The first of Mostly Nordic’s concert series—’Iceland’—took place last Sunday, January 22, at the Nordic Heritage Museum and, true to its intent, brought us music we might never have heard otherwise. Two Icelanders, singer and guitarist Skúli Gestsson and singer and accordion player Lára Hrönn Pétursddóttir, presented a program of Icelandic folk songs, the kind of songs familiar to Icelanders from childhood up.
Folk song in Iceland has gone on since at least the 14th century, including the long epic songs called rimur which, as Gestsson says, “are where we store our stories.”
The two performers sang songs which began inland with the sheep and their shepherds, the ghosts and spooks which inhabit the long dark nights of winter, the predator fox of legend and the elves, and then the coming of spring and summer with the precious green which pervades everything then. They then moved to the ocean, and the fishing which is such a main industry, many fishermen leaving families for long months at a time, the women running the farms in their absence.
Anything like European performing didn’t begin to take place until the mid-19th century. According to Gestsson, there was no written tradition of music, no choirs before 1848, no instruments before 1874, no symphony orchestras before 1950. Instead they had folk singing and dancing. Nowadays, accordion and guitar are the usual instruments for accompanying these songs.
Perhaps because of this heritage, the songs such as Gestsson and Pétursdóttir were rhythmically simple, with short lines, melodies easy to remember and repeated in subsequent verses. For a similarity, think the rhythm and tune of “Yankee Doodle.”
Gestsson is a member of a famous Icelandic rock band, Dikta, but also a music educator with a special interest in the folk traditions of rimur, currently pursuing a master’s degree in Music Education at the University of Washington. Pétursdóttir has been steeped in music and played accordion since childhood, and later studied singing in Reykjavik while simultaneously earning her boat captain license. She is a boat captain now working out of Seattle.
Both are skilled instrumentalists. Pétursdóttir did most of the singing, with a light, clear mezzo voice very suitable for folk song, which didn’t sound trained. When Gestsson joined in singing the two sang mostly in fourths, not any varied harmonies.
The well-attended concert was extraordinarily interesting for the music and the style, refreshing, enlightening and well worth hearing. The next one, ‘Norway‘, occurs February 19.
