leif erikson lyric

Kari Taur
Digging Deep Nordic R
by
I
D avid
n December of 2003, Kari Tauring was teaching a rune
workshop at a Norse shamanic event in Minnesota
focusing on the völva, or staff carrying women of Norse
tradition. During one session, the event host suggested that
she chant the runes rhythmically using a staff for percussion.
Tauring added a second smaller stick that she called a tein
(based on the Norwegian word for the sucker tree that grows
from the stump of a tree that’s been cut down) to tap the shaft
of the staff while pounding it on the floor to create a unique
rhythmic experience. This was the birth of what Kari calls
“staving,” and over the next few years she developed it into a
fully-formed spiritual practice called Völva Stav, a system of
ritual performance that helps her reconnect with the traditions
and folkways of her Norwegian ancestors.
Tauring’s musical roots are steeped in Celtic as well as
Norwegian folk tradition. She learned hymns and prayers in
Norwegian from her Lutheran grandmother and American
folk songs both in school and at home. As a child, Tauring
would watch the singing and dancing in her homemade folk
costume and wish she could join in. Her musical education
started with church music, then classical, then Celtic folk,
for which she had a strong inclination. “I didn’t know why
I had a strong urge to sing Celtic material,” she says. “We
thought dad was all German but he isn’t really German at
all, but rather Latvian, Luxembourgish, French-Canadian,
Celtic and some kind of Indian.” These diverse influences
all surfaced in the songs Tauring wrote with her first
group, Rose Absolute in the early 1990s, including a song
series called “7 Songs of Me” in which she explores each
piece of her lineage.
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Sing Out! • Vol. 55 #3
de
Y oung
Coming from primarily Norwegian stock, Tauring has
made it her creative mission to mine the roots of Norwegian
culture in Minnesota. And this past March, she released her
third studio album, a collection of songs and spoken word
inspired by Norwegian myth called Nykken & Bear on the
Omnium label. In exploring her roots, Tauring says her intent
is “to go deeper than lutefisk, lefse and Lutherans,” but she’s
quick to point out she still respects those things. She works
with the “preserved material” of Norway, songs, poetry and
arts which were forced underground during centuries of
Danish rule from 1349 to 1814 when what is now Norway
was ruled from Copenhagen, a period of cultural oppression
the Norwegians call “The 400 Year Night.”
Norway’s suppressed culture began to resurface in
the 1800s when the romantic nationalist movement started
to rebuild Norway’s identity. It was no accident. Those
responsible for helping to bring back the old ways purposely
went out and sought the forgotten material of the folk
traditions, music poetry, dance, costume, and language.
Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg (1843-1907), wrote many
pieces of music based on Norwegian traditional music, and
writer Arne Garborg (1851-1924), whose poem “Haugtussa”
formed the basis for a song on Tauring’s latest CD also helped
reshape Norwegian identity by writing a play in Nynorsk (one
two official standards for written Norwegian) and translating
Homer’s Odyssey into the language.
It was during this renaissance that Tauring’s greatgrandparents were among the nearly 800,000 Norwegian
immigrants to Minnesota. The newly re-discovered material
was vitally important to Norwegian identity at the time, and
uring
c
Roots
many immigrants
preserved it, the
Norwegian-American
community in the Midwest
becoming something of a
time capsule. According to
Tauring, because of the mass
exodus from Norway (in some
cases entire towns relocated) there
are some Norwegian dialects that exist only in the US, and
Norwegian linguists often travel to Minnesota to study them.
One piece of Norwegian culture that came to Minnesota was
the specifically Norwegian Hardanger fiddle used primarily
in dance music. And Minnesotan Karen Solgård, a major
proponent of the instrument in the United States, has served as
one of Tauring’s mentors over the years.
Kari explains the importance of drilling down to extract
the essence of her Nordic roots by launching into a discussion
of the World Tree, or Tree of Life which connects the heavens,
earth, and through its roots, the underworld. The so-called
tap root goes straight down, Tauring says. And at the cellular
level, the Northern European memory of immigrants goes
back to the ice age, passed down through the mitochondrial
DNA of their mother’s mother’s mother’s mother (and so on).
She points out that one reason the arts of a culture can be so
healing, is that they stir memory at this deep level, especially
through the vibrations of music and the movement of dance.
According to Tauring, dysfunction in a culture is often
the result of external factors impacting on it. In Norway, the
plague of the 1340s where perhaps half the population was
killed was the environmental trauma leading up to the 400
Year Night. Then the Danes took over, replacing Norwegian
music, money and dance with their Danish equivalents.
