(Malung, Sweden) In the Swedish forest, the “kulning” rises and falls to the sound of a high-pitched melody that is both bewitching and strange: Jennie Tiderman-Osterberg, her hands in the mouth, jostles the tranquility surrounding area to call a herd of cows, an ancestral technique that she intends to perpetuate.
Posted at 8:00 a.m.
At the edge of these woods in Dalarna, bastion of Swedish identity in the center of the country, it will only take a few moments for him to see the animals point the end of their muzzle through the trees, the bell ringing around their necks.
The government of the Scandinavian country has just decided this winter to present a file to have the “fäbod”, rustic summer farms where these traditional songs were born, classified on the list of intangible heritage by Unesco.
A Scandinavian chant dating back to the Middle Ages, the kulning once resounded through the forests, when peasants – mostly women – took cows and goats to graze there in the summer, to prevent them from eating the crops of the arable land.
If many farms disappeared with industrialization and the exodus to America of many miserable farmers from the middle of the 19th century, bringing in their wake the extinction of many peasant traditions, kulning has regained its letters of nobility in recent years. .
With a boost from Disney, which gave a global echo to kulning by making it appear in the second part of Snow Queen (2019).
The real life “
For Jennie Tiderman-Österberg, her passion for music began at a very young age thanks to an obsession with opera, then punk music. But after hearing kulning for the first time, things took a new turn for this academic researcher.
“The first time I used kulning, I felt like my feet were taking root,” she told AFP. “I have decided that it is my life’s mission to spread knowledge of kulning and other summer farm traditions”.
At the faböd in Arvselen – a small set of wooden houses painted red – Jennie practices her kulning, recalling three cows from the forest.
Farm owner Tapp Lars Arnesson, one of the few men to try his hand at kulning, returned to the family farm after a career in acting, drawn to a simple country life. “For me, there is nothing better. It’s real life,” he says in front of the few buildings without electricity.
While there were several tens of thousands of them in the middle of the 19th century, his fäbod is one of some 200 that still exist in Sweden. And only a handful of them still practice kulning.
But in the face of its growing popularity, this high-pitched, wordless chant is now practiced as an art form and concerts are given across the country. Prestigious music schools and private teachers even offer kulning lessons.
Liberator
At the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, a small group of female students of all ages gathered for a lesson. Each learns to project her voice as the ancients did to be heard for miles.
“People want to learn kulning because there’s something intriguing about using your voice in this powerful way,” says Susanne Rosenberg, folksinger and teacher who started the course.
Her students range from “an opera singer who wants to learn something new about how to use her voice”, to “someone who just wants to call the kids home for dinner”, having fun she.
On a farm near Gnesta, in the south of Stockholm, Karin Lindström gives her outdoor lessons.
Although it no longer has agricultural use today, the centuries-old tradition can bring other benefits to those who practice it, with its powerful and assured sounds.
“Personality is very closely (tied) to voice and a lot of people haven’t been able to express themselves as much,” she says. It’s very liberating”.