Sympathetic Strings: Stories of the Hardanger Fiddle

(gentle music) - My grandfather and my grandmother immigrated from Norway and then they settled and met in Northwestern, North Dakota.

They raised six children out there, four boys and two girls and they all played music, every one of them.

Every family gathering would have music.

- My mom's mom came from the most Northern point in Norway, so Vardo.

Then my mom's dad came from the very Southern part so I've got nearly the whole country of Norway covered.

I can pick my heritage from nearly anywhere I want to.

(gentle music) - You asked if I'm Norwegian.

Yes, definitely.

My father was born in Forde.

He was (speaking foreign language).

My wife's father was born on Morris up in North Norway about a hundred miles North of the Arctic circle.

I speak fairly good Norwegian.

We eat and cook Norwegian and we sometimes think in Norwegian (upbeat music) - [Bud] When I was a kid living in Fargo in North Dakota, just down the hall from us was a violin maker, Gunner Helland.

He was a good friend, family friend and fellow immigrant but he was one of the last, in a long line of Hardanger fiddle builders from Norway.

Helland fiddles are very famous in Norway.

So when I was in the seventh grade, I used to go into his shop very often and watch him work and work with him.

He gave me my first violin to fix up.

He showed me how to repair it and get it in good shape.

My father was a fiddler and a musician.

He played accordion and fiddle.

So he had collected a number of Gunnar Helland's Hardanger fiddles.

This was all done as a present for me by one of my students in Indonesia.

He made all of these little inlays and here added PVC pipe.

So that's a Indonesian Hardanger fiddle.

(chuckling) (soft music) This is one, two of my students in...

They learned to play the violin through our program and built their own fiddles.

(instrumental folk music) This is in Sentani, Indonesia in Papua Indonesia.

And of course another old Norwegian instrument was the ku-horn.

This one, (blows ku-horn) I think it's interesting because it sounds like the cow is still in there.

One of the most enjoyable things I do is teach musical instrument building.

We have a course where young people come and learn how to build guitars and ukeleles and fiddles.

(instrumental folk music) And then we practice playing them and have just a great time doing it.

(instrumental folk music) Sarah and Ruth are the most recent students and I think they were what, like 14 and 16 when they started and Aaron is a bit older.

(instrumental folk music) - Patience is something that I really admire about Mr. Larsen.

He has so much patience for the detail work and that's something that I tend not to have as much of and so he would carefully, I'd make a mistake and he'd carefully look at it and say, "It's okay, it's fixable, we can fix it.

"We can add some more wood "or we can carve some more wood out, whatever it takes."

(instrumental folk music) - I'm a North Dakota girl and I love all things North Dakota.

So I have wild prairie roses on the fingerboard and we'd done the tailpiece and a Western Meadowlark and I'm also a bison fan so I have a bison head on my fiddle.

(instrumental folk music) I liked the haunting sound, the under strings cause it to echo and vibrate and you can really picture a Fjord and it sounds very beautiful and silvery.

(instrumental music) (blowing) (sanding) Don't say too much in between coats.

If you sand too much, it'll go back to the epoxy.

I had to do like four coats of super glue instead of two.

- When I put the inlays on, you're supposed to file them down or sand them down to the even flush with the ebony.

And so what I'm using right now is steel wool.

You shouldn't be able to tell if there's a proxy on top of the ebony and so that's why you wanna get it as smooth as possible.

Sometimes you kind of carve down into the wood and then place the inlays.

What I did was carve the in lays out and then set them on top of the ebony and then carved him down until they matched and basically look seamless, not quite but almost.

(laughs) - My experience involved splitting wood with an axe.

- It's quite different making a instrument.

(upbeat music) - You start with chunks of firewood.

It's usually over seven pounds of wood and well-seasoned spruce for tops.

And then you start with a foam, cut them out then you bend the sides and make the ribs.

Cut and carve the back and carve the outside and then you turn in to carve the inside and the thickness has to be just right because the graduations of each instrument are what produce a really good tone.

- All these small holes that have been put in, were put in just with a drill press.

These were just depth gauges so I know about how deep to rough this out before I can start contouring everything down and get it exact.

(gentle music) - A Hardanger fiddle is a folk instrument and it should be made to reflect the person who plays it, who owns it.

We choose designs that are meaningful to people.

This is called the Rose technique or Rose drawing in Norwegian.

People design their own.

(gentle music) - It's kind of funny, we say the fiddles describe our personalities and yeah, yours is very detailed and beautiful like in the lighter kind of detail (mumbles) very bold and (mumbles).

- This is definitely one of my most prized possessions, the fact that I built a working fiddle.

When you start out having no experience as a luthier, you're so nervous.

What if it doesn't play?

What if it doesn't sound right?

And coming out of this with an instrument that's this beautiful and can make music is just, you can't even describe what it feels like to actually have completed something like that.

