We go AAA with WARDRUNA, the Norse warriors bringing primal sounds into the present.
Seeing Wardruna isn’t just a gig. It’s a spiritual awakening. We went on the road with the band who’ve spent more than a decade redefining the idea of ‘Viking metal’
April 2009. A hundred Inferno Festival attendees are gathered inside Oslo’s Viking Ship Museum, the elegantly carved longboats instilling a hush that turns into a resonant hum of anticipation as six musicians enter and gather around a collection of ancient instruments and mics.
A deep aboriginal drone resounds in the hall, a rhythm is played out on a wooden log like it’s telegraphed from another age, attended to by the imprint of a mouth harp and the stately beat of a hide drum. It’s the sound of something coming into being, of time coalescing into a long-forgotten state of grace. Even before band founder Einar Selvik and Gaahl’s serene, baritone chants and Lindy-Fay Hella’s otherworldly wail have realigned our collective brainwaves, even the most hardened metaller is wiping away tears.
Nearly a decade later, sitting in a tour bus outside Manchester’s Albert Hall before a now-customarily sold-out show, Einar is recalling Wardruna’s first-ever live performance.
“I was so scared before that first concert,” he admits. “It was seven years in the making. It was very emotional; I went straight down afterwards and cried like a baby. I’d put so much into it for so many years and that was the birth-giving, when you present it to an audience. To also be allowed to do it in that space in front of the longships, it was such an honour in itself, and there was a lot of pressure because there was a buzz around the project, and press from all over the world. We had no idea if it was going to work live at all. It was a special thing.”
For Einar, Wardruna isn’t a band he just decided to start one day. It’s a calling, a personal journey and a life’s work. Starting as premonitions he had as a child, it’s since manifested in ways so personally profound he confesses he’s still trying to get his head around it.
Steeped in a deep and thoroughly studied knowledge of Norse belief and culture, it’s never been the band’s purpose to take us back to a romanticised past, but to make old wisdom applicable to the present. To replenish hearts and minds with an awareness and an innate sense of belonging for which the speed, distractions and isolation of modern life make no allowance.
That notion of a greater whole is echoed in the trilogy of albums Wardruna have released over the course of nine years – Runaljod – Gap Var Ginnunga, Runaljod – Yggdrasil, and Runaljod – Ragnarok – each exploring a set of runes from the ancient Elder Futhark alphabet, and collectively describing a metaphorical cycle of man’s relationship to nature, from sowing seeds, through nurturing to death and rebirth. But this is no mere concept. To be brought into being, each song, each rune, has demanded its own sacrifice and its own lived experienced to become fully charged. For the song NaudiR from 2013’s Runaljod – Yggdrasil, based on the rune for Need, Einar fasted in a cave for two days before recording the vocals naked in the snow. “Method composing” is his term for it, and it’s ingrained into the band’s purpose.
“I did it for myself, for my own growth as a human being,” he says, “but I’m 100% convinced that you would have noticed the difference, and it’s not a gimmick. I only tell people half of the layers that I put into it, but when you come down to profound emotional states of mind, how do you capture it? And since the premise of the way I create is to get as close as possible to what it is I am portraying or singing about, this is
“I CRIED LIKE A BABY AFTER WARDRUNA’S FIRST CONCERT”
EINAR SELVIK
the only way to evoke whatever I am trying to capture. Of course, it’s not always convenient or pleasant, but it’s knowing the balance between what you ask for and what you are willing to pay for it. One of the most important things I’ve learned in this whole journey is that anything of any value comes at a cost.”
Whether it’s been through word of mouth, interest in Viking history or, more lately, their musical contribution to the semi-fictional Vikings TV series, the following that’s grown around Wardruna has become something other than simple fandom. As someone from their first label, Indie Recordings, once put it, Wardruna have become more than a band – they’ve become a religion. It transcends age, nationality and, despite Einar’s black metal past as the drummer for Gorgoroth alongside Gaahl, genre allegiance. Among the lexicon of responses, “life-changing” is one phrase you’re likely to hear often, not because Wardruna’s music comes at you from leftfield, but because the space it opens up answers something that, deep inside of yourself, you feel you’ve always known.
“I think it’s something we crave without even knowing,” says Einar. “And I think that the people it strikes the hardest are the ones who didn’t even know that they craved it and probably can’t put into words even what’s happening: ‘Why am I reacting so strongly? Why am I feeling emotional?’ This isn’t party music, it’s not fun; it is serious and it is heartfelt, and it’s not emptiness but it’s a space where you can be you. You can feel your connection to something that is bigger than yourself, whether or not it’s the room, us onstage, the sounds, longing for nature or a spiritual thing, it
doesn’t really matter. That journey is your own. The only thing we do is create a space. That’s why this music has never been about individuals, it’s about something else, and it’s what we say before we go on: see you on the other side, have a good trip.”
