Bára Grímsdóttir and Chris Foster
Icelandic folk music with traditional Icelandic langspil, guitar, kantele & shruti
If you want to know more about our work, just send us a message from the contact page.
gigs & tour dates
news & stuff
Another year draws to a close.
It's dark, cold and snowy outside.
Here is the song Gott ár oss gefi / Give us a good year from our Flúr album. It's a 17th century text by the Icelandic priest Jón Þorsteinnson (1570 – 1627).
The tune and arrangement are by Bára in the Icelandic tvísöngur style. It's asking for a good year next year.
We fervently wish for peace and better times ahead.
We'll be working on that.
Kyndilberar / Torch Bearers - video series
Along with our good friend, Linus Orri Gunnarsson Cederborg, Chris works on a project called Vökufélagið. It's a network of people who are dedicated to building a vibrant, inclusive folk music and dance community in Iceland. Among other things Vökufélagið organises the annual Vaka Folk Festival in Reykjavík.
When it became clear that it was not possible to organise concerts or other live music events during the Covid pandemic, Vökufélagið shifted its focus to video production, because there is little to be found on the internet.
Here are a couple of videos from the series, with the unique Icelandic tvísöngur, two voice harmony style of singing.
Here's one with Chris singing with Linus Orri .
Here's a clip of us performing at the 2022 Nordic Harp meeting in Turku, Finland.
New Funi album
Chris has been working on plans for recording our third full length Funi album. We have been casting our net wide and collecting together songs and rímur extracts that are very little known. Bára has also been writing new tunes for some of the texts. This process of discovering and then arranging hidden riches is one of the things that we love about working with traditional music, whether it's from Iceland or England.
We are adding a new dimension to this album project.
As well as our usual song arrangements, with langspil, Íslensk fiðla, kantele and harmony vocals, we have been working with our friend Buzby Birchall of Hidden Sounds to make special recordings in the Icelandic landscape, in locations connected with the songs, so the sounds of the earth and sea that the songs first sprung from will be present, like veins of minerals through rock, throughout the album.
Regular folk music activities in Reykjavík
Part of our mission as Funi is to share our traditional music and to collaborate with other enthusiasts to encourage more people to get actively involved in singing, playing and dancing. We are involved in several regular opportunities to get involved with playing and singing folk music in the Reykjavík area.
Söngvaka
For the past few years, we have run a monthly open singing session in downtown Reykjavik. We now meet on the third Wesdnesday of each month, through the winter, at Söngskólinn í Reykjavík, which has a good room for singing (no surprises there) and onsite car parking too.
The idea behind these sessions is to create a welcoming space and opportunity for people to come and sing together and to share and learn new songs. In particular we focus on the unique, traditional Icelandic Tvísöngvar, two part harmony songs, and the old dance ballads called Sagnadans or Vikivaki, which are largely overlooked in the wider Icelandic musical world.
Kvæðamannafélagið Iðunn
Kvæðamannafélagið Iðunn was founded in 1929, by working people who were moving into Reykjavík from the countryside. They wanted to keep up their old ways of self made entertainment. It is one of the oldest established cultural organisations in Iceland and it is dedicated to the maintenance and preservation of the traditional Icelandic singing and poetic styles associated with the Icelandic rímur tradition. Bára was first introduced to this venerable society by her parents, who were active members. They took her along to meetings and expeditions as a child and she has been involved with it to a greater or lesser extent ever since.
The first known rímur dates from the 14th century and the tradition continued as an important form of home entertainment in farms, right up to the 20th century, when big changes in Icelandic society and the arrival of home entertainment in the form of radio, and later on TV, led to its decline.
Bára has been the formaður (chairperson) of Iðunn since 2015. Now in this ninetieth anniversary year, the society is going from strength to strength as more people become interested in this unique and beautiful form of traditional ballads. The precise founding day of Iðunn was the 15th September 1929 and the society marks the anniversary 'Dagur rímnalagsins' each year with a concert.
Details of all Kvæðamannafélagið Iðunn activities along with extensive archive recordings can be found on the society's website.
Reykjavík Trad Sessions
For some years now, there have been regular fortnightly folk music sessions in downtown Reykjavík. The music played at the sessions is primarily Irish, Scottish and Swedish tunes, with plenty of singng added into the mix. There is a core group of about seven or eight people who turn up most times. Many of the players are immigrants or students who are studying here for a while. We also quite often welcome players from other countries who are passing through or are here on holiday. The group is very friendly and both the music and the craic are very good.
Since May 2023 we have been meeting twice a month at the Ægir bar on the corner of Laugarvegur and Skólavörðustígur in downtown 101 Reykjavík.
Check out the Reykjavík Trad Sessions Facebook page for regular updates about what's going on.
Vökufélagið
In January 2024, Chris got together with a small group of folk arts activists here in Iceland, to form a new association called Vökufélagið (The Vaka Society). The name comes from the Vaka Folk Arts Festival, which we have been helping to organise since it started in 2015.
The declared aim of Vökufélagið is 'to promote dialogue and cooperation between individuals, associations and institutions, in order to create opportunities to sing, play, dance and listen to Icelandic traditional music, and folk music from further afield, alongside collaborations with other folk arts activities such as handcrafts, poetry, storytelling, drama, etc., all with the aim of building a vibrant, inclusive folk arts community in Iceland.
