{"id":4879,"date":"2013-05-11T15:30:49","date_gmt":"2013-05-11T14:30:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swedishfreak.com\/?p=4879"},"modified":"2015-06-15T11:00:03","modified_gmt":"2015-06-15T10:00:03","slug":"dancing-with-the-devil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swedishfreak.com\/2013\/dancing-with-the-devil\/","title":{"rendered":"Dancing With The Devil"},"content":{"rendered":"

The hambo<\/b> is a traditional dance with origin in the 19th century. It is a couple dance in \u00be time; the music has a strong accent on the first beat and a tempo that varies from moderate to fast (100 to 120 beats per minute). <\/i><\/p>\n

<\/i>The hambo is a dance with a fixed pattern and tunes almost always have a corresponding eight measure structure. The name \u201chambo\u201d is derived from the name of the parish Hanebo, where the dance is said to have originated.<\/i><\/p>\n

In the province of H\u00e4lsingland<\/i><\/b>, about 300 km north of Stockholm<\/i>, in the parish of Hanebo<\/i><\/b>, lies the small village H\u00e5rga<\/i><\/b> at the foot of a steep and rocky mountain, H\u00e5rgaberget<\/i><\/b>, i.e. H\u00e5rga Hill or H\u00e5rga Mountain.<\/p>\n

Twenty thousand years ago, the mountain and the entire landscape was covered by a huge continental glacier, which, like glaciers always do, was sliding towards warmer regions, scraping and polishing the bedrock. When the ice, another ten thousand years later, finally receded from the rocky landscape, it left the top of H\u00e5rgaberget<\/i> polished and flat as a tabletop.<\/p>\n

This unusually shaped mountain, with its flat top and wide view in all directions, has of course attracted people in all times, and even if there are no signs left on the flat rock face, we can imagine that it has been a place for ceremonies, rituals and celebrations for many thousand years. And there are old legends that talk about bloody sacrifices, of animals, slaves and prisoners.<\/p>\n

\"View<\/a>
View from H\u00e5rgaberget<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But even if the rock face bears no sign, it has made its mark in people\u2019s minds: there is a dark age-old tale about what once happened on the mountain. The first known written version of this tale is dated 1785, written by the then vicar in Hanebo, but the core of the legend is probably much older.<\/p>\n

Long time ago, in the evenings of early summer, when haymows and barns were empty, awaiting the upcoming harvest, people used to sweep the barn floors and arrange dancing nights, called logdans<\/i><\/b> (~ haymow dance).<\/p>\n

On a Saturday evening many, many years ago, a number of young men and women had gathered for logdans<\/i> in H\u00e5rga. The dancing had been going on for several hours, and the short midsummer night was giving away for the light of dawn.<\/p>\n

Suddenly the door opened and an unknown fiddler entered, wearing a long coat and a wide-brimmed hat. He began playing a wild tune that grabbed the dancing youngsters and gave them new force and energy. The fiddler\u2019s eyes were like burning coals under the brim of the hat, and his pointed goatee beard wagged up and down as he played.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Folk<\/a>
Folk dancers
Photo by Arne Winderlich<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The music went on incessantly, and the dance became wilder than ever. The fiddler led the procession of young dancers out through the neighbourhood, \u201dout through doors and in through windows\u201d, over hills and meadows, up to H\u00e5rgaberget<\/i>.<\/p>\n

It was Sunday morning, and the church bells were ringing, summoning people to church service, but the dancers didn\u2019t hear, couldn\u2019t stop dancing.<\/p>\n

Only one person, a girl, heard the bells and threw herself down. Lying on the floor she noticed that the fiddler had cloven hooves under his long coat! She tried to warn the others, but no one listened, and she was left alone lying on the barn floor when the dancers went on dancing up the hill.<\/p>\n

Another version of the tale says that a boy, seeing the cloven hoof, tried to stop the happening by hacking his knife into a doorpost \u00ad\u2013 goblins, ghosts and devils are said to be afraid of steel \u2013 only to find that his arm, still holding the knife, was torn off.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Contestants<\/a>
Contestants in H\u00e4lsingehambon
Picture from treffpunkt-schweden.com<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The dance never stopped. The youngsters kept on dancing on the flat hilltop in H\u00e5rga; they wore out not only their shoes, but their feet, the flesh from their bodies, and the bones in their skeletons. In the end, there was nothing left but a number of skulls rattling around in a circle on the flat rock face.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s still a circular pattern visible on the mountain top. The tale says that on dark and cloudy Saturday nights you can see shadow-like, restless souls dancing on the flat mountain top.<\/p>\n

\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013<\/p>\n

H\u00e4lsingehambon<\/i> is a Hambo Dancing Contest (claiming to be the Hambo World Championship) which is held in H\u00e5rga every year in July.<\/p>\n

