnesotan Iron Age musical re-enactment. We also use the iron jangles in ritual music. I think Loki's "beating on the vett" is about staff rhythm on the barrel lid or coffin box lid. We added a cross stick that we call tein...so, stav and tein. Great information here! Thank you for your work and generous sharing.
in norwegian traditional music from the 1800s, there is "trampetakt" where you stamp the floor to keep the rythm. the sami drum tho is a VERY old traditional instrument, and it has been found all the way from the south to the north, AND the viking age.
yes! in traditional dance we rely on the fiddler's foot while the hardingfele can sometimes be hard to follow. Yes the Sami drum is very old and they lived all over Norway - but the Indo-European Norsemen did not use it in mystical practice. There is no mention of it in any Edda, Saga, or grave find of the völur or other spiritual or religious figure - @@Dejawolfs
Drums were present in Sami populations, under the name "runebomme" in Norwegian. Our earliest written source of this is from 1100-ish, so we're not entirely sure how far back they go or if there was any overlap of such a fashion between cultures. I wouldn't rule out drums, but as you say, there's little evidence to confirm it.
@@KazeinHD well. it seems to me that drums had become associated with the devil, and unchristian. the runebomme is directly connected to pagan magical rituals. the carolingians doesn't seem to have used drums, yet, they were a revival of the western-roman empire, which had used drums, the tympanum, which itself derived from an ancient greek instrument. it seems strange that the romans, which had such a large influence culturally through the iron trade on norway, not to mention the rest of the world, did not also have some influence musically.
It had to be said. Modern pop culture adaptations, unfortunately, are seen as factual in the minds of a lot of people. Great video, as always Aḥmad ibn Faḍlān ibn al-ʿAbbās ibn Rāšid ibn Ḥammād, AKA Antonio Banderas from the 13th Warrior
Totally agreed, the weight of pop culture often takes over factual reality from: Aḥmad ibn Faḍlān ibn al-ʿAbbās ibn Rāšid ibn Ḥammād, AKA Antonio Banderas from the 13th Warrior
I think groups like Wardruna are sort of like the Scandinavian version of A Tribe Called Red. ATCR make modern electronica music but they utilized Native American instrumentation and vocal styles as a way to keep these things alive while still making it interesting to a modern audience.
I don't know how traditional the indigenous elements of ATCR are, but Wardruna has very little/almost nothing in common with Scandinavian folk music (same with the costumes and face paint and all that), it's more straightforwardly new age/fantasy. nothing wrong with that, but it's definitly not a fusion of tradition and modernity, it's a wholly modern riff on the contemporary fantasy viking.
What a great and informative video! Einar Selvik even says himself that his music is not authentic of the time, but rather builds on it in a modern sense, since no one really knows what the music sounded like back then anyway. And the throat singing always stuck out as weird to me. I still headbang to the modern takes on Viking music though 😁 anyway, this video goes well together with what my history teachers taught about the vikings back in school, but it takes it a few steps further. I'm Swedish so Viking stuff is part of the basic school curriculum.
My thinking is: if you want to know what the most traditional sounds are for a culture, look at lullabies, the things we sing to kids. Media always want to make things exotic, but honestly, I think "twinkle twinkle little star" or the Dutch "In de maneschijn" is probably what music sounded like back then and it's fine.
I'd take it a step broader, though, and say that lullabies are a good starting point to understand the musical language of a culture. Then you try to connect with the religion and personality of the people, but for real.
That expectations vs. reality rugpull at 11:50 was absolutely savage. I think the modern "viking folk" genre is like a spiritual successor to the Norwegian black metal scene... You start with edgelord middle class teenagers looking for something pagan and primal to shock society, and a few decades later you've got very serious throat-singing white dudes with mullets, playing music that also has a clear yearning to convey something primal and "alien". You hit the nail on the head pointing out that a lot of these groups aren't trying to be historical- more than a few are very open about that. They're not going for a reconstruction so much as a feeling or an artistic idea- but even those are still ideas that are very colored in by familiar medieval tropes.
Not only a spiritual successor, an actual successor/offspring. Wardruna's Selvik and Gaahl were both in Gorgoroth, and countless nordic folk artists overlap with black metal.
We may know that they're going for an artistic play on "Viking/pagan" tropes, but my experience with fans of this genre is that it's being taken as literal historical representation of the culture/music. It's cashing in on the average Joe who just got done binge watching Vikings on Netflix and now wants to channel their inner Ragnar. And imho the music sucks 😂
@@prestonhebb1380 thats so true, specially among nerds (video game nerds, fantasy nerds, anime nerds, etc), they don't care about history or culture, they only care about things that a child would find "Bad ass". Folk Metal has always sounded "fake" to me, and these "not Metal" folk ensembles of today still carry some of that "fakeness" for me. Like they trying way too hard to sound ancient and esoteric.
@@GabAssbreaker yeah a lot of modern day pagan/viking metal to me sounds very kitschy in ways that 1970's hard rock bands influenced by folk music did not (think: Jethro Tull, Thin Lizzy, Wishbone Ash etc) precisely because they did NOT try so hard to sound ancient
as a researcher myself (in a different field - art history) possessing a big amount of curiosity and affection for music history.... this was totally enlightening and fun to watch. thank you. i love it when fellow researchers diffuse their own knowledge for others so freely on this plattform! also in love with the format, the jokes and the sources provided! bravo!!✨👏
I was waiting for you to play an ABBA song with Norse instruments - taking modern Scandinavian music, but breaking it down to the basics of what Medieval Norse music would've sounded like lol!
The opening was funny. I'm from Sweden, the easiest way to actually look into the music would probably be Iceland, since they still speak closest to what people sounded like in the middle ages, we also have a small part of Sweden that wrote with the futhark up until just a hundred years or so ago.
I know Heilung or Wardruna isn't reproduction of historically accurate however, I do like them. Wagner's Flight of the Valkyries is only iconic to me because of Apocalypse Now. I have a very strong interest in actual and historically accurate music because it seems to me a window into the cultures of my ancestors. I really appreciate your efforts to bring forth actuality. Thank you. You gained a new subscriber.
It's such a pleasure to listen to someone who so obviously knows their subject, and a bonus when their presentation is as engaging as yours. Fascinating and entertaining - plus I learnt a lot! Thank you!
Yeah this is pretty much what I thought was the case. Nice to hear a historian confirm the instruments is where the historical accuracy ends. Maybe one day in the future our descendants can utilise time travel to hear see what it all sounded like
I really appreciate your authenticity and effort you put into your content. Much respect! Btw 9:50 The Lur sounds like it could come from the Celtic peoples and 9:57 the Jaw Harp is the most tribal sounding instrument in all of mankind in my opinion. Something about that frequency chills me in ways that feel primal.
Well, we dont listen Wardruna and Heilung for "historical accuracy". Their music is an modern evolution of ancient music. Wich is good as it is. I'm really impressed by your dedication and knowledge about music and history it's always interesting This is what I love with our era. We can look back at history and amplify it with all the knowledge we gather from the whole world.
it's only a modern evolution of ancient music in the way that most music is an evolution of older roots. nothing about it is particularly more historical to the setting.
This is the closest you’ve come to talking about traditional balto-finnic music lol. Also cool video, i didn’t know that the tagalharpa/jouhikko is considered more karelian than scandinavian!
Interestingly though, it is also a traditional instrument in Estonia among swedish-estonians in particular, and is sometimes referred to as a "swedish kannel" over there. So if we assume the swedes brought it there, it raises the question why it never became popular in sweden? It's not easy to find much info on it online, but there's apparently a book that wikipedia links to that talks about it (The Rough Guide to World Music)
An almost exact instrument exists in the Shetlands called the gue. It's a bowed lyre, and seems to have been introduced during the "Viking Age" by Norse settlers, as well as the language, which evolved into norn, which was spoken in the area until relatively recently. The word fiddle in english was also introduced from norse fiðla. I personally feel that due to it's similarity, the jouhikko was probably introduced by scandinavians, and maintained in Karelia.
@@varangjar1544 it is propable that the scandinavians may yabe introduced atleast the predecessor of the modern day jouhikko to the karelians and finns (maybe they got it from trade along the volga when they met nomadic peoples like the bulgars?). Also i really hope that norn can be revived
@@lovebaltazar4610 I’d only say we should be careful when it comes to nomenclature, almost every time a culture names something after another culture, it’s not an indication of its origins. Were we to take the name Flamenco at face value, we’d assume the musical style came from the Netherlands, because Flamenco means “Flemish/Fleming,” but obviously that’s not the case, and its roots are instead Ibero-Andalusian rather than Flemish. In most of these cases, it’s always that an arbritary association was formed between the element and that foreign culture. Of course the “Swedish” part can actually mean it’s from Sweden, but the possibility of it being a “Flamenco” case is also an option to be considered. At the end of the day, no evidence of bowed instruments has been found in Viking Age Scandinavia. It’s possible that the instrument is called Swedish because the Swedish community in Estonia began using it in Estonia, and their consistent usage generated an association with that community, from which point was called Swedish.
I like to picture old Norse music as more “lighthearted” and joyous after a long day of daily life raising families on the land and sea…..similar to how traditional Irish Celtic music is….I have yet to hear a truly sad “traditional sounding” Irish song…..much like I have yet to hear a sad Mexican Polka or Brazilian Jazz tune ! 🤣 🪗 🇲🇽🌮 Love your brutally yet respectful take on the reality of traditional or speculative ancient musics…subscribed! 👍 ☘️🐸🌼🦆
Traditional Scandinavian folkmusic is almost the oppsite of Irish, its more often than not - not jolly at all. It tend to be something in the lines of: "Three boys are lost, years later three sisters are raped and murdered on their way to church, the three murderers go to the sisters parents disguised as pilgrims for lodging, and bed the mother before its discovered that they murdered the sisters and then in the chaos its revealed that they where infact the lost sons, and they raped and killed their sisters (and fucked their mother)... Then more ppl dies violent deaths...
Sad Irish traditional song. The Croppy Boy. Even if you don't know the story or lyrics. Centuries of lost wars gave them plenty of mournful songs, but they're not the ones you play to have a good time at the pub.
