Folk Metal and the Narrative

An Introduction to Folk Metal

The emergence of Folk Metal as a notable subsidiary of the Heavy Metal genre was almost directly precipitated by the rise and development of the Reconstructionist Neo-pagan movement in Northern Europe, in the late 1980's and 1990's.

The aforementioned movement was a quasi-religious phenomenon that stressed the need to return to the polytheistic Germanic faith, and consequent social order, of the pre-Christian epoch. Folk metal emerged as the cultural extension of this movement, gaining prominence in the early 1990's.

Thematically, Folk Metal was rooted in the folk traditions of the Germanic pagan culture and its regional variants, with bands borrowing heavily from Eddic Poetry.

The Edda itself is an immense oeuvre, and has been called "the greatest literary monument preserved to us out of the antiquity of the kindred races which we call Germanic...the original storehouse of Germanic mythology" . Folk Metal bands chiefly appropriated material from the Poetic Edda, adapting many of the characters and events featured in these Norse epics, and reducing them to the vignettes we see featured in their lyrics. I believe the following to be sufficiently illustrative:

When Heimdall's horn is blown and Ragnarok is born

Fenris will rise and devour the great

And bleed from the jaws, the river of rage

When Ragnarok's at hand he will rip the magic chain

Fenris will rise and devour the great Odin himself

And bleed from the jaws, the river of rage

The narrative aspects of the Norse epics that have survived this modal transition and are preserved in Folk Metal, mark an ideal point of departure for an inquiry into the relationship between Folk Metal and the narrative. This essay will attempt to establish this relationship, with close attention to how major elements of the narrative function in Folk Metal lyrics. Particular elements that I will discuss in this essay are setting and plot.

And as Folk Metal is above all else, a musical genre, the role that music itself plays in accentuating narrative elements will be considered. It must be noted therefore, that the narratives present in Folk Metal are two-dimensional, comprising of both musical and lyrical components.

Folk Metal and the Narrative

The narrative element that is immediately pellucid in Folk Metal lyrics is the setting; an indicator of its significance to the genre. Much of the effort that goes into the creation of Folk concept albums is centered on the replication of the setting found in the Edda and other epics. The need to reproduce the epic largeness of the Edda, informs both the musical and lyrical aspects of Folk Metal. Given the limitations of the strophic form used in Folk Metal, lyricists are confined to a short but necessarily encompassing description of the macro-setting, which describes the overall setting of the narrative. The limitations of form elicit the need to incorporate aural and symbolic elements into the construction of setting. Consider the following:

Down from the glen came the marching men

With their shields and their swords.