Garmarna

Garmana is one of the many Scandinavian artists I've been led to in the past fortnight. I really like the way in which they combine folk music (usually Scandinavian ballads) with rock music, although I tend to prefer their earlier music in which they play just folk music.

Garmana was founded in 1990 by Stefan Brisland-Fermer, Gotte Ringqvist and Rickard Westman after they were inspired by old music they heard in a theatre. A year after the band had been formed, they were joined by Jens Höglin (who plays the drum) and Emma Härdelin joined them in 1992 because they thought that a female voice would be a good contrast to the dark tone of their music. As of 1999 they began to combine their folk music with rock and trip-hop (downtempo electronic music). In 2001 they released an album, in which all the songs were of the Latin language, so they've experimented quite a lot with their music. As far as I can see, they tend to sing about people in vulnerable/disadvantaged positions.


N.B. English translation is provided on the YouTube clips

If you'd like to listen to more samples of their music, here are the links to their mp albums on Amazon: Guds Spelemän, Hildegard Von Bingen, Vedergällningen, Vittrad and Garmarna.