Come with me on a pilgrimage to the tiny mountain village of Vågå – together with 800 other people. They have been drawn there by one passion, one hunger. To hear the music of the Hardanger fiddle. Delicate and decorative – muscular and feisty. With this podcast, I am doing penance for past sins, having previously believed the Hardanger fiddle to be near-obsolete, a museum piece. And its music unsophisticated. How wrong I was! Hearing the instrument at its mysterious and magnificent best – as played by virtuoso Ottar Kåsa – opened a gateway for me to deep Norwegian culture. It achieves a modern miracle: to be vigorously and unsentimentally alive, while maintaining a musical inheritance. And it also connected up with the deep culture of my own background, on the west coast of Ireland. 

EPISODE PHOTO

Detail of Hardanger fiddle made in 1911–12 by Olav Eivindsen Bakkene, Telemark i 1911-12. The instrument belongs to Telemark Museum. 

From: digitalmuseum.no

Photo: Bård Løken

Licence: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

CONTACT

Twitter: (a)northbynorway

Email: northbynorway(a)gmail(.)com

MORE INFO

andrewjboyle(.)com

THANKS

to Ottar Kåsa for permission to use his recording of Høgsetbenken (springar after Myllarguten)

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Hitler demanded that Vidkun Quisling should be Prime Minister. The king said: No! With that, all possibility of compromise was closed off for King Haakon and his government. It was a decision that put them in extreme danger. No monarch or head of state was killed by the Nazis during the war – but on April 11th 1940, they not only tried to assassinate King Haakon, they were also convinced they had succeeded. In fact, the king and politicians evaded the bombing raids on Elverum and Nybergsund. They moved northwards from place to place – to avoid detection and to bolster the spirits of the ever-more beleaguered defence forces. But they finally had to sail for England and exile. As the figurehead of Norwegian resistance, the king’s work from England was of huge significance for Norway’s people.

EPISODE PHOTO

King Haakon seeks cover in a birch grove during an air raid on Molde in late April 1940. 

Photo: Per Bratland

Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 NO

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Email: northbynorway(a)gmail(.)com

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Today’s podcast is about the greatest drama of modern Norwegian history. What Norwegians call ‘Aprildagene’ – the fateful days of the 9th, 10th and 11th of April 1940. The greatest drama? How else to describe three days that start with King Haakon in his bed in the palace in central Oslo, and finish with the king and government hunted by the Nazis from town to village to farm. Three days that finish with them stumbling through snow as German planes strife and bomb the ground around them in an assassination attempt. How else describe three days that see a coup d’etat by a politician whose party – at the most recent general election – gained a meagre 1,8 percent of the popular vote. Today, Act 1 of the drama: the 9th of April. The climax of the 10th and 11th comes in the next podcast.

EPISODE PHOTO

King Haakon VII of Norway in 1930

Photographer: Ernest Rude

Public Domain

CONTACT

Twitter: (a)northbynorway

Email: northbynorway(a)gmail(.)com

MORE INFO

andrewjboyle(.)com

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