Annbjørg Lien: A Beginner’s Guide

Just ten miles south of the strikingly beautiful city of Ålesund on the west coast of Norway is the small town of Mauseidvåg. It’s where Annbjørg Lien grew up and where she fell in love with the sound of the Hardanger fiddle.

The korps (marching bands) were a familiar sight and sound in the region, and there was jazz, but very little folk music. Lien’s parents, however, loved folk music and would record the weekly folk programmes from the radio and then gather round to listen on the family cassette-player in the living room. Over time she compiled quite a collection of the master fiddlers from all over Norway. “When I was around five years old I had one wish and that was to learn to play the Hardanger fiddle. My dad didn’t play so he started to learn so that he could teach me.” Her father’s energy didn’t stop there: he began gathering young people together in Mauseidvåg to form a spelmanslag (folk group), and Lien and her friends soon found they were travelling all over Norway to perform at festivals and competitions.

Lien with (left to right) Knut Reiersrud, Hans Fredrik Jacobsen, Rune Arnesen and Bjørn Ole Rasch (photo: Knut Utler)

After all this experience Lien, still in her teens, was getting a lot of work as a folk musician. But while they were supportive of her music, her parents were adamant that Lien had to have a ‘proper job,’ so she enrolled at the Oslo National Academy of Art studying interior architecture and furniture design. The three-year course actually took her six to complete because her (now legendary) folk band, Bukkene Bruse, was busy touring internationally; they were even chosen as the official band for the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer after their self-titled debut album had come out the year before.

“I needed to retune my head, my soul and my heart, to kick-start the next period in my life”

Her first solo release in 1988, Kjellstads-Slåtter, saw her playing traditional fiddle tunes. Her second, Felefeber (1994), revealed an assured traditional fiddler now also including her own compositions. Prisme (1996) marked the arrival of important collaborators including guitarist Roger Tallroth, keyboardist and producer Bjørn Ole Rasch and drummer Rune Arnesen on Lien’s own compositions. Baba Yaga (1999) reflected her passion for music from other cultures, and Waltz with Me (2008) was commissioned by the Telemark Folk Festival and featured American fiddler Bruce Molsky. Two years later came the release of her duo with much-loved Norwegian singer Sondre Bratland (Alle Vegne, 2010) and in 2015 Drifting Like a Bird, a commission from the North Sea Festival in Farsund, was a magical celebration of life at sea.

And this is where I’m going to fast forward through the years of recording, composing and touring because, while the pandemic has brought huge changes to all our lives, Lien had already begun a new chapter well before that, and it’s this part of her story that leads up to the release of her most recent recording, Janus (read the review). “Six years ago I felt I needed to learn something new. I’ve been packing suitcases, playing nonstop, and the energy fell out. I needed to retune my head, my soul and my heart, to kick-start the next period in my life.” She began a PhD with the University of Agder in Kristiansand, based on the Hardanger fiddle music of the folk-rich Setesdal region.

“I wanted to look for compositional tools in the music, so I was looking for specific Hardanger fiddle characteristics. What are the identities that hold a tune up and what are the characteristics that identify a traditional tune that’s been changed over 200 years and yet you can still recognise it as the same tune? I ended up with eight characteristics and each was used to make a new tune connected to each compositional tool. And that’s the new album!”

A few months into the PhD, in early 2015, Lien became ill and her hearing was severely damaged. Playing was out of the question, and after a cochlear implant there was a lot of retraining and recovery. She describes her PhD work during that period as “a gift.”

She found it hard to write music after a deep dive into the archive material, and especially listening to the music of Andres Rysstad (d1984). “How do you find yourself again after that?” she asks. “One of my arguments was that if you dare to be open about where the inspiration comes from, because all creative work comes from somewhere – nature, people, musicians – and if you put that on the table, this comes from there. Now I can see where I am and I can place myself, and it was easier to compose.”

Janus is special for all those reasons, but also as a gathering together of so many musicians, a nod to the importance of collaborations in her career. She talks about some of the people who’ve been part of her music: the Swedish guitarist Roger Tallroth who she can be innovative and curious with, one foot in tradition, the other in many other genres; Shetland’s Catriona MacDonald who travelled to Ålesund when she was part of Shetland’s Young Heritage and Lien’s father invited all the musicians to their home in Mauseidvåg (they continue to work together as part of the group String Sisters); Bjørn Ole Rasch, keyboardist, composer, arranger and producer whose work is woven through so many of her albums; singer Sondre Bratland, who she’s had a 30-year duo partnership with, finding inspiration in being so close to the words and the story and the tonalities; and the master fiddler Hauk Buen – “I lived in his house in Telemark to be close to a really big artist over a long period of time. We played and talked a lot and I could see how he played, how he used nature – how he breathed, how he was with his art.”

In 2019 UNESCO inscribed the folk traditions of Setesdal to their intangible cultural heritage list. The Agder County Municipality (in which Setesdal lies) wanted to follow this up and find new ways to protect and nurture the arts of the region. Annbjørg Lien was appointed project manager, passionate about recruiting new generations into the music, the arts and the traditions which she fell in love with as a child.

This article originally appeared in the May 2022 issue of Songlines magazine. Never miss an issue – subscribe today