On the album Mirra, the innovative folk musician Benedicte Maurseth once again invites us to the vast Hardangervidda plateau—this time with a focus on the wild reindeer.
When Benedicte Maurseth released the album Hárr in 2022, the visionary Hardanger fiddle player was praised for creating a masterpiece. Her blend of the distinctive sound of the Hardanger fiddle and the use of concrete sounds from wildlife immersed listeners in a unique soundscape.
For Hárr, she received the prestigious Nordic Music Prize, and the album was named one of the world’s top ten folk music releases of the year by The Guardian.
Now she releases the long-awaited follow-up Mirra, which, like Hárr, is a concept album where concrete sound plays a central role in the compositions. This time, the focus is on the wild reindeer, native to Maurseth’s home area of Eidfjord in Hardanger. The work follows elements of the reindeer’s distinctive sounds and annual cycle, as in “The Calf Rises,” “Summer Grazing,” and “Hunting March,” as well as their behavior and masterful adaptation to the nature they live in harmony with.
Mirra is an old, forgotten dialect word from Hardanger, describing when reindeer run together in a circling pattern—both to keep warm and to ward off predators. The word was also used to describe a time when reindeer “teemed” in large numbers.
The music is repetitive and marked by the hypnotic repetitions of folk music, also inspired by American minimalism, krautrock, and free improvised music.
The concept and music are presented and composed by Benedicte Maurseth and further developed and arranged in collaboration with her outstanding fellow musicians: Håkon Stene on melodic percussion, Mats Eilertsen on bass and electronics, and Morten Qvenild on keyboards.
The album was recorded by Morten Qvenild at Ugla Lyd Studio in Nesodden in 2024, and produced by Benedicte Maurseth and Jørgen Træen.
Benedicte Maurseth says:
“Only twice in my life have I seen wild reindeer. The first time was a large herd—probably several hundred animals. They ran tightly together with intense focus, blending almost completely into the gray-brown landscape around Dyranut on the Hardangervidda plateau. I was seven years old. Many years later, I witnessed them once again, by chance, heading east one spring day.
This despite growing up in the mountains, at Maurset in Eidfjord, right at the base of the vast mountain plateau where I’ve wandered for years in every direction. There too, the reindeer have wandered for thousands of years. So they’ve never been far away, even though they remain elusive.
They dig through the snow with their hooves all winter to find food. They’re in constant motion—migrating. When the winter wind settles over the landscape for days at a time, the reindeer lie still and wait, without a sound. They endure fierce wind and blowing snow in their thick, well-adapted fur—up to minus forty degrees. They give birth to calves in the damp snow of spring. An hour or two later, the calf rises and runs after its mother. In summer, they flee from swarms of mosquitoes while enjoying lush birch shoots, reindeer lichen, and mushrooms. In autumn, they flee from hunters but gather again for the rutting season, before the females and males part ways once more, digging again through another white winter for nourishment.
They communicate with grunts and clicking sounds from their hooves, whether they step on wet marshland or hard ice. They live in herds—all to survive in this seemingly desolate landscape filled with rocks, glaciers, snow, rivers, heather, and moraines. This is where they belong.
Mirra continues the thread from my previous work Hárr (2022), with ecosophy as its guiding stone, this time with the reindeer in the lead role. They are remarkable, beautiful creatures—but also threatened. Mainly by humans, who slowly but surely reduce their space, year by year. Unless we’re careful, the wild reindeer of Hardangervidda may disappear forever.”
Additional guest appearances on the album include other endangered species that currently or historically coexisted with the reindeer on Hardangervidda (Track 7): snowy owl, arctic fox, wolverine, Lapland bunting, whimbrel, curlew, golden plover, scaup, gyrfalcon, green-winged teal, common scoter, long-tailed duck, marsh harrier.
