The hardingfele, or hardanger fiddle, is Norway's singular flourish upon the European violin tradition.
While the exact origins of the violin in Norway are unclear, some form of fiddle existed by the 1600s. The famous early reference is in Trondheim Cathedral, depicting a bowed harp, a giga of sorts, cousin to the tagelharpa, captured in stone.
Early Scandinavian Bowed Instruments
The term tagel refers to the horsehair employed in the instrument’s strings, although this term did not gallop into print until the twentieth century. Scholars used to peg that Trondheim Cathedral carving at the twelfth century. Now, they’ve pushed it forward to the second quarter of the fourteenth.
Further east in Scandinavia and the Baltics, similar bowed string jobs can be found, such as the Jouhikko or Jouhikantele, which is now popular in Finland. Different bodies, same bad habits. Not the tagelharpa, but close enough that you’d recognise the family resemblance in a dark room.
The trail doesn’t stop there. Take the Welsh crwth. It shows up in the Havod Manuscript (1605-1610), depicted as a three-stringed instrument alongside a straight bow similar to the one seen in the Trondheim carving. Dig deeper and the crwth’s been leaving fingerprints all over the place: fourteenth- and fifteenth-century England, then even earlier, lurking in an eleventh-century French book called the Tropaire de Saint Martial.
Tropaire de Saint Martial
The Tropaire de Saint Martial is especially significant because it depicts Saint Martial dressed in an oriental-style getup, reminiscent of themes found in ancient myths of Asia Minor, and Gilgamesh territory.
The treatise of Walter de Milemete De nobilitatibus, sapientiis
A fourteenth-century crwth, Worcester (one can find a misericord in Gloucester depicting a crwth. This is from the nineteenth century, with f-holes as on a modern violin).
A lyre in Durham Cathedral Library, MS Hunter 100, f. 62v, eleventh-century.
The Cloisters Apocalypse, French c.1330
Paris, BnF, Latin 1 f.215v, c.850
Shout out to the Shetland gue, and the fiðla of Iceland.
In 1646, the Sunnfjord priest Christen Jensøn wrote in his dictionary: 'Haar-Gie kaldis en Bonde feyle' (Haar-Gie is called a peasant fiddle).
Torleiv Hanaas interpreted 'Haar' as a corruption of 'Hord,' meaning the fiddle came from Hordaland, and possible early hardingfele evidence. Otto Andersson read it as 'hair,' suggesting a bowed harp with horsehair strings. But the most important takeaway, as Reidar Sevåg noted, is simply this: by 1646, Sunnfjord had an established fiddle tradition distinct enough to warrant its own name, and it was associated with common folk rather than urban elites (Sevåg '06: 149).
The Hardingfele Arrives
The hardingfele turns up in the mid-seventeenth century, but let's not be naïve. German and Italian fiddles had almost certainly slipped quietly into rural Norway long before that. The hardingfele is essentially a violin equipped with four sympathetics. Writing in 1956, Norwegian musicologist Arne Bjørndal suggested the sympathetic mechanism 'was probably taken from the English viola d'amore, which from the sixteenth century was in vogue in the north of England and in Scotland.'
The timing fits: the viola d'amore was well-established in Britain by the time the Jaastadfela emerged in 1651, and maritime trade routes between Scotland and Norway were well-traveled highways.
Estonian musicologist Igor Tõnurist has documented patterns of instrument migration across the Baltic region in his extensive studies of folk music traditions. He notes that Swedish influences were particularly strong in shaping local Estonian instruments: the Estonian bowed lyre was even called the rootsi kannel, or 'Swedish kannel,' making its origins unambiguous. Maritime trade routes, it seems, were highways for sympathetic string technology.
Granddaddy Jaastadfela
The earliest hardingfele on the books comes from Ullensvang in Hardanger, about eighty clicks south of Bergen (a detail for the geographically minded). This specimen goes by the name 'Jaastadfela', props to its creator, Ole Jonsen Jaastad (1621–1694), dated circa 1651.
