Fossegrimen (Eugene) is a Scandinavian folk dance band founded by David and Claire Elliker-Vågsberg in 1999. They have performed in Norway, Salem, Portland, and Eugene, and often provide the music for Scandinavian folk dances, weddings, festivals, and fairs.
Bio
Fossegrimen, the Eugene-based 5-member folk dance group, is named for a Scandinavian waterfall-dwelling folk creature that teaches people how to play the fiddle. The band plays a variety of Nordic traditional melodies, folk tunes which have been transmitted through the years from musician to musician. Fossegrimen plays both gammaldans (literally 19th-century Nordic “old dances" such as vals, schottis/reinlender, masurka and polkas) and bygdedans (Norwegian village dances such as springars, gangars, polskar, and polsdans) as well as set dances and mixers known as runddansere or turdans. While most of the songs on Fossegrimen’s album Vals til Claire (2008) are from the 1700s and 1800s, the title track is an original written by David for Claire Elliker-Vågsberg. Fossegrimen provides the music for Scandinavian folk dances, weddings, festivals, and fairs. The group, which includes leaders David and Claire Elliker-Vågsberg; their son, Kurt Elliker (fiddle), Brian Wood (guitar and nyckelharpa), and Carson Krause (bass), wear bunader (traditional Norwegian folk outfits) for special occasions. David Elliker-Vågsberg studied violin and also learned to play the hardanger fiddle while he was in college. He also performs on fiddle and the nyckelharpa, as does Claire Elliker-Vågsberg. The hardanger fiddle, which originated in 16th-century Norway, has four top strings and four to five sympathetic strings and is tuned higher than a violin. The nyckelharpa, literally a “key harp” of 14th-century Swedish ancestry, is a bowed string instrument. It has 4 top strings played with a bow, 12 sympathetic strings, and a set of horizontal “keys” on the neck that the player depresses to fret the strings and change the notes. In 2003, Oregon Public Broadcasting's "Oregon Arts Beat" featured Fossegrimen on a program. Claire and David have traveled to Norway since 2015 to compete in a National contest known as Landsfestivalen i gammaldansmusikk as members of a fiddle group called Naustedalen Spelemannslag. The Landsfestivalen is a festival for which as many as 500 fiddlers and dancers of all ages compete.
