Bondepraktikan (The Farmer's Almanac)

I was just listening to my Scandinavian folk music and it struck me how much of the music was related to food and its sources. Some of this is direct: one of the songs on Ale Möller's The Horse and the Crane is called 'Giv Oss Fågel' (Give Us Fowl). Giv oss fågel i myckenhet Herre, cries the singer. 'Give us fowl aplenty, Lord!' Låt knopparna svälla åt ripan / Sänd ripan i vår snara / Håll oss vid Liv! 'Let the buds swell for the grouse; Send the grouse into our snare; Keep us with Life!'

Another song describes the process of a single seed passing through a mill in such terms of personification that it is difficult to know whether the song is metaphorical or not.

Ranarim, Gjallarhorn, and other folk bands draw on similar texts for their songs, including May Day songs, spells to protect their crops or livestock, prayers for the bounty of the world around them. The song sampled here is Ranarim's 'Bondepraktikan', whose text is taken from the Farmer's Almanac, outlining what can be expected of each month and giving seasonal advice about planting, harvesting, weather, and even blood-letting!

This short clip covers only March and April, the former of which I have translated, below, that you might get a flavour of the song:

Mars
Jag beskärer mina trä i Tor
plöjer därtill min åker och jord
denna månad låt intet blod
bad och svett är då mig god

I prune my wood in the month of Tor
And plough besides my land and yard;
This month I never let no blood,
For prayer and sweat are then my good.

However, the significance of the land and livestock are felt well beyond the songs about such things. Throughout old Scandinavian folk stories and songs, land is talked about in terms of barrenness and fertility to set the mode of the story; likewise, time is frequently referrenced seasonally: a bee 'comes one evening in May or June / when the last line of potatoes is picked'; a lover returns 'when the lilies spring from the soil'; a girl waiting for her lover has 'but one wish; / that the leaves of the linden tree all were green, / One leaf embracing the other / just as our greatest bond of love'. She is not only suggesting that her love will return in the spring, when the roads are clear, but is also suggesting that their love for one another has lasted the winter and is ready to blossom again in the spring, as reliable and everlasting as the beautiful tree that represents them. Thus the fertility of the land, its miraculous annual reliability, is tied directly with the happiness and renewal of the people; its barrenness represents all that is lonely or forsaken.

Cry out for me! Lend me your throats!
It is people I need!
The hungry can no longer speak!
Give me a thousand lives and then I'll brighten up!
-- thus sings the [lonely] Mountain.

(Ale Möller -- 'Det Sjungande Berget' / 'The Singing Mountain')

Swedish is such a beautiful tongue. One of things I love most about the Swedish language is the word föder. Literally, the word means 'feed', but it has many other implications. For instance, föder upp, 'feed up', means to raise, rear, breed, bring up. Moreover, the word can be used metaphorically to suggest that something 'gives rise to' something else. Where we might say 'violence breeds violence' or 'adoration of one feeds contempt for the other', Swedish would use föder for both. Further extended along these lines, föder can be used to depict the physical process of birthing. 'Hon födde en gosse' means 'She bore a child'. Hence, the word for feeding entails the entire process of Human or animal nourishment, from bringing a child into the world to sustaining and nourishing it; in the animal's case, it even includes the breeding process.