Listen to Wardruna’s Yggdrasil and Feel Like a Viking
By Frank Poulin
Last week, Norway’s traditional folk outfit Wardruna launched Yggdrasil, the second album of their Runaljod trilogy. If you’re already familiar with the 2009 opening chapter, , then you know how easy it is to let Wardruna immerse you igap var Ginnunganto a world where Norse gods once reigned over land and sea.
Since the first album came out, the members of Wardruna (Einar Kvitrafn Selvik, Lindy-Fay Hella, and Gaahl) have spent their time perfecting their sound and the way it translates to live performance, with a net effect of making it more accessible and enjoyable from a purely musical standpoint. While the songs of the first album gave off an overall feeling of being more ambient than openly musical (with a few exceptions), this is definitely not the case for Yggdrasil. It feels less like attending a mystical ritual and more like sailing on a longship in a thunderstorm, headed into battle with the Gods by your side. The entire album has an engaging, cinematic feel to it ~ and in fact several of the songs have been featured, with great effect, on the History Channel’s new series Vikings.
The trilogy aims to interpret the 24 runes of the ancient Norse alphabet known as the Elder Futhark. Each of the runes not only corresponds to a phonetic but also is named after (and came to symbolize) concepts taken from mythology, nature, and daily life (“god,” “water,” “joy,” etc). But this is hardly where the connection to ancient Nordic tradition ends. The band uses handmade historical instruments and sings in the ancient dialects, often recording in the woods or other locations significant to a song or its rune. All these elements, combined with the added ambient sounds (wind, burning torches, running streams) and choirs, makes for a very effective time machine that takes you back a thousand years to those lands of ice and thunder.
I for one can’t wait to hear what they have in store for the conclusion of the trilogy. Meanwhile, if you’ll excuse me, I have a medieval village to plunder.
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