Now, this beauty rocks four playing strings and two sympathetic strings, the same configuration as the Swedish låtfiol. (Gaver: 33)
Not all Norwegian fiddles followed the same pattern, however. The Setesdals-fele, a hybrid instrument from the Setesdal region, combined the body of a normal violin with the sympathetic strings and relatively flat fingerboard and bridge of the hardingfele, a kind of best-of-both-worlds compromise. This regional variation demonstrates that the hardingfele tradition wasn't monolithic but adapted to local preferences and playing styles.
Following its emergence circa 1650, the hardingfele quickly gained popularity throughout Norway during the 1700s. Fiddle makers from the Hardanger region became renowned across the country for their exceptional craftsmanship.
The archaeological record points to an earlier tradition than previously thought. In 1971, excavators in Gamlebyen, Oslo, uncovered a five-string bridge dating to the mid-thirteenth century, its top clearly curved. Crucially, it was found in an ordinary house rather than a noble residence, indicating that fiddles were part of everyday musical life for common Oslo residents, rather than exotic imports confined to the royal court (Kolltveit 1998: 63).
Notable among these makers were Isak Nielsen Botnen (1669-1759) and his son Trond Isaksen Flatebø (1713-1772), both of whom were highly regarded for their fiddles. As a result of their influence, the term 'Hardingfele' came to be used to describe most Norwegian fiddles today.
From Baroque to Modern
Until not-too-long-ago, the hardingfele clung tight to its Baroque roots. It was smaller than the modern violin, strung with thinner strings, and fitted with a flatter fingerboard and bridge.
That said, the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries brought a slow but steady identity makeover. The instrument grew in size, straightened itself out, and picked up an increasing amount of decorative swagger, borrowing liberally from the rosemåling tradition.
The hardingfele did not appear out of thin air. Evidence indicates that pre-violin bowed instruments persisted in rural Norway well into the seventeenth century. A riddle recorded in Sunnfjord in 1849 describes an instrument with three strings:
On the stomach there lie three lines / In the intestines there is a good crunch.
Three-string fiddles were familiar enough to appear in local folk puzzles (Sevåg 2006: 149).
A seventeenth-century wake at Hovde gård near Brekstad featured a spelemann playing 'ei fiolin med tre strenger' (a violin with three strings) (Aksdal & Nyhus:17).
Even Isak Botnen, before crafting his famous hardingfeler, reportedly built instruments 'som ei auso eller ein tresko' (shaped like a dipper or wooden shoe) possibly pear-shaped rebecs or similar medieval-derived designs (Sevåg '06: 148).
As fiddle-making drifted eastward into Telemark during the nineteenth century, regional styles popped off, and ornamentation became part of the instrument's signature drip.
By the twentieth century, especially from its latter half onward, modern hardingfeler had largely made peace with the modern violin, adopting its proportions and design while retaining enough traditional flair to remind everyone this ain't some fancy orchestra piece.
Documentary evidence traces a continuous line of professional fiddle players in Norway from the mid-sixteenth century onward. Bergen registers from 1564 and 1571 name players of the 'feyle' or 'fedle' (Sevåg '06: 150). Between 1586 and 1629, twenty professional musicians worked in Bergen, fifteen holding the title 'spillemann', most likely fiddle players serving the city's working classes while stadtmusikanten served the nobility (Sevåg '06: 150).
The term 'bierfeyler' (beer fiddler) appears in sixteenth-century sources, referring to musicians who played at common folk gatherings. These bierfeyler may have carried the medieval bordun style forward into the dance music of rural communities (Sevåg '06:152). When the stadtmusikant system expanded in the late 1600s, trained professionals began calling themselves 'musikant' or 'instrumentist,' while 'spillemann' became the term for players serving lower social classes, the cultural ancestors of the hardingfele tradition (Sevåg '06: 152).
