National Geographic Music (National Geographic)

As a guest of Norway's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Førde Festival, National Geographic Music attended the festival's 21st annual edition, July 8 - 11, themed this year as "Freedom and Oppression." This was the very first time any music festival has given such focus to world musical traditions that have managed to survive despite centuries of political censorship, suppression, and threats of eradication.

The overall spirit of the festival proved to be an outstanding celebratory triumph, aimed to banish the shadows of oppression. Yet the theme, freedom's tenuousness today, at once cherished and yearned for by so many, stimulated the minds of many, including international delegates from afar as Brazil, Mexico, Mongolia, Australia, the Czech Republic, Italy, Spain, Belgium, France, Canada and the U.S. We looked at thematic implications, the various musical histories involved, and the urgent, critical need to further develop the festival's 2010 thematic banner globally.

Pre-Festival Journey: First Bergen, Then Deep into the Sognefjord

But before the much-anticipated main festival in Førde's town, nestled in the Sunnfjord, I took a few days to explore some of the western region. L.A.-based music journalist, Steve Hochman joined me in Bergen for this adventure. We had no clue what surprising experiences and monumental revelations awaited.

The Førde Festival holds the distinction as one of Europe's (and arguably, the world's) best-produced music festivals, where traditional western fjord culture is central to its context. To experience life there along the vast and deep fjord waterway snaking through the towering mountainous landscapes, is essential to fuller appreciation of the region's music and part of the festival's historical pride of locus. As savvy world music aficionados realize, you can really only 'get' the music in its specific cultural milieu - apart from the fact that western Norway's nature setting in full summer-bloom, is one of the most beautiful spots on the planet. And so it was that we leapt at the festival's invitation to explore parts of the country's longest, deepest ('and best') fjord: Norway's majestic Sognefjord.

The historical city port of Bergen was on the cool side this year with spritzing showers and occasional stretches of dazzling sunlight bursting through the rolling North Sea fogs. The weather didn't deter us from zooming up the Mount Fløien funicular with the view of the whole island archipelago city sprawling out below into the ocean or having lunch in the fish market whose canopied stalls are laden with freshly caught and smoked delicacies. Nearby, the oldest part of the city, Bryggen, a restored Hanseatic row of gabled, brightly painted red and golden ochre late medieval buildings - fronting warrens of complex inner wooden structures, and now a UNESCO World Heritage site along the city's harbor, was crawling with poncho-garbed tourists.

There are at least a couple of weeks' worth of fascinating medieval sites, museums, and art galleries to visit in Bergen, as well as day trips to such beautiful spots as the late 19th century violinist Ole Bulle's island villa in Lysøen. But there was limited time before the big trip to the Sognefjord the next morning. We chose to see the 18th Hanseatic Museum, Bergen's oldest intact trade house, built after the 1702 fire that almost destroyed the entire town. A marvel of superb wood craftsmanship and artistic decorative grace, its silent, dark interior spaces with the original fishing commerce storage area downstairs and charming upper floor living and office quarters tell the story about the early days of merchant marine life.

Vik and the Quest for "Viking Viagra" - and the Hopperstad Stave Church:

Early next morning, we caught the 3 ½ hour-long ferry ride to Vik on the Sognefjord, famed small industrial town, where 100,000 kilos of probably the world's rarest and most unusual of all cheeses, the "Viagra of the Vikings," Gamalost, is made annually, and also the site of the 2nd oldest Norwegian stave church.

Vik's local man-about-town, Hopstock Hotel's gracious owner Carl André Riiber, whisked us off to the legendary Gamalost Tine-brand cheese manufacturing site, next to his hotel. Our hosts, Per Henning Liljedahl and Bjorg Honsi Aafedt, had prepared a tasting table of Norwegian cheese, mostly unknown or unavailable in the U.S.: rich blue Norssola, buttery brie, smoked Jarlsberg, and Ridder, with a crowning tray of golden Gamalost, some cubes marinated in Aquavit. With a local raspberry puree drink, we were in heaven.

Older Norwegians crave this cheese daily, as it's been known for health-enhancing properties since Viking days, 1000 years ago. Gamalost is reputed to ward off illness, heart and lung diseases, and increase sexual prowess. It's a tremendous energy-booster, and once the world of health-seekers discovers this cheese, we wondered how much would be left in Norway?

