I discovered these guys just last week and I cannot get enough of them and have been raving about them to anyone who will listen. They often sing in old Germanic - like in Hamrer Hippyer which...
I discovered these guys just last week and I cannot get enough of them and have been raving about them to anyone who will listen. They often sing in old Germanic - like in Hamrer Hippyer which contains parts of the Second Merseberg Incantations
Wappy folky droney bangy music and medieval North European magic is an absolute perfect storm of my interests. Throw in that amazing throat singing as some icing on that cake and I'm rapt.
I'm seriously considering travelling to London to see them live in November but we will have a three week old baby at that point and my wife might murder me if I leave her to manage alone for a weekend (reasonably enough, I think). Maybe I'll catch them on their 2019 tour...
My favourite track of theirs is Krigsgaldr but they're all pretty great.
Speaking of throat singing, if you’re a fan of it you should definitely check out Tengger Cavalry. They combine Mongolian folk music and Tuvan throat singing with modern rock/metal. They are...
Speaking of throat singing, if you’re a fan of it you should definitely check out Tengger Cavalry. They combine Mongolian folk music and Tuvan throat singing with modern rock/metal. They are pretty badass and I’m a huge fan.
And for a more authentic version, the Gyuto monks have some great albums as well... I listen to them while I meditate.
I've been lucky enough to encounter Buddhist chanting choirs in person and it's something else. You don't so much hear it more as huge waves of sound reverberate right through you. Amazing.
I've been lucky enough to encounter Buddhist chanting choirs in person and it's something else. You don't so much hear it more as huge waves of sound reverberate right through you. Amazing.
I am super jealous of you as I have never had the privilege of hearing it live. You’re absolutely right about the reverberations being a major part of it though. I have a pretty decent sound...
I am super jealous of you as I have never had the privilege of hearing it live. You’re absolutely right about the reverberations being a major part of it though. I have a pretty decent sound system and crank the bass up so my subwoofer vibrates the whole room while listening to them and meditating (don’t worry I don’t have any close by neighbors it would annoy ;). It’s a remarkably pleasant experience “feeling” the chanting as much as hearing it, and it greatly adds to the depths you can get to while meditating, IMO.
I stumbled across this group in a YouTube dive some time ago and I've been hooked. They're playing what I can only describe as what viking would listen to if they commandeered a synthesizer....
I stumbled across this group in a YouTube dive some time ago and I've been hooked. They're playing what I can only describe as what viking would listen to if they commandeered a synthesizer. They're playing drums of animals skins painted with their own blood. They're playing bones and animal horns. It's intense stuff, and the theatrics of their performance are best displayed with this song here imo.
Baader-Meinhof phenomenon in action. I had never heard of this group until two days ago when Heilung | LIFA - Krigsgaldr LIVE showed up in the YouTube autoplay list after listening to some other...
Baader-Meinhof phenomenon in action.
I had never heard of this group until two days ago when Heilung | LIFA - Krigsgaldr LIVE showed up in the YouTube autoplay list after listening to some other song posted to ~music. The thumbnail was so intriguing with the female singer in her headdress, how could I not listen to it? It was beautiful and I’m a fan now.
I'm not a historian but have done quite a lot of reading around the subject but still.. this could be totally wrong so take this with those warnings.... It's worth noting that most of their...
I'm not a historian but have done quite a lot of reading around the subject but still.. this could be totally wrong so take this with those warnings....
It's worth noting that most of their influences may not be very Viking. Heilung work a lot with ideas relating to the practice of seiðr and galdr which are believed to be Old Norse (mostly pre-Viking Age), but as we don't have very much in the way of records from then, nobody really knows.
Vikings and most Scandinavian peoples didn't write much stuff down. They had, we believe, a rich oral history of songs and poems but either nobody wrote them down or what they were written on didn't survive. The historical records we have for that time are almost entirely non-contemporary, with the Poetic and Prose Eddas being a major source - both written in the 12th century, several hundred years after the Viking Age is generally considered to have ended and well into the Christian age (at least in Iceland where Snorri Sturluson was writing)
None of that makes it any less great music, nor any less interesting.
Thank you. I'm a bit of a history buff (or as Dan Carlin would say, a fan of history), so I had my doubts but as an American I'm not going to cast doubt on Germans and Scandinavians about their...
Thank you. I'm a bit of a history buff (or as Dan Carlin would say, a fan of history), so I had my doubts but as an American I'm not going to cast doubt on Germans and Scandinavians about their history. Do you have any sources I could read up on?
So my specific interest in this area is galdrstafir, Icelandic stave magic, which are mostly but not exclusively unique to Iceland. Justin Foster's website is about the best you'll get online and...
So my specific interest in this area is galdrstafir, Icelandic stave magic, which are mostly but not exclusively unique to Iceland. Justin Foster's website is about the best you'll get online and he links to a lot of sources, including all the original manuscripts. A book called The Sorcerer's Screed is also excellent. I really don't know a great deal about seiðr other than what I've seen visting Strandagaldur and from reading Egil's Saga.
