Myrkgrav is preparing to launch a new material, therefore it is a perfect time to read yet a another page in the Ringerike old stories/tales. As stories have their own inner rhythm and the artist is subjected to their influence, the discussion is better led in an ad-hoc manner.
- Many places in the Oslo area have names related to numbers. Femputtene is a group of five small ponds, Sjuguttmyra (Seven Lad Moor) is a swamp in Krokskogen where seven young boys fought about the right to grazing land 400 years ago. Tolver'n it's the 12th and final drive of the conveyor in Asa. So Lars, many tales are left to be told.
- You are right, a lot of places are named after what happened there. For example, Ingjerdsbrenna is named after a woman named Ingjerd who succumbed to a snow storm on her way back home after bringing food to her husband, who was working in the forest with coal miles at the time. She had their son with her, who survived by clinging to his mother's dead body and covering up in her clothes until someone finally found them both and it was too late for Ingjerd's part. To this day, people still throw a stone or twig on that spot to mark it as they pass by. Many of these stories are quite morbid, but I guess it makes sense. On the other hand you have places like Jargenskastet, which is where famous fairytale author Jargen Moe stopped to rest on his travels between Sarkedalen (where he had priest duties) and his home in Hole. All of these things are generally not written down anywhere, the stories have been passed down through generations. Ia m just lucky to live somewhere where the history is so rich and people are still interested in keeping the memories of times which have long since passed alive.
- The tale about this "Seven Lad Marsh", oldest known story of Krokskogen seats, is ending tragically as they were all killed. In their memory, the older generations had put seven decks in this marsh. It is said that the logs contained in this bog is so hard that it is impossible to cut them.
- As I mentioned earlier, it has been customary to do something small to remember where something happened, which is why they used to stick poles in the marsh in memory of the seven shepherds. Unfortunately some things just get so old and vague that hardly anyone remembers exactly what happened, and thus the marsh in question has been pole-free for the last hundred and fifty years. I have a small hope that by bringing the story back once more, someone with the right mindset will remember the importance of remembering our history and take initiative to again make this a landmark for everyone to see.
- This new material presents the future Myrkgrav album: Forteljinger fra Finnefjerdingen...
- The title of the album implies that all the stories are from Finnefjerdingen, which is the old name of my home village, Asa. However, this is not completely true, as I take some liberty in finding stories from the other areas around the southeastern part of Norway. The idea is that these stories could have been told by someone in Finnefjerdingen, who would already have heard them somewhere else. Like we have TV shows now, in the olden days they sat around the fireplace and told stories they had heard from someone else or that their ancestors told them. My whole idea is to make an album in that spirit.
- A ljgrava ved Ormtjenn (The moose grave by Ormtjenn)
Back in the day, people hunted moose in a slightly different way than today. They dug a deep, huge hole in the ground with pointy poles in the bottom and covered it up. They often made these a graves in passages where they knew moose would frequent, but sometimes cattle also met their death there, which is why it was eventually banned. Anyway, this story is one that goes in my family, as my great-grandfather supposedly one time came across an abandoned moose grave like this, and started digging through it. At the bottom, he found a chest with what he believed to be a treasure the forest Finns had hidden there. He couldn't get it up on his own, so when spring came he went back with the help of some friends, but the chest was gone. This story has been published in a couple of Reidar Holtvedt's local history books, the titles escape my mind right now.
- BjA nnestussern fra SandungskA lven (The bear gun from SandungskA lven)
A bear gun is a huge fucking musket that only a few people owned, rightly so as you'd probably make red mist of anything you'd kill with it apart from massive bears. This particular one ended the lives of many, many bears during its time in different hands and eras, and the story revolves around that theme.
- Melbustad'n og UldrefA lket (Melbustad and the mountain people)
The underground or mountain people is often referred to in Scandinavian folklore. In this particular story, a hunter decides to spend the night in an old and abandoned stable. Soon enough though, he finds himself no longer alone, as a Hulder appears and tries to seduce him. No one who is in their right mind would spend the night with a Hulder, so he does the natural thing and tries to shoot her, but as we all know regular led doesn't hurt these mystical creatures; only steel. So the hunter takes a steel button off his shirt and fires through his trusty old musket, and the Hulder falls dead. Suddenly the room is filled with people, they are holding court for the hunter's devious act. I'll let the rest of the story be a surprise.
- As an ending, could you expand on the subject of this new record's technical aspects? You have once said you will use a painting as a cover.
- What I can say about the (hopefully) upcoming album, is that I've simply gone one step further in every direction involved. The music itself is less harsh and extreme, more oriented towards melodies inspired from Scandinavian folk music. Quite honestly Ia m not particularly fond of extreme metal anymore, but seeing as these songs were written while I still was, they're on some kind of middle ground. Ia m on the fifth year of working with the album now, and it's starting to resemble Wintersun's neverending project Time . The first couple of songs I wrote for it are also the most similar to the old material, with blast beats and tremolo picking and whatnot, and I've actually been thinking of just not including them seeing as how that type of music doesn't give me anything anymore. I do however think the listeners will like them, so I'll probably go ahead and finish them up anyway.
The lyrics and other text-based aspects have also been focused somewhat. On the Trollskau album the songs were both new and old, and thus some of them didn't have lyrics that went with the local history concept. This time around I didn't have to deal with that, so I've been carefully selecting stories from my old books that fit the general idea of telling tales of daily lives for farmers, lumberjacks and other a simple "entrepreneurship". There's also a slight focus on superstition and the belief in creatures that we might not see with our naked eye, which is a dominant part of Norwegian folklore as a whole and also plays a big role in our folk music. In addition the dialect aspect has come more to its right for this record, seeing as how I've researched syntaxes, words and paraphrases used back then and attempted to incorporate it all in the lyrics. I've for the most part tried my best to not make actual lyrics out of the stories, but rather split them up and adapt them to the rhythm of the songs. It's incredibly time-consuming, but I feel the stories deserve to be enjoyed as close to original form as possible. Of course no one really cares about this but me.
When it comes to artwork, I guess you can say the 7a split with Voluspaa that's being released shortly gives a small taste of the general idea. I dona t want to say too much about it, but involves some handwriting, drawings and generally rather old appearance. Not quite sure about paintings or no paintings yet, but Ia ll cross that bridge when I get to it. Artwork costs money, and money is something musicians never have in plenty.
Interview by Vasile Silvasan
*** This interview is also available on Let's Rock website