\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013<\/p>\n

The tale about dancing with the devil is retold in a song, H\u00e5rgal\u00e5ten<\/i><\/b> (the H\u00e5rga tune), which is a hambo<\/i>. The hambo<\/i> dance tunes, in \u00be time with a strong accent on the first beat, is rather catching, even to people like me who don\u2019t practise folk dance or aren\u2019t particularly fond of it.<\/p>\n

The H\u00e5rgal\u00e5ten<\/i> tune is popular and there are numerous recordings. You can hear one version here:<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/center>
\n(Sung by Sandra Dahlberg, accompanied on guitar. Pretty, sounds romantic, but really totally wrong: it should be a fiddle in higher tempo, arranged so as to reproduce the horror of the text. But as said \u2013 it\u2019s pretty. \ud83d\ude42 <\/i>)<\/i>The Swedish original lyrics are rendered below, in parallel to my flatfooted translation; it doesn\u2019t rhyme, it doesn\u2019t follow any previously known metre, but\u2026<\/p>\n

(For those not familiar with the Swedish alphabet: the letter \u201d\u00e5\u201d looks like an \u201da\u201d with a ball on top, and it is pronounced like the \u201da\u201d in the word \u201dball\u201d. Easy to remember, isn’t it?)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
H\u00e5rgal\u00e5ten<\/strong>Spelmannen drog fiol ur l\u00e5dan
\noch lyfte str\u00e5ken h\u00f6gt mot s\u00f6ndagssolens kula.
\nD\u00e5 blev det fart p\u00e5 H\u00e5rgafolket,
\nde gl\u00f6mde Gud och hela v\u00e4rldenDansen gick p\u00e5 \u00e4ng och backar,
\nh\u00f6gt upp\u00e5 H\u00e5rga\u00e5sens topp.
\nMan slet ut b\u00e5d’ skor och klackar,
\naldrig fick man p\u00e5 dansen stopp.Varifr\u00e5n kommer du som spelar,
\ns\u00e4g vem har l\u00e4rt dig detta spel det vilda galna?
\nStannar du inte brister hj\u00e4rtat,
\n\u00e5 Gud bevare han har bockfot!Klockorna hade ringt i dalen,
\noch d\u00e4r gick far och mor och bror till socken kyrkan.
\nVar kan nu H\u00e5rgas ungdom vara,
\n\u00e5 herregud de dansar \u00e4nnu!Dansen gick till H\u00e5rgal\u00e5ten,
\nh\u00f6gt upp\u00e5 H\u00e5rga\u00e5sens topp.
\nMan har nu inte l\u00e5ngt till gr\u00e5ten,
\ndansar nu s\u00f6nder b\u00e5de sj\u00e4l och kroppHejda din str\u00e5ke spelman innan,
\nvi dansar liv och sj\u00e4l och alla ben ur kroppen.
\nNej inte slutar han sin dans
\nf\u00f6rr\u00e4n allesammans faller d\u00f6da!<\/td>\n		The H\u00e5rga Tune<\/strong>
\nFiddler took the fiddle from its casing
\nlifted bow to greet the dawning Sunday sun
\nIn H\u00e5rga village people started bustling
\nOnce was God and all the world forgottenDance, they did over hills and meadows
\nto the crest of H\u00e5rga ?mountain
\nSoles and heels ?they soon wore out
\nSince the dance? could not be stoppedWherefrom are you, amazing fiddler
\ntell, who taught you play this wild and mad?
\nOur hearts will burst unless you stop!
\noh help us God, he walks on cloven hooves!The bells were ringing in the valley,
\ngod-fearing people went on their way to church
\nBut where are all the H\u00e5rga youngsters?
\noh Lord, my God, they are still dancing!They swirled and danced to H\u00e5rgal\u00e5ten<\/i>
\nhigh on the crest of H\u00e5rga ?hill
\nExhausted, nearly weeping, crying!
\nTheir souls and bodies ?torn asunderFiddler, hold your bow? before
\nlife, and soul, and bones leave our bodies!
\nNo, he doesn’t stop, his tune goes on
\nTill all of us at end fall down.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The hambo is a traditional dance with origin in the 19th century. It is a couple dance in \u00be time; the music has a strong accent on the first beat and a tempo that varies from moderate to fast (100 to 120 beats per minute). The hambo is a dance with a fixed pattern and … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":5201,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[305],"yst_prominent_words":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swedishfreak.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4879"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swedishfreak.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swedishfreak.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swedishfreak.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swedishfreak.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4879"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.swedishfreak.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4879\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swedishfreak.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swedishfreak.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swedishfreak.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swedishfreak.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4879"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swedishfreak.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=4879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}