Now fortified, we drove to the Hopperstad Church, second oldest stave church in Norway, built around 1140. It looms high with dark, flanging turrets, as if a strange, gigantic mythical bird had alighted in the midst of a meadow. Its imposing interior is a wonder of post-Viking era architecture, whose vaulting ceiling replicates an upside-down Viking ship, and the original 8 meter high rock-solid, de-sapped pine stave posts supply structural girders.

Vik holds an annual Gamalost Festival at the end of May, and there are hopes to include a music festival, which should draw bigger crowds, seeking more than Viking Viagra and ancient church splendor.

Speed-boating to Vik's Findebotten Guest House:

A huge surprise was in store for us, as Carl André Riiber and his son, Carl Henrik, suited us up in North Sea Oil Industry wet-suits and led us into their rafting speedboat. With Carl Henrik at the helm, off we whizzed over fjord waters, clutching the boat's side ropes as it charged over the waves, to a small Vik fjord farm, the Findebotten Guest House, for lunch.

In 1998, owner Turid Findebotten and her husband Ingebrigt renovated the farmhouse property that has been in the family since the 1600's. It's a lovely, peaceful spot, where over 700 travelers a year come to fish, hunt, gather wild herbs and berries, drink the mountain's mineralized spring waters, and just relax.

A brilliantly feathered red and blue Macau parrot from Brazil is a Findebotten pet and flies around the mountainside, and Turid whistles to bring it home to feed apples. The spacious guest house rooms about 20 guests, although there are throngs of hundreds more who attend the annual Findebotten Blues Festival at the end of July. There are also the sports enthusiasts who come to parachute into the placid green fjord waters.

Findebotten's young Estonian chef, Aleksander Fedin, is fast becoming a celebrated Vik chef. Known for his love of local mountain herbs, he innovates with accomplishments such as his sorrel-basil ice cream. He'd smoked local-caught salmon for us, then roasted it and dressed it with tiny bits of bacon, mountain herbs and melted butter. He presented this glory with a contrast of artfully arranged warm and cool vegetables and a glass of Austrian Gobelsburger.

Meeting Up with Karl Seglem:

Again zipped up in our wetsuits, and still savoring Chef Aleksander's chocolate truffles, we were off by speedboat to meet musician (tenor sax and goat horns), composer, and poet Karl Seglem, waiting for us on the Hella dock.

He drove us along a long, narrow highway deeper into the Sognefjord interior to Solvorn to spend the night. Farther now from the brewing storms on the Atlantic North Sea coast, the late afternoon light was airborne and transparent. In celebration of the moment, we listened to Karl's newest music from his 27th album Ossicles over his car's sound system.

One of country's prominent contemporary jazz composers who incorporates western Norway's traditional folk music in his world jazz compositions, Karl's recent quintet recording with master Hardanger fiddler, Håkon Høgemo, and his players of guitars, ngoni, mbira, bass, drums and percussion, is a triumph of studio live-recording immediacy. Ossicles surges with fierce tenderness and recedes in brooding melancholies, biding time with an anticipatory 'suspensefulness,' and treadles back and forth with rhythmic intensities. Karl's sounds embrace the region's magnificent landscape, as he culls the shimmering ripples and soft gleam of fjord surfaces and breathes and blows with the sky's clouds as they descend and hover low in the mountains. There is a measured, contemplative peace, filled with improvisational reflections not unlike the sudden shifts of rain, wind, and sunlight one encounters along the Sognefjord. There is always movement in his "silent" sounds, propelled by swelling "echoes" rising out of meadows and fields, forests, shadowed valleys and mountains, the vast waterways and tumbling waterfalls. As Karl claims, he is "of the land."

An evening of superlative pampering was planned for us at Norway's oldest lakeside hotel in Solvorn, Walaker's, dating from 1640. It's an ideal setting for romance, where you are greeted with gentle smiles and old-world kindness. The veranda overlooks a profusion of roses in the garden. We marveled over the exquisite four course dinner: a cream mussel soup scented with vanilla, tender morsels of venison with blue cheese and fresh herbs, a slice of baked halibut with fennel slivers, chanterelles, pomegranate seeds and emulsion of roast potatoes in hazel butter sauce, and dessert, a wine-poached fig on a dollop of mascarpone. Sleep came very easily that night in the softest of down beds in the world.

