Swedish cow calling gets Hollywood moments and other winds
MALUNG, SWEDEN (AFP) – Jennie Tiderman-Osterberg lets out a loud shout into the Swedish forest, her voice rises and falls in a horrible, eerie melody. The echo echoes through the forest and moments later, three cream-colored and black cows emerge from the trees. The bells around her neck clink as they approach her to return to her shed.
This is charring – a form of Scandinavian cattle that dates back to the Middle Ages.
Once these calls came from summer farms around Central Sweden when farmers took their animals back from the forest after a day of grazing.
Many of the farms disappeared when Sweden was industrialized in the middle of the 19th century, but charring has grown in popularity in recent decades.
Prestigious music schools now offer courses and the hypnotic and captivating art was even featured in the 2019 Disney movie Frozen II.
Sweden recently decided to nominate the summer farms called fabods, where charcoal was developed, to UNESCO’s list of intangible cultural heritage in order to better preserve its unique culture.
Tiderman-Osterberg’s lifelong passion for music began with a childhood obsession with opera, before going through a punctuation scene. She is currently pursuing a doctorate in musicology.
Hearing gossip changed her life, she said, as she fell in love with both the art form and its cultural origins.
“The first time I used charring, it almost felt like my feet were growing roots,” she said.
“I decided it was my life’s mission to spread knowledge” about kulning and other fabod traditions, said the tattooed musician wearing a pinafore, cotton dress and headdress dating back to the 19th century.
Traditionally, fabod women used to take cows and goats to graze in the forest to ensure that they did not eat the crops grown on arable land.
When AFP caught up with Tiderman-Osterberg in July, she was visiting Arvselen fabod in central Dalarna and practiced recalling the farm’s cows from the forests.
Owner Tapp Lars Arnesson returned to his family farm after a career as an actor, attracted by a simple life in the country.
“For me there is nothing better,” he said, standing outside one of the farm buildings, a trilby pulling down over his eyes. “This is real life.”
He has maintained the group of small red traditional buildings without electricity and still lives off the land, growing vegetables and milking his three cows.
His fabod is one of only about 200 left in Sweden, a decrease from tens of thousands in the middle of the 19th century.
And only a handful keep the bullet alive.
Tiderman-Osterberg plans to tour in Sweden this summer with fabod farmers to give lectures and charcoal demonstrations to raise awareness.
Its growing popularity means that the loud, wordless conversation is now also practiced as an art, with concerts around the country.
At the Royal Academy of Music in Stockholm, a small group of students sit scattered in the corners of a dimly lit auditorium and respond to their teacher’s call with their own melodic.
They learn to project their voices as farmers in the forest would have done to reach animals miles away.
“People want to learn choking because there is something exciting about using their voice in this powerful way,” said folk singer and professor Susanne Rosenberg, who started the course.
Rosenberg’s students come from a variety of backgrounds. “They could be an opera singer … (or) someone who just wants to call the kids home for dinner,” she said.
Enthusiasts also offer outdoor courses, with or without cows.
On a farm near Gnesta south of Stockholm, teacher Karin Lindström troops over lush slopes followed by a dozen students.
Standing in a field while mosquitoes and gnats buzz around, her dozen students begin with short sounds and build up until they are ready to try their own cattle.
Few will ever use their new skills to gather cattle, but Lindström said that the centuries-old tradition had other advantages.
“The personality is very close (linked) to the voice and many people have not been able to express themselves,” she said.
“It’s very release.”