References to spillemenn and fiolin appear across Norway in the seventeenth century: Sunndalen (early 1600s), Ryfylke (c. 1620), Hardanger (1625, 1631), Sogn (1661), Finnmark (1660s), and Rørås (1670) (Sevåg 2006:153). In the 1730s, a stadtmusikant in Skien, Telemark, complained about the bierfeilere encroaching on his territory, showing that the folk tradition thrived alongside and sometimes in competition with the formal musical establishment (Sevåg 2006: 153).
Tunings
There are between twenty and thirty different tunings used for the instrument, but some instruments may be tuned a tone or more higher than the written pitches. Fiddle playing in Scandinavia has long been entwined with myths and legends involving devils, trolls, and water spirits. As such, the different tunings of the hardingfele are often believed to carry almost magical or mystical qualities.
This fusion of acoustic technology with supernatural belief wasn't uniquely Norwegian. Latvian ethnomusicologist Valdis Muktupāvels, in his comprehensive 2002 study of Baltic musical instruments, documents similar patterns across the entire Northern European region. Baltic instruments, he explains, were deeply intertwined with ritual magic: goat horns were believed to possess protective powers against evil spirits, and the construction of ceremonial rattles involved what he describes as 'highly ritualised' practices charged with 'archaic ritual mythology.' Even the materials mattered: evergreen wood symbolised fertility, cock feathers represented time-cycles and sexuality. The belief that musical instruments could channel supernatural forces, Muktupāvels argues, was widespread throughout the region during this period.
One of the most common tunings is A-D-A-E, which has several names, including oppstilt, stille, vanleg, or høg bas.
Another well-known tuning is A-D-F#-E, referred to as Huldre tuning, named after the beautiful women in folklore who are said to lure men into the underworld.
A more unusual tuning, Lausbas (loose bass), involves tuning the G string down a fifth, to D-D-A-E.
The biggest tuning legend on the street circles back to Fossegrim, or Strömkarlen if you’re talking to Swedes, the Stream Man. A shape-shifter. A music man. Makes his home in waterfalls.
Handle him right and he could make you a genius. Handle him wrong and you’d be lucky to walk away. That was the deal with Strömkarlen. You brought payment and you waited to see how the water judged you.
Strömkarlen would clamp down on your right hand and yank it back and forth like he was trying to tear the music out of your bones. He’d keep at it until the fingertips split and blood slicked the strings. That was how he taught. If your offering was weak, that’s where it ended. You walked away knowing just enough to tune the thing, nothing more. A tease, a warning. But if you paid right, he showed you the full deck: all eleven measures. Only ten of them were meant for people like us. The last one belonged to the night crowd.
Norwegian folklore says Myllarguten (the Telemark fiddler born in 1801, dead by 1872) didn't learn the hardingfele the honest way. He cut a deal. Went straight to Fossegrimen and pawned his soul for the craft. That's how the story goes, anyway. You don't get that good without owing somebody something.
They say the spirit was easiest to find on Midsummer's Night, Christmas Eve, or a Thursday, those thin hours when the world’s guard drops and the natural and the unnatural start sharing drinks. Funny thing is, Fossegrimen is the name of a hardingfele tune Myllarguten played all the time, like he was daring anyone to tell the difference between legend and repertoire.
The line blurred so badly it stuck. By the early 1900s, the tale was burned right into Norwegian culture. Johan Halvorsen took it off the street and onto the stage, writing a full orchestral work around the myth in 1904–05, with the hardingfele front and centre like a smoking gun. The production ran 104 times between 1905 and 1909.
Sympathetic Strings
Bjørndal notes the sympathetic strings 'often appear as a pentatonic scale,' creating an additional layer of resonance that distinguishes the hardingfele from cousin d'amore. This pentatonic tuning adds to the instrument's distinctive Nordic character, reinforcing melodic patterns already embedded in traditional Norwegian music.
The Baltic psaltery (the kannel in Estonia, kokles in Latvia, and kanklės in Lithuania) employed similar technology. Latvian ethnomusicologist Valdis Muktupāvels describes how the kokles featured a special longest string called the dziedātāja, literally 'the singer,' tuned a fourth below the tonic and plucked continuously to create a drone accompaniment (Gaver:18). This 'drone music' tradition, as he terms it, dominated rural musical life across the Baltic and Scandinavian region during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. (Gaver:18).
