Visor Från Gotland - Field-recordings from Sweden

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Songs from Gotland, Field-recordings from the Swedish Radio Archives.
"They called me t'nightingale, 'cause I sung an' warbled all the while", said Patrik Lindby, 80 years old at the time, to a folk-song collector, Ragnar Bjersby, early in the 1950's.
A few years later the Swedish Broadcasting Company made tape-recordings of songs from the Baltic island of Gotland.
Late in the summr of 1956 Matts Arnberg travelled round the island and collected, with the aid of a sound technician,Sven Andersson, the remains of a musical tradition from days gone by.
They were guided on their trip into the old music of Gotland by the two foremost authorities on the folk music of Gotland: Svante Pettersson and Ragnar Bjersby. It took only a few days to record 21 bearers of the tradition,
most of them singers. Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the Gotland song tradition - at least as regard these recordings - is the degree in which it differs from the tradition of the mainland, not only in its linguistic dialects but also as regards textual contents and melodies. For instance, Gotland has a type of songs - mill songs, which make fun of the neighbours' extra-vagant mills - which do not exist elsewhere.
The songs which were recorded on Gotland in August, 1956, have often been used in radio programmes through the years. This applies in particular to the songs of the great singer Emma Pettersson of Fleringe and August Bodin's splendid recording of the ancient cumulative song "Jultiggarvisan"- "The Christmas begging song".
Fältinspelningar Ur Radioarkivet