Nordic · Norway· coming soon
The
Tagelharpa
A Nordic bowed lyre with three or four horsehair strings, played upright on the lap, in a tradition that nearly disappeared and was rebuilt from museum fragments in the twentieth century.
In preparation
The tagelharpa (Swedish; also jouhikko in Finnish) is a small bowed lyre from the Nordic and Karelian regions, with three or four strings traditionally made of tagel — horsehair. It is played upright, held against the knee, with the fingers of the left hand touching the strings from behind rather than pressing them onto a fingerboard. Its sound is rough, archaic, slightly hollow — closer to a bowed drone instrument than to any modern violin family member.
By the twentieth century the playing tradition had nearly vanished. The instruments survived in folk-museum collections; the technique had to be reconstructed by ethnomusicologists working from sparse field recordings and oral memory. Today it is enjoying a slow revival, often paired with the kantele in the same Finno-Karelian runo-song repertoire. Our piece, when it arrives, will sit in that revived tradition — bowed long tones, the dark resonance of horsehair on horsehair, and the kind of firelight quiet that the instrument was built to fill.
A new piece for this tradition is in preparation. Subscribe on YouTube to be notified when it releases.
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