Garmarna

Stefan Brisland-Ferner made a life-altering decision after seeing a staging of Hamlet in 1990. It wasn't the play so much as the music that accompanied it, which featured Olov Johansson of Väsen playing an original score on the traditional Swedish nyckelharpa keyed fiddle. Brisland-Ferner decided he wanted to become a folk musician, too.

With the nyckelharpa haunting their dreams, Brisland-Ferner and his friends Gotte Rindqvist and Rickard Westman went on to form Garmarna, named for the mythical dog that guards the gate between the worlds of the living and the dead. After a successful appearance at an outdoor festival two years later, the band was booked at the rock-oriented Hultsfred. To fit into the lineup, the group decided to add a drummer for the gig, Jens Höglin, who became a permanent part of Garmarna. The show also ended up being important for two reasons: a producer from a small record label was so impressed that he offered the group a contract that same night; and Emma Härdelin, daughter of fiddler Thore Härdelin, was in the audience.

Emma Härdelin knew Brisland-Ferner from a fiddle camp they both attended as children, and she would soon approach Garmarna and become the group's vocalist. The band's first recording was an EP and it garnered Garmarna a small following that allowed it to tour and eventually record a full-length record, Vittrad, in 1994. The acoustic album was nominated for a Swedish Grammy in the folk category, and though it did not win the follow-up, which added electronics, Guds Spelemän (God's Musicians) won the award in 1996.

Garmarna toured internationally and got a big boost by appearing in the Eurovision contest in 1997. The band's next album, Vedergallningenn (Vengeance), was released in 1999, garnering them their third Grammy nomination. The group then took on an unusual project for its 2001 CD: rearranging medieval songs written by the 12th century mystic nun Hildegard von Bingen. —Marty Lipp