Spelmansstämma

[kareina]

This weekend was the annual Spelmansstämma event. "spelmans" in this context means musician's and "stämma" is "meeting", though the word can also mean tune or voice/pitch/part,which is somehow appropriate. For me the weekend started a bit after mid-day on Friday, when lord_kjar and I went out to Gammelstad to help out with the set up. We had signed up for the shift of prepping the hamburger stand for evening food sales. We had time to chop a huge bowl of onions and lettuce and get the tables and grill set up before it was time to head to town to pick up our friend L from the bus station.

Friday evening was a social dance, and we had much fun. Groups of musicians did half an hour sets each, and the next group usually started straight away, so the only breaks I took from dancing was when I needed to run to the toilet. We danced till well after 01:00, and then finally decided that it would be smart to go get some sleep before heading back in the morning.

Saturday we arrived on site at 09:00, and enjoyed breakfast there with others in the Luleå Hembygdsgille(the local guild of folk musicians and dancers). Then we went over to an old barn and helped lord_kjar set up a sound system there. (This was one of several venues on site which had performers over the course of the weekend). We finished that on time to head to the final rehearsal for our dance performance, and then had time to claim a nice bit of hill near the stage for our blanket. L was willing to sit with our lunch bag, backpacks, instrument cases, and water, while we did our performance, and then we had the rest of the afternoon to relax and enjoy ourselves.

We watched some performances (and I worked on nålbinding while we did), we occasionally got up and danced when there were musicians playing on the big stage but no one using the dance stage. On those occasions we just hopped onto the dancing stage and had fun. Not surprisingly, whenever we did other people also got up and danced, too, but nearly always our group was the first ones to get up and dance. We also went to the folk singing workshop, which was lots of fun (and gave me more time for nålbinding). This year the workshop was held in an old house a bit further away from the other activities. As a result the group was only people who meant to be there. A smaller crowd than last year's session (which was in a building in the middle of everything), but a more focused one. My quest to learn Swedish one song at a time is continuing.

The weather on Saturday was sunny and warmish (hot while dancing, but when sitting still I was glad I had the nålbinded shawl to wear over my costume). This gave good crowds over and above the musicians and guild members (all musicians get in free, even if they aren't part of the guild--I recommend to all of my friends to come to this another year, and bring an instrument!).

In addition to a very good local turn out this year we also had a large buss full of musicians and dancers from Bodo, Norway, and others from there came by train. Apparently there were 70 of them in total. This meant that there were a fair few good dancers on site that I didn't already recognize.

There was about two hours between the last performance of the day and the start of the social dance in the evening, so we three went home and cooked dinner and even had time for shower and short nap before heading out to dance. This was a good thing, because it refreshed our batteries for dancing. I managed to dance till after 1:00 before getting to tired to keep going. The mosquitoes were also much more viscous on Saturday evening than they had been on Friday--on Friday I got one or two bites all evening, on Saturday I had many more, even while dancing. Part of the problem was that we had far more dancers on Saturday, so it became necessary to open more windows for air, and when it was late enough that the mosquitoes were getting thicker we couldn't close the windows, because there were so many dancers and it would have been too warm. So both because I was tired, and to escape the bugs I went to the car and took an hour's nap. When I woke up it was raining, so thinking the mosquitoes would be less, I went back to the hall to dance some more. Sadly, while there were no more mosquitoes outside, there were plenty of them inside. There were also no many folk still dancing, so I did a few dances, and we called it a night and went home to sleep.

Sunday we had no work shifts in the morning, so we didn't have to be on site before 11:45 for the 12:00 parade to officially start the afternoon's activities. It was nice to get a bit of sleep! It didn't really rain all afternoon, but since it had been raining last night and in the morning the crowds were much smaller. However, there were still plenty of opportunities to fill the dance stage with impromptu dancing in between dance performances, and we had much fun. I also made good progress with my nålbinding in between dancing.

The last performance in the old barn where lord_kjar was in charge of sound finished at 14:30, so we was nearly done packing up the equipment by the time the guy in charge stopped in a bit later. This earned him much praise. After we had finished up that bit of work we went and did more dancing while he joined the rest of the musicians of the guild for the final session on the main stage and then we helped tear down some of the other things that had been set up for the weekend. We were home by 18:00, and have had some time to eat and relax before I fell into my computer to check in with the world.

Comments

[eliskimo.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a lot of fun!