Music and Spring

"Here comes the sun

    Here comes the sun".

Remember that happy song from the Beatles?

If you’re lucky, you might remember checking the long counters of vinyl recordings of 78 RPMs, or  33 1/3s, and shopping the latest pop-tunes on a 45 RPM to find the latest “Hit Parade” tune on one side  while

the flip side featured a never-heard filler tune. Collectors can still find these in thrift stores and playable if  they can find a needle  for the  turntable!. Currently, our youth have earbuds full of sounds as  their eyes stare downward, glued to a tiny screen.
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 Ordered from our home computers, sources such as Itunes are making music stores obsolete.

One of these digital services is Spotify, developed in 2006 in Stockholm, Sweden.and launched  October

7th, 2008. While free accounts remained available by invitation to manage the growth of the service, later subscriptions were opened to everyone.On January, in 2010, Symantec's antivirus software determined that Spotify was a Trojan horse, disabling the software for millions of computers. However, one month later, Spotify was reinstated and evolved to the point of becoming one of the world's largest music markets. To this day, music-lovers are using sources such as Google Play, Pandora as well as Spotify to enjoy their music.

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Music has always been a part of country celebrations of weddings, dances and folksongs.

The Halling was an early folk dance traditionally performed in rural Norway, with some versions of the 
dance also found in parts of Sweden. It has been documented as the oldest folk dance in Northern Europe.

The dance was traditionally performed by men at weddings and other solemn ceremonies. The Halling is a dance known today as a rhythmic acrobatic dance that requires a lot of strength. Sons of Norway features a touring Stoughton, Wisconsin High School dance team known by their program of Scandinavian dance. One of their highlight feature is a tall young man circling a hat held high on a pole. Leaping into the air, one leg is extended and his foot kicks the hat into the air. The ‘halling’ is a solo male dance described as “something bearish” as it develops into furious action we might see in a Russian Cossock dance, or our breakdancers.

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On the calmer side, composers such as Edvard Grieg have made Norway music internationally known.Modern music in Scandinavia has continued to thrive in various forms. Norway is famous for a variety of musical concerts and  musical events.

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Thousands of spectators attended a recent concert by  Karpe Diem, a well-known Norwegian rap  group. While the concert was being enjoyed, a young fan apparently got carried away. In a bizarre event in this Bergen, Norway youth concert, a twenty-eight-year-old man , who wasn’t in the audience but had back-stage access, grabbed a fire-extinguisher and sprayed several in the audience resulting with respiratory illnesses, damaging band equipment before he was arrested. Music is enjoyed in many ways.

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Justin Bieber is extremely popular in Norway, with some schools even having rescheduled exams in the past so their students could attend his concerts.

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  In another music genre, Oslo, Norway is known as the City of Music.Every March since 2001, a music festival known as The Oslo International Church Music Festival has been held featuring several concerts in   some of the city's most beautiful churches .

Heard in concert are cantatas by G. F. Händel, Telemann, Bach, Mendelssohn-Bartholdy's Elijah, and the list goes on .The festival has since 2001 presented choirs, ensembles, orchestras and soloists of the highest class.

 The people of Oslo love music and they  love going to concerts. Audiences fill both large venues and small basement clubs any day of the week, all year round as spring brings out the music in Norwegians. With the Easter celebrations approaching, church choirs are busy getting ready for the celebration. Easter is, of course, a religious highlight of the year , but the churches have a problem.

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Norwegian chuches are apparently in need of 
pastors. Norway is not known to be a highly-religious country with Easter popular as a secular  holiday rather than religious while Christmas remains the high point of the spiritual year.

 There is a    shortage of pastors. Even though few people are

coming to services, there is a need for church officials to conduct  weddings, funerals, and other church-related events.NOK (Norwegian Broadcasting) has reported that many Norwegian pastors are reaching retirement age and too few young Norwegians are studying for a career as a pastor. “We’ve had to advertise vacant positions and are struggling to find applicants for the vacancies” Trond Glimsdal of one diocese told NRK. This situation exists all over the country and personnel chiefs from Norway’s eleven dioceses recently met to discuss the need to fill

existing vacant church positions as well as those needed to replace retiring pastors . Consolidation of congregations is often impossible due to the large separation of communities. There are openings and opportunities for those wishing to study for a pastoral position in Norway, so here’s your chance.. Easter will soon be here.
               Easter and spring.