@EmilReiko Yea.... There is a quiet heaviness about Scandinavians. The loud, boisterous, cheat beating Vikings are nearly certainly false. Those wild Celts are projecting themselves onto us. One thing I note about modern Scandinavians is that they often actually strike me as creative and off the wall in their own unique way. And theres a sort of deadpan humor, but with a lot of snark. I.e. at a hotel in Berlin, someone hit the elevator button too fast when it was full and a Norweigian guy on the elevator said "first time with elevator?" And Scandinavians all make fun of their neighbors. But also I suspect there was a sense of spreading their own way of life, taming and controlling new areas. My mostly Swedish dad is a really odd person. His humor is definitely on the "wtf even is that" spectrum. Personality traits I get from him that make me think of what Vikings were actually like are things like tending to prepare for situations such that the chance of success is very high, as well as a mindset of seeking unorthodox methods of getting ahead, or trying to find new clever ways of doing things. It's like "find what works and do that, fuck all the people talking about this wrong stupid way of doing it"
As a Norwegian, the amount of neckbeard "norse pagans" that came after the tv show "vikings" was a huge blow to our culture and history. Most of our ancestors were famers and fisherman.
I can assure you, there is plenty of people out there that enjoy that series without thinking it's true! We all know that they had lasers and motor boat, not that shitty parody of weapons and drakkars that they used.
I mostly started watching your videos to have something I can talk about with my brother, but now I just really like your content and feel like it's time well spent on this platform.
If you want to find a dead-sure example of how Norse/Viking music sounded like, I do give it to you that we _do_ have one example. And that is Norwegian kved and stev singing. The reason I feel confident in that is that if you go to Ireland and Scotland, you'll find a very similar way of singing called Sean-Nos which they claim dates back to at least the 1300s. And there's some written evidence that kved dates back to old Norse as well. Sean-nos and kved/stev is basically the same style, just in two different languages. The contact between Ireland/Scotland and Norway was at the greatest during the viking times. A large part of mitochondrial DNA in Western Norway and Iceland is of Irish origin due to the contact (eh-hem) that existed back then. They brought a lot of women back. And there's Norse influence on the gaelic language, from that very period. The most likely reason why this style of singing only exist in Ireland, Scotland and Norway is in my mind from the contact they had back then, as this contact was gradually lost, and since we know both kved and sean-nos dates about that far back. I do not think sean-nos could have made it to Norway, or kved could have made it to Ireland, any later than the viking age just because there wasn't all that great a contact between Ireland and Norway after ca 1200. Where it originated who knows, my guess probably in Ireland/Scotland, but if so it still was a music style the vikings/norse would have sung. Here's an example of how it sounds like in Norwegian: th-cam.com/video/VtWPTO1duyE/w-d-xo.html And here's an example of how it sounds like in Gaelic: th-cam.com/video/To8vz3V3kEQ/w-d-xo.html There you go. That's what viking music would have sounded like. You're welcome.
Thank you! Interesting- I will try to find some examples off Sean - nos 🤗🙏❤️. As a person from the west coast of Norway with a DNA with 34% irish- without a clue were it comes from.. so this is interesting
Hey Farya, please do a video on Irish Sean Nos singing one day! You’re videos are an amazing contribution to ethnomusicology and I think more people need to hear about Irish singing and it’s potentially mysterious origins :)
This video blew my mind away with all the musical history I didn’t know! Always love learning new things! To me, I always treated modern Norse music or neofolk as a “reformation” of the historical music and not a resurrection of it. Cause to me music is constantly evolving as it did throughout history. Like martial arts or folklore they change along with the times as they are past on from generation to generation. Even during the Viking Age what was music to a Norseman in 793ad was probably a lot different from music to a Norseman in 900ad given they are pretty much a century apart. Tho bands like Wardruna, Heilung and Skald are not historical, they are the continuation of traditional folk music and bring modern people a closer connection to the culture.
Day 3 of exploring and falling in love with your channel after the Orientalism vid... You are basically the ProfessorDaveExplains of music, and I'm all for it ❤
Great video. I think it was Bernard Cornwell that had a character ask, "Are they viking?" The answer was, "No, they are trading." It emphasized that the Vikings were just traveling traders around Northern Europe who occasionally did some extra-sharp dealing. Later, of course, they followed the money, but they took their families along.
I appreciate that Ibn Fadlan took his time to tell us how actual norse music would've sounded like. I've known too many people who thought Wardruna or Heilung is what actual norse music sounded like.
This was quite interesting. Something I hope you go into more in the next video is that the "viking" bands you spoke about never claimed to be that. The music Wardruna writes is their interpretation of Nordic folk and shamanic texts along with just plain ambient music. Heilung are pretty much the same vein but more Germanic.
This is exactly the kind of video I was looking for. I'm a really big fan of exactly as you say, Wardruna and Heilung, but part of me wondered how Norse it really is, because it sounds plausible to our ears, but there's just no way we could ever know exactly.
Lebanese weddings are the absolute best! You made laugh today, which was greatly needed after being glued to watching the utter destruction going on right now in the region.
Modern "viking" music is great for expressing the primal aspects of life that their Pagan stories describe. These musicians carry on a spiritual legacy, and it's up to them to interpret and express it.
When talking about Norse music we should not forget scaldic poetry. While also a form of poetry, it was also a musical genre called quads. This is the type of music most frequently described in the sagas. We have quads surviving from the late medieval, and it is possibly the best approximation to what norse music sounded like. I will post some examples.
The "Blease? Is there anyone hiir? Blease chelp!" at the end was peak Arabic, tbh. You did that one perfectly. Loved the insight throughout the video, btw, but I just had to comment on your lovely, stereotypical accent.
Great video as usual man. Still waiting for some Karelian Kalevala-esque music though! Also would be cool to see some Karelian joik as all you ever see online is Sami joik. How on earth you weren't freezing recording this I have no idea
I am someone that takes part in historical reenactment of the viking age in my country of the Netherlands, a lot of people tend to forget that a lot of the norse travelers that would have arrived on our shores were merchants, trading with the locals. At the same time the locals of the dutch north, the Frisians closely related to the angels and the saxons themselves went on raids and at times even sought aid from the norse in defending against frankish pressure from the south of the country. Frisians by the way are so closely related to the anglo-saxons that old English and modern Frisian are able to be understood by one another, a British documentary crew actually tried this out by attempting to purchase a brown cow in rural Fryslan, and it worked.
Thank you. I have tried and tried to explain to a young friend (who thinks he's a Viking) that modern bands are producing modern music, not actual Norse songs. Maybe this will explain it to him without denigrating some enjoyable music.
You are a Montrealer? I subscribed a while back for the music but having a brother Montrealer makes it even better! Cheers from an ex-West Island boy 👍🏻
I'm Scandinavian, I have the cheek-bones, the grey-blue eyes and a stare that will give men bigger than me pause but i have never heard anything about Viking music. I think the earliest thing we have was noted down is from the 13th century. Used to be on the radio as pause music. You did a great job though and for what it is worth I think the Persians was even more bad-ass than the Vikings ;)
Some groups like Eldrim are pretty alright. Not accurate but very pleasant to the ear. Love that you’re educating folks on the oft forgotten culture of the Norse rather than perpetuating the mascot culture of Vikings.
So enjoyed this video! Happened upon it while browsing. Your narrative, expertise and HUMOR were fantastic. Look forward to watching other videos in your library🤙
Very disconcerting to click onto a video about the Norse music during the Viking Age and be immediately greeted by the ol' salam alaykum, but I'm definitely here for it. Alaykum salam.
Ibn Fadlan made me crack up really hard, this was both fun and educating. Thanks for correcting some things, especially the throatsinging which I agree sounds cool, but was never a viking thing. I have stubbornly refused to watch the modern viking series, just watching the trailers made me realize I'd probably just get annoyed, although I have friends who enjoy them. I should perhaps mention I'm swedish. The vikings may perhaps have had some kind of drum, but I'm guessing they didn't. The traditional way here to create rythm in folkloric music is to clap hands and/or stomp feet. I personally think it goes all the way back to the vikings and earlier. I don't think the vikings adopted the sami drums for two reasons. There is no such drum inherited to our "modern" folkloric tradition, nor any tale of it. Also, the sami and the vikings didn't really intermix, and the sami drums were/are very closely related to the sami religion and mainly used by shamans. The sami drum would more be seen as a religious item than a music instrument, which if you were unlucky could be used to curse you, so I have a hard time seeing why they would have adopted it. But I won't say it never happened, I just deem it highly unlikely. I agree with all your other conclusions about viking music. Thanks again for a great video!
I love "folk" bands like Heilung, Skald and others but I'm aware they probably sound very far from what traditional Norse would've sounded or looked like.It's more like a fantasy world. I hope other fans are aware of this as well. However I have this feeling contemporary "Norse" music takes a lot elements from cultures like Mongolian/Native American so they look more exotic, right? Take that band The HU for example, it's going to look way more appealing to young audiences if they make something similar to their sound and visual style than if they just looked like that 12:43. :D Then add some face painting, shamanic stuff, nature-oriented culture, bang! Exotic, cool, whatever...just more appealing! Also I guess the music industry must be a very competitive world, so the key word is attention- another good reason for them to get as distinct as they can.
Thanks for the great content - it’s the first video I’ve seen from you but I’m gonna check out more (hope it doesn’t get too technical, I enjoy music but don’t know shit)! ✨ While the music of the mentioned bands is very dear to me I also think it’s important to keep in mind that they are just bringing aspects of the past into a shape that is not only more enjoyable for modern listeners but also scratch that itch of people to “reject modernity” and give them a (romanticized) concept of roots to connect to.
As someone of Danish/Scandinavian descent, I appreciate this video. Viking wasn't a race, but a lifestyle -many Northern European clans went Viking, and even Scottish clans went Viking.
