The Bagpipe Society

Bagpipes for the Norwegian Folk Tradition

Part 1: Introduction

This is the history of a personal project aimed at the development of a bagpipe to be used to play Norwegian traditional music, and to adapt and develop a repertoire of Norwegian tunes I could play on the pipes. In this article, I will discuss some musical, ideological and technical themes I encountered in this project, and how various aspects of those themes shaped the project.

My point of departure was simple: I had heard a variety of bagpipes in many different settings. I liked the sound and expressiveness of these instruments so much that I wanted to be able to play some version of pipes. In the Norwegian context there were, however very few sources that mentioned pipes being played, no traces of physical instruments, far less recordings of pipes being played like anything remotely possible to term as “Norwegian traditional music”. A few written sources mention pipes; the most cited is probably an advertisement in one of the newspapers in Oslo from 1849 where it is told that a certain Jens Christenson Klevgaard would perform “Sekkepibelyd fra Valdersdalen” (bagpipe sounds from the Valley of Valdres) (Berg, 1990:313-314).

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