"Viking Music" and Issues of Genre

The Nordic Sound

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Do musicians get the final say in what their music is called, and is genre meant to be a literal descriptor of the music we hear?
In the 3 years I’ve been running this channel, covering the music of Wardruna, Heilung, and almost everything in that sphere, I have had endless conversation over what to call this music with many alternatives offered for the sake of “anything but Viking music”. Dark folk, pagan folk, nordic folk (the worst option for reasons obvious to traditional musicians), heathen folk, new nordic folk… and even the major artists themselves have been outwardly disassociating from the level. But why don’t any of the alternatives stick instead of Viking music?
Join me in this conversation about the contentious yet seductive nature of the Viking music phenomenon from the perspective of an ethnomusicologist. Questions here are posed around the nature of genre, the binding themes of this music scene, artist and audience perspectives, and whether or not any of this is about historical accuracy at all, and if that matters to the ultimate enduring label of Viking music.
Or, can we not change how we talk about Viking music at all before we change how we talk about the Viking age itself?
My ultimate hope is that questions brought up in this video start some needed conversations to be carried on as this genre continues to grow, instead of continuing the trend of dancing around the subject as we run on the euphemism treadmill. Because remember, I don’t have the answers, only the questions. The answers are what we as a community make them to be.
Thank you for watching.
-Jamo

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