Hurv KRCD-17: Troskarilekar - Troskari Tunes

Is this "The Continued Adventures of the Music of the Western Dales"? - Sure, at least if you believe the rumours. But a lot of water has flowed under the bridge over the West Dales River in the 22 that have passed since the release of that album, and listeners will notice both similarities and differences.

All the music on this disc is from our home district of Malung, and what's more, from one particular fiddlers' family there, Troskari. The main focus of the album is on the traditional playing style, and on simple ways of playing together. Yet the timeless language of the tunes means that no other playing style feels more modern.

The Troskari people come from the village of Västra Fors, 'West Falls', in the far north-west corner of Malung parish. They lived their lives beside the little Elling river, where once upon a time watermill stood cheek by jowl with watermill, in the 17th century as many as 16, by the 19th the number reduced to two, the upper and lower 'toll' mills, where a proportion of the flour was retained as payment. These were mills of a rather special sort, which in popular belief were home to magical beings like water-sprites and 'tomtar'.

The Troskari folk ran the flour mill at the upper part of the falls, as well as a woollen mill belonging to a textile dying plant. One of their tasks to look after the dams in the Elling lakes, those which supplied all the mills with water. Naturally they also had a smallholding which everything that belonged to it, summer pasture and lumberjacking. As was usual in the Malung district, from time to time people were sometimes away for very long periods on what we would today call business trips. We know that the Troskari people travelled as far as Kristiania (Oslo), Särna, Venjan and down to Hedemora - anything up to 200 km to the north-west, north-east, south-west and south-east.

But the homestead lay just a stone's throw from the falls around which the whole of life centred, falls where there was of course a water sprite, at least if you believe the local legends. It's hard to imagine a better environment for fiddlers - and the Troskari folk were certainly fiddlers, among the best Malung ever had. The booklet includes detailed notes in both English and Swedish and a wealth of archive photos of the people and the places, a valuable document of a life-style which has disappeared.

Kalle Almlöf, fiol,
Anders Rosén, fiol,
Målar Lennart Johansson, sång,
Hars Åke Hermansson, sång.

list of tunes