Boda Waltz: A Song History

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The tune known to American players as “Waltz from Boda” is named for Boda, in the Dalarna region of Sweden; the Traditional Tune Archive lists “Bodavalsen” and “Vals Från Boda” among its other titles and reports that in Sweden it is called a waltz after Soling Anders.[1] Swedish library records show that Soling’s name is still current in Boda music: a 2025 album by the ensemble Boda mollkapell includes two polskas “efter soling Anders Hansson,” and the group’s 2026 album closes with a track called “Solingvalsen,” though the sources consulted here do not establish that this is the same waltz.[2][3]

Etching of an old man playing the fiddle

Anders Zorn, Village Violinist, etching, 1904. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0). Shown for its subject; it has no connection to the tune.

The tune was recorded at the 1978 Delsbostämman, the yearly fiddlers’ gathering at Delsbo in Hälsingland, for The Swedish Fiddlers, an album produced by Samuel Charters that Folkways issued in the United States and Sonet in Sweden.[4][5] In his notes, Charters says it was played in the informal evening session after the gathering by a group that included Björn Stabi and Röjås Jonas; he calls it “a popular melody” and adds that Boda was Röjås Jonas’s home village, not far from Rättvik, and that this group’s rendition followed his own manner with the tune.[5] Sweden’s national library catalogues Röjås Jonas Eriksson (1921–1989) as a fiddler from Boda, and the notated collection of Boda folk music he compiled between 1951 and 1956 was published in facsimile by the local heritage society in 2021.[