Wardruna are something of a modern musical phenomenon. Part Scandinavian folk revival, part prog rock epic and part pagan ritual, their wide-screen performances are a beautiful and mesmerising celebration of repurposed ancient traditions, the natural world and the power of singing together.
Their audience is usually a suitably diverse crew of metalheads, silver-haired goths, fishermen’s friends folkies and more than the odd cosplaying Viking, as it was at the magnificent Symphony Hall. However, their crowd was firmly of the Generation X and Boomer age group and there were certainly very few, if any, at this Birmingham show under the age of 40. Not that that mattered, for those that were present were transfixed as Einar Selvik and his Valkyrie co-vocalist Lindy-Fay Hella chanted, howled, harmonised, danced and called up the ancestors over pounding deer-skin beats, deep and resonating drones and sampled sounds of birds, running water and wind blowing through thick Scandinavian forests.
Dressed in loose-fitting black clothes and with his head shaved and beard in a long plait almost down to his navel, Selvik and his seven-strong raiding party appeared in permanent twilight with atmospheric up-lights, plenty of shrubs and grasses in long planters across the front of the stage, occasional bursts of dry ice and a huge back drop with a variety of projections. The sound of ravens calling to each other echoed around the hall and the band eased into the bowed double kravik-lyre powered riff of the operatic “Kvitravn”.
Soon a solar eclipse unfolded onto the stage back drop and, to the sound of pipes, gently bubbling water and understated percussion, Wardruna slipped into the woozy “Solringen” and the psychedelic folk of “Heiruta Thurs”, as Lindy-Fay Hella twirled and skipped around the front of the stage, as if encouraging a Dark Ages rave. With “Tyr”, Selvik and Eilif Gundersen strapped on an enormous pair of battle horns to lay down a heavy ambient drone to accompany the deep repeated chanting of the rest of the band, which then morphed into “Isa”, an earthy and shamanistic duet led by Hella over an off-kilter groove.
As the main set drifted towards its conclusion, Selvik stepped up to his deer horn microphone stand to deliver a plea for those present to learn from the past and to create a better now. To sing together and to appreciate its universal medicinal power and in a subtle dig at those who misrepresent Norse culture for nefarious reasons, he explained “This cultural pissing contest is quite irrelevant”.
With that, a row of torches at the front of the stage was lit and the band broke into the atmospheric “Helvegen”, a choral lament about death and letting go. Looking quite bowled over by the subsequent applause, Selvik smirked “I remember this from last time. It’s the Birmingham way of asking for one more tune”. So, as the rest of the band shuffled off stage, he picked up his harp to sing “Birna”, a lullaby and the title track from the band’s most recent album. Having finished, he put down his instrument and with a “Stay safe and stay sane”, he left the stage himself.
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