Last weekend, Sheila took the train down to Stockholm to attend the Midvinterstämma in Järfälla. A "spelmansstämma" is best translated as a sort of music festival where there will be concerts, possibly teaching sessions, and lots and lots of "buskspel"--literally 'playing in the bushes' or jamming. At events in the summer, the term can be taken literally, but as this event is in late January, it's of course an indoor event.
This was the 40th anniversary of what was the FIRST such indoor, winter event, and is organized by Lars Lindkvist, who also organizes the course at Ekebyholm that Sheila has attended several times since 1998, so was sure to be full of people she knew. And only a 7-hour train ride away! 😃 Of course, flying would have been faster, but a nyckelharpa is an awkward travelling companion on an airplane. My friend Ami could meet me at Stockholm Central Station (Centralen) at 3:15, and we'd go to her place to catch up, eat dinner, and play some music.
So, we got to the train station at 8:45, only to find that the first train had been exchanged for a bus, due to extreme cold (-40C / -40F) in one of the railway centers farther north, which meant that trains couldn't leave that location, which meant there weren't enough cars to make up our train. She didn't want to deal with the nyckelharpa and flight case on a bus either, so changed to a later train. And then after more thought, since the 2nd train was the exact same type of train on the same route, chose to go even later but on a train coming from the west rather than from the north.
Finally got on the train about 12:30, now to arrive in Stockholm at 7PM rather than the planned 3:15. Luckily, Ami and I both have What'sApp and were in contact throughout all of this. "Oh, well, we can have dinner at the hotel once I check in."
Everything went great at first. I'd opted for a first-class ticket, because the seats are way more comfortable, and I've gotten to where I appreciate that. The car was almost empty at the start:
And I enjoyed watching the scenery go by. I took a short video, but for whatever reason, it refuses to load properly into the blog.
But a few hours in, the train slowed down significantly. It crept along for about an hour, until we reached Huddiksval. They came on (finally!) and announced that the reason was the extreme cold. There's enough friction in the wheels that things melt, but it's cold enough that they refreeze, and so then there's more friction and eventually important things overheat (like brakes), so they slowed down until they could stop and go out and hack the ice away.
Finally got to Stockholm at 8:30. We grabbed a quick bite and went to the hotel. So much for planning! No practicing the tunes I don't know for the next day's Allspel (where the entire group plays through several tunes. I knew 3 out of 6....).
Lars and I have stayed at the Welcome Hotel in Barkarby on several occasions. The rooms are spacious (for Europe) and the breakfast is good.
Not quite what hotels in the US try to pass off as a "Continental Breakfast"!!
Ami picked me up from the hotel a bit before noon. We had time to check in and pay--it's standard that musicians don't have to pay an entrance fee at stämmor, but we did pay for the coat-check. Then we got some sandwiches and coffee and we were ready for the day.
A stämma is usually begun with a call on a cow-horn, but as this is a city-type event and was held at the School for the Arts, it was "blown open" by the Kulturskolans Blåsarensemble (Wind Ensemble). Then there were a couple of speeches about the 40-year history of the Midvinterstämma, and then the Allspel. We all trooped up onto the stage (which left very few in the audience!) and played our 6 tunes, twice each. See the first video below.
The afternoon was full of performances. They seem to have filmed the entire stämma, so I'll post links to the ones I actually saw. NOTE: YouTube has a habit of adding ads at the beginnings, and then auto-playing the next video. I do not know how to fix this. Be ready with the "Skip ad" button, and use the Back arrow at upper left to return to the blog after the video.
Allspel--if you look closely, you can see me kind of hiding behind the lady in the black-and-white striped sweater at the far left of the stage:
I missed a couple of performances, but came back for Hörkens Bygdedansare (Hörken is a village in the Bergslags region of Sweden, and bygdedanser are the village dances; mostly polskas in 3/4 time, so the name means "People who dance the old village dances from around Hörken). The group or members thereof have been in Boulder a couple of times to teach workshops. They present the tradtional dances in what would have been the everyday dress of ordinary people 150 years ago.
Then a performance by Eva Tjörnebo & Viskompaniet (Eva & the Song Company), who are the folks we usually spend Midsommar with.
I wanted to see the group Kollijox (more friends of mine), so decided to wait through the next performance and was REALLY glad I did! The "Kulturella Folkdansgillets ungdomsgrupp" (Cultural Folk-dance Association's youth group....a mouthful in either language!) put on an extremely energetic performance. They played around with some of the traditional dances, combining some into new forms, and they were just great!
AND the group Kollijox, who have also visited us in Boulder. Lars Lindkvist, with the nyckelharpa, is the leader of the Ekebyholm nyckelharpa course I've been to. His husband Tommy is playing a cittra. It has zillions of strings set out in chords. You may have seen several of these in the Allspel video above. Tommy built a special stand for his that projects the sound forward better.
After all of that, we wandered aroud for a while, joining various groups to jam.
More sandwiches for dinner. There was also a food truck outside, but neither Ami nor I wanted to reclaim our coats in order to go out. There was a "visstuga" (song cabin) with Eva Tjörnebo, basically a sing-along. I think there were about 50 of us! People would suggest or sing songs they knew, or ask if anyone knew "this song that my gramma used to sing where the refrain was _____, but I've forgotten the rest!" And yes, somebody knew it.
Then there was dancing! I got to dance to Kollijox, thanks to Lars L. assuring everyone that yes, I was from America but I still knew what I was doing (thanks, Ingve, for dancing with me!). Nobody asked me for their last tune, a Finnskogspols, so I danced by myself because it's one of my favorite dances and I couldn't just STAND there and listen!
Then Marie came and asked me to dance. She was really good, and we danced many dances together, switching roles as needed. Sometimes I think I'd rather dance with women than with men! But I was too busy to get any pics.
There was still time to join more jam sessions, so we did that until they started clearing away chairs.
(For anyone who would know, yes, that's Mikkel in the plaid shirt! Must have been 25 years since I saw him last!)
Spent Sunday playing tunes with Ami and just recovering from Saturday. On Monday, she drove me to meet Kjell (pronounced like "Shell") Lundvall, who built the nyckelharpa that I left home in Denver. He had agreed to build a box to ship my new one home, since it was built by one of his students, Peter Hedlund. Peter isn't a novice to PLAYING (you can find him all over YouTube), but he hadn't ever built one until I think 2015 or so. Kjell was a Master Carpenter before he ever started building instruments...I wish I'd taken a pic of this beautiful little bureau he had in his hall. We had a lovely time listening to Kjell's stories over coffee and semlor (cardamon buns filled with marzipan and whipped cream, only available between Christmas and Easter).
The train ride home went much more smoothly except for the part where I had to get up at 5:30....it was only 5 hours, so I was "home" in time for a late lunch. With my head full of tunes, but without a nyckelharpa. 😔 But it's in good hands. I'll let Kjell know when we REALLY get home, and he'll ship it then.
