01	Hoglorfen						04:54
	02	Navdi/Fasa (Terror)						07:58
	03	Drafur och Gildur						05:23
	04	Dolkaren (El punal)						04:56
	05	Bierdna						05:10
	06	Kina (China)						03:29
	07	Forshyttan						04:22
	08	Dufwa						03:54
	09	Vals i fel dur						03:42
	10	Skane						04:17
	11	Graucholorfen						06:15

Northside
Year: 1997
Catalog Number: NSD6003
Produced by: Dag Lundquist & Hedningarna

Their fourth album, released 1997-02-24.

Anders Stake: Keyed fiddles, Violins, Jew's harp, Willow flutes, Wooden flutes, Swedish bagpipe, Souna, Jinghu, Gong, Vocal.

Bjorn Tollin: Tambourine, Drone Stringdrum, Bass mandora, Percussion.

Hallbus Totte Mattsson: Mandora, Moraoud, Accordion, Swedish Dulcimer, Vocal.

Guest musicians
Wimme Saari: Jojk [2, 5, 11]
Ulf "Rockis" Ivarsson: Bass mandora [2, 10, 11]
Johan Liljemark: Didgeridoo [3, 5, 11]
Knut Reiersrud:Electric guitar [10]
Ola Backstrom: Violin [3]


Hippjokk is quite a difference from earlier albums, Sanna and Tellu are absent and are replaced by Wimme Saari on vocals. Although his two jojks, Navdi and Bierdna, are a great experience, the loss is too big. This record simply cannot be compared with the great mystique and frenzy that Sanna and Tellu gave to Hedningarna's sound in Kaksi! and Tra. Apparently they contributed so much more to the overall result than I ever imagined.

A trend that I find alarming is the 'rave like' songs that appears on this CD. I simply can't stand Graucholorfen and have already selected "don't play this track" on my computer CD player after only a few listenings. It was music like this I wanted to get away from when I started to listen to Hedningarna.

The layout of the cover art is by far the most boring I have seen on a CD cover. Why this "modern in the 60's" art? (i.e. art that looks like what everything that was supposed to be ultra-modern looked like in the 60's) For example the toilet-door-gender-sign like logo that can be seen above. The old logo was so much more beautiful. The name of the album is another disappointment. Tra, for example, is an inspiring name which, together with the picture of the piece of wood pierced with metal nails, symbolized the meeting of past and present which is found in Hedningarna's music. Hippjokk is a name with high nerd-factor, a merging of "Hipp" (older Swedish word for "cool") and "Kvikkjokk" (a village in northern Sweden with a Sami name).

Apart from this, Hippjokk is by no means a bad album. I finally have the great song Drafur och Gildur which I loved right away when I first heard it at Umea Folkmusik Festival, in February 1996. Its lyrics is at a lower level than the lyrics in Kaksi! and Tra but then again, it is written by Swedish hobby musicians rather than by Finnish national poets. Since I played RPG in my youth I find the lyrics about dwarfs fighting trolls quite 'cute'. Other strong songs are Dolkaren and Skane, they grow every time I play Hippjokk, very catchy.

Hippjokk only has two songs with lyrics (not counting the songs with jojk) but these are omitted from the CD cover for some reason! Instead there is a small paragraph of text for each song with some background information to that particular song, very nice. The English version of the paragraph is added to the song listing below. The English versions seem to lack some information that exist in the Swedish ones sometimes. The comments within brackets are mine.

Conclusion: a must-have for the true Hedningarna fan but for persons that just want to buy one record to try Hedningarna out, I would recommend Kaksi! or Tra instead. The loss of Sanna and Tellu is too big to make this album one of Hedningarna's best. Please Sanna, come back!

-Mattias Mattsson

Label:Silence Records

Songs
Hoglorfen (Music: trad.arr)
This is a reel from different parts of Sweden [from Vingaker with borrowed parts from Smaland]. A "lorf" is a kind of bridal dance.

Navdi/Fasa (Music: trad. arr/W. Saari/A. Stake, Lyrics: trad.)
Wimme is jojking the Wolf. Fasa [Eng. Horror] forest was a remote and and mythical wild region in the mid-western parts of Sweden [South east Varmland] that you preferably not entered.

Drafur och Gildur (Music: M. Ahlman/T. Virkkala, Lyrics: M. Ahlman)
A bloody ballad about the Good defeating the Evil, which we learned from some Erborigian bards during a Middle Ages week on Gothland. [These 'Erborigian bards' are "Sorkar och Strangar"]

Dolkaren (Music: trad. arr)
A marching-tune from Setesdal, Norway. The ancient music of this valley has been kept alive through generations. We are playing a version inspired by the fiddler and silversmith Halvard Bjorgum.

Bierdna (Music: trad. arr)
Wimme is jojking the Bear. Our first meeting with Wimme was in Umea up north, when he suddenly entered the stage and started to jojk our music in such ecstacy, that he ended up on the floor with the microphone stand on top of himself.

Kina (Music: trad. arr)
A reel after Ljuder Anders, Mora. In the fall 1987 we were in China at the Peking [Beijing] Opera on a folkmusic course. We found this pearl in our luggage.

Forshyttan (Music: trad. arr)
This is a mixture of reels from Norway and midwest of Sweden [Varmland] with some Arabic sounding frases from a book of old Swedish tunes.

Dufwa (Music: trad. arr)
A reel after Anders Petter Dufwa in the southern parts of Sweden [Werckelback, Smaland]

Vals i fel dur (Music: P. Arthur/trad. arr, Lyrics:P. Arthur)
Anders has two pen-pals, two anonymous persons who in 1972 released the "most cult album in Sweden ever" [The very pest of Philemon Arthur & the Dung]. This is one of the unreleased songs by the band, called Philemon Arthur & the Dung.

Skane (Music: trad. arr)
One night during the Falu Folkmusic Festival 1996 Knut checked in on "The Vision" and played some guitar on this favourite song of ours among thousands of tunes from Skane, in the very far south of Sweden.

Graucholorfen (Music: Tollin/Mattsson/Stake/Liljemark/Saari/Ivarsson)
We closed our sessions in the studio by putting on the recorder and have a jam session to this special kind of reel-groove.



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Hippjokk by Hedningarna


Hedningarna look back to medieval melodies and instruments for their source material, but they electrify and sample those traditional sounds and infuse modern dance grooves.

On Hippjokk they draw a dotted line between medieval and electronic dance music, with hypnotic rhythms and traditional melodies. Unlike their previous two records Kaksi! and Tra this one has the core Swedish trio without Finnish vocalists, but joining the trio on three tracks is Finnish Sami Wimme Saari, whose yoik (chanting) is very reminiscent of Native American chanting.

This record moves the entire Nordic folk/world music movement up many notches and sets a new standard for other bands to attain. And it's really intense.



"Imagine eating black bread tainted with ergot and hallucinating with a bunch of peasants from a Breughel painting while K.C. and the Sunshine Band jam with a squad of Viking berserkers playing bagpipes. All other rave music is hereby declared dilettante fecal matter." - Charles M. Young, Musician


"Unlike most of the retread, dinosaur rock on the radio, Hippjokk is genuinely new, unique and unashamedly aggressive." - Cliff Furnald, CMJ