The Wizard Woman of the North can be found at a café, but pay attention to her shoes! They are usually the type which she can easily kick off. Because the Wizard Woman of the North has to have air between her toes so she can feel the earth she walks on and belongs to. These feet with the well-ventilated toes are used for dancing or for marking the rhythm when she plays or sings.
Can the Wizard Woman of the North be found on a church pew?
Certainly, now and then, but she finds at least as much spiritual inspiration for her life and her music out in Mother Nature. In the bright light of the Nordic Midsummer Eve you can find her by a bonfire at the seaside. All Wizard Women of the North own a sheath knife. She might keep it hanging from her belt, or in a kitchen drawer, or in the glove compartment of her car…a good knife is a necessary tool for the Wizard Woman of the North: you never know what life might have in store!
Songs of work
You will seldom see a Wizard Woman of the North cry crocodile tears, but you may hear a melancholy sigh and a few real sobs. After all, she is burdened with the memory of long, hard winters, and she knows that without that ballast she would never be able to play and sing the songs she has inherited from her foremothers. Yes, she comes from a long line of foremothers, both ordinary earth-dwellers and the mysterious mountain and hill folk. Not many of the women on this recording know how to milk a goat, but several of them know old women who have been milkmaids on summer mountain farms all their lives. These women sang while they worked and in their free time, and have passed their traditional songs on to new generations of female musicians.
The wood nymphs
At sea, in the forest and in the mountains the Wizard Woman of the North has her sisters, the wood nymphs. They are beautiful, strong-willed, courageous spirits who bewitch men and lure them into romance and marriage in their underground world. If a man wants to protect himself from the wood nymphs, he must say the Lord’s Prayer, cast something made of steel at them, or carry a bit of a shroud close to his body. For the Nordic woman, on the other hand, the wood nymphs serve as a great source of inspiration. The power of the wood nymphs can be heard in the "blue" notes and the supple rhythms of Nordic folk music. The wood nymph lives in the great Nordic outdoors, but I myself have actually seen her at a music café…at the crack of dawn!
