At first glance it looks like a violin. Now take a closer look. Where a simple black fingerboard usually lays is a glittering, pearl-incrusted piece of art. The normally plain wooden body is decorated with delicate flourishes of flowers, geometric shapes and traditional Norwegian patterns. In place of a typical scroll is an intricate carving of an animal head or some sort of mythical creature. This instrument is clearly not a violin, but a piece of art: a Hardanger fiddle. It is what the eight lucky members of St. Olaf’s Hardanger fiddle group, the Lars Skjervheim Spelemannslag, have the privilege of playing.
Associate Professor of Music Andrea Een officially established the Lars Skjervheim Spelemannslag at St. Olaf in 1999, but the instrument has been present on campus since 1979, when a Norwegian student requested to start Hardanger fiddle lessons with Professor Een.
Since then, the program has done nothing but continue to grow. From one student in 1979, Professor Een has expanded the group to eight fiddlers and six instruments. Students must study the fiddle for credit in order to borrow one of the school’s ancient and unique instruments.
The instrument
The first fiddle, known as the hardingfele in Norway, dates back to 1651 in the town of Hardanger, Norway. It originally had a more narrow, rounded body, but in 1850, it was recreated to look more like the violin.
The collection of Hardanger fiddles at St. Olaf is continuing to grow steadily, along with student interest in the program. A fiddle built in 1808 was recently donated to the college. “It hasn’t been played in a very long time, so it’s acclimating,” Een said, meaning that no one will be able to play it until the restorations have settled and it has become used to the school’s climate. A newly made instrument from Oregon will arrive on campus around May 1, bringing the school’s collection of Hardanger fiddles to a total of eight.
As for the instrument’s relation to the violin, it would be a mistake to see them as one and the same. “Of course there are many similarities between the Hardanger fiddle and the violin, but I don’t want to fall into the trap of thinking that the Hardanger is just a type of violin,” Anna Bakk ‘10, a violinst in the St. Olaf orchestra and a Hardanger student of Dr. Een, said. “It’s not – it’s definitely its own instrument, with its own particularities.”
The Hardanger’s ornate ornamentation sets it apart from violins, but it’s also tuned differently and has four or five strings called sympathetic strings that sit below the finger board and resonate, helping to produce the instrument’s unique sound. The way the instrument is played is also significantly different from the violin. Fiddlers are discouraged from using their chin to hold the instrument to their shoulder, and while playing, they are supposed to stomp their feet. “At first this seemed silly to me, but then I realized how helpful it is to keep time with my foot, especially when there are several Hardanger fiddlers playing together,” Bakk said. The fiddlers also learn all of their tunes by ear, as is tradition in Norway.
How they got started
Most of the members of the Lars Skjervheim Spelemannslag have personal connections with the instrument. Megan Peterson ’12 first discovered the fiddle in sixth grade when she attended the International Music Camp in the Peace Gardens, on the border between North Dakota and Canada. At the camp she met a girl from Sweden, who was unlike anyone she had ever met before. “She had blonde hair that reached the bottom of her back and she kept in a braid and she wore a traditional dress... On the talent show day, she brought her Hardanger fiddle. I thought it was the prettiest instrument, and ever since then I’ve always wanted to play it,” Peterson said. She joined the group in January 2009 and plans to keep the fiddle a part of her life for as long as possible.
Meg Granum ’11 had her first encounter with the fiddle in the summer of 2004 while visiting distant relatives in Norway. “My father’s second cousin, Trygve, still runs the family farm and when he heard I played the violin, he insisted he had to show me something – the Hardanger fiddle his father made and played,” Granum said.
She returned to Norway this past summer for the University of Oslo summer program and was greeted with a surprise from Trygve. He had had the fiddle, which was previously unplayable, repaired. Granum had started Hardanger lessons with Een the second semester of her sophomore year, so when she visited Trygve again, she was able to play traditional Norwegian tunes for him. “I played some of the tunes his father used to play him and his siblings as they went to sleep and he was so overcome with happiness that he offered to let me borrow the fiddle for a few years so I could continue my studies,” Granum said.
The Migrations Concert
March 21 in Boe Chapel, the Lars Skjervheim Spelemannslag will be putting on a “Bridge of Peace” concert with the American Swedish Institute Spelmannslag, a Swedish violin group, and the Twin Cities Hardingfelelag. For approximately the past 200 years, there has been some conflict between the two Scandinavian countries, starting with the Napoleonic War and continuing as a result of cultural tensions.
The upcoming concert will be a celebration of Norway and Sweden’s peaceful dissolution of their conflict, as well as a friendly rivalry. It has been jokingly referred to as the “battle of the Norwegian vs. Swedish fiddlers.”
“It’s difficult to have the groups play together because the American Swedish Institute Spelmannslag plays on violins and the Lars Skjervheim Spelemannslag plays on Hardangers,” Een said.
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