I don’t usually associate Terje Gravdal with big anthems but he’s certainly come up with one this time. The song is called ‘Nomadic Grey Spirits’ and its subject is reindeer hunting in Hardangervidda national park in Norway, which is in the middle of nowhere, the nearest centre of population being his home town of Odda. It gets odda and odda.
Not the sort of subject you’d normally expect to come across in song. He explains it thus:
“In ‘Nomadic Grey Spirits’ I try to highlight the hunting traditions in Hardangervidda National Park. The song is a description of inherited survival traits, where the predator seeks survival by hunting, while the prey seeks survival by fleeing or hiding.” A sort of Norwegian Hunger Games I suppose.
He continues, “I was 18 years old the first time I got to go with my father on wild reindeer hunting in that Park. The way hunting is done has changed somewhat since my first encounter with hunting in the high mountains up here near the Arctic Circle. But it is the same knowledge about wildlife that is communicated, must be learned through experience, and is still used today.”
With a song like this I reckon it’s a bit like being a character actor on stage or in TV or film. You aren’t acting out the role because of your chiseled good looks, the pretty girl on your or the size of your fan club and your lunch pack. Rather you’re there because the director needs you to carry the story along with gritty realism.
And so with ‘Nomadic Grey Spirits’; does it convey the spirit of the great outdoors, the chase, the fight and the outcome?
Of course it does, and in case anyone had any doubts, the video (by Jørn Hareide) will take care of them. A very cleverly shot one that has partly been borrowed (from the TV series Søringen & Samen about the meeting of two different Norwegian cultures) and which in some parts could be an advert for walking and adventure holidays in Norway whilst in others could be reenacting the Battle of Mount Longdon in the Falkland Islands.
Terje Gravdal never ceases to explore new territory with his songs, oftentimes ploughing a path where others dare not go. I can’t imagine anyone else on Earth making a song out of hunting reindeer.
Everything points to it being too esoteric by far but as is often the case ‘everything’ got it totally wrong.
This single is the fourth of his six country/folk releases for 2025, and it will be part of his fourth EP (‘The Dreamer’), also planned to be released in 2025.
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