For a band with such a strong sense of identity, Wardruna’s line-up has been fluid over the years. Lindy-Fay and percussionist Arne Sandvoll are the only remaining members from that first performance, Gaahl’s decision to part ways with the band being for reasons as mercurial as they are personal. Nevertheless, backstage in Manchester the atmosphere is one of deep camaraderie. Arne’s playful demeanour suggests his onstage ability to switch between a wide variety of instruments with natural fluidity. Fellow percussionist H.C. Dalgaard is possessed of a jazz background, a dry wit and a brain with an unfathomable ability for multitasking (how do you manage to play three rhythms at once? “Coincidence”). Zither player John Stenersen radiates chilled, positive energy, and Lindy-Fay is self-possessed but gregarious. Eilif Gundersen, a former farmer and a leading expert in old wind instruments, is just as wise, eccentric and sprightly as you would expect from someone clearly hewn from the very stuff of nature. Einar may have an iron will, but
“THIS ISN’T PARTY MUSIC. IT IS SERIOUS AND IT IS HEARTFELT”
EINAR SELVIK
it’s measured by how at ease he is with himself among his company, improvising a call-and-response rhythm against his leather ironmonger’s coat with H.C., breaking into laughter, and moving into meditative mode as stage time eventually approaches.
Beneath the stained glass windows of the Albert Hall, the packed crowd, about to receive Wardruna in the north of England for the first time, is on tenterhooks. When the house lights finally dim and coloured light catches on the stunningly effective, tessellated backdrop, there’s an electric, this-isreally-happening charge coursing through every soul. Einar and Eilif step front and centre, bearing twin bronze lurs that look like huge shower heads excavated from a long-lost alien civilisation, to blare out the chestrattling herald for the imperious march of Tyr. The massed, solemn chant that follows is a traction beam pulling you across a threshold into a world as intimate as it is cinematic. From Wunjo’s windblown majesty, through to Runaljod’s stern yet strangely funky percussive rite, and Einar’s solo performance of Völuspá – performed on an ancient lyre – there’s a sense of awe and a humbling that no amount of gratitude can fully match, but you want to pour it out anyway.
It’s a similar scene in London’s equally ornate Shepherd’s Bush Empire the next evening. Audience members are lost in a trance, and the closing, heart-rending Helvegen offers passage and gives way to ecstatic applause that just keeps on growing, overwhelming the bandmembers onstage. As a coda, Einar offers a solo performance of Snake Pit Poetry, written for TV show Vikings, and echoing across the ages.
For most here, witnessing Wardruna is a form of spiritual chiropractic. For others, it’s something more. “We played Edinburgh a few days ago,” recalls Einar, “and I met a man who had been paralysed a few years ago. Him and his wife told me about their struggle and the fact that when he found my music, that was the first time in a long period that he actually found the will to try to start training again. I’ve received so many strong stories, letters or emails and met people, and it’s a powerful thing that something I created for myself and my own needs can have these ripples, that inspire other people for beneficial things in their own lives – whether it’s dealing with illness, or will to live, or depression, or centring them.
“I don’t know how to handle it or relate to it, to be totally honest, because it’s very powerful when you look into somebody’s eyes who has come
over to you from the street, and they are crying and they say that my music saved their life. What can I say to that? But I am thankful for it, and it’s a beautiful thing. As an artist, it is a huge honour to be part of somebody’s life so closely.”
The path that Wardruna travel isn’t prone to the insecurities that beset our contemporary crop of bands – the ‘difficult second album’ syndrome, the ill-advised shift of style, the audience-dividing grafting on of mainstream elements – it’s a continuum that answers to a very different set of priorities, and a more timeless cycle of endless renewal. With the trilogy complete, a new stage is starting to take shape, with a bridge formed in the justreleased album, Skald. Essentially a solo album by Einar, but released under the Wardruna banner (“I did release an EP under my own name, which felt kind of wrong, to be honest”), it draws from old, oral traditions while stripping many Wardruna songs to a raw, vulnerable strand that adds a yet more personal dimension.
“A skald was a multifunctional person in historical times,” Einar explains. “He, or she, was the genealogist, the poet, the news forecaster, the seer. The skald had so many different functions and roles, and also because it was an oral society, poetry and words and stories and news by word were extremely powerful. So Skald is my humble modern take on it, and a tribute to the old skalds. I won’t say that I’m doing what they did, because we don’t know for sure how these things were performed. We can do quite educated guesses, and of course I do base quite a bit of my approach to it on valid guessing.”
As for what follows, Einar reveals there’s a specific concept about viewing ourselves and the world, but also a “bottomless well of things to explore”. Yet, one thing is for sure: it will be on their own terms and, ultimately, terms you can call your own, too.
“With Wardruna, it’s always felt like something that I couldn’t not do,” says Einar, “and that’s why I’ve been so uncompromising since day one.
I’ve said no to 90% of all concert requests during these years, and requests for scoring for films, because it hasn’t felt right. I think that’s part of why Wardruna connects with people as well, because I’ve been so true to my vision and have let time take its course. I believe the gods help the ones that help themselves, and if you feed and nourish a vision and a path, and if you stay true to your gut feelings, these things will at some point connect and become reality.”
If magic is the art of making the invisible manifest, Wardruna are its true masters. SKALD IS OUT NOW VIA
NORSE MUSIC
“PEOPLE CRY AND SAY THAT MY MUSIC SAVED THEIR LIFE” EINAR SELVIK