Sallow: harp, strings
Hellig: flute
Weide: clarinet, tuba
Catkin: percussion
All songs written and performed by The Barrowfolk in Jutland, July-August 2024.
Cover art and layout by Salix.
Sallow: harp, strings
Hellig: flute
Weide: clarinet, tuba
Catkin: percussion
All songs written and performed by The Barrowfolk in Jutland, July-August 2024.
Cover art and layout by Salix.
This August, I was fortunate to meet a pair of somewhat celebrities: Tollund Man and Elling Woman, two of the best known and preserved bog bodies from Jutland in Denmark. Some 4000 years ago, their bodies were placed with care and some ritual within peat bogs, which provided the right conditions to preserve their bodies. They were found mid-20th century, so well preserved they were thought to be no more than a decade or so old and subject of police investigation.
After meeting Tollund and Elling in Silkeborg, I began working on a collection of songs dedicated to and inspired by these two enigmatic folk. The Barrowfolk is my attempt to connect with their distant history, telling a story but remaining apart from that story. This is the soundtrack to a long forgotten 1970s BBC Play For The Day dramatising their lives. Music as folk history...or folk horror.
"Woven from a potent experience of meeting Tollund Man and Elling Woman, two of the best known and preserved bog bodies from Jutland in Denmark, The Barrowfolk utilises flute, clarinet, harp and other string instruments and percussion to depict an imagined dramatization of the lives of these ancient peoples. Rustic, distant, distorted music, of a hauntological atmosphere as it imagines a past through an unsettling diorama of pastoral folk horror."
The Barrowfolk is an imaginary soundtrack to a 1970’s TV documentary on the lives of two preserved bog bodies in Denmark. These two ‘celebrities” serve as inspiration and this record and project is a telling of their lives through song. This esoteric folk way of storytelling is apart of the near limitless world of Willow Tea and the capacity to think imagine and create.