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The folk music of Folldal belongs to the Eastern Norwegian "flatfele" (normal violin) area, and is rather closely related to the folk music of Gudbrandsdalen, the neighbouring valley in the west.
The repertoire we practice consists of a core of old springleik tunes, which are dance tunes dating from the 18th century or earlier, and which have a characteristically assymmetrical 3-measure rhythm, where the first measure in each bar is markedly shorter than the other two. We also play some few halling tunes, also parts of the more archaic repertoire. In addition we have a lot of more recent music, belonging to the "runddans" or "gammeldans" dance types (waltz, rheinlender, skotsk/polka), dating from perhaps the first part or middle of the 19th century.
Our main source is the fiddler Thorvald Tronsgård (1892-1986), who lived in Dalholen in the upper (western) part of Folldal. He was the last fiddler in Folldal who played the archaic springleik music. The three oldest members of Folldal Spellmannslag (which at the moment consists of eleven active fiddlers aged between 17 and just above 40), and a couple of other fiddlers not at the moment active in our group, learned the repertoire from Thorvald during the early and mid 1970es, and the rest of the fiddlers in turn have learned from them.
The playing style and sound of Folldal Spellmannslag is far more rough and less "polished" than what one might consider to be the average among fiddler groups of today. We do not emphasize too much adjusting the style to the demands of contests or performances for an audience, the main thing for us being just practicing what we have learnt. Neither do we work very hard to become as identical as possible - we see the variation as valuable.
The members of Folldal Spellmannslag today live far from each other, from Røros in the north to Oslo in the south - the older ones among us are established and working elsewhere (two of us are not originally from Folldal either), while the younger ones are studying at highschools and colleges away from home. We only manage to get together all of us a few times a year, perhaps eight weekends at most. Nevertheless, as we see it, it is important to keep in contact and maintain the focus and organizational "center" in Folldal, and not to disperse ourselves into organizations elsewhere, thereby fragmenting our efforts.
Just before Christmas 1999 Folldal Spellmannslag published
a CD. You can download and listen to two of the tracks here:
Gammel-Husin,
springleik (MP3, 3.1 MB)
Karileiken, wedding
march (MP3, 3.2 MB)
The Norwegian version of the page includes a complete list of the tracks on the
CD, as well as the cover picture and presentations and photos of us. The CD costs NOK 150. You may order it from us using the form below. In addition
to the price we have to charge you for the shipping, the cost of which will vary
according to the country you are ordering from. We will either have to ask for
payment in advance, or (at lest to the Nordic countries and Germany) it should
be possible to pay for it at the post office, although this will involve an
extra fee to the postal company. If this form doesn't work, please send the
vorresponding information by e-mail.
At the other pages of our website, which are not likely to be translated into English for the time being, we will publish information on our music as well as on our sources and the history of our association.
