The Nordic Harp Meeting is a musical conference, a meeting place for musicians
and instrument makers, with workshops and lectures focusing on the harp, lyre, kantele and related
diatonic instruments.
We want to include musicians at all levels, instrument makers and everybody who is interested
in traditional music and harprelated instruments. Professionals and advanced harpers
are as welcome as beginners and curious listeners.
There will be ensemble playing and jam sessions, workshops and lectures. The program
will also include some public concerts, but most notably, we want to encourage
active participation by meeting each other, playing together and
learning from each other.
The main objectives of the Nordic Harp Meeting are:
1. to meet other harpers from Nordic and other countries, to teach each
other new tunes, make use of each other's knowledge, repertoire and experience, and generate new ideas from the synergistic effects
of many different traditions and creative impulses.
2. to discover the diversity of harps and harp-related instruments of
the North: Norwegian folk harp, Finnish kantele, Norwegian langleik,
Finnish bowed lyre (jouhikko), Norwegian round lyre, Anglo-Saxon lyre,
various historical harps and psalteries, and their respective traditions.
3. to enrich your repertoire with traditional tunes from other countries,
ranging from historical tunes to recent music.
4. to transfer traditional tunes from the kantele, lyre, langleik and other
traditions to the harp and vice versa, thus creating new sounds in Nordic folk music.
5. to experiment with ancient and new methods of playing harprelated string
instruments, and to encourage free and open-minded debate on matters relating
to these instruments and their history.