Concert: Maja Heurling, Ola Sandström, and Livet Nord Perform Irrbloss

October 2, 2022

Concert: Maja Heurling, Ola Sandström, and Livet Nord Perform Irrbloss
Free and Open to the Public
October 4, 2022 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm CT
Tripp Commons, Memorial Union, 800 Langdon St.

Our friends at the Sustaining Scandinavian Folk Arts in the Upper Midwest Project are presenting this free concert with cosponsors the Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Cultures, the Center for European Studies, and the Department of German, Nordic, and Slavic+.

Poster for Irrbloss: Songs from the Poetry of Signe Aurell concert by by Maja Heurling and Ola Sandström, October 4, 2022, 6pm, Memorial Union, UW-Madison. Illustration is of a guitar and two fiddles rising from behind a mountain range and in silhouette against the sun behind them

Signe Aurell was a Swedish woman who came to the United States in 1913, worked as a laundress and seamstress, joined the Industrial Workers of the World, and wrote poetry and essays published in the Swedish American press during her seven years living in Minnesota. In 1919, Aurell self-published a poetry collection in Swedish, Irrbloss (Will-o’-the-Wisp), featuring her lyrically powerful work. Her poems, mostly unknown until now, tell of homesickness and the struggle for a better tomorrow.

Musicians Maja Heurling and Ola Sandström collaborated to set music to a selection of poems from Irrbloss, blending folk stylings and the Swedish visa tradition together to amplify the importance and continued relevance of Aurell’s words. In October 2019, 100 years after they were released, the album with the compositions of Signe Aurell’s poems was released on Kakafon Records. In doing so, the group has employed the Swedish visa tradition to interpret not just Aurell’s poetry, but also the migration histories of the over one million Swedes who came to the United States between 1850 and 1930.

The Sustaining Scandinavian Folk Arts in the Upper Midwest Project presented Heurling and Sandström in a Zoom concert in May 2021. Heurling and Sandström will be joined for this concert by violiinst/violist Livet Nord. See this YouTube playlist for videos of seven of these songs performed by Maja Heurling, Ola Sandström, Livet Nord, and Daniel Wejdin in Dyvik, Sweden, on August 9, 2022.

This performance on October 4 will feature songs based on the poetry of Aurell, as well as stories from her life in both Sweden and Minnesota. Appetizers will be provided.