Hardanger Fiddles made by Bud Larsen and his teacher, Gunnar Helland
I recently stopped by In the Chips, the Moorhead woodworking studio, to watch half a dozen luthiers make Hardanger Fiddles. What’s a Hardanger Fiddle? Start with a violin, then doodle folk art floral designs all over it. Inlay patterns of shell or bone into the neck. Carve a monster head on top. And most importantly, add a second row of strings that drone harmoniously below the four strings you play with the bow. The Hardanger Fiddle is often called the national instrument of Norway, so it shouldn’t surprise you that Fargo-Moorhead has an exciting, active, and growing Hardanger Fiddle scene.
The Fargo Spelemannslag is a club of about a dozen Hardanger Fiddle players and makers. At the center of the club is Bud Larsen. Most members are either playing fiddles made by Bud, or fiddles they made themselves under Bud’s instruction. I’ve talked to a few apprentice luthiers from the club over the years, and most of them are astonished that they are actually doing this! Many have no previous experience in woodworking or fiddle playing. They come to the project through love of their ancestors.
Making this uniquely Norwegian instrument is about 200 hours’ worth of communing with your great-grandparents, imagining farmers’ dances in Norway and America’s northern plains as you carve maple and spruce. What would our ancestors think if they saw us making Hardanger Fiddles in memory of them more than a century after they died? Well, many of them would be shocked and scandalized! They would snatch the unfinished fiddle parts from their great-granddaughter’s hands and throw them into a fire to save her immortal soul.
Religious revivalist preachers like Hans Nielsen Hauge (there’s a statue of him at Concordia College) travelled Norway warning that all things fun and secular are putting our souls in great jeopardy. Dancing, drinking alcohol, playing cards, and fiddle music were all the work of the devil. They called the Hardanger Fiddle “The Devil’s Instrument.” Thousands of fiddles were burned in Norway. Some of our ancestors brought these beliefs with them to America, while others brought their fiddles.
It was quite a controversial theological issue, but nowadays we are assured by religious leaders that the supreme being at the center of the universe is probably just fine with Hardanger Fiddles. Norwegians love the fiddle now as a symbol of their culture, and Norwegian Americans love it for the same reason.
Like many Americans, I have a nostalgia for my family’s ancestral homelands that translates into a general appreciation for stuff that comes from there. Ironically, this nostalgia inspires me to drink a Danish-made Carlsberg beer at the Sons of Norway lodge, even though my Danish Great-Grandma Jensen hated alcohol (and probably hated Norwegians, too).
Ah well. Maybe it’s misguided, but I think our hearts are in the right place. To our ancestors, we raise a glass, we listen to this music, and we make these fiddles, in your honor…whether you like it or not.