This is a really good video. I really appreciate your thorough approach and looking at things from all angles. As someone who grew up in the guitar business, who is a musician and obsessed with history, I started digging deeper in the last few years on Western and Northern European music history. It actually started for me along side early American music and the Appalachia, and then brought me back to Europe. What I do feel is that some of Cecil Sharps work in rhe more isolated parts of Britain could hold some similarities to the Norse. Also the Highlands have strong Norwegian ties, such as hardanger fiddle. I realize I’m talking in some different time periods here, but some things in folk traditions tend to stick around for quite a while. Such as the reconstructed documented Anatolian scale , (I believe it was Anatolia, or close by )major Phrygian scale from 3000 years ago. That scale has been pretty wide spread throughout parts of the Middle East and Europe for a long time. Anyway, there seems to be evidence of bowed lyre playing in Wales dating back to around 600 AD. Some speculating an independent development, maybe maybe not, but non the less that dates back pretty far and regional playing styles really set the tone. Then you have the discovery of two lyre bridges in Scotland dating back around 2500 years. Their have been as you know a good number Germanic lyres found that date well into the first millennium AD as well a Scrythian helmet depiction of a similar lyre. The roughly 3000 year old bronze Germanic Lurs, and later wood examples I’ve heard have a Mixolydian series to my ears. Bottom line I would say in terms of musical scales, pentatonics, Mixolydian, Dorian and aeolian, including various gapped version and shifting between them, such as thirds would be my guess for old Norse, based off of the traditions near by. And of corse untempered with some micro tonal elements, like with the trad rural British singers. On the other end, I’ve also read about ancient accounts of the use diads in some areas of Northern European traditional vocal music, and perhaps instrumental. Thanks again for your hard work. Incidentally not a bad Arab accent, I got a kick out of it anyway Best
I mean scandinavian culture & music of the middle ages certainly resembled broader european music & culture, but if you further go back to more „tribal times", the picture may drastically change. The scandinavian peninsula of the middle ages was a fairly advanced, urban civilisation and didn't only consist of rural, tribal communities anymore, like in the bronze- and iron age. I mean we have thousands of stone carvings from bronze age scandinavia, which oftentimes show war- and hunting scenes, which gives us an insight into the thinking and culture of the scandinavians back then. In the great migration period, which is the time period that marks the transition from antiquity to the middle ages, there was lot of cultural and societal change in europe. An entirely new religion was introduced and spread and europeans went from tribal societies to the first kingdomes and city-states. The scandinavians converted to christianity pretty late, but ofc they were influenced by the changes in mainland europe within all this time they remained pagan.
I have a Tunisian friend who always talks about Viking music being an evolved form of Carthage music! In fact, I find this fact, theory, or whatever it is, very interesting... based on the many details he talks about and explains about the Carthaginian civilization.
So, again, it might provide some influence and that would be an interesting theory but we can’t say “all of their music was based on that of Carthage”. Discussions very easily devolve into a negating of local culture in favour of exotic inspiration. Influence, however, is not impossible.
@@thegreenmage6956 I totally agree... I can never assert or believe that one civilization inherited its art or culture completely from another one! There are always touches of modernization and adjustments for any legacy; whatever its classification. But at the same time, we can always relate some legacies to its earlier origin in an attempt to understand "where was the idea originated."
There's an interesting, and surprisingly short book named 'The Tonal Language of Older Swedish Folk Musik', by Sven Ahlbäck. His investigation is a bit of a "reconstructionist" approach, looking at recordings from the early 20th century and transcriptions from the 19th century of old songs. These songs have a few interesting traits in common, which put them quite apart from more modern folk music - however, even then we can basically just state '18th century, possibly going back to late medieval times at the very least?' Here's a few traits he finds, however: * A fixed scalar frame of root, major second and perfect fifth. Other intervals are somewhat loose - the third may vary so much as to be neutral. * A melodic motif of fourth-major third-root is very popular, and can occur in many transposed positions. This motif can be transposed around, but will often cause the scale to be altered a bit - however, the fifth, the root and the second of the scale are always kept unaltered; in C (both major and minor) these are possible: [C B G], [Ab G Eb], [G F# D], [F E C], [Eb D Bb]. Microtonal alterations are common on each of the degrees except root, second, fifth. These motifs can be chained, and often are, so melodic gestures like c B G F# D Eb D Bb', where G belongs to two such motifs are very common. Just playing around with this motif is basically 90% of getting something to sound like 18th century Swedish folk music. * The sixth of the scale isn't used very often at all. * Some use of what corresponds to descending major chord arpeggios in root voicing also occur. * Chords are not structurally meaningful. * Monophony (so probably actually heterophony unless solo) However, Ahlbäck notes that these traits also differ in many ways from conservative Norwegian music traditions. He makes no claim as to how far back these features go, and which features are innovations and which are retentions. He does trace some of the influence of a few important instruments on the scale design: willow flute, cow horn, jew's harp. The translation into English was published fairly recently, I'd recommend it for anyone interested: www.uddatoner.com/markdown-2/index.html#!/The-Tonal-Language-of-Older-Swedish-Folk-Music/p/533161533/category=146064501
Also, the Frisians and Norse had very close connections, already known to the romans due to Frisian/Herulian pirate raids in the late third century. They considered each other as cousins and were allies against Charlemagne 500 years later.
😂 you’re reaction to the accurate clothing made me laugh. Their actual attire was definitely underwhelming to what we’ve been fed through decades of books, tv, and movies. And as an aside, I keep waiting for the wolves to make an appearance in your background.
I'm so happy you brought up the tagelharpa or hiiurootsi as Karelians or Finns would call it. It is one of the instruments along with the kantele that holds imense cultural history and value to us but only the kantele and jouhikko are atributed to us in the mainstream. Side note Joik is overtone singing but not from the throat. For people interested in medieval music from Scandinavia check out TSB.
I feel vindicated. I'm a Norse heathen but Wardruna and Heilung are just not my groove, and I get some weird looks from my fellow heathens when I say so. Folk music on simple traditional instruments is perfectly lovely. The heavy metal warrior fantasy has its place, and gives people a lot of joy, but if I really want to "travel back in time" and evoke a vibe of days long past... they miss the mark for me. Thanks for this enlightening and very validating video! 😊💖
I think the prevalence of Tagelharpa in "viking music" is due to the strong presence of bowed instruments in scandinavian folk music, mainly fiddle but also a bunch of more obscure ones such as nyckelharpa, moraharpa, hardangerfela. If you have previous experience with swedish folk music something that looks and sounds like an "ancient" violin probably just has the right vibes. On the topic of tonality in scandinavian folk music it could be worth mentionen that there is indeed quite a bit of microtonality, at least here in Sweden. I haven't studied the harmony close, but it is very much there. Another cool thing is the usage of odd meters in swedish dance music. In some regional varieties of Polska, a 3/4 rythm, is played with the last beat drawn out in an almost rubato kinda way. It's the same logic as 7/8, but it's not marked by a beat but rather feels like if the music is taking an extra deep breath. I think these stylistic elements are considered old, even in the context of traditional music. If you'd like to dig deeper, Elfdalian music is probably a good place to start, it's a very historicaly isolated region that has it's own language preserving a lot of old norse elements, as well as kept using the runic alphabet into the 20th century.
The lur has been around since the Bronze Age, but back then it was made out of copper alloy. It is interesting to know that the people used that musical instrument in "war-like" contexts and they thought the sound of brazen instruments resemble the sounds of thunder and earthquakes(all related to the gods they worshipped). I wonder if there is a link between this information and the use of lur in the Viking age.
I have a lot of information about the lur. We still practise the old tradition in Twente and it's a proto-germanic tradition that has survived 😊 there are archeological findings from the early ironage from Denmark that contain all the elements of our tradition as how we still celebrate it today in the eastern Netherlands. The tradition almost disapeared during ww2 but it's now making a revival and it's getting more popular again amongst younger people. The lur played a shamanic role in pre Christian Europe. In Sweden they practise kulning which is connected to the same tradition as it was to cause an echo to appear. People though the echo were spirits answering your call, so when people were about to pass, the spirits would be called and they would answer to guide the person who was dying into the spirit world. It was done to make your presence known, to attract the good spirits and ward off the bad ones. In Twente during midwinter we still play the lur (midwinterhoorn) above a well so the echos reach far throughout the whole area. The echo is called "the ancients call" and it's played with a warming drink and good company. After the player is done playing, the neighboring neighborhoods now answer the call letting the player know that he is not alone. So they play back n forth. This stems from the echo that was the spirit answering the call of the lurplayer, letting him know he was in good company. By playing across the land people asked the bad spirits that would take life away to leave and to ask the good spirits to seep new life back into the earth again so the daylight may return and spring may appear for a new cycle. It was the transformative magic of yuletide/joelentied/jultid and with that death was seen as the beginning of new life and not as the end. Joelen in Dutch and low Saxon still means "to howl." Also wolves would answer the lur's call as well and together with the high pitched howling of Kulning, this tradition is the origin of the Mythological creatures of the white women/Tuatha de Dannan (these were the Völva/Veleda), the goddess Danu/Tan(m) (Tamfana) and Nerthus, hellhound and the banshees (from the time when the British isles were still connected to Doggerland.) It's very likely that the lur was originally the shamanic instrument of the ancient Völva to communicate with, and guide the spirits. But with this I'm talking about proto Germanic and proto Indo-European times. The oldest lurs were cowhorns or horns carved out of treestumps. (In Twente we still play the treestumps, only in the town of Markelo they still use the cowhorn.) For the medieval Vikings this had developed to the call to the Valkyries to pick up the dead and bring them to Valhalla/Walhalla.
Was recommended this video out of the blue and really enjoyed it. I, personally, can't stand these "modern Norse/pagan" bands simply because everyone I've ever met who listens to them gets this skewed idea of Norse and "pagan" history in their heads. I know your intent was not to criticize these bands but I think it's important and refreshing to have an expert come out and say "hey, this isn't historical". Great vid! Liked and subscribed
I imagine most of their music was what you'd expect at areas of food and drink and festivities and were probably upbeat and to lighten the mood; low and slow for leisure, etc... They weren't always dour and bloodthirsty...they were human. Though, in the same vein, during ceremonies and rituals they probably chanted and used drums and things like that, but more in a religious setting. Funerals and sacrificial rites were probably sombre; during war they probably had more "brutal" music and singing to psyke-up the warriors (not much different than anywhere else in the world or history).
