So next year it will be double digits!
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And also, uhm, in Brittany and Normandy.
It’s a tenuous connection nonetheless. More often than not people’s traditional songs turn out to actually be popular music hall tunes of the 19th century. Not to mention the problem of equating Baltic traditions with Nordic ones. That’s not a problem per se; as you say traditions evolve. Its just not an unbroken tradition back to pagan times.
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A lot of the French folk revivalists came over here (Quebec) to study get access to the more raw traditions. The surviving traditions in the various parts of France tended to be more formalized, often based on written records of earlier centuries. I don’t know about Alain Stivell himself, but a lot of his scene were really inspired by visits to Quebec. Same with the Scottish folk revival. When I was living over there, I was surprised by how many Quebec folk tunes the Ceilidh would play.
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Which is not the same thing as saying that you are faithfully recreating traditions of 1000 or more years ago… 
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Yes, most of the groups discussed here are quite transparently incorporating elements of all kinds of music (didgeridoos, throat singing, drums from all over the world) and they don’t pretend to be recreating some lost art form. They’re just inspired by music that has come down through human-to-human interaction. It reminds me of once when I went with a friend to his first pow-wow, and he was disappointed that they were wearing bright-colored costumes made with modern materials. Like they should have tried to recreate some glorified ancient art or craft. That’s can be cool thing to try, but I think it’s more exciting, and basically inevitable, to carry on a living, changing tradition.
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Except they do pretend that, for some value of “pretend,” at least implicitly, with the whole “historical re-enactment” shtick they have going on. Heilung describes itself as “amplified history.” Wardruna talk about “creating” “ancient Norse” music traditions. The way they talk about it acknowledges, at least on some level, that they’re basically modern “world music” bands, so they are certainly aware that they’re doing “ancient music” in roughly the same way Gwar are aliens, but the casual observer doesn’t necessarily get that.
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Given my profound knowledge of Celtic languages and traditions, I think they are rather an invocation to that famous divinity that comes riding expensive chariots, talks in the night, and leaves, still in an expensive chariot.
Yeah, I was talking about the musicians I and others have recommended in this comment thread (Väsen, Heningarna, etc.) who actively innovate on old traditions and make it clear that’s what they’re doing.
But again, they don’t often have enough knowledge on those old traditions, in part because they are not historically clear to anyone… there are certainly people who have a working knowledge of these pre-Christian cultures to some degree, but much of it is kind of guess work, since most of the written sources about them come from post-Christian writers, who had their own agenda. They claim to be reviving traditions of the past just as they were, but that’s not what they are actually doing. They are enacting a modern version of the culture via their own modern lens, and likely not at all replicating the past as it actually was lived (despite some of their claims).
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Hold on a minute here, just hooooooollld on.
What was that you just said about GWAR?!?!?
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I think we’re agreeing here. The groups I mentioned don’t claim to be reviving anything. They’re carrying on a culture that still exists. So Swedes performing Swedish folk music and incorporating African drums or Bulgarian-style singing are building on their own tradition, just like pow-wow dancers in hot-pink feathers are a part of their tradition. Folk traditions are not sealed in amber. We all have them.
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Just wanted to point out that the whole genre isn’t like that. There are some really fantastic bands who shouldn’t get lost behind the woo and dreck.
Yes, I’m aware. I’m addressing specific people making specific claims about what they are doing.
Also, I do like the music (unless it’s from a racist band), and it’s actually beside the point I’m making: I’m just pointing out that anyone who claims to be resurrecting a culture that had it’s hey-day so long ago is not being entirely truthful. It’s one thing to be pulling on traditions that go back centuries, to be claiming to be the only and rightful heir to a specific cultural context.
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Heilung came up with a clean bill of health, as far as I could find. No sign that they’re secret Nazis. You just have to worry when you discover a band you like that speaks to an imagined history loaded with nordic/germanic imagery.
On a related note: Heilung was basically a religious revival, when I went to their show. Just a crowd of metalheads with one hand raised in the air, swaying gently to the music, until the closing number when the gentlest mosh pit I’ve ever seen broke out.
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