What makes this personal for Tauring, or for the purposes
of healing what she refers to as her Ørlög (hereafter, oorlog,
which means something like fate or karma in Old Norse),
is that her mother and her mother’s clan grew up the only
Norwegians in a cluster of Danish farms in Wisconsin.
Her great aunt tells stories of remnants of the ages-old
persecution from the Danes to Norwegian children. When
her grandmother was a schoolgirl, for example, the Danish
kids told them they smelled bad, made them sit in the back
of the classroom and cut the buttons off their dresses.
According to Tauring, prejudice can become an endemic
problem within cultures because of people’s tendency to identify
with their oppressors, one characteristic of what psychologists
call the Stockholm syndrome. When this happens, cultural
dysfunction becomes normalized, amounting to a denial of
cultural identity. Sinead O’Connor, in the lyrics to her song
“Famine” tells the story of the historical trauma of the Irish of
the potato famine, pointing out, “If there ever is to be healing,
Vol. 55 #3 • Sing Out!
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Kari and Drew Miller perform at the Cedar
Cultural Center in Minneapolis in 2009.
photo by David De Young
there has to be remembering and then grieving.” Parallels can
easily be drawn between Norwegian, Irish and even Native
American experiences, and Tauring says this remembering is
the inspiration and motivation behind her work in Norwegian
roots. Part of the healing process is achieved by connecting
with one’s ancestors in the language they would have spoken,
and because of this, Tauring’s performances include music and
song in English as well as Norwegian traditional folk music in
the dialects of her great grandmother’s family.
Tauring uses the phrase “inherited cultural grief” to
describe what is also called historical trauma. If not healed,
these traumas can be handed down from generation to
generation, often as traditions of addiction and passive
aggressiveness. Through the vibrations of her music, Tauring
hopes to create new patterns of functionality and heal the
oorlog for the next generation. “You have to ask yourself,”
she says, “Are you going to keep repeating a habitual phrase
that’s dysfunctional and pass it onto your kids?”
T horn , the R unes , Y ule S hows and B eyond
In the early 1990s, Tauring formed her second band,
named after one of the better known runes in the AngloSaxon rune poem, Thorn. Tauring had been a student of the
runes since the late ‘80s, and to her the rune Thorn suggests
the choices we as individuals are responsible for making and
how we need to strike our own path in the world. In her 2007
book on the runes, The Runes: A Human Journey, Tauring
says, “Sometimes Thorn wants us to understand the concept
of universal law. In Scandinavia, universal law is known as
orlag [sic], the fabric of individual destiny ... The choices we
make each day send out waves to the rest of the world. Thorn
helps us to make the decisions that benefit our highest path.”
Tauring’s traditional American folk music explores this
highest path in many forms. Her 1998 album, Faith in Me, is full
of songs foreshadowing the work she would eventually bring
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to workshops around the country and present
in her seasonal shows. In the title song, she
announced her intent to express the heritage
of her “deeper-than-Lutheran” roots. In
“Boundaries,” she discusses the importance
of boundaries in human relationships, noting
that “an erosion of boundaries by degrees
leads to the seemingly sudden lapse of all
rules until gravity is the only law that some
humans adhere to.” “Mother Mate Myself”
was written after her second son was born
and describes the loss of self that can come
from mothering small children. The song is
also about the opportunity to re-build the
self as better, more careful, more “safety
first” and more here and now.
In 1999, Tauring presented the first
of what would become seven yuletide
celebration shows. The shows incorporated
elements of the world’s various festivals of light and took
place over the winter solstice in Minneapolis. These multimedia events, employing music, puppets, dance, stilt-walkers,
film shorts and photography were a way for people to reconnect with their cultural heritage and traditions from which
they might have, for whatever reason, become divorced. An
early theme was “Discovering Origins, Building Traditions,”
which remains an appropriate banner for the work Tauring
continues today. She released a studio album of some of
those songs in 1999 and a follow-up, expanded version of it
(A New Yuletide Celebration) in 2011.
When she began writing music for dance to as part of
these shows, Tauring says it changed her music organically.
Karen Solgård had told her several years before, “Kari,
you will never really have the deep spiritual experience
with this music you are seeking until you learn the dances.
The dances express the spirituality through the body.”
