Wardruna - About Two Songs
More than allowing for the "I've always felt homesick for a place I didn't know" cliché, I've always felt like I wasn't home or comfortable anywhere for long... Until I was cold: In Scotland, in Sweden... in the North. It's why I fear travelling to Iceland: I don't think I'll ever want to come back.
When I listen to Wardruna -- in particular these two songs -- I feel myself as if I belong to something bigger than I am, like an ancestral calling that precedes me and extends me beyond the little speck in time I am: One I hopefully build upon and leave a legacy to build upon behind.
In a way, listening to Wardruna is like finding that ever elusive home I've yearned for ever since I remember. A couple of their songs resonate especially.
Helvegen - The Road to Hel
The first song, "Helvegen", offers one a road to culmination, to the death-sleep, and how one can expect to eventually become "free of the bonds that bind us". But there's a song that's sung about the substance of life that's passed on from those who are on their way to death-freedom and those who remain life-bound. The song could be "Helvegen" itself, which makes it a beautiful circular reference in the everlasting cycle of life and death.
The song is not meant to bring comfort, but it alludes to what leaves and what remains in a way that is comforting for me. For the memory of those who've left is deep in me, and I hope that I remain within those I'll one day leave, too. A legacy of knowledge, in the form of song(s). Somehow, why I write what I write, why I sing what I sing -- with great sacrifice -- in hope that it too will be passed on, one day. That's how I hope to live on, to not be forgotten. In and with song.
Who's going to sing of my name when the wolf comes for me and after I sing myself to sleep?
Lyfjaberg - Healing-mountain
Einar described it perfectly: "The song expresses that climbing a tough mountain, both in reality and metaphorically, is a mental as well as a physical effort. I have tried to write this journey up the mountain as one for the mind and spirit as much as the feet and body. Anything of true value, comes at a true cost".
I've felt like I've been climbing this mountain for most of my life; seeking for the balms at the top, seeking for a cure for my lifelong ailment. And as I've been slung so many times to the base of the mountain, one such event just recently, I now also feel like I'm strong enough to start climbing it, again. And I do that in hope that "naked, at the top (...) the shadow-women dance about me, and sing for me".
And I hope their song lulls me. Into sleep or into death-sleep, eventually. But truly: that it'll eventually soothe me, cradle me... cure me. Until then, I'll keep writing my songs about the mountain climb.