Folk arts traditions are constantly evolving, and by keeping the inheritance of previous generations alive, they simultaneously celebrate both past and present. Far from being reenactment or mimicry, they enable people's creativity to manifest itself in the contemporary work itself. In this way, traditions are constantly evolving. Because folk traditions are varied and in constant flux, no single individual or group can claim to own or have created them. They belong to the collective experience of the communities in which they take place. Our ambition is to build traditions for tomorrow.
Big honour for Bára
On 17th June 2019 (75th anniversary celebration of Iceland's full independence from Denmark and the 90th anniversary year of Kvæðamannafélagið Iðunn), Bára was invested as a Knight of the Order of the Falcon, by the President of Iceland, Guðni Th. Jóhannesson. The honour was awarded 'For protecting and re-newing the traditional music of Iceland'.
Performance dates
2025
Weds. 22nd January at 20.00
Söngskólinn í Reykjavík
Söngvaka
Icelandic traditional song workshop
Fri. 7th February 2025 at 18.00
National Museum of Iceland (Þjóðminjasafnið)
Safnanótt - Details to be confirmed
Weds. 19th February at 20.00
Söngskólinn í Reykjavík
Söngvaka
Icelandic traditional song workshop
Weds. 19th March at 20.00
Söngskólinn í Reykjavík
Söngvaka
Icelandic traditional song workshop
Weds. 9th April at 20.00
Söngskólinn í Reykjavík
Söngvaka
Icelandic traditional song workshop
Fri. 25th - Sun. 27th April
Stemma landsmót
Annual national gathering of Icelandic Kvæðamenn organisations.
Concerts, Dancing, Workshops, Sessions etc.
Details to be confirmed
Mon. 15th September
Dagur rímnalagsins
Annual celebration of the Icelandic rímur tradition, organised by Kvæðamannafélagið Iðunn.
Details to be confirmed.
Booking now for 2025
and beyond.
To enquire about booking us for concerts or workshops, just send us an email from the contacts page here on our website.
Watch this space for updates and more dates.
If you scroll down you will find info about our recordings and publications.
albums
All of our recorded music is available as physical CDs and downloads from:
You can also find it on multiple streaming platforms, such as Spotify, iTunes, Amazon, Deezer and so on.
FLÚR (GMCD007)
Our album of 15 Icelandic songs was released in April 2013. Flúr is an old Icelandic word that means decoration or tracery.
The physical CD comes in a digipak along with a 32 page with lots of photographs, notes about the songs and full song texts in both Icelandic and English translation all beautifully designed by Inga Elsa Bergþórsdóttir.
As well as our usual mix of instruments, we are joined by some excellent musical friends and relatives who add their spice to the mix. This is family based, cottage industry record production at its very best.
… haunting and fascinating.
Simon Broughton – Songlines, October 2014
These consummate and intensely mesmerising performances are quite simply superb in their natural authority.
David Kidman - NetRhythms.co.uk, May 2013
It’s a particular pleasure, to come across this wonderful disc by Bára Grímsdóttir - one of Iceland’s foremost traditional singers - and
British-born multi-instrumentalist, Chris Foster.
Oz Hardwick R2 magazine - July 2013
You can download songs from FLÚR and our other album FUNI from Bandcamp. You can buy physical CDs online from Bandcamp or from us in person, here in Reykjavík, via the email link on the contacts page, or at our gigs.
Funi (GMCD002)
Our first album was released in 2004. The album was recorded in England, where we were living at the time. We were joined on the album by our good friend and fabulous squeeze box player, John Kirkpatrick. The photo on the front of the album shows three generations of Bára's family, photographed at the family farm in 1932. Her father, who also wrote several of the song texts on the album, is the little blond haired boy in the bottom left of the photo.
Chris' solo albums
Chris' solo English language albums are all available from Bandcamp.com
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Full information about the albums can be found over on Chris' website.
Bára sings
Passíusálmar
(Hymns of the passion)
by
Hallgrímur Pétursson
The Passíusálmar are fifty hymns written by the Icelandic priest and poet Hallgrímur Pétursson (1614 -1674) and completed in 1659. These meditations on the sufferings and death of Jesus Christ hold a special place in Icelandic culture and are also the most widely published and translated Icelandic literary work.
Hallgrímur intended the hymns to be sung, so he set each one to a known tune in the Lutheran hymnody. People learned the hymns by heart and sang and read them in their homes during Lent. Over the years, the hymn tunes evolved in the mouths of the people as the melodies were moulded to the sounds and structure of the Icelandic language.
In the twentieth century the practice of singing the Passíusálmur started to decline. They continue to be read a lot in churches and on the radio on Good Friday. Fortunately, recordings of older people, many of who knew all 50 hymns by heart, singing the hymns were made, before they passed out of use.
In March 2020, Bára researched traditional melodies to seven of the Passíusálmur and performed them in Háteigskirkja, a church in our neighbourhood in Reykjavík. Due to Covid restrictions the performance had to be live streamed, so we have videos of the performance.
We are happy to share this very special music here.
Passíusálmur number 36
Um skiptin á klæðunum Kristí
(Christ's garments divided)
Passiusálmurs numbers 37 - 42 are over on the music and videos page.
© 2024