As I said, not an expert, just an interested amateur. It's only tangentially related to Norse magic but I can recommend Matthew Champion's Medieval Graffiti which is about witch markings in England. I've been straying a bit more into local (I live in eastern England, which was under Viking/Danish occupation for a few hundred year) stuff recently. Not least because I can go to churches and see these things for myself. I find the Norse traditions very interesting but there isn't a huge amount of information out there, at least online. There are some books, which Justin mentions on his website, and he has academic papers you can download too.
From what I can tell Heilung take this stuff pretty seriously, at least in the sense of doing their research. Whether they actually believe in it is another question, and not even very relevant.
From what I can tell Heilung take this stuff pretty seriously, at least in the sense of doing their research. Whether they actually believe in it is another question, and not even very relevant.
I discovered these guys just last week and I cannot get enough of them and have been raving about them to anyone who will listen. They often sing in old Germanic - like in Hamrer Hippyer which contains parts of the Second Merseberg Incantations
Wappy folky droney bangy music and medieval North European magic is an absolute perfect storm of my interests. Throw in that amazing throat singing as some icing on that cake and I'm rapt.
I'm seriously considering travelling to London to see them live in November but we will have a three week old baby at that point and my wife might murder me if I leave her to manage alone for a weekend (reasonably enough, I think). Maybe I'll catch them on their 2019 tour...
My favourite track of theirs is Krigsgaldr but they're all pretty great.
Speaking of throat singing, if you’re a fan of it you should definitely check out Tengger Cavalry. They combine Mongolian folk music and Tuvan throat singing with modern rock/metal. They are pretty badass and I’m a huge fan.
And for a more authentic version, the Gyuto monks have some great albums as well... I listen to them while I meditate.
I've been lucky enough to encounter Buddhist chanting choirs in person and it's something else. You don't so much hear it more as huge waves of sound reverberate right through you. Amazing.
I am super jealous of you as I have never had the privilege of hearing it live. You’re absolutely right about the reverberations being a major part of it though. I have a pretty decent sound system and crank the bass up so my subwoofer vibrates the whole room while listening to them and meditating (don’t worry I don’t have any close by neighbors it would annoy ;). It’s a remarkably pleasant experience “feeling” the chanting as much as hearing it, and it greatly adds to the depths you can get to while meditating, IMO.
I stumbled across this group in a YouTube dive some time ago and I've been hooked. They're playing what I can only describe as what viking would listen to if they commandeered a synthesizer. They're playing drums of animals skins painted with their own blood. They're playing bones and animal horns. It's intense stuff, and the theatrics of their performance are best displayed with this song here imo.
Baader-Meinhof phenomenon in action.
I had never heard of this group until two days ago when Heilung | LIFA - Krigsgaldr LIVE
showed up in the YouTube autoplay list after listening to some other song posted to ~music. The thumbnail was so intriguing with the female singer in her headdress, how could I not listen to it? It was beautiful and I’m a fan now.
And then today you post this! :P
I'm not a historian but have done quite a lot of reading around the subject but still.. this could be totally wrong so take this with those warnings....
It's worth noting that most of their influences may not be very Viking. Heilung work a lot with ideas relating to the practice of seiðr and galdr which are believed to be Old Norse (mostly pre-Viking Age), but as we don't have very much in the way of records from then, nobody really knows.
Vikings and most Scandinavian peoples didn't write much stuff down. They had, we believe, a rich oral history of songs and poems but either nobody wrote them down or what they were written on didn't survive. The historical records we have for that time are almost entirely non-contemporary, with the Poetic and Prose Eddas being a major source - both written in the 12th century, several hundred years after the Viking Age is generally considered to have ended and well into the Christian age (at least in Iceland where Snorri Sturluson was writing)
None of that makes it any less great music, nor any less interesting.
Thank you. I'm a bit of a history buff (or as Dan Carlin would say, a fan of history), so I had my doubts but as an American I'm not going to cast doubt on Germans and Scandinavians about their history. Do you have any sources I could read up on?
So my specific interest in this area is galdrstafir, Icelandic stave magic, which are mostly but not exclusively unique to Iceland. Justin Foster's website is about the best you'll get online and he links to a lot of sources, including all the original manuscripts. A book called The Sorcerer's Screed is also excellent. I really don't know a great deal about seiðr other than what I've seen visting Strandagaldur and from reading Egil's Saga.
As I said, not an expert, just an interested amateur. It's only tangentially related to Norse magic but I can recommend Matthew Champion's Medieval Graffiti which is about witch markings in England. I've been straying a bit more into local (I live in eastern England, which was under Viking/Danish occupation for a few hundred year) stuff recently. Not least because I can go to churches and see these things for myself. I find the Norse traditions very interesting but there isn't a huge amount of information out there, at least online. There are some books, which Justin mentions on his website, and he has academic papers you can download too.
From what I can tell Heilung take this stuff pretty seriously, at least in the sense of doing their research. Whether they actually believe in it is another question, and not even very relevant.
Apparently they do