Interview: Sinikka Langeland
Finnskogen is the "Finnish Forest," beginning about 120 kilometers outside of Oslo, Norway, and stretching into Sweden (where it's called Finnskogarna). The inhabitants settled the area in the 17th century and are a recognized minority in Norway, but you'd be hard-pressed to tell a Finnish descendent from a Norwegian national.
But if you dive into the culture, read the poetry and listen to the music, the spirit of the immigrant Finns is still alive.
Sinikka Langeland is the embodiment of Finnskogen.
Born to a Finnish mother and a Norwegian father — "Sinikka" is a Finnish name — Langeland was raised in Finnskogen and she still lives deep in the woods. She got her start on the folk scene by singing and playing guitar, but after switching to kantele — the national instrument of Finland — Langeland began to more fully explore her maternal roots, but with many twists along the way.
While Langeland has played, and can play, traditional kantele music, she's an original hybrid artist who mixes Norwegian and Finnish folk songs, classical works by Bach and original compositions that display a sharp ear for experimental jazz and modern tonalities, rhythms and harmonies.
Langeland has released nine albums as a leader for various labels (Grappa, Nordic Sound, Heilo), her debut album for the ECM label is likely to bring her the most attention.
"Starflowers" uses the words of Finnskogen "lumberjack-poet" Hans Borli (1918-89) with the compositions of Langeland, a idea she first explored on her 1995 CD "Har du lyttet til el vene om natta".
But with "Starflowers", Langeland is accompanied by a first-rate collection of Nordic jazz musicians: trumpeter Arve Henriksen (who worked with her on 2002's "Runoja"), saxophonist Trygve Seim, bassist Anders Jormin (who played on the previous Borli project) and percussionist Markku Ounaskari.
The music is free and floaty, and "Starflowers" is dark and beautiful rumination on runes, religion and rustic life.
Langeland and Ounaskari started a short U.S. tour on Sept.. 27 a the Kennedey Center in Washington, D.C., followed by two days in Minnesota (Sept. 29 at The Cedar Nordic Roots festival in Minneapolis; Oct. 1 at St. Olaf College in Northfield), one in Baltimore (Oct. 3 at An Die Musik) and concluding in New York City (Oct. 4 at Scandinavia House).
- Christopher Porter
What made you switch from guitar and take up the kantele?
It's because my mother is born in Finland and she always talked about this instrument from my childhood. She said we should go and search for it, because it's not normal in Norway. So we went to Finland to visit my relatives there and found this instrument. Then I just got so interested in it; I thought it gave me some more possibilities. When you play guitar, it's not so easy to find something new on it because so many wonderful things have already been done. So, after a while it became my main instrument.
But jumping from a six-string ax to a 39-string, five-octave chromatic instrument must have been difficult.
It was difficult. Somebody challenged me and invited me on a tour of Sweden. So I thought, "OK, I just have to rehearse a lot," and it was during maybe six months that I really worked an extraordinary amount. For a while I used both instruments, guitar and kantele, but now I can't play guitar anymore. I don't have the muscles for guitar anymore.
The kantele is very close to the rune tradition in Finland. The oldest kantele had five strings — then [the music] would be very traditional and very closed — and I use this five-tone melodies in some of this new composed music also. [But] I'm not playing this traditional.
What I have really studied is this vocal style of Norwegian folk singing and the singing tradition of rune songs.
The kantele style, because I lived in another country I haven't been close to that — and I was not so interested in that traditional. The oldest style was very nice, but the modern style of kantele, I wasn't so interested in. I developed very much my own way of playing kantele because there's no one else here. I have very good roots in the singing styles, but I arrange with my instrument very, very free, and all the techniques I'm using are quite free. But because I worked with these folk styles, this music is inside me. So there is also some kind of pressure from folk styles in kantele playing. And, of course, I've met and listened to many kantele players in Finland. But the way I play is quite free and modern.
Is there still a sense of Finnish ancestry in Finnskogen, or have most people just adopted Norwegian ways?
There is very big interest in the Finnish culture here, and these people who came from Finland in the 17th century, they had a very special way of cultivating the forests, and rune songs and special architecture. The people who have this ancestry here are accepted as a minority in Norway, together with the Sami people and the Romani people. So there is a kind of revival here of taking care of the culture. So it's nice for me and my family and my mother because we have a mirror here for our roots.
I've been to Norway three times and I have to admit: I hadn't heard of the Finnskogen area until I learned about you.
It's not so very famous; it's not so very big either. But it's coming on stronger now. It's like Sami in that there is also Finnskogen in Sweden. Of course, what people most think about in Norway is the mountains and the fjords and the Western part; this is the Eastern part. It's the start of this big forest area that goes through Sweden and into Russia. We're the Western starting of this big tiger belt. I also have some friends in Ural Mountains, so it's nice to have contacts with people in Russia who also sing rune songs, with their old Finno-Ugric roots. So it's something in common with this old shamanic tradition for people who have lived in the forest.
How did you discover the poetry of Hans Borli?
He was living 100 kilometers from me here, in the forest; more in the south of Finnskogen. He was starting to become quite famous when I was a teenager. So I started to hear about him, and heard him at some festivals, and I started to find some books. It was something that was close to me because he used the same nature. And in another way, he had some kind of philosophy that was very interesting for me.
It's a difficult flavor to get in translation. But he has this connection to this old way of thinking about nature. That it exists in everything. It's shamanism in a way, but he's more influenced by modern ways of thinking and modern philosophies. It's a difficult thing to explain in English, but I can feel that he has these Finnish roots and this close contact with nature. And because he was working in the forest, he was living in the forest — other people are maybe not conscious about nature all the time; I can feel that he was very open to nature. And he thought about how we're connected with nature — or if nature is just doing what it likes.
Because so many old songs deal with spirituality, whether in a runic or Christian sense, how much does spirituality play into your musicals decisions? Or are you choosing music based on the music itself?
I think I've always been very interested in spiritual questions. I'm not going to church every Sunday — even if I really love being in the church, I'm not that kind of Christian person. But I've always felt very attracted to everything related to spirituality.
I was just played a big concert in the Nidaros Cathedral [in Trondheim] that was very important in medieval times in Norway. And I was thinking, "Is it very different for me to sing in these churches [versues] singing the [words of] Hans Borli?" And in a way, it's not so different. If I go through nature, or if I go through other symbols, I'm searching for the same things.
Nordic cultures seem to have the ability to feel comfortable with both their ancient roots, the rune songs, all the way up to more recent times, which would be the Christian culture. And also be comfortable mixing them together. Whereas in continental Europe, they've mostly forgotten their pagan pasts.
I think you're right. We're still very close to nature, so we need to have it. And I know many people here say, "I do not go to so much to church, but on Sunday I really want to go walk in the forest. The forest is a kind of cathedral to me." Or they will say, "I can go be with God in the mountains." Of course, we have our Christian culture, but we really feel like we can go outside and have church in the nature.
Sinikka Langeland:
http://www.myspace.com/sinikkalangeland
http://www.sinikka.no
ECM Records "Starflowers" page
This interview was originally conducted for an article in Washington Post Express.