1 Musical Forms

Folkeviser

The term folkevise (folk-song) is a very general one. In the widely accepted sense of ballads rooted in the Middle Ages, folkeviser probably came to Norway from England during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, together with the kjededans (chain dance). The form became popular in a very short time, first taken up as a fashionable trend among the nobility, but soon spreading to all classes of society. In spite of the apparent borrowing from England, with the translation and rewriting that borrowing implies, the melodies known today seem typically Norwegian in style, and the same song may be sung to different melodies in various regions of the country.

The songs are divided according to their subject-matter: kjempeviser are battle songs; trollviser (also called tryllviser) concern trolls and witchcraft; heilagviser are sacred songs and historiske viser are historical tales; ridderviser, tales of knights and courtly love, and skjempeviser, jesting or mocking songs. There is, however, no similar division in the types of melody, although there are two different verse constructions which affect the melodies: a four-lined stanza, with the same rhymescheme as the gammelstev (see below), and a two-lined stanza.

The four-lined stanza also has an omkved (refrain), often divided into two parts, with the innstev (inner verse) or mellomsleng (middle refrain) coming between the first and second lines, and the endestev (end verse) or ettersleng (after refrain) after the second line. The two-lined stanza form has the whole omkved at the end of the second line. These single and double refrains are often found in Scottish ballads and Negro spirituals, while in English folk-song it is more usual to find the whole refrain at the end of the stanza or, where it is split, after the second and fourth lines, rather than after the first and second.