MALUNG, Sweden — Jennie Tiderman-Osterberg
lets loose a high-pitched call into the
Swedish forest, her voice rising and
falling in a haunting, eerie melody.
اضافة اعلان
The echo reverberates through the woods and moments
later, three cream and black cows emerge from the trees. The bells around their
necks jingle as they make their way towards her to return to their shed.
This is kulning — a form of
Scandinavian cattle-calling dating back to the Middle Ages.
Once these calls rang out from summer farms across
central Sweden as farmers brought their animals back from the woods after a day
of grazing.
Many of the farms vanished as Sweden industrialized
in the mid-19th century, but kulning has grown in popularity in recent decades.
Prestigious music schools now offer courses and the
hypnotic and entrancing art was even featured in the 2019 Disney movie “Frozen
II”.
Sweden recently decided to nominate the summer farms
known as fabods, where kulning developed, to
UNESCO’s intangible cultural
heritage list to better preserve their unique culture.
‘The real life’
Tiderman-Osterberg’s
lifelong passion for music started with a childhood obsession with opera,
before going through a punk drummer stage. She is currently doing a PhD in musicology.
Hearing kulning changed her life, she said, as she
fell in love with both the art form and its cultural origins.
“The first time I used kulning, it felt almost as if
my feet were growing roots,” she said.
“I decided that it was my life’s mission to spread
knowledge” about kulning and other fabod traditions, said the tattooed musician
dressed in a pinafore, cotton dress and head-covering harking back to the 19th
century.
Traditionally fabod women would take cows and goats
to graze in the woods to ensure they did not eat the crops grown on arable
land.
When AFP caught up with Tiderman-Osterberg in July,
she was visiting the Arvselen fabod in the central region of Dalarna, practised calling the farm’s cows back from
the forests.
Owner
Tapp Lars Arnesson returned to his family farm
after a career as an actor, attracted by a simple life in the countryside.
“For me there’s nothing better,” he said, standing
outside one of the farm buildings, a trilby pulled down over his eyes. “This is
the real life.”
He has maintained the group of little red
traditional buildings without electricity and still lives off the land, growing
vegetables and milking his three cows.
His fabod is one of only around 200 left in Sweden,
down from tens of thousands in the mid-19th century.
And only a handful keep kulning alive.
Tiderman-Osterberg is planning to tour Sweden this
summer with fabod farmers to give lectures and kulning demonstrations to raise
awareness.
Its rising popularity means the high-pitched,
wordless call is now also practiced as an art, with concerts given around the
country.
‘It’s very releasing’
At
Stockholm’s Royal College of Music, a small group of students are spread out into the corners of a dimly
lit auditorium, responding to their tutor’s call with melodious ones of their
own.
They learn to project their voices as farmers in the
forest would have done to reach animals kilometers away.
“People want to learn kulning because there is
something intriguing about using your voice in this powerful way,” said Susanne
Rosenberg, a folk singer and professor who started the course.
Rosenberg’s students come from a variety of
backgrounds. “They could be an opera singer... (or) someone who just wants to
call the kids home for dinner,” she said.
Enthusiasts also offer courses outdoors, with or
without cows.
On a farm near Gnesta south of Stockholm, tutor
Karin Lindstrom troops across verdant hillsides followed by a dozen students.
Standing in a field as mosquitoes and gnats buzz
around, her dozen students start with short sounds, building up until they are
ready to attempt their own cattle calls.
Few will ever use their new skills to round up
cattle, but Lindstrom said the centuries-old tradition had other benefits.
“The personality is very closely (linked) to the
voice and many people have not been able to express themselves,” she said.
“It’s very releasing.”
Read more Trending
Jordan News
.jpg)
.jpg)