I agree it probably did sound like how you described it. Even tho i am probably wrong, I always imagined accurate Ancient nordic/Germanic music probably sounded similar to Slavic music with heavy Uralic influence but also slight Celtic and some Roman influence. I imagine it sounded not too different from most European music, but i do imagine it probably was more simple, primitive and archaically Indo-European sounding. I can imagine that especially religious music had a more archaic Eurasian Steppe sound from, ancient proto-Germanic/indo European traditions that resemble Steppe/Siberian music traditions like Overtone singing. And being a sea fairing warrior culture i imagine, chanting was possibly very common.
In the late norwegian medievals and renaissance , about 250 to 450.years after the norse age, the south and central folk music was very much like fiddle based with sticks pounding in the ground, with the music going gradually faster. A small leftover today is the Hallingkast dance music. At the end of the dance, a hat is kicked off from a stick held up high.
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AUDIO EXAMPLES OF PLAUSIBLE RECONSTRUCTIONS OF NORSE MUSIC BELOW:
This is a very basic, general and introductory overview of what little we do know of the music of Scandinavia during the Viking Age.
Here is the link to the Ensemble Mare Balticum's recordings which I mention in the video, in which you will hear historically and archeologically informed reconstructions of what Norse music may likely have sounded like using scientific methodology (it's mostly the first ten minutes that deals with the Viking age, as the rest is centred on post-Christianisation Scandinavian music, I especially recommend starting at the 7th minute as the first parts are only demonstrations of war horns and military calls using lurs):
th-cam.com/video/g8N3eG0u_OU/w-d-xo.html
Here is also my humble attempts in which I illustrate all the historical elements talked about in this video, from the instrumentation to the heterophonic, and heptatonic-diatonic melodic framework with pentatonic tendencies:
Lyre improvisation:
th-cam.com/video/CfYfdb0oHfE/w-d-xo.html
Thrymskvida Song:
th-cam.com/video/wtTPbkvxY6k/w-d-xo.html
This is my previous video on the subject of overtone throat singing in Norse culture:
th-cam.com/video/gr9586Dlq4E/w-d-xo.html
Sources:
"What did they sound like? Reconstructing the music of the Viking Age by Chihiro Larissa Tsukamoto"
www.academia.edu/31493503/What_did_they_sound_like_Reconstructing_the_music_of_the_Viking_Age
"People and Their Soundscape in Viking-Age Scandinavia Critical Reflections in a Music-Archaeological Perspective" by Cajsa S. Lund
www.academia.edu/31773185/Cajsa_S_Lund_People_and_Their_Soundscape_in_Viking_Age_Scandinavia_Critical_Reflections_in_a_Music_Archaeological_Perspective_Studien_zur_Musikarch%C3%A4ologie_VII
00:00 Intro
01:58 The “Viking” genre isn’t historical
04:45 What we do know: the instruments
10:54 The Norse were not culturally separate from the rest of Northern Europe
15:20 Heptatonic and diatonic music
17:20 Pentatonic music
18:52 Heterophony
22:40 Conclusion
i thought your arab accent was spot on lol
should have thrown in a "Bismillah" or two XD
Really enjoyed the video and the information relayed, thank you for putting in the work to present it to us. As an aside, the first time I heard the Sámi language, and songs I immediately thought of North American Indigenous language and song, more specifically North Central U.S. to Northern Canada. It's not an exact match, but the sound is similar to my ear. The clothing and color patterns of their clothes and items are also similar. Have you listened to much of the language and song of North American Indigenous people?
To me there are 2 songs from the Ensemble Mare Balticum link that reminds me of what I would associate with a bit older traditional folk music from Sweden.
The very first song, the one played on bone flute (starts at 00.00), sounds very much like the kind of melodies I would hear when people played cow horn at "fäbodar". There were gatherings to show the traditional fäbod-life where people would show kulning and play cow horns.
Then the song Grímur Á Miðalnesi around 47 minutes in, this is a faeroese folk song. And if I remember right it is one of the kvaðdansur, and could be seriously old.
Are you in front of a green screen or are your actually sacrificing your toes for our sake?
(Also why are you named after a car, i’m new here)
As a Norwegian schooled in old Norwegian instrument making I think I can provide some insight from the Norwegian perspective. Our folk music is distinguished from the other Nordic countries in that the most common scale used is based on the "willow flute" . It has two interlocking natural tone scales which gives you a scale so cool the Vikings definitely must have liked it. And the oldest Norwegian folk songs I know uses the scale. There's still people in the dark, remote forests that keep teaching the old songs and ways of singing them..
Our favourite Iranian Greek Norse Romanian Spanish Arabic Bulgarian Roman French Canadian back at it again
Sounds like a typical citizen of the Roman Empire to me. :-P
Sonne comme un gars de Montréal 🤣🤣 Gros ( vidéo super intéressant , d'un point de vue de Reconstituteur Viking 🤟)
Sounds like him and I may be related 😂
Mouthful
And Slav.
An Iranian man acting as a middle ages's typical Arabian sholar lost on Scandinavia yet actually on Canadian wilderness drenched in snow. Perfect!
Quite historically accurate
Not only that, he's talking to a small furry animal. (not putting this down, I loved it)
Also loons when there is snow, so must be early spring.
Tropic Tunder :)
I just wonder how you can see that it is Canadian background and not Scandinavian?
(To me it very much look like my neighbourhood)
"They were tall as date palms, painted from head to toe in strange markings, with strange leather armor with studded iron bolts for no reason. Their hair is even more bewildering, shaved at the sides but jutting out like a chicken crest with an unecessary amount of braids otherwise. Their clothes seem all entirely grey or brown and devoid of color, not to mention covered in shit. There is a blue mist that oppresses these lands, and only Allah knows why. The heathens never even wear helmets to battle, but are successful in every fight. Their swords were forged in witchcraft for I have seen them slice through mail and helm as though they were made of butter."
-An actual account by Ibn Fadlan
xD Be careful, not everyone might pick up the satire.
Excellent aha
Lol I actually began reading this seriously and it took me a few seconds to understand what was going on 😂
Lmaoo
@@faryafaraji Same, it seems so similar in style to what Romans thought of 'Barbarians'
He is Greek,
He is Arabic,
But most importantly he can tell us about the norse music.
He's partly Greek??
@@ianlilley2577 All greeks are arabic
He is not greek, he is form eastern region cultures
@@ianlilley2577 no
@@midnightblue3285 Cool, not everyday I see people from eastern region cultures
As a Danish history buff I just want to say THANK YOU for calling out the atrocities "Hollywood" has done to the image of Scandinavia in the Viking period. Also, to anyone who don't know, the people of the same lands in the same times who never went on raids or trading trips were not Vikings. To "go viking" was an activity. Not a title or a culture in and of itself.
As a fellow dane, may I recommend a show your danish genes would absolutely love? You oughta check out Vinland Saga.
As a Faroese person im also glad that this video tells about that we are very different musically. We the Faroese are have things like Chain dance and Singing Kvæði which has been a thing for us for hundreds of years and ive never heard that anyone else in Scandinavia still do it today
It’s also the wave edgy neo-pagans who have grudges against their Christian parents and use that identity to rebel, yet their only concept comes from Hollywood and videogames 😆
@@hitrapperandartistdababy "Vinland Saga is a Japanese historical manga series written and illustrated by Makoto Yukimura."
Really? Modernized mumbo jumbo about the Nordic people written by someone from the other side of the planet :P
@@Schmorgus You are really saying this under a video from someone just as removed... in fact you are likely only a little less removed than someone in Japan as the fact it has been over a millennia is way more relevant than someone's geographical location. Any Modern person in the Western world is so far removed from the life of people in that Age...
You are also judging the accuracy of it off something as insignificant as the ethnicity of it's writer, which has no bearing on their historical knowledge nor the people they may have consulted with for the historical aspects. And again you are saying all of this under this video where a Canadian talks about Norse music...
"Throat-singing while 360 noscoping the anglo-saxons with two axes"
Lmao, made my Day
I just love the image of a T-posing Viking spinning at the speed of light with two axes and slicing entire armies that way
Average Dane-axe user in Chivalry 2
Mlg
-noscoping- *NorseScoping* 😂😂😂
@@Shin_Akumi loool
Some say Ibn Fadlan is still wondering the north. It's a cool story that I am sure he would call tragic.
Must be a pretty chill guy by now
Wondering and wandering are different words with different meanings. Go back to elementary school, and try not to fail this time.
@@slappy8941 and many times spell check will hijack the typed word before you are even aware of it, cyber bullying is not cool.
@@slappy8941 normal people don't care
@@slappy8941 Anyone with a minimal English education can appreciate Luci Micle’s inadvertent play on words without stumbling over the word wonder, as the writer’s intent is obvious. Maybe you are the one here who needs to dedicate more time to reading…and etiquette
*Arabic version of Farya Faraji added to collection* This is one of the many reasons why you are the best music composer, your likeability is limitless. You are also one of the few who, in addition to putting passion into your content, have the pleasure of sharing knowledge with all of us. Even if it is music belonging to my enemies I will watch this video because I already know that there will be interesting things, since music it is a universal way of communication.
Collecting Farya variants like pokemon
@@theoneandonlydetraebean8286 yes, it's quite funny
The only enemies are within ourselves
How can they be an enemy when Vikings and Romans never fought?
@@snail1720 haha yes I know, since they are northern people similar to the Germans let's consider them enemies
That Ibn Fadlan impression needs to be reuploaded as a separate soundbite. Such meme potential!
Wait… Vikings didn’t play melodic death metal? Pousours.
They did, don't listen to this fraudster
@@hailthevictoriousdead they all listened to Metallica !!!
😂
On bowed instruments: there are clear indications in archaeological finds from the 7th and 8th century in Norway and Sweden that there was close contact with central eurasian nomads in the iron age/migration age. Horse gear in turkish style and horse burials etc.
Good point, I focused mostly on a Mediterranean source but one to the east and the steppes would make sense too
@@faryafaraji Being Swedish I remember something of being taught in history class that while old norseare most know for their viking raids into Europe, they had a (now) lesser known trade network that was pretty damn huge for it's time in the east. The kinda stuff that eventually led to Kiev being founded around year 400.
Correction after a short wiki dive. Kiev was probably founded 400 CE by trade between the east and Scandinavia, this is a few hundred years before the "Viking age" which began around 800 CE.