Ferry to Ornes and on to Balestrand:

The next day, we rode the ferry to Ornes, where Norway's oldest stave church, the World Heritage Urnes Church, sits several meters up along the steep mountain road, past cultivated raspberry brambles, cherry and apple orchards, and a deer farm. Dating from 1130, the north side holds brilliantly executed panels of curvilinear carvings of the "Urnes" animal and intertwining serpents in a mighty battle. The interior is even more complex than the Hopperstad Church, and the whole visual feast is a cultural high point of Viking, Celtic, Christian Romanesque, and Gothic design.

It was here in this church several years ago that Karl Seglem drew inspiration for the last track on "Ossicles," "The Ornes Song." In the stillness of the church filled with visitors, Karl drew up a chair and blew his enchanted melody on his goat horn.

We met up for a good, strong coffee in the Urnes café with Karl's cultural heritage activist friends, Reidar Solberg and Grete Letting, who've written an excellent children's book about Norway's stave churches, "Den Vesle Stavkyrkjeboka." And as we raced down to catch the ferry, Karl scooped up a basket of the sweetest strawberries to snack on.

We drove to Balestrand to catch up with 20 international journalists and promoters who'd been on their own fjord "trip of a lifetime" on the Flåm railway. We stopped by at the home of Lena Skjerdal, one of Karl's vocalist friends, for a picnic luncheon and a huge bowl of more strawberries. Lena's 4 year old daughter hummed away in bliss as she tasted all. Lena's new jazz-ballad album, "Home" brims with her gentle phrasings and a star voice that skims, rises, and dips with the instrumental harmonies.

Before a sumptuous dinner at Kvikne's Hotel dating from 1752, Karl delivered a brief appetizer concert with Håkon Høgemo, Norway's greatest living Hardanger fiddler, in nearby St. Olaf's Church. Håkon holds an adulated superstar status among traditional folk fans. Befitting the theme of the festival, Hardanger music had been historically banned in churches, as it was considered music of the "devil." But there they were together, Karl on his tenor sax and goat horns, Håkon on Hardanger, illuminated by the evening sunlight filtering through the church's stained glass windows, tracing melodies with ancient, yet thoroughly contemporary timbres and resonances.

To Førde Through the Realm of Falling Waters with Øystein Wiger and Synnøve Bjørset:

The final leg of our journey was the enjoyable 6 ½ hour bus trip to Forde over the Gualarfjellet mountain road to Fosseheimen, Realm of the Falling Waters. We traveled with the town's legendary guide, Øystein Wiger and young, gifted Hardanger fiddler, Synnøve Bjørset.

If anyone can give you a feel for the local mountain farming culture and how Hardanger music was born there, Mr. Wiger is the man. A charming and knowledgeable authority, he spun tales of local lore with added anecdotal statistics about the region, seasonal climate details, and the best fishing spots for salmon and trout. In the background, he played Synnøve's joyful CD, "Slåttar." Mr. Wiger is convinced that Hardanger music is inspired by the sounds of nature: "Waterfalls, the wind, farm animal bells, the birds, all go straight to the fiddle."

Between visits to thunderous waterfalls, we stopped off at the highest vista point to breathe in the spectacular beauty. Mr. Wiger told us a tale that could be aptly called, "Romance of the Gamalost." It's part reality: the yearning valley swain in love with the dairymaid high up in the mountain, who made long climbs to court his sweetheart. Traditionally, ripening Gamalost cylinders were kept in the small bedrooms of mountain dairymaids and often beneath their beds. With a twinkle in his eye, Mr. Wiger hinted that the cheese still carries the heat of love-making from days gone by.

An old former brewery was setting for a real mountain picnic lunch with food from the Førde district: succulent, giant crayfish, tasty cured goat, lamb, and ham, goat pate, smoked salmon and gravalax, fruits and cheeses, including Gamalost - attested to by Mr. Wiger as the main reason for his longevity and health - country breads, fruit juices, and barley beer. We were serenaded by a young Hardanger fiddler and were all on top of the world.