Wardruna - Birna (2025)

Country: Norway
Style: Dark Folk
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 24 Jan 2025
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I like Wardruna, the dark folk side project of former Gorgoroth drummer Einar Selvik, in which his stagename was Kvitravn, also the title of the fifth Wardruna album. This is the sixth and it's more of the same but maybe a little more varied. This is neopagan music, hearkening back to the music of animist pre-Christian Norway. It's almost odd to hear it in the form of a studio release instead of field recordings. It's performance music, often ritual in nature with a strong connection to the natural world, which means that we listen and feel it rather than find any need to sing along, the way we might with folk songs.

There's a blinding exception here in Hibjørnen. It's absolutely a folk song in that sense, instead of folk music. It's a voice and a guitar (or equivalent stringed instrument). It tells a story, even if I'm not fluent in Norwegian (except occasional words I've learned from min søster) so have no idea of what's being told. If I was, I could easily imagine myself singing along. That it follows a strikingly similar melodic drive to Steve Earle's Copperhead Road only underlines that, its instrumentation merely provided on talharpa (I presume) rather than mandolin. The effect is similar, merely with sadness rather than rebellion as the tone.

Whatever the norm here is, Hibjørnen isn't it. I suppose the majority of the material here follows a cinematic bent, playing into what Selvik does as a composer of music meant as accompaniment, whether for films, TV shows or videogames. Most notably, he composed the music in the TV show Vikings, or at least what was done in a traditional Norse manner. The title track plays into that, as do pieces of music like Skuggehesten and Lyfjaberg. Birna opens ominously, almost like a threat. Skuggehesten starts with a sample of thunder and a galloping horse, but the horse cleverly rides into the song proper in the form of percussion. It threatens too, but Lyfjaberg is less in our faces, more of a background piece of music in Vikings than one bolstering a battle scene.

As you can imagine from that paragraph, everything here lives or dies on its mood, even when it's not particularly cinematic in nature. Hertan is a particularly strong opener, not just because it's a thoroughly blatant piece of music but because it's gloriously layered. It kicks off with heartbeats, adds a chant then ambience and builds into something primal. While we might easily imagine the scene in which it might appear, it would likely feature a band performing music beacuse this isn't background music. It's foreground music that we can feel but also dissect.

And there's a lot of that sort of music here too, which tends to constitute my favourite pieces. I'd call out Hertan as my first highlight, with Himinndotter and Tretale close behind and, a little bit further back, Jord til Ljos, the warmest piece here, which is comforting from the moving water at the beginning all the way to the tweeting birds at the end. There's a hint of new wave on this one, not just the Dead Can Dance that's often overt but maybe even some atmospheric Shriekback.

I can believe Himinndotter might be easy to adapt into visuals, but different people would likely see it differently. Where something like Lyfjaberg feels like it was composed to back a film scene, Himinndotter is the reverse, a piece of music I could imagine someone staging in operatic fashion. While this album is often dark, sparse or even sad, this gets downright jubilant. It's stirring choral work with instrumentation and the fact that it also gets witchy only makes it more adaptable in my mind.. I heard witch in Lindy-Fay Hella's vocals but maybe you'll hear something else entirely. It's open to interpretation.

Tretale goes back to ominous, but builds in a much more ritual fashion. It's far slower and sparser than, say, Skuggehesten, with the ambience being looped twigs or fire not galloping horses, a cry from a raven standing out all the more because of that. It does build but in a nodding drone that's later joined by melodies on flute and lyre and eventually vocals. I like it a lot, but it's one that you have to feel for it to work. I'd say the same about Dveledraumar, but that didn't work for me, even if it was for entirely arbitrary reasons.

It's the longest piece of music on the album, its fifteen minutes over twice the length of anything except Lyfjaberg, which is still only eight and half. However, the early featured instrument sounds to me like someone's blowing a musical raspberry, while the one behind it could be a road crew on the street outside digging it up again. Maybe you won't hear that, but I couldn't not. There's also an organic sound here which seems out of place, as I heard a whale breathing. Perhaps it's meant to suggest something amniotic, like a return to the womb. I don't know. It just didn't fit. It's worth mentioning that this longest song is also largely minimal when compared to the rest of the album, so less happens in its fifteen minutes than in most of the tracks that are a mere three or five.

So this is another 7/10 for me, but I liked it a lot. If you listen to movie soundtracks as well as dark folk music, then add another point to that.