@@faryafaraji To further this, many proto-norse and even proto-germanic words as well as the runic system are EERILY similar to Turkic runes and words and names from Tengriism.
It seems highly likely that a lot early proto-Germanic culture actually came via present day Ukraine. What was then the Scythian and Circassian areas, perhaps as early as the Yamanaya peoples. Turkic nomads who found themselves in northern Europe, rather than the standard theory of: It migrated upwards from the mediterranean slowly.
@@grumpycup4762 Norse and Germanic people likely have a common ancestor with some Turkic nomads, NOT that Turkic nomads migrated to northen Europe and became the Germanic and Norse people.
It’s true as well the Welsh bowing as early as the early 600s. One of the string instrument bridges found in Scotland from the Iron Age in cranog is flat. For bowing? I think strong, common dna and culture between parts of Europe and Central Asia / Eastern Europe continued passed the original Yamnaya migrations. Not to mention just long term traditions, musical stylings and syntax surviving. very similar to rural Britain to the Appalachia.
Thank you for the excellent lesson. What separated the Nordic peoples and made them the Vikings (an occupation, not an ethnic group, being related to 'riever') was not their weapons, tactics, clothes, music, or alphabet, but their ships. The flat-bottomed, wide, double-teardrop ships could sail ocean coasts, be dragged or even carried short distances by small groups, and rowed or sailed anywhere there was two feet of water. This made it a latter-day helicopter, enabling attacks by surprise on settlements where the terrain would normally prevent them. When rievers can appear from nowhere, pillage and burn, and (most critically) be gone before resistance can organize, that will certainly bestow a mystique as a separate kind of creature. The fact that in every other way they are like their neighbors would get lost.
Wasn't it Saxon King Alfred the Great who built and maintained a navy himself?
With their own ships serving as early warning lookouts and also to cut off any raiders' escape route, the Viking longship advantage was finally negated.
It is striking in all of human history, that nations without much of a naval tradition, can catch up within a generation to build and operate a very effective (French) or even superior navy of their own (Romans).
@@AudieHolland It's absolutely true that technological advantages diminish over time as those on the losing end adapt to them. The Brits in World War II put radar on the rear of their bombers to detect fighters. It worked very well, for a while. Then the Germans learned to jam the radar, then follow it. In a short time it was a life-saver, then useless, then a liability.
This is a very standard break down. I don't go with the ghost occupation view. They had their own kings and their own ceremony. There was also something about ships also, they have ships they dug up which were iron lined and not flat, and once you include Normans as Vikings you have to leave the simple communal raids theory.
Vikings were their own culture and lived along the sea traveled and had their own kings. The common people of the north were cow herders and just lived in those places.
Same copy and paste of " it was an occupation"
Excellent. Einar Selvik doesn't say anything different from what you say about Wardruna's music. Also, his own interest is really in pre-Viking era cultures. I'd love to hear the two of you in conversation!
Definitely, these bands have always been very open about the nature of their music. Any of the blame concerning how people think this music is historical lies on the audience, not on them; they’ve never mislead anyone and have provided us with incredible music over the years (that said I’m probably biased because I’m a massive Einar Sevik fanboy haha)
Einar is awesome
Einar is an amazing artist!
It's the fans we should fear
Sigurbodi is historical
And there are many old songs and melodies in Scandinavian folk music that have survived to this day, which probably have their roots far back in time
It's the songs and melodies that have their roots in the far future that one needs to worry about.
That doesn't mean they came from the viking age though, especially since the Christian church and rulers made our ancient animistic ways illegal.
@@sykotikmommy And yet, ironically, they worship a Satanic character (rather, that should be plural, as the bible has multiple gods, but not the trinity they pretend I'm referring to).
@@sykotikmommy Like much of Christian religion, they just overlayed their tradition, holidays etc. on top of standing pagan ones, so it is likely that the lyrics would change, but the type of music would remain similar.
@@ankiking very good point.
About the Norse (and the Slavs and Finnic) getting the bowed instruments directly from the Byzantians. There was this old bowed instrument, the gudok, that was used in Rus (at least in Novgorod for sure). As far as I could find out, there is evidenve from the 10th and 11th century of fiddle-like instruments being used in Novgorod at least. And interestengly, it was lost for some time, but it was preserved by the Finnic Komi, who were had a cultural exchange with the Novgorodians (the Ilmen Slovenians) for a pretty long time. The Komi call it the sigudõk btw
Also, my impression was that people were also scared of the Norse for not being Christian. There was something similar with the Hungarians when they just appeared (at the same time), maybe even seen as a reminiscent of the Huns
Don't Hungarians have some cultural connections to Huns? Like in myth?
@@robinrehlinghaus1944 Well, both used to be steppe nomads and raided Middle Europe
@@robinrehlinghaus1944 They were called the Magyars (which many still call them including Hungarians themselves) and they migrated from central asia like a lot, and I mean a lot, of different tribes and steppe people during the invasion of the Huns. They all used to be Tengri at that point in history and were culturally very similar because of that and the nomadic lifestyle.
@@robinrehlinghaus1944 are you joking? All slavs are basically the result of a persian woman that was assaulted by a mongol or a hun, haha. They think they are europeans but even with their aryan features they cannot fool anyone these neanderthals.
@@seanvandiijk2889 Come again?
I also agree that the oldest unbroken tradition of Scandinavia vocals is the women's calling tradition. I was able to study Iron Age bone flutes this past summer. Between bone flutes, cow and goat horns and neverlur, and women's vocal music I pretty much have it all! ;)
Honestly I don't think they used drums. Since there is no mention of it in later sagas and Edda, no pictorial or artistic portrayal, and no archeological evidence. We use staff and stick for rhythm in Minnesotan Iron Age musical re-enactment. We also use the iron jangles in ritual music. I think Loki's "beating on the vett" is about staff rhythm on the barrel lid or coffin box lid. We added a cross stick that we call tein...so, stav and tein.
Great information here! Thank you for your work and generous sharing.
in norwegian traditional music from the 1800s, there is "trampetakt" where you stamp the floor to keep the rythm. the sami drum tho is a VERY old traditional instrument, and it has been found all the way from the south to the north, AND the viking age.
yes! in traditional dance we rely on the fiddler's foot while the hardingfele can sometimes be hard to follow. Yes the Sami drum is very old and they lived all over Norway - but the Indo-European Norsemen did not use it in mystical practice. There is no mention of it in any Edda, Saga, or grave find of the völur or other spiritual or religious figure - @@Dejawolfs
Drums were present in Sami populations, under the name "runebomme" in Norwegian. Our earliest written source of this is from 1100-ish, so we're not entirely sure how far back they go or if there was any overlap of such a fashion between cultures. I wouldn't rule out drums, but as you say, there's little evidence to confirm it.
@@KazeinHD there is archeological evidence dating further back.
@@KazeinHD well. it seems to me that drums had become associated with the devil, and unchristian.
the runebomme is directly connected to pagan magical rituals.
the carolingians doesn't seem to have used drums, yet, they were a revival of the western-roman empire, which had used drums, the tympanum, which itself derived from an ancient greek instrument.
it seems strange that the romans, which had such a large influence culturally through the iron trade on norway, not to mention the rest of the world, did not also have some influence musically.
It had to be said. Modern pop culture adaptations, unfortunately, are seen as factual in the minds of a lot of people. Great video, as always Aḥmad ibn Faḍlān ibn al-ʿAbbās ibn Rāšid ibn Ḥammād, AKA Antonio Banderas from the 13th Warrior
Totally agreed, the weight of pop culture often takes over factual reality
from: Aḥmad ibn Faḍlān ibn al-ʿAbbās ibn Rāšid ibn Ḥammād, AKA Antonio Banderas from the 13th Warrior
Pretty much all modern culteral understandings of vikings are wrong. Why would our interpretation of their music be right?
I think groups like Wardruna are sort of like the Scandinavian version of A Tribe Called Red. ATCR make modern electronica music but they utilized Native American instrumentation and vocal styles as a way to keep these things alive while still making it interesting to a modern audience.
This! I can also plug Otyken as a Russian/si eria example of the same thing. It's so cool that we can blend cultures together with music
I don't know how traditional the indigenous elements of ATCR are, but Wardruna has very little/almost nothing in common with Scandinavian folk music (same with the costumes and face paint and all that), it's more straightforwardly new age/fantasy. nothing wrong with that, but it's definitly not a fusion of tradition and modernity, it's a wholly modern riff on the contemporary fantasy viking.
What a great and informative video! Einar Selvik even says himself that his music is not authentic of the time, but rather builds on it in a modern sense, since no one really knows what the music sounded like back then anyway. And the throat singing always stuck out as weird to me. I still headbang to the modern takes on Viking music though 😁 anyway, this video goes well together with what my history teachers taught about the vikings back in school, but it takes it a few steps further. I'm Swedish so Viking stuff is part of the basic school curriculum.
My thinking is: if you want to know what the most traditional sounds are for a culture, look at lullabies, the things we sing to kids.
Media always want to make things exotic, but honestly, I think "twinkle twinkle little star" or the Dutch "In de maneschijn" is probably what music sounded like back then and it's fine.
I'd take it a step broader, though, and say that lullabies are a good starting point to understand the musical language of a culture.
Then you try to connect with the religion and personality of the people, but for real.
That expectations vs. reality rugpull at 11:50 was absolutely savage. I think the modern "viking folk" genre is like a spiritual successor to the Norwegian black metal scene... You start with edgelord middle class teenagers looking for something pagan and primal to shock society, and a few decades later you've got very serious throat-singing white dudes with mullets, playing music that also has a clear yearning to convey something primal and "alien". You hit the nail on the head pointing out that a lot of these groups aren't trying to be historical- more than a few are very open about that. They're not going for a reconstruction so much as a feeling or an artistic idea- but even those are still ideas that are very colored in by familiar medieval tropes.
Not only a spiritual successor, an actual successor/offspring. Wardruna's Selvik and Gaahl were both in Gorgoroth, and countless nordic folk artists overlap with black metal.
We may know that they're going for an artistic play on "Viking/pagan" tropes, but my experience with fans of this genre is that it's being taken as literal historical representation of the culture/music.
It's cashing in on the average Joe who just got done binge watching Vikings on Netflix and now wants to channel their inner Ragnar.