2003 was a threshold year for Tauring. Both her boys
were in school, and she had expanded her ritual shows to
include the equinoxes, now doing three shows a year. Also that
year, a friend had written a poem for her called “Old Norway,
New Viking” predicting that she would soon connect her runic
roots with her American identity and help others do the same.
Studying Hardanger fiddle dances by Solgård and how their
various tunings can be trance inducing was the key that helped
Tauring complete the bridge between the two worlds of ancient
Norway and modern Norwegian immigrants in Minnesota.
She began to write for this marriage of ancient and immigrant,
combining American folk tunes about seasonal change with
ritual and Norwegian tap root exploration, immersing herself
in the work from 2006 to 2008, researching the intersection of
runes and dance, writing her rune book, and building up her
repertoire of mostly Norwegian folk songs.
She released six of these songs on the Völva Songs EP in
2008, forging a musical partnership with Drew Miller of Boiled
in Lead. Live performances of
some of this material led to a
live album with Miller called
Live at The Capris in 2009. In
2010, Tauring released a Völva
Stav manual and an iPhone rune
app based on her rune book. An
MP3 of her singing/chanting
each rune and a recording
of the medieval rune ballad,
“Runarvisa” recorded in 2008
is included with her rune app.
to call nature in and repel
the nykken on her own.
A Yuletide Celebration, 1999, Kari Tauring, #50097
To fully realize Nykken
A New Yuletide Celebration, 2001, Omnium
& Bear, Kari includes three
Faith in Me, 2001, Kari Tauring
original poems to fill in
Völva Songs, 2009, Kari Tauring, #2105
gaps and contribute to the
Live at the Capri, 2010, Northside Arts Collective
story-like feel of the CD
and also to drive home the
C ontacts :
theme of healing historical
Booking: [email protected], 612.454.6594
trauma. “No – I will not
pass it all on / For there is
O n the W eb :
sifting, healing to be done,”
<http://www.karitauring.com>
Tauring says in her poem
N ykken and B ear
“Beginnings,” written the
In 2012, the ideas that would become Nykken and first time she visited Norway in 2009 as a contestant on the
Bear came together. Several years earlier, as part of her Norwegian reality show “Alt for Norge.” Tauring believes
Nordic roots studies, Tauring had begun looking for troll that by incorporating her own modern original material,
and huldre songs – huldre being a part cow, part female she enables that healing by re-connecting the heathen, precreature from Scandinavian folklore. She expanded her Christian, Lutheran and Immigrant aspects of her ancestry.
search to include “nykken,” a male spirit said to exist
In creating her new CD, Kari provides voice, guitar,
along the borders of water and land to which people stav, cow horn, and seljefløyte. She worked with Drew
would sometimes pray before swimming. The nykken was Miller on bass, dulcimer and stav. Miller had already been
responsible for teaching humans the ways of playing music on a path to explore ancient and traditional folk music
to nature. “I have always been fascinated by the water for years, and had been looking for new ways to bring
entity called nykken,” Tauring wrote in the liner-notes to that into modern contexts. The recording also includes
the new CD. “Living in the sea, the nykken has power to contributions from producer and musician Scott Nieman at
grant musical ability to the would-be musician (especially his studio dubNemo in Minneapolis, David Stenshoel (also
harps and fiddles) brave enough to seek instruction.”
of Boiled in Lead) on violin, and her husband Greg “Trax”
Tauring had already been performing the traditional Traxler on drums.
Norwegian nykken-themed “Villeman og Magnhild,”
In the end, Kari feels the CD turned out to be more of an old
which appears on the album as a bouncy American-styled fashioned listening album than a concept album. The recording
galop, and “Runarvisa,” an aching and beautiful medieval has the relaxed feel of her live solstice and equinox shows
rune ballad, since 2008. For the new album, she also and demonstrates her
recorded a medieval folk song, “Heiemo og Nykkjen,” and strengths as a storyteller
her own interpretation of “Nekken’s Polska” from Sweden. and a weaver of parts into
She introduced the bear theme to the project because a cohesive whole. She
the bear is sacred in Norse tradition and a symbol of the feels it’s more accessible
Northern experience. For Kari, the bear has shown up than anything else she’s
in dreams as a spirit guide and teacher reminding her to done in this genre, and
slow down and to face her fears. The bear section of the feedback has been quite
album includes a waltz, a longdance, a children’s game positive.
and a ritual dance. One of the bear songs, “Bjønndans ein
The positive feedback
Rituel fra Trysil” is the oldest known hunting ritual/song/ Kari has already received
dance in Norway and the only song Tauring has found in the for Nykken & Bear is
Norwegian folk tradition that uses staff rhythm similar to an invitation to write
what she developed for Völva Stav.
more original material.
