NORA BANG - FINE ARTIST AND OLD NORSE SINGER



MY MUSIC

My music is our music, the Old-Norse heritage, and yet, shared by all those cultures in the regions towards the East and South, where the Old-Norse people travelled. The Old-Norse period is estimated to include partly the Viking-period and hundreds of years before that. In other words, the life span of The New Testament and more. 'Old-Norse' is 'forn-nordisk' in Swedish and 'old-nordisk' in Norwegian.

The Old-Norse people travelled South and East, and had visitors from these areas as well. Artifacts and pure logic indicates that the Old-Norses have encountered various beliefs and religions during all of their travelling history, reaching far back to before Christ was born.

The tunes of the Old-Norse music that I perform, are selected according to my systematic method of assuming the age of Norwegian folk music. We know musical fashions down the history of times. The youngest of these are minor/major fashion that set in from around 1700. Before that was the church modal scale fashion setting in with the dominance of the Roman Christian Church from around 1050. A lot of our musical heritage in the North are neither of these fashions. That has been a challenge to the experts. Apparently, they may be of older age than 1050. The rune-stone at the left is from around that time.

With my background in the Vedic tradition of North India, I am aquainted with a musical thinking that equals to those tunes in the Norwegian folk music that are neither minor/major nor church modal tunes. The tradition of Vedic musical thinking was vivid before 1050. And since history claims the Old-Norse people travelled South East, it is obvious that there is a musical common history in some way here. 

People of the North and the East may have shared the same opinion about scales and tonality. Who have influenced whom, is maybe not a relevant question.The Vedic tradition has it's roots in the Northern Scandinavia before forn-nordic times. It is obvious that the Old-Norse had an advanced system of musical grammar equal to the complexity of the Old-Norse language, poetry and carvings. With the sudden onset of Roman Church dominanse, prohibition and extinction of the Old-Norse culture left modern people with little knowledge of our cultural heritage. 

Poetry, tales and folk tunes, however, have left tracks. With my experience with Vedic music and meditation ever since my childhood, I have a sence of performance when I encounter those old tunes of my ancestors from the inland Southern parts of Norway.



Characteristic to the sound of the Old-Norse music, is the microtonality, meaning, there are not only half-tones, but also quarter-tones and even smaller tones. You can hear this as I sing, either sung by sliding from one tone to another or by intonation, meaning, what tone I set or land on, which may be a tiny little bit higher or lower than in modern tonality. Without this information, the modern listener would think it sounds 'sour'.

I have had great curiosity in searching Old-Norse traces, grave-yards and rune-stones. It is heartening to hear the music emerge from our ancestors in these way they convey it.
On the sacrificial stone under the Ygdrasil tree of life

I perform the concerts alone or occationally along with other musicians for extra instruments.  See 'NEXT CONCERT' in the menu bar at the top right side. I perform the oldnorse tunes with the original microtonal scales. It is possible to book me for a concert, either you want a special short concert into a private event or you would like to have a full concert in your local arena. Contact me on nora.bang@gmail.com.

My CD is professionally recorded at Jurgen Milkereit Studio, Tvedestrand, Norway. It contains some of my reconstructions of oldnorse tunes. The runes are not recorded, because I perform them only heart to heart. So, to experience the old Futhark 24 runes, please enjoy my concert. It is however, possible to have the runes in painted version in original samples. Can be seen in the concerts, where I bring them, -  a collection of 5-7 original small paintings of the nature of one rune. 

Please enjoy!