- It's a feeling that I'm guessing, I haven't had any children but this is my baby.

And so it goes with me nearly everywhere.

It was a lot of fun to build.

It was a lot of fun to finish it.

(instrumental folk music) I'm hoping that my sister will build the Hardanger fiddle.

We've already talked about building one for her.

So that's probably our next project.

(instrumental folk music) - I'm not Norwegian, no, (laughs) Nope, so anyone can do it, right?

You don't have to be Norwegian.

(instrumental folk music) I hope to play fiddle for the rest of my life.

(instrumental accordion music) - Fun to play for dancers 'cause you get energy back from them.

Put the music out but it's interactive between the dancers and the musician I think.

A lot of the music that we play, what we call Gamalt dance, the Polka Waltz and Schottische, they were popular all over Europe.

They spread all over the world and then when you couple that with the older traditions within Norwegian music, the Hardanger fiddle, what they call bigda dance or village dance, each village would have their own dance and before the waltz became popular and the polka became popular, they danced gongar and springar and halling and ruddle and a lot of those types of dances, bigda dance did not survive the immigration process very well.

- When I was younger, my dad went to Norway and picked up a Hardanger fiddle.

I had been playing Suzuki classical since I was four and a half and I was 12 years old and I'm like, "What is this thing?"

A few years later, I took it out again and I became connected with Andre Ian from St. Olaf and the Hardanger Fiddle Association of America and it's awesome.

I've gone back there and been a teacher now.

So I've come full circle of learning the instrument and I'm playing for dancing.

It's so neat to see that relationship and expression and communication between the dance and the music.

(instrumental folk music) It's kind of like swing dancing, for people who are uninitiated as to try to describe how spinning art works.

There's not a set pattern, there's a set number of figures and then you can do it however you want.

(instrumental folk music) - I got into Norwegian folk dancing and music because of my dad who was from Telemark, Norway.

He came over in 1924.

They had dance contests, fiddle contests and dance contest here in the Midwest with Hardanger fiddlers.

So then he had the opportunity to keep dancing Telespringar, which is the regional dance from the place where he came from.

He loved to dance and he was a great dancer and he loved sharing that culture from Telemark.

(instrumental folk music) One of the other reasons that my dad and his friends kept it up is because it was a community and that's what Kari and I are working on also now is trying to get that dance community at least back again.

- The thing that I think was the most striking for me in terms of not coming from a preconceived or preordained traditional path was modern Swedish pedagogy, which is gender neutral.

So they don't do the boy part and the girl part in (mumbles).

It was so hard for the first 10 years to break people's conception of not having it so gendered that we like literally-- - I still haven't broken free (laughs) but I'm working on it 'cause I also understand the benefit of, let's just say learning both the lead and the follow.

- Kind of readjusting and cracking that open has been what has opened up the tradition to so many more younger people who are like, "Hey, I'm they them."

- I think the Hardanger fiddle has kind of opened up new areas of music and rhythm.

It's also brought me on a journey of enjoying the culture more, even though there aren't dancers where I'm playing, in my head I'm seeing the dance and I think that helps and I hope that I can portray that to others through music.

(slow music) The fiddle that I have was built in 1911.

My fiddle was made near Christiania, Norway.

I believe it came to the US with Chris Arnheim, who was the first owner that I know of, of the fiddle.

And then he passed it on to his grandson who gave it to David Grinstead who passed it on to me.

One day, I will pass this on to somebody else.

- This is some of my dance friends.

The Lawns Cape Like is the name of the contest in Norway and we all happened to be there that year.

Oh, here's my newspaper photo in Norway.

There I am in a bunad that was too big for me.

My grandfather was Steiner Rodan and he came to America in 1911 at 17 years old.

And he and his three brothers played the Hardanger fiddle in Norway.

He had three fiddles, three Hardanger fiddles.

I was lucky enough to get one of them years after he died.

I started playing Hardanger fiddle in my 40s with no violin experience before that.

This I got from my grandpa.

I know they were farmers and they didn't have a lot of money.

So instead of taking them to somewhere to be repaired, they just took parts from other fiddles and put them on.

(gentle music) - Most of the time, it has four sympathetic strings underneath, those that were built in the 1900s, 1900 to 2000.

Now they're starting to put five or six sympathetic strings on it.

- Under strings that ring vibrate when you play the upper strings and it gives that special happy song that Norwegians like for their dance music.

(calm music) It has plates that are a little thinner, inset sound holes and it's tuned, usually a note higher.

(gentle music) A note higher than regular violins.

The traditional music is made to play on the Hardanger fiddle.

It is a national instrument of Norway.

(instrumental folk music) - It carries much better in a good acoustical place than a violin does and much better outdoors.

And it was used for playing outdoors for bridal marches and for playing for kinda open air markets.

So these under strings really help that.