And imho the music sucks 😂
@@prestonhebb1380 thats so true, specially among nerds (video game nerds, fantasy nerds, anime nerds, etc), they don't care about history or culture, they only care about things that a child would find "Bad ass".
Folk Metal has always sounded "fake" to me, and these "not Metal" folk ensembles of today still carry some of that "fakeness" for me. Like they trying way too hard to sound ancient and esoteric.
@@pst5345 Savage?
@@GabAssbreaker yeah a lot of modern day pagan/viking metal to me sounds very kitschy in ways that 1970's hard rock bands influenced by folk music did not (think: Jethro Tull, Thin Lizzy, Wishbone Ash etc) precisely because they did NOT try so hard to sound ancient
That Drip is top tier ngl. You are class incarnate Farya, keep doing what you do
as a researcher myself (in a different field - art history) possessing a big amount of curiosity and affection for music history.... this was totally enlightening and fun to watch. thank you. i love it when fellow researchers diffuse their own knowledge for others so freely on this plattform! also in love with the format, the jokes and the sources provided! bravo!!✨👏
I was waiting for you to play an ABBA song with Norse instruments - taking modern Scandinavian music, but breaking it down to the basics of what Medieval Norse music would've sounded like lol!
The opening was funny. I'm from Sweden, the easiest way to actually look into the music would probably be Iceland, since they still speak closest to what people sounded like in the middle ages, we also have a small part of Sweden that wrote with the futhark up until just a hundred years or so ago.
I know Heilung or Wardruna isn't reproduction of historically accurate however, I do like them. Wagner's Flight of the Valkyries is only iconic to me because of Apocalypse Now. I have a very strong interest in actual and historically accurate music because it seems to me a window into the cultures of my ancestors. I really appreciate your efforts to bring forth actuality. Thank you. You gained a new subscriber.
It's such a pleasure to listen to someone who so obviously knows their subject, and a bonus when their presentation is as engaging as yours. Fascinating and entertaining - plus I learnt a lot! Thank you!
Don’t forget about the (mostly) pentatonic nature of the Faroese skjaldur tradition. Very interesting video.
Great point, I should have mentionned those!
Yeah this is pretty much what I thought was the case. Nice to hear a historian confirm the instruments is where the historical accuracy ends. Maybe one day in the future our descendants can utilise time travel to hear see what it all sounded like
I really appreciate your authenticity and effort you put into your content. Much respect!
Btw 9:50 The Lur sounds like it could come from the Celtic peoples and 9:57 the Jaw Harp is the most tribal sounding instrument in all of mankind in my opinion. Something about that frequency chills me in ways that feel primal.
We have found bronze lures in Denmark that date from 1000 BCE.
Well, we dont listen Wardruna and Heilung for "historical accuracy". Their music is an modern evolution of ancient music. Wich is good as it is.
I'm really impressed by your dedication and knowledge about music and history it's always interesting
This is what I love with our era. We can look back at history and amplify it with all the knowledge we gather from the whole world.
it's only a modern evolution of ancient music in the way that most music is an evolution of older roots. nothing about it is particularly more historical to the setting.
This is the closest you’ve come to talking about traditional balto-finnic music lol. Also cool video, i didn’t know that the tagalharpa/jouhikko is considered more karelian than scandinavian!
Yeah it’s mainly a Karelian/Finnish instrument; it has no known usage historically within Scandinavia outside of the modern neo-folk genre :)
Interestingly though, it is also a traditional instrument in Estonia among swedish-estonians in particular, and is sometimes referred to as a "swedish kannel" over there. So if we assume the swedes brought it there, it raises the question why it never became popular in sweden? It's not easy to find much info on it online, but there's apparently a book that wikipedia links to that talks about it (The Rough Guide to World Music)
An almost exact instrument exists in the Shetlands called the gue. It's a bowed lyre, and seems to have been introduced during the "Viking Age" by Norse settlers, as well as the language, which evolved into norn, which was spoken in the area until relatively recently. The word fiddle in english was also introduced from norse fiðla.
I personally feel that due to it's similarity, the jouhikko was probably introduced by scandinavians, and maintained in Karelia.
@@varangjar1544 it is propable that the scandinavians may yabe introduced atleast the predecessor of the modern day jouhikko to the karelians and finns (maybe they got it from trade along the volga when they met nomadic peoples like the bulgars?). Also i really hope that norn can be revived
@@lovebaltazar4610 I’d only say we should be careful when it comes to nomenclature, almost every time a culture names something after another culture, it’s not an indication of its origins. Were we to take the name Flamenco at face value, we’d assume the musical style came from the Netherlands, because Flamenco means “Flemish/Fleming,” but obviously that’s not the case, and its roots are instead Ibero-Andalusian rather than Flemish.
In most of these cases, it’s always that an arbritary association was formed between the element and that foreign culture. Of course the “Swedish” part can actually mean it’s from Sweden, but the possibility of it being a “Flamenco” case is also an option to be considered. At the end of the day, no evidence of bowed instruments has been found in Viking Age Scandinavia. It’s possible that the instrument is called Swedish because the Swedish community in Estonia began using it in Estonia, and their consistent usage generated an association with that community, from which point was called Swedish.
Amazing start, certainly one of the arabic accents of all time. Also nice kaftan.
I like to picture old Norse music as more “lighthearted” and joyous after a long day of daily life raising families on the land and sea…..similar to how traditional Irish Celtic music is….I have yet to hear a truly sad “traditional sounding” Irish song…..much like I have yet to hear a sad Mexican Polka or Brazilian Jazz tune ! 🤣 🪗 🇲🇽🌮
Love your brutally yet respectful take on the reality of traditional or speculative ancient musics…subscribed! 👍 ☘️🐸🌼🦆
Traditional Scandinavian folkmusic is almost the oppsite of Irish, its more often than not - not jolly at all. It tend to be something in the lines of: "Three boys are lost, years later three sisters are raped and murdered on their way to church, the three murderers go to the sisters parents disguised as pilgrims for lodging, and bed the mother before its discovered that they murdered the sisters and then in the chaos its revealed that they where infact the lost sons, and they raped and killed their sisters (and fucked their mother)... Then more ppl dies violent deaths...
Sad Irish traditional song.
The Croppy Boy.
Even if you don't know the story or lyrics. Centuries of lost wars gave them plenty of mournful songs, but they're not the ones you play to have a good time at the pub.
Traditional Irish sean nos music can be pretty sad.
@EmilReiko Yea....
There is a quiet heaviness about Scandinavians. The loud, boisterous, cheat beating Vikings are nearly certainly false.
Those wild Celts are projecting themselves onto us.
One thing I note about modern Scandinavians is that they often actually strike me as creative and off the wall in their own unique way. And theres a sort of deadpan humor, but with a lot of snark. I.e. at a hotel in Berlin, someone hit the elevator button too fast when it was full and a Norweigian guy on the elevator said "first time with elevator?" And Scandinavians all make fun of their neighbors.
But also I suspect there was a sense of spreading their own way of life, taming and controlling new areas.
My mostly Swedish dad is a really odd person. His humor is definitely on the "wtf even is that" spectrum.
Personality traits I get from him that make me think of what Vikings were actually like are things like tending to prepare for situations such that the chance of success is very high, as well as a mindset of seeking unorthodox methods of getting ahead, or trying to find new clever ways of doing things. It's like "find what works and do that, fuck all the people talking about this wrong stupid way of doing it"
As a Norwegian, the amount of neckbeard "norse pagans" that came after the tv show "vikings" was a huge blow to our culture and history. Most of our ancestors were famers and fisherman.
* we don't worship false gods either, we converted to Christianity❤️
I can assure you, there is plenty of people out there that enjoy that series without thinking it's true!
We all know that they had lasers and motor boat, not that shitty parody of weapons and drakkars that they used.
Dnt forget most of your ancestors weren't Vikings warriors ,nor royals , but poor peasants and slaves.
I mostly started watching your videos to have something I can talk about with my brother, but now I just really like your content and feel like it's time well spent on this platform.
If you want to find a dead-sure example of how Norse/Viking music sounded like, I do give it to you that we _do_ have one example. And that is Norwegian kved and stev singing.
The reason I feel confident in that is that if you go to Ireland and Scotland, you'll find a very similar way of singing called Sean-Nos which they claim dates back to at least the 1300s. And there's some written evidence that kved dates back to old Norse as well. Sean-nos and kved/stev is basically the same style, just in two different languages.
The contact between Ireland/Scotland and Norway was at the greatest during the viking times. A large part of mitochondrial DNA in Western Norway and Iceland is of Irish origin due to the contact (eh-hem) that existed back then. They brought a lot of women back. And there's Norse influence on the gaelic language, from that very period. The most likely reason why this style of singing only exist in Ireland, Scotland and Norway is in my mind from the contact they had back then, as this contact was gradually lost, and since we know both kved and sean-nos dates about that far back. I do not think sean-nos could have made it to Norway, or kved could have made it to Ireland, any later than the viking age just because there wasn't all that great a contact between Ireland and Norway after ca 1200.
Where it originated who knows, my guess probably in Ireland/Scotland, but if so it still was a music style the vikings/norse would have sung.
Here's an example of how it sounds like in Norwegian: th-cam.com/video/VtWPTO1duyE/w-d-xo.html
And here's an example of how it sounds like in Gaelic: th-cam.com/video/To8vz3V3kEQ/w-d-xo.html
There you go. That's what viking music would have sounded like. You're welcome.
Just checked those out that was amazing.
Thank you! Interesting- I will try to find some examples off Sean - nos 🤗🙏❤️. As a person from the west coast of Norway with a DNA with 34% irish- without a clue were it comes from.. so this is interesting
"having two axes and 360 no-scoping anglo-saxons" is my favorite quote of the week.
Hey Farya, please do a video on Irish Sean Nos singing one day! You’re videos are an amazing contribution to ethnomusicology and I think more people need to hear about Irish singing and it’s potentially mysterious origins :)
Yea there are too little ethnomusicology content on youtube - I'm hoping to contribute one day if I actually have the time to make videos :)
agus is breá liom Sean Nós
Keening would be a good one too.
This video blew my mind away with all the musical history I didn’t know! Always love learning new things!
