This site is for musicians who play Scandinavian folk music: the largely traditional music of Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark.  See Instructions for how to use it and here for a brief discussion of folk music basics.

It began in answer to the challenge of how to bring new musicians into an existing spelmanslag (band), where the repertoire to be learned can be very large.  Rather than perpetuate a paper culture of binders or even an ad hoc distribution process via email, I decided to bring the repertoire online for some of the groups I play with.

Many people contribute to the tunes played by each group. They organize workshops and teach tunes, they transcribe tunes onto paper and distribute them, and they select the music for Scandinavian dances.  I have gratefully built upon their work in the materials on this site.

Many regions in the U.S. support Scandinavian dance groups and associated musicians, and there are many great sources of information about Scandinavian folk music, including other tune archives: check out the Resources area.

                                                                              -- Karen Myers
                                                                               October, 2005