Hurv KRCD-26: Historic recordings of Swedish Folk Music III - Fäbodmusik från Malung

The Magic Music of the Forests

The scarcity of arable land in Scandinavia and the short growing season due to a cold climate are important reasons for grazing cattle far away from the home farm. The richest lands closest to home were used for crops for human consumption, and for hay for winter fodder, and so one had to go further away to find pasture for the livestock, to woodland meadows and grass-covered wetlands. These excursions extended so far that one had to spend the night out in the forest, houses were built for these overnight stays, and here we have the beginnings of an organized system of summer pasture, or 'shieling' as it was known in Scotland.

The herdswomen followed the livestock to keep them from trespassing on others' pastures or damaging the forest, and because of the threat from predatory animals. At night the livestock were called by horn-blowing or herding-calls; the animals were so used to these signals that they would almost always make their way home when they heard this music.

The life of the shielings was hard - there was milking to be done and the making of dairy products from morning to night - but old herdswomen often say how agreeable it was when the pace of life was only set by the rhythm of nature and animals. An older, experienced woman would be in charge of a shieling, and the shepherds would be those who were not needed at home, often children and young people.

Sometimes something went wrong: then you had to go out searching for them, and a system of musical signals was used to communicate when the animals had come home or been found. There were dangers out in the forest - wolves and bears, not to mention trolls, fairies and other supernatural beings. In our secure lives, it is easy to forget how young girls far away in the forest would have felt, living at the mercy of Nature from May to September, far from the rest of the community.

Perhaps the most striking aspect of this music is the positive effect it has on your mood. It's not only that this is one of the most special kinds of music in the world - and might one even say the most beautiful?: it's also that you constantly find yourself wrapped in a wave of warm and good-hearted feelings. Here are people who sing and talk to their protegées, their livestock, and they do it by means of the 'language of the animals', a language which the cows, the goats and the sheep have learnt to understand throughout the centuries. It reminds one not a little of how a mother talks and sings to her babies: and surely that's how these women saw their animals as they led them out to pasture. In selecting tracks, priority has been given to the oldest known recordings. All those contributing were at the time of recording active in the environment where the music belongs, and several were actually recorded at work. The booklet contains 20 pages of valuable notes each in English and in Swedish, as well as rare archive photos from the shielings of Malung parish.

list of tunes