To me, I always treated modern Norse music or neofolk as a “reformation” of the historical music and not a resurrection of it. Cause to me music is constantly evolving as it did throughout history. Like martial arts or folklore they change along with the times as they are past on from generation to generation. Even during the Viking Age what was music to a Norseman in 793ad was probably a lot different from music to a Norseman in 900ad given they are pretty much a century apart. Tho bands like Wardruna, Heilung and Skald are not historical, they are the continuation of traditional folk music and bring modern people a closer connection to the culture.
Day 3 of exploring and falling in love with your channel after the Orientalism vid...
You are basically the ProfessorDaveExplains of music, and I'm all for it ❤
Great video.
I think it was Bernard Cornwell that had a character ask, "Are they viking?" The answer was, "No, they are trading." It emphasized that the Vikings were just traveling traders around Northern Europe who occasionally did some extra-sharp dealing. Later, of course, they followed the money, but they took their families along.
I appreciate that Ibn Fadlan took his time to tell us how actual norse music would've sounded like. I've known too many people who thought Wardruna or Heilung is what actual norse music sounded like.
I lost it at the beginning XD
For some reason I saw the title, assumed you'd resurrected the actual Ibn Fadlan for your video, and was fully ready to accept this.
This was quite interesting. Something I hope you go into more in the next video is that the "viking" bands you spoke about never claimed to be that. The music Wardruna writes is their interpretation of Nordic folk and shamanic texts along with just plain ambient music. Heilung are pretty much the same vein but more Germanic.
This is exactly the kind of video I was looking for. I'm a really big fan of exactly as you say, Wardruna and Heilung, but part of me wondered how Norse it really is, because it sounds plausible to our ears, but there's just no way we could ever know exactly.
Lebanese weddings are the absolute best! You made laugh today, which was greatly needed after being glued to watching the utter destruction going on right now in the region.
Modern "viking" music is great for expressing the primal aspects of life that their Pagan stories describe. These musicians carry on a spiritual legacy, and it's up to them to interpret and express it.
Excellent talk! Someone cast this man as Ibn Fahlan in a historically accurate remake of "The 13th Warrior".
It's so nice to hear a clever person presenting anything on the Web.
When talking about Norse music we should not forget scaldic poetry. While also a form of poetry, it was also a musical genre called quads. This is the type of music most frequently described in the sagas. We have quads surviving from the late medieval, and it is possibly the best approximation to what norse music sounded like. I will post some examples.
Draumkvedet (dream quad) th-cam.com/video/_pyNyV0pRvQ/w-d-xo.html
Bergatrollets frieri (an old Germanic myth, same as Beowulf and Grendel), Swedish version th-cam.com/video/X_BpmQqErks/w-d-xo.html
Scaldic poetry to king Harold Hardrada th-cam.com/video/6cQI6XdHPDY/w-d-xo.htmlsi=acocOad5CDors-GR
Draumkvedet
m.th-cam.com/video/gQnqd_Mm3I0/w-d-xo.html
Even before the 'viking' age, the art we find in Anglo Saxon burials and in places like Uppsala are almost identical!
Anglo saxon is germanic migratied angles and saxons from denmark and north germany so no wonder the similarities
Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse were mutually intelligible languages
The "Blease? Is there anyone hiir? Blease chelp!" at the end was peak Arabic, tbh. You did that one perfectly. Loved the insight throughout the video, btw, but I just had to comment on your lovely, stereotypical accent.
Great video as usual man. Still waiting for some Karelian Kalevala-esque music though! Also would be cool to see some Karelian joik as all you ever see online is Sami joik. How on earth you weren't freezing recording this I have no idea
I am someone that takes part in historical reenactment of the viking age in my country of the Netherlands, a lot of people tend to forget that a lot of the norse travelers that would have arrived on our shores were merchants, trading with the locals.
At the same time the locals of the dutch north, the Frisians closely related to the angels and the saxons themselves went on raids and at times even sought aid from the norse in defending against frankish pressure from the south of the country.
Frisians by the way are so closely related to the anglo-saxons that old English and modern Frisian are able to be understood by one another, a British documentary crew actually tried this out by attempting to purchase a brown cow in rural Fryslan, and it worked.
This was both very funny, entertaining, and information. Definitely earned a subscription
Thank you. I have tried and tried to explain to a young friend (who thinks he's a Viking) that modern bands are producing modern music, not actual Norse songs. Maybe this will explain it to him without denigrating some enjoyable music.
You are a Montrealer? I subscribed a while back for the music but having a brother Montrealer makes it even better!
Cheers from an ex-West Island boy 👍🏻
I'm Scandinavian, I have the cheek-bones, the grey-blue eyes and a stare that will give men bigger than me pause but i have never heard anything about Viking music. I think the earliest thing we have was noted down is from the 13th century. Used to be on the radio as pause music.
You did a great job though and for what it is worth I think the Persians was even more bad-ass than the Vikings ;)
Filmed on location in Skyrim.
Some groups like Eldrim are pretty alright. Not accurate but very pleasant to the ear. Love that you’re educating folks on the oft forgotten culture of the Norse rather than perpetuating the mascot culture of Vikings.
Thanks for sharing this knowledge, hope to see more norse inspired music too!
I love your genuine interest in different culture's music and why they play what they play! Thats true passion.
So enjoyed this video! Happened upon it while browsing. Your narrative, expertise and HUMOR were fantastic. Look forward to watching other videos in your library🤙
Very disconcerting to click onto a video about the Norse music during the Viking Age and be immediately greeted by the ol' salam alaykum, but I'm definitely here for it.
Alaykum salam.
I don't know how I got here but this video is fascinating and your fit is rad.
This is really interesting. Showing it to my son, who is totally into Norse lore and lifestyle
Tyvm for giving an honest explanation of my ancestors music! Love the videos!
Ibn Fadlan made me crack up really hard, this was both fun and educating. Thanks for correcting some things, especially the throatsinging which I agree sounds cool, but was never a viking thing. I have stubbornly refused to watch the modern viking series, just watching the trailers made me realize I'd probably just get annoyed, although I have friends who enjoy them. I should perhaps mention I'm swedish. The vikings may perhaps have had some kind of drum, but I'm guessing they didn't. The traditional way here to create rythm in folkloric music is to clap hands and/or stomp feet. I personally think it goes all the way back to the vikings and earlier. I don't think the vikings adopted the sami drums for two reasons. There is no such drum inherited to our "modern" folkloric tradition, nor any tale of it. Also, the sami and the vikings didn't really intermix, and the sami drums were/are very closely related to the sami religion and mainly used by shamans. The sami drum would more be seen as a religious item than a music instrument, which if you were unlucky could be used to curse you, so I have a hard time seeing why they would have adopted it. But I won't say it never happened, I just deem it highly unlikely. I agree with all your other conclusions about viking music. Thanks again for a great video!
Awesome! I am excited to follow your growing musical library!
I love "folk" bands like Heilung, Skald and others but I'm aware they probably sound very far from what traditional Norse would've sounded or looked like.It's more like a fantasy world. I hope other fans are aware of this as well. However I have this feeling contemporary "Norse" music takes a lot elements from cultures like Mongolian/Native American so they look more exotic, right? Take that band The HU for example, it's going to look way more appealing to young audiences if they make something similar to their sound and visual style than if they just looked like that 12:43. :D Then add some face painting, shamanic stuff, nature-oriented culture, bang! Exotic, cool, whatever...just more appealing! Also I guess the music industry must be a very competitive world, so the key word is attention- another good reason for them to get as distinct as they can.
Thanks for the great content - it’s the first video I’ve seen from you but I’m gonna check out more (hope it doesn’t get too technical, I enjoy music but don’t know shit)! ✨
While the music of the mentioned bands is very dear to me I also think it’s important to keep in mind that they are just bringing aspects of the past into a shape that is not only more enjoyable for modern listeners but also scratch that itch of people to “reject modernity” and give them a (romanticized) concept of roots to connect to.
Thanks for the knoledge Farya, love your content my dude
I love ur videos. Ur so authentic and sympathetic n ur jokes come so natural 😊
As someone of Danish/Scandinavian descent, I appreciate this video. Viking wasn't a race, but a lifestyle -many Northern European clans went Viking, and even Scottish clans went Viking.
Love your videos on music history! Keep it up. Thank you
Wonderful video! I love the clarity and depth of exploration and look forward to the rest of the series on Scandinavian music! Thanks!
I just happened upon your channel because of this video. Thank you so much!
This is a really good video. I really appreciate your thorough approach and looking at things from all angles. As someone who grew up in the guitar business, who is a musician and obsessed with history, I started digging deeper in the last few years on Western and Northern European music history. It actually started for me along side early American music and the Appalachia, and then brought me back to Europe.
What I do feel is that some of Cecil Sharps work in rhe more isolated parts of Britain could hold some similarities to the Norse. Also the Highlands have strong Norwegian ties, such as hardanger fiddle. I realize I’m talking in some different time periods here, but some things in folk traditions tend to stick around for quite a while. Such as the reconstructed documented Anatolian scale , (I believe it was Anatolia, or close by )major Phrygian scale from 3000 years ago. That scale has been pretty wide spread throughout parts of the Middle East and Europe for a long time.
Anyway, there seems to be evidence of bowed lyre playing in Wales dating back to around 600 AD. Some speculating an independent development, maybe maybe not, but non the less that dates back pretty far and regional playing styles really set the tone. Then you have the discovery of two lyre bridges in Scotland dating back around 2500 years. Their have been as you know a good number Germanic lyres found that date well into the first millennium AD as well a Scrythian helmet depiction of a similar lyre.
The roughly 3000 year old bronze Germanic Lurs, and later wood examples I’ve heard have a Mixolydian series to my ears. Bottom line I would say in terms of musical scales, pentatonics, Mixolydian, Dorian and aeolian, including various gapped version and shifting between them, such as thirds would be my guess for old Norse, based off of the traditions near by. And of corse untempered with some micro tonal elements, like with the trad rural British singers. On the other end, I’ve also read about ancient accounts of the use diads in some areas of Northern European traditional vocal music, and perhaps instrumental.