(instrumental folk music) It does predate the classical violin, which came in about 1540, 1550 in Italy.

And this instrument seems to have been developed from some medieval instruments that we can see in stone carvings, angels playing these small fiddles.

(instrumental folk music) - Andrea Een, she was an instructor at St. Olaf college for many years and she was the one that kind of gave me the basics on how to play the fiddle, our first year.

The Hardanger fiddle there isn't a lot of sheet music, it is passed on just by listening and mimicking.

So like in these pictures, there is music there but it's more of a reference point than it is reading it, Like you would violin music and you remember it better.

(calm music) There's over 30 different tunings to the fiddle.

So that was probably the largest challenge to get over and the tunes are much different.

I'm playing dance music with a Hardanger fiddle and I'm playing classical music with the violin.

- When I worked in Gunner's shop, the Hardanger fiddle tradition was dying out.

We'd work on them but Gunner wasn't building them after 1939.

In fact, this is the very last one that he built and this Hardanger fiddle hung in the window there for all the years that I worked with Gunner, for about nine years it hung there.

He said, "Well, why don't you take this one "and finish it for me someday?"

So I've probably built around 40 of them since then, then I started it in 1939 and I finished it 63 years later.

(inspiring music) - I had asked my family if anybody had Hardanger fiddles and nobody did but a lot of the Hardanger fiddles got destroyed so had they been in my family prior to that time and it was kind of a mandate from the church that this was an instrument of drunkenness and fortification so you couldn't have it.

So they actually had fiddle burning parties and that was part of the decline of the Hardanger fiddle.

- The church really banished the singing and the dancing and the fiddle.

I think the thing that's difficult though is that it's both and it carries this idea of devil's instrument from pietistic standpoint.

And it also is an immediately trance inducing kind of instrument with tunings that have roots in sort of magical songs and the tunes kind of come from magical folk tradition.

(instrumental folk music) Through my studies and through learning about it, there was always a tension between the church and the people because those church positions were filled mostly by Dames who held Norway as an underdeveloped colony for 400 years.

We weren't allowed to have our roads and schools and newspapers and language, so bokmal, the educated language that was Danishified.

And in old Norse traditional way, it's called oorlog, the deep history of any kind of trauma or ancestor tension.

(bright music) - As far as lasting, the Hardanger fiddle lasting, how long it's going to stay around, it all depends on how it adapts to new songs and new cultures.

It's just like language.

When we study a language and we want to say, how strong is that language, we look at how well that language is able to introduce new words, how people can use it to bring in new ideas and concepts.

If the language changes and it can be used in different contexts and for new ideas, then the language is strong.

(bright music) - In 1979, I had a student from Norway who wanted to study Hardanger fiddle with me and I had just come to St. Olaf two years before that and was just learning to play it myself, the instrument.

I decided, well, I'll give him lessons and he's turned out to be the Agilent to the King of Norway.

So he's really up there in the echelons today but that was the beginning of my teaching Hardanger fiddle and we still are the only Hardanger fiddle program at a college outside of Norway.

(bright music) I really enjoy teaching it because I was a classical violinist in my training and my doctorate was in classical violin.

And I found it very liberating to play something where you only learn by ear.

And the music has kind of complicated so it's actually quite difficult when you're just beginning to learn by ear.

And I found it was wonderful for my students too.

It made their rhythm better, it made their intonation better, it just really added to their musicianship and that's what it did for me also.

- The Hardanger fiddle has definitely taken me on a special journey.

I started playing before I contacted relatives in Norway.

I have gotten to tour there and it's the most beautiful place.

I was able to go to the places where my family grew up.

- How important is it to keep these traditions going?

I don't know 'cause music is always changing.

It's always involving, it has to, it needs to grow, it's organic but it's always nice to remember where the music came from.

- There was so much heritage that got lost in the generations between my great grandfather to my grandfather to my mom and my dad.

My family always used to play music at get togethers.

Well, I just remember that when I was tiny and then it eventually faded and no one does that.

So I think learning these folk arts like the Hardanger fiddle, understanding a little bit of why the fiddles are the way they are and then also being able to bring the music back into families is very important to hand down because it kind of gives a sense of purpose to where people came from and being able to connect with the fact that you reap what you sow, understanding that my family came from another country, had a lot of hardship, took the leap of faith to come to another country and grow and flourish.

It just kind of sets the tone for the fact that if you put your mind to it, you can do anything.

- I don't believe that all in the melting pot theory where we're all supposed to become alike where we force people into taking on a dominant culture.

It spices up our whole existence.

If we can share the things in our background, the things that make us unique as people.

I think this part of our Norwegian heritage is very special.

Now it's becoming more and more popular and it's becoming even enjoyed by other cultures all around the world, the Hardanger fiddle.

It's fun to be part of that movement of making an instrument come back to light, for a tradition to come back to life.

(instrumental folk music)