Trettonhelgskurser

This weekend, while many of my friends across the Known World attended 12th Night Coronations in one Kingdom or another I attended a very different sort of event: Trettonhelgskurser (which Google Translate says means "Twelfth Night Courses", even though "tretton" is 13), a weekend of classes sponsored by the Svenska Folkdansringen (Swedish Folk Dance Ring). Unlike many SCA events which are based around attending many different classes in many different subjects, these courses were each designed to run the full weekend. One could either take the class in dance, or in singing folk songs, or in playing music, or in woodworking, or in costumes for folk dance. However, even though most of us would have been interested in more than one class, each class ran for the full weekend, so we could only take one.

lord_kjar and I decided to go with the folk song class, in part because I need more help with singing than with dance, and in part because of my quest to learn Swedish, one song at a time. I think this class helped with that.

Two full days of class time was enough for us to learn eight songs. Now, when I say "learn eight songs", I mean that for each song we learned the words and melody plus one, or more often several, alternate tunes for the song. Not like in a choir, where people are grouped according to which range they sing in, and each group learns a tune that combine nicely. Nope, in Swedish folk singing *everyone* learns each tune for a given song, and then we divide up and sing multiple parts at once, and then we may switch which groups sing which version of the tune, or, perhaps, some individuals will switch groups.

With luck I will make time to translate each of these songs and share them here, since it has been quite a while since I did an entry for the "learn Swedish one song at a time" series.

I will share one of them now, because the translation is easy:

( Vi ska dansa med Sara )

Hopefully I will have a link to the tune up soon--when that happens I will edit it. If you want to hear it before that happens poke me.

How else was this event different from the SCA events I have attended? ( Well, the best way to answer that is with a description. )

Oops, I just looked at the clock, it is later than I had hoped--I still need to read my 1000 and do my yoga, and I have to drive to Boliden for work in the morning (1.5 hour drive). I will be there till Thursday evening, when I return home so that I can attend my exam to get new hearing aids on Friday. Then next week I will head back there for the first half of the week, then home to pack and get ready for the Scotland trip.