Thanks again for your hard work. Incidentally not a bad Arab accent, I got a kick out of it anyway
Best
I mean scandinavian culture & music of the middle ages certainly resembled broader european music & culture, but if you further go back to more „tribal times", the picture may drastically change. The scandinavian peninsula of the middle ages was a fairly advanced, urban civilisation and didn't only consist of rural, tribal communities anymore, like in the bronze- and iron age. I mean we have thousands of stone carvings from bronze age scandinavia, which oftentimes show war- and hunting scenes, which gives us an insight into the thinking and culture of the scandinavians back then. In the great migration period, which is the time period that marks the transition from antiquity to the middle ages, there was lot of cultural and societal change in europe. An entirely new religion was introduced and spread and europeans went from tribal societies to the first kingdomes and city-states. The scandinavians converted to christianity pretty late, but ofc they were influenced by the changes in mainland europe within all this time they remained pagan.
Fantastic video, and love the loon in the background throwing in periodic eerie wailing!
I have a Tunisian friend who always talks about Viking music being an evolved form of Carthage music! In fact, I find this fact, theory, or whatever it is, very interesting... based on the many details he talks about and explains about the Carthaginian civilization.
So, again, it might provide some influence and that would be an interesting theory but we can’t say “all of their music was based on that of Carthage”.
Discussions very easily devolve into a negating of local culture in favour of exotic inspiration. Influence, however, is not impossible.
@@thegreenmage6956 I totally agree... I can never assert or believe that one civilization inherited its art or culture completely from another one! There are always touches of modernization and adjustments for any legacy; whatever its classification.
But at the same time, we can always relate some legacies to its earlier origin in an attempt to understand "where was the idea originated."
There's an interesting, and surprisingly short book named 'The Tonal Language of Older Swedish Folk Musik', by Sven Ahlbäck. His investigation is a bit of a "reconstructionist" approach, looking at recordings from the early 20th century and transcriptions from the 19th century of old songs.
These songs have a few interesting traits in common, which put them quite apart from more modern folk music - however, even then we can basically just state '18th century, possibly going back to late medieval times at the very least?' Here's a few traits he finds, however:
* A fixed scalar frame of root, major second and perfect fifth. Other intervals are somewhat loose - the third may vary so much as to be neutral.
* A melodic motif of fourth-major third-root is very popular, and can occur in many transposed positions. This motif can be transposed around, but will often cause the scale to be altered a bit - however, the fifth, the root and the second of the scale are always kept unaltered; in C (both major and minor) these are possible: [C B G], [Ab G Eb], [G F# D], [F E C], [Eb D Bb]. Microtonal alterations are common on each of the degrees except root, second, fifth. These motifs can be chained, and often are, so melodic gestures like c B G F# D Eb D Bb', where G belongs to two such motifs are very common. Just playing around with this motif is basically 90% of getting something to sound like 18th century Swedish folk music.
* The sixth of the scale isn't used very often at all.
* Some use of what corresponds to descending major chord arpeggios in root voicing also occur.
* Chords are not structurally meaningful.
* Monophony (so probably actually heterophony unless solo)
However, Ahlbäck notes that these traits also differ in many ways from conservative Norwegian music traditions. He makes no claim as to how far back these features go, and which features are innovations and which are retentions. He does trace some of the influence of a few important instruments on the scale design: willow flute, cow horn, jew's harp.
The translation into English was published fairly recently, I'd recommend it for anyone interested:
www.uddatoner.com/markdown-2/index.html#!/The-Tonal-Language-of-Older-Swedish-Folk-Music/p/533161533/category=146064501
Also, the Frisians and Norse had very close connections, already known to the romans due to Frisian/Herulian pirate raids in the late third century. They considered each other as cousins and were allies against Charlemagne 500 years later.
This guy is the coolest MoFo I have come across on this subject & the genre of explination!!!!! ❤
😂 you’re reaction to the accurate clothing made me laugh. Their actual attire was definitely underwhelming to what we’ve been fed through decades of books, tv, and movies. And as an aside, I keep waiting for the wolves to make an appearance in your background.
I'm so happy you brought up the tagelharpa or hiiurootsi as Karelians or Finns would call it. It is one of the instruments along with the kantele that holds imense cultural history and value to us but only the kantele and jouhikko are atributed to us in the mainstream. Side note Joik is overtone singing but not from the throat. For people interested in medieval music from Scandinavia check out TSB.
I feel vindicated. I'm a Norse heathen but Wardruna and Heilung are just not my groove, and I get some weird looks from my fellow heathens when I say so. Folk music on simple traditional instruments is perfectly lovely. The heavy metal warrior fantasy has its place, and gives people a lot of joy, but if I really want to "travel back in time" and evoke a vibe of days long past... they miss the mark for me. Thanks for this enlightening and very validating video! 😊💖
Listen to *Raido* from Wardruna...you may like it : )
Where has this channel been all my life?
That the best men kaftan i ever saw, it look perfect on you combined with your dark beard.
This was a phenomenal treat! Thank you Ibn Fadlan, and thank you for helping Beowulf fight off the Wendol!
Thank you for the information and for the humour. Loved it.
I think the prevalence of Tagelharpa in "viking music" is due to the strong presence of bowed instruments in scandinavian folk music, mainly fiddle but also a bunch of more obscure ones such as nyckelharpa, moraharpa, hardangerfela. If you have previous experience with swedish folk music something that looks and sounds like an "ancient" violin probably just has the right vibes.
On the topic of tonality in scandinavian folk music it could be worth mentionen that there is indeed quite a bit of microtonality, at least here in Sweden. I haven't studied the harmony close, but it is very much there. Another cool thing is the usage of odd meters in swedish dance music. In some regional varieties of Polska, a 3/4 rythm, is played with the last beat drawn out in an almost rubato kinda way. It's the same logic as 7/8, but it's not marked by a beat but rather feels like if the music is taking an extra deep breath. I think these stylistic elements are considered old, even in the context of traditional music. If you'd like to dig deeper, Elfdalian music is probably a good place to start, it's a very historicaly isolated region that has it's own language preserving a lot of old norse elements, as well as kept using the runic alphabet into the 20th century.
The lur has been around since the Bronze Age, but back then it was made out of copper alloy. It is interesting to know that the people used that musical instrument in "war-like" contexts and they thought the sound of brazen instruments resemble the sounds of thunder and earthquakes(all related to the gods they worshipped). I wonder if there is a link between this information and the use of lur in the Viking age.
I have a lot of information about the lur. We still practise the old tradition in Twente and it's a proto-germanic tradition that has survived 😊 there are archeological findings from the early ironage from Denmark that contain all the elements of our tradition as how we still celebrate it today in the eastern Netherlands. The tradition almost disapeared during ww2 but it's now making a revival and it's getting more popular again amongst younger people.
The lur played a shamanic role in pre Christian Europe. In Sweden they practise kulning which is connected to the same tradition as it was to cause an echo to appear. People though the echo were spirits answering your call, so when people were about to pass, the spirits would be called and they would answer to guide the person who was dying into the spirit world. It was done to make your presence known, to attract the good spirits and ward off the bad ones.
In Twente during midwinter we still play the lur (midwinterhoorn) above a well so the echos reach far throughout the whole area. The echo is called "the ancients call" and it's played with a warming drink and good company. After the player is done playing, the neighboring neighborhoods now answer the call letting the player know that he is not alone. So they play back n forth. This stems from the echo that was the spirit answering the call of the lurplayer, letting him know he was in good company.
By playing across the land people asked the bad spirits that would take life away to leave and to ask the good spirits to seep new life back into the earth again so the daylight may return and spring may appear for a new cycle.
It was the transformative magic of yuletide/joelentied/jultid and with that death was seen as the beginning of new life and not as the end.
Joelen in Dutch and low Saxon still means "to howl."
Also wolves would answer the lur's call as well and together with the high pitched howling of Kulning, this tradition is the origin of the Mythological creatures of the white women/Tuatha de Dannan (these were the Völva/Veleda), the goddess Danu/Tan(m) (Tamfana) and Nerthus, hellhound and the banshees (from the time when the British isles were still connected to Doggerland.)
It's very likely that the lur was originally the shamanic instrument of the ancient Völva to communicate with, and guide the spirits.
But with this I'm talking about proto Germanic and proto Indo-European times. The oldest lurs were cowhorns or horns carved out of treestumps. (In Twente we still play the treestumps, only in the town of Markelo they still use the cowhorn.)
For the medieval Vikings this had developed to the call to the Valkyries to pick up the dead and bring them to Valhalla/Walhalla.
Was recommended this video out of the blue and really enjoyed it. I, personally, can't stand these "modern Norse/pagan" bands simply because everyone I've ever met who listens to them gets this skewed idea of Norse and "pagan" history in their heads. I know your intent was not to criticize these bands but I think it's important and refreshing to have an expert come out and say "hey, this isn't historical".
Great vid! Liked and subscribed
I imagine most of their music was what you'd expect at areas of food and drink and festivities and were probably upbeat and to lighten the mood; low and slow for leisure, etc...
They weren't always dour and bloodthirsty...they were human.
Though, in the same vein, during ceremonies and rituals they probably chanted and used drums and things like that, but more in a religious setting. Funerals and sacrificial rites were probably sombre; during war they probably had more "brutal" music and singing to psyke-up the warriors (not much different than anywhere else in the world or history).
I agree it probably did sound like how you described it.
Even tho i am probably wrong, I always imagined accurate Ancient nordic/Germanic music probably sounded similar to Slavic music with heavy Uralic influence but also slight Celtic and some Roman influence.
I imagine it sounded not too different from most European music, but i do imagine it probably was more simple, primitive and archaically Indo-European sounding.
I can imagine that especially religious music had a more archaic Eurasian Steppe sound from, ancient proto-Germanic/indo European traditions that resemble Steppe/Siberian music traditions like Overtone singing.
And being a sea fairing warrior culture i imagine, chanting was possibly very common.
In the late norwegian medievals and renaissance , about 250 to 450.years after the norse age, the south and central folk music was very much like fiddle based with sticks pounding in the ground, with the music going gradually faster. A small leftover today is the Hallingkast dance music. At the end of the dance, a hat is kicked off from a stick held up high.
This was awesome and highly educational. I enjoy your music and the educational experience out of your videos.