In magic lands

As regular readers will know I usually try to mix it up (a bit). So it's with apologies that I immediately follow one post about a popular Swedish song with another one. But hey, Christmas is coming and these are what I'm hastily working on, with singalongs in prospect.

Vi gå över daggstänkta berg

D                                        A7

Vi gå över daggstänkta berg, fallera,
A7                                                    D

Som lånat av smaragderna sin färg, fallera!
         G

Och sorger ha vi inga,

          D
Våra glada visor klinga,

             A7                                 D
När vi gå över daggstänkta berg, fallera!

         G

Och sorger ha vi inga, &c

We walk over dew-sprinkled hills, fallera,

Who've borrowed from the emeralds their tints, fallera!

And sorrows we're not bringing,

Our merry songs go ringing

When we walk over dew-sprinkled hills, fallera.

2. De väldiga skogarnas sus, fallera,

Gå mäktiga som orgeltoners brus, fallera!

Och livets vardagsträta,

Så lätt det är förgäta,

Vid de väldiga skogarnas sus, fallera!

Och livets vardagsträta, &c

The sound of the mighty forests' roar, fallera, 

Tremendous like the growl of organ chords, fallera!

And life's daily fretting

Is easily forgotten,

When you're out in the mighty forests' roar, fallera!

3. De gamla och kloka må le, fallera,
Vi äro ej förståndiga som de, fallera!
Men vem skulle sjunga
Om våren den unga,
Om vi vore kloka som de, fallera?

Men vem skulle sjunga, &c

The old and the wise, smile they may, fallera,

We know we aren't as sensible as they, fallera!

But who on earth would sing rhyme

To hail the youthful springtime,

If all of us were just as wise as they, fallera?

4. O mänskor, förglömmer er gråt, fallera,
och kommer och följer oss åt, fallera!
Si, fjärran vi gånga
Att solskenet fånga,
Ja, kommer och följer oss åt, fallera!

Si, fjärran vi gånga, &c

O sorry humankind, forget your tears, fallera,

Come abroad and walk with us out here, fallera!

Just see, how far we're marching 

The sunshine that we're catching,

Yes, come abroad and walk with us out here, fallera!

5. Så gladeligt hand uti hand, fallera,
Nu gå vi till fågel Fenix land, fallera!
Det sagoland som skiner
Av kristaller och rubiner,
Nu gå vi till fågel Fenix land, fallera!

Det sagoland som skiner, &c

So gladly we walk hand in hand, fallera,

Now we're on our way to see the phoenix' land, fallera!

That saga-land illumined

All with crystal and with rubies,

Now we're on our way to see the phoenix' land, fallera!

(Text from the 1944 edition of Sjung Svenska Folk.)

The words are by Olof Thunman, poet, landscape artist and enthusiastic hiker (he was inspired by the ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau).  The story is that he made up the words, some of them anyway, in the course of a post-dinner walk in Flen (Södermanland) in 1900, when he was just 21. At the time he was employed as a private tutor to three boys, sons of a bank director called Ericsson. Walking with him was the eldest son, Edwin Ericsson, playing an accordion. There is some dispute whether the ridiculously catchy melody was Edwin's own invention or a traditional "gånglåt" (marching tune). At any rate the essential "fallera"s came along later, replacing a double repeat of the final word in the line.

However it came about, I think Olof Thunman's lyric does capture the feel of spontaneous composition in nature. What I particularly like is how the song starts with something like realistic observation of the nature around him (the emerald green, the sound of the trees), but it ends by following the imagination into magic lands. That seems to me just the way that things tend to happen on a walk; as our thoughts gradually become less willed, as the immediacy of nature becomes less novel to us, a creative interplay between our minds and our physical activity and our surroundings takes place, if we allow it to. It offers the promise of a bigger life than the one we normally inhabit, and if this promise finds words at all, they tend to be words of the fantastic, the world of fairytales, yet arising naturally, like dreams; e.g. in this case the image of emeralds (verse 1) giving rise to the crystal and rubies of verse 5.

I suppose I'm labouring the obvious, but it makes me question my normal understanding of that important aspiration we refer to by terms such as "mindfulness" or "being present". It mustn’t mean limiting ourselves to attending only to what our senses are registering, as it were for fear of missing something. Salutary as such advice seems (i.e. in response to modern waking lives that are mostly buried in the virtual) yet it's something short of a living relationship with nature: strictly observing our surroundings, we cease to interact with them, we assemble data but we exile ourselves from nature's community. We don't open ourselves to letting it tell us anything new. It's the same with our communication with other people: if we habitually scrutinize another person's behaviour, we stop being able to hear them, they become merely a case.

Vi gå, etc: nearly all the verb endings are "wrong". I'm not sure why, though it seems to be typical of older Swedish song lyrics: whether some Swedish verb-rules have actually changed since 1900 or whether it's supposed to sound archaic or slangy or dialectal or comic or what. (In some other texts the imperative verbs in verse 4 appear as "förglömmen","kommen", etc... different, but just as "wrong".... this is what Gustaf Adolf Lund sings in the YouTube clip below.)

inga / klinga, etc. As in many older Swedish songs and poems, there's a strict pattern of masculine (monosyllabic) and feminine (disyllabic) rhymes: here it's masculine for lines 1,2 and 5; feminine for lines 3 and 4. But feminine rhymes aren't quite as commonplace in English as they are in Swedish, one reason I gave up on a proper verse translation of this one.

berg (Verse 1): a word with wide usage in Swedish: mountain, hill, cliff. 

vardagsträta (Verse 2): everyday dealings.

förgäta (Verse 2): forget. The usual word is glömma; this is a poetic alternative. 

som de (Verse 3). As in most old songs, the pronouns and some other common words should be pronounced the way they are spelled, and not as they are in standard modern Swedish; sometimes, as here, it's necessary for the rhyme. (I.e. you have to pronounce de as "deer" not "domm"). Compare the popular lullaby Videvisan, where dig must be pronounced "deeg" not "day". 

sagoland (verse 5). Saga means fairytale or legend (as in Sibelius' En Saga). Yes, I know, I've translated it as "saga-land" because it sounded better, but please don't start thinking of something like Njals' Saga. It means a magical land, the land of Faërie.

Here's Gustaf Adolf Lund's recording from 1913. Lund's text (like many others) didn't include verse 2 but otherwise it follows the same sequence as quoted above. Some texts don't; for examples, see the Swedish Wikipedia article https://sv.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vi_g%C3%A5_%C3%B6ver_daggst%C3%A4nkta_berg .

Here's my rendition:

michaelpeverett · Vi Gå Över Daggstänkta Berg