Spak Olof Olsson

(Olmorts) Spak Olof Svensson (1855-1952) from Särna, Spak Erik's father. We are lucky to have some wax rolls with recordings of Spak Erik as early as 1918-1920, made by the Norwegian musicologist Olav Sandvik. We hear a fiddler with a magic, glowing and forceful playing style, high dancing tempo, meticulous intonation of the major, minor or 'pastoral blue note' intervals, and everything in between - a true master fiddler, still in his age of strength. This invaluable source gives us information of the true musical status of Swedish fiddle music at its heigth and should be used as a standard for all of us.

...Yes, I applied for support for such a release from the Swedish Council of Cultural Affairs, which two times every year gives big money to record producers in the fields of classical, folk and jazz music, but they met with a refusal. I have transcribed every note of these wax rolls and have got a permission from the owners to make the music available to folk music lovers and neophytes of Swedish fiddling. Everything prepared, could be a fine package of music book with CD. But the money... concerning the poor sound quality of the wax rolls, some tunes cut off in the beginning or the end, I doubt that this is a great commercial project. So far listeners are recommended to listen to Spak Olof's tunes in my interpretations on the two Särna CD's. But if anybody of you folks is rich and don't know what to do with all your money, we could perhaps plan something together for the benefit of Spak Olof, you, me, and least, all fiddle lovers around the world.

In my opinion we should carefully study folk music iconography. with the same interest as by those playing renaissance and baroque music or by musicologists. There is a common misinterpretation that the playing styles of the old fiddlers were home-made. On the contrary they are most often witnesses of wide-spread practises, not only in Sweden but in the rest of Europe. Please, go to the library and look in David Boyden's excellent book 'The History of Violin Playing' and you will see beautyful angels, or French and Italian classical or dance players demonstrate violin and bow grips which are exactly like old Swedish country fiddlers. Indeed we can often talk about Swedish folk fiddling as 'living baroque'. This is not only shown in elementa like fiddle and bow grips but even more in how the music itself sounds. Those who have studied baroque music just a little will be astonished and fascinated by the baroque style left and right hand ornamentations, 'mezza di voce' (swelling tones), use of 'scordatura' (detuned violin) and 'notes inégaux' (dotted notes) as played by old Swedish fiddlers.

We can see from the photo of Spak Olof that he used all gut strings: no fine tuner for the e-string, the g-string is the thickest one which indicates that it's plain, unwound gut (try one: some manufacturers have restarted to produce them, and with good quality - search Gamut Strings in America or Northern Renaissance Instruments in England on the Net). He has no chin rest on his violin, no need for it because of his baroque style grip - also the chin rest inevitably takes away resonance and sound from the fiddle (take away the chin rest and get a violin with a $1000 value more sound). 'Italian' bow grip, favoured by many Swedish fiddlers. Probably an antique bow - the screw seems to be made of bone rather than of metal. We can see a thread coming out of the f-holes - it was a practise to have it fixed around the sound post so that one could easily change the position of it. The thread was tied under the violin. Some fiddle players had, and have, this mania of changing the position of the sound post, for every weather and every mood... for sure, you know one of them too...

(Photos by fiddler Lars Åhs, Älvdalen - click for a closer view!)