This Drum Is Not the Devil’s Instrument - The Development and Performance of Drum Tunes in Norwegian Folk Music

Sep 29, 2026

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Trommeslåtter (drum tunes) have shaped Norwegian traditional music for centuries. This article traces how drum tunes developed and how they were performed in Norway, emphasizing Johannes Sundvor’s role in transcribing and collecting drum music. It presents and analyzes examples from Sundvor’s collection and links this Norwegian tradition to European military drumming. The study concludes with interpretation considerations and an overview of drum tunes’ present status.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages31

Reading Time1 h 18 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Trommeslåtter in Norwegian traditional music

Sundvor’s transcription and collection

Relation to European military drumming

Performance features and modern status

Yearbook for Traditional Music (2024), 56, 1, 25–55 doi:10.1017/ytm.2024.10 This Drum Is Not the Devil’s Instrument: The Development and Performance of Drum Tunes in Norwegian Folk Music BIRGER MISTEREGGEN and CARL HAAKON WAADELAND Abstract Trommeslåtter (drum tunes) have played a vital role in Norwegian traditional music for several hundred years. This article examines the development and performance of drum tunes in Norway, with a special focus on the work of Johannes Sundvor in transcribing drum music. We present several examples and analyse tunes from Sundvor’s collection. We also demonstrate how this Norwegian drum tradition is related to a tradition of European military drumming. The article concludes with a discussion of aspects of interpretation and an outline of the status of drum tunes today. Birger Mistereggen ([tambur@me.com](tambur@me.com)) Drummer and Percussion Player, Assistant Professor of Music Performance at UiT, The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway. He holds a master’s degree from the Norwegian Academy of Music. He has conducted new artistic research on a Norwegian drum tradition. He is a musician in a large variety of projects within classical music, jazz/pop/rock, and folk music. He performs on several recordings and has a Grammy nomination with the group “Trio Mediaeval.” He has broad experience as a pedagogue and lecturer. Carl Haakon Waadeland ([carl.haakon.waadeland@ntnu.no](carl.haakon.waadeland@ntnu.no)) Drummer and Percussion Player, Professor Emeritus of Music Performance at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway. He holds a PhD degree in Music with a thesis on rhythm performance. He published a book and CD presenting a Norwegian folk drum tradition, trommeslåtter (drum tunes) . He performs on many recordings and released a CD where drum tunes are used as the basis for improvisation. He has published several articles related to rhythm performance in international journals. © The Author(s), 2024 . Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the International Council for Traditions of Music and Dance. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence ([https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. INTRODUCTION Archaeological excavations reveal discoveries of drums dating back to the Stone Age (Olsson 1985:688) . In Norway, the drum has been used by shamans in the pre-Christian religion of the Sami people for thousands of years (Graff 1993:388–91) . This article examines a Norwegian drum tradition related to the performance of the cylindrical twoheaded rope-tensioned drum, played with two drumsticks. Such a drum is most often made of wood or brass and has snares attached under the bottom head, which make a characteristic buzzing sound (see Figure 1) . When we use the term “drum” in this article, this two-headed drum of military origin is what we refer to. This drum tradition is documented in both civil and military Norwegian contexts dating back to the sixteenth century. The tradition has been continued by oral transmission. Written music describing drum signals did not exist in military sources before the eighteenth century. As a folk instrument, the drum was very much used at weddings. The Danish cultural historian, TroelsTroels-Lund, has written about Norwegian wedding ceremonies in the sixteenth century, and we read (authors’ translation): The music played atthe head ofthe wedding procession. It could probably be done with just one flute player, but people on the west coast had both flutesand drums. The drum was the instrument that ordinary people liked best. In Norway there were therefore many places where they only used drums at weddings (Troels-Lund 1939: 400). On the west coast of Norway, the c

FAQs

What is the main subject of the article?

The article investigates the development and performance of Norwegian drum tunes (trommeslåtter), focusing especially on Johannes Sundvor’s transcriptions and collections.

How does the article describe Sundvor’s contribution?

Sundvor learned early drum tunes in the 1890s, later collected and wrote down the tradition, and produced written transcriptions (1915–1937) and recordings in cooperation with NRK in 1937.

What performance characteristics distinguish the drum tunes in Sundvor’s collection?

The drum tunes imply an underlying double-stroke roll used as a drone, with rhythmic motifs played as single strokes on top, distinguishing them from many drum marches that lack such an underlying roll.

Sep 29, 2026

Upload by Rowan