“Heiemo og Nykkjen,” which appears as a dance “In past recordings,”
ballad, complete with eerie e-bowed dulcimer and creepy she says, “I’d been
vocal effects, is the most important song on the album for interpreting songs from
Tauring. Traditional songs and stories about the nykken my own perspective. Now
exhibit varying degrees of equality between the sexes. In I feel like I can express
“Villeman og Magnhild,” Magnhild is submerged by the my original voice more
nykken, but the male hero Villeman (Wildman) rescues her clearly. I have a sense of
by playing the runes on his golden harp. In “Runarvisa,” bravery that I didn’t have
which tells a similar story, Villeman and Magnhild are before.”
more equals, but Villeman still is the rescuer of Magnhild
and her sisters. Heiemo, on the other hand, acts as her own
agent in negotiations with the nykken and is strong enough
D iscography
photo by Heidi Ehalt
Vol. 55 #3 • Sing Out!
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Fram Dansar ein Haugkall
K
ari Tauring writes: “The lyric
for this song is adapted from
the mythical epic ‘Haugtussa,’
written (scandalously) in Nynorsk
at the hight of the Norwegian national romantic period by Arne
Garborg (1851-1924). Grieg meant
to write music for it but never
quite got it. Olav Sande (18501927) from Kyrkjebø in Sogn (near
my home fjord) wrote the tune in
1899. It has been used as a dance
tune ever since in both Norway
and America. I made it my own by
simply changing it to a minor key
and through the English lyric interpretation. In Haugtussa, Veslemøy
(the heroine) wavers between the
Christian world and the Heathen
world, the living and the dead, the
angels and the ‘demons.’ She has
always interacted with the huldre,
‘the hidden folk’ and in this song
she is close to marrying the mound
man, a huldu who shape shifts into
bear form during the daylight hours
and into a musical lover after the
midnight bells ring. While she
would become an immortal being
herself, it would ruin her chances
to go to heaven and join her dead
sister. As you can guess, the sister
appears in her ghostly form to give
warning and comfort to Vesslemøy
... but this song snippet leaves us
wondering!
“The Norwegian verses are in
dialect quite close to my grandmother’s Sognefjord dialect and
my cousin who still runs the goat
dairies in Underdal sang this song
for me at my welcome party in
2011. I learned it from the Seattle,
WA, Leif Erikson Sons of Norway
Lodge’s Leikarringen book and cd
set (2008). I sing them in English
after the Norwegian.”
You can hear Kari’s performance on her Nykken and Bear CD,
available from Omnium Recordings
(P.O. Box 7367, Minneapolis, MN
55407; Ph: 612-375-0233; Web:
<http://www.omniumrecords.com>).
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Sing Out! • Vol. 55 #3
w: Arne Garborg (1895), m: Olav Sqande (1899)
Arr. Kari Tauring © Kari Tauring
track
Fram dansar eith Haugkall fager og blå
Med Gullring om håret som fløymer,
Han giljar for Veslemoy til og frå,
Og Tonar i kring honom strøymer.
Å hildreande du! Med meg skal du bu,
I Blåhaugen skal du din sylvrokk snu.
But when it rings, the midnight bell,
And day of the hill is gone
You’ll hear my songs and graceful play,
Locking you in my arms
I will come to you from the wild ways
And sleep with you in my arms until I wake
Out dances the mound man, handsome and blue
A gold ring on hair, long and flowing
He seduces a young maiden to and fro
And all around melodies flowing
To bewitch just you
With me shall you live
In the blue mound, spinning on a silver wheel.
Med du skal jitja i Blåhaug brur
I silke og sylv så det bragar
Og aldri kjennast sår eller stur
I alle dei levedagar
Å hildreande du! Med meg skal du bu,
I Blåhaugen skal du din sylvrokk snu.
In daylight hours I am the brown bear
Who bounds in the forest wide
And bathes my fur in the deepest lakes
And wades in the swift flowing streams
And plays on the strand and master of the land
As far away as your eyes can see.
06
Yes, you shall sit as a Blue Mound bride
I silk and silver it dazzles
And never will you know sorrow or care
In all of your long living days.
To bewitch just you
With me shall you live
In the blue mound, spinning on a silver wheel.
Vol. 55 #3 • Sing Out!
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