                                          Let the music begin.

It's Over!

The race has ended and the skiers can now relax! For 43 years, this event has been a classic for outdoor enthusiasts as they participate with a few thousand other skiers of all ages and travel from Hayward to Cable, Wisconsin on a fifty kilometer ( 30 miles) trail through the Wisconsin  hilly forest on their cross-country skis.

Each skier carries a specific weight and spectators cheer as the skiers enter the little town of Cable in northern Wisconsin.

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Outside of being in competition with others, the winter sport or maybe just the exercise, it’s questionable whether many know ( or even care) about the reason for the event! And why the “required extra baggage”?  The extra weight is the equivalent of a two-year old infant being carried on a storied journey.  The event is
the Annual Birkebeiner held in northern Wisconsin. Perhaps some American-based skiers may not know it’s significance, but native Norwegians certainly do.

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This all started in Norway. There always was a war going on between tribes, but a civil war was being fought from 1130-1240. While  king and chieftain names kept changing every two to twenty years, the fighters were often loyal to the same two sides, namely the church-leaning Bishops who  believed they were the people’s  true leaders and the rest who preferred their independence, and  resisted!.

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Priest with crosier

The “Church power” people became known as “ The Baglers” who were centered in the southwestern area of Norway and believed this was the place for the center of Norwegian power. All tribes were urged to submit to their authority. Baglers were also known as ‘Crosiers’, a crocked staff carried by the bishops as a symbol of their power. Along the eastern border of Norway, the population was less affluent and tended to

Birkebein ( Birch legs)

make a living  robbing those more fortunate. This rag-tag group simply opposed the bagler attempts to solidify control. Because members of this unruly group were so poor they couldn’t afford shoes, they wrapped birchbark around their legs and feet. They became known as the “Birkebeiners”    ( the Birch legs) and worked the border area  of Norway and eastern Sweden.

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This war intensifies when one of their members, Sverre Sugurdson,

King Sverre

marries a daughter of the Swedish king, thus gaining importance. He becomes commander of the birch-legs and trained his followers into becoming a cohesive army, waging heavy resistance against the Baglers with countless wars occurring between tribes. New kings enjoyed their victories, but died quickly. Often, this interaction resulted in the creation of several male offspring who were later able to claim to be fathered heirs to thrones of these deceased kings. One of these future kings was a son known as Haakon and followed by several “King Haakons”.

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Håkon Sverreson ( son of Sverre) soon became the leader of his father‘s armies and took part in many battles. However, he died an unusual death, possibly that of being poisoned by his father’s queen. Being unmarried, there was no apparent heir to his kingdom.

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 However, at this time, a woman named “Inga of Vartig” approached the court with an infant boy she claimed was fathered by King Håkon, thus claiming heir to the throne. Being supported by the king’s

followers, the claim was accepted, upsetting all plans by warring Baglers and putting the baby’s life as well as that of the mother’s life in grave danger. To escape assassination attempts, two skiers were chosen to transport the  2-year-old child to a safe territory where he would be raised by another friendly Norwegian King. The skiers were being pursued by their Bagler enemies as the two skiers and their infant passenger struggled in a blizzard through forests and mountains to safety.

This rescued child would later be known as Håkon Håakonsson IV, King of Norway.  

This king reigned for an astounding forty-six years while finally settling the long Norwegian civil war after everyone  agreed to a church-state regulation.He also prohibited ‘blood feuds’ and created a  regulation of heirs to the thrones. All while creating what was to be called Norway’s “Golden Age”. King Håkon IV of Norway died in 1263, but is still remembered annually

  by Norway’s “Worldloppet” and The US Birkebeiner, one of which is held in the northern area of Hayward Wisconsin. Every year, snow permitting, cross-country skiing enthusiasts arrive to take part in the ceremonious skiing event, carrying a backpack containing weight that would have been that of a two- year-old child in their responsibility, had  they been skiing for their lives in the Norwegian snowy mountains.

 Of all of the numerous Scandinavian leaders and famous kings, Håkon IV has been honored and remembered by Americans and Scandinavians alike every year in this winter sport.