Goin' Global
The hardingfele has experienced a significant revival in recent decades, with numerous performers bringing it to international audiences:
Annbjørg Lien offers a rich exploration of Norwegian folk tradition featuring the hardingfele in both traditional and contemporary arrangements in her album Waltz with Me. One imagines this does moderately well in world music sections alongside Bulgarian gadulkas and Turkish sine kemans.
Ragnhild Hemsing showcases the hardingfele's versatility in both classical and folk contexts in Homecoming, demonstrating the instrument's expressive range. The tradition of bringing Norwegian folk music to international audiences has deep roots. Ole Bull (1810-1880), Norway's most famous violinist, was the first to give Norwegian folk music to the world stage. Bull played both the European violin and the hardingfele, and drew inspiration from the remarkable performances of the miller boy Torgeir Augundson (known as Myllarguten). Bull's achievements was firmly built on the foundation of Norway's folk music culture, making him a crucial bridge figure between rural tradition and cosmopolitan concert halls.
Lars Skogstad presents traditional Norwegian folk tunes (slåtter) in Hardanger Fiddle Music.
Susanne Lundeng performs traditional Norwegian slåtter from Hardanger in Slåtter from Hardanger.
The instrument's dual identity (both folk and classical) creates fascinating performance challenges. In Henrik Ødegaard's 2000 'Nyslått. Concerto for two Hardanger fiddles and string orchestra,' soloists Per Anders Buen Garnås and Torgeir Straand didn't read music at all. They learned their parts by ear, as traditional folk musicians do, then performed them in a full orchestral setting with the Telemark Chamber Orchestra. Two experienced violinists familiar with the hardingfele helped bridge the gap between traditions. The result represents what Aksdal calls 'a quite new and very interesting approach' to combining separate musical worlds: the dominant frame is art music, but the content and learning method remain rooted in oral folk tradition.
Persecution & Revival
The hardingfele's survival wasn't assured. The instrument faced two distinct waves of persecution. From roughly 1860 to 1895, Norwegian fiddle music faced what Bjørndal describes as 'fanatical religious oppression.' During this dark period, many beautiful folk melodies were lost, and valuable instruments were 'spoiled, burnt or broken' by religious zealots who viewed folk music and dancing as sinful. The fiddle, with its associations with folk celebrations and its mythological tunings linked to supernatural beings, made an obvious target.
The instrument's renaissance began in 1895 with the establishment of annual competitions in national fiddle playing. These competitions not only preserved the tradition but actively revitalised it. Bjørndal, writing in 1956, observed that fiddle music had reached 'a height never reached before,' becoming 'a living folk art in a continual state of growth.' The near-destruction of the tradition, paradoxically, may have strengthened Norway's resolve to preserve and celebrate it.
But suppression didn't end there. After World War II, the hardingfele faced renewed challenges when the Nazi party's attempts to adopt Norwegian cultural symbols tainted traditional emblems. Combined with rapid urbanisation and what Aksdal calls 'American gas station culture,' the instrument was increasingly 'met with disgust and aversion', seen as an obsolete relic in a world demanding reconstruction and international solidarity. The most typical symbol of traditional peasant culture had become, for many, an embarrassment (Aksdal & Nyhus: 17).
The revival gained institutional legitimacy in 1989 when the Norwegian parliament established a professorship in traditional music at the Norwegian Academy of Music. For the first time, musicians could be formally trained as bi-instrumentalists, accomplished performers on both classical violin and hardingfele. This development produced a new generation of performers like Arve Moen Bergset, Nils Økland, and Åshild Breie Nyhus, who could navigate both the traditional folk idiom and the demands of classical orchestral performance. The educational infrastructure transformed the hardingfele from a purely traditional instrument into one capable of sophisticated art music expression.
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