Marit Steinsrud grew up in a folk music family in Valdres, and as a small girl she learned many langeleik tunes by ear from neighbouring women. Her speciality are traditional Norwegian tunes on the langeleik. Marit and her husband Stein have been at most Nordic Harp Meetings so far, represented the Norwegian langeleik tradition, and led the allspel with Norwegian folk tunes. Together they have also organised the marvellous NHM 2010 and NHM 2014 and NHM 2019 in Gjøvik.

Marit Steinsrud plays the langeleik at the Nordic Harp Meeting 2009 (photo: Floris van der Meijs)

Workshop: Norwegian dance tunes from the langeleik tradition with Stein Villa & Marit Steinsrud

The langeleik (also called langharpe) is a fretted zither instrument with one melody string and additional drone strings, which has a tradition in Norway dating back at least to the 16th century. A lot of ancient Norwegian tunes survived to our days in this langeleik tradition. From this corpus of langeleik music, Stein sometimes transfers tunes to his Norwegian harp. In this workshop for intermediate/advanced musicians, you will learn some langeleik tunes and transfer them to your instrument. The tunes have traditionally been both sung and played for dancing. This includes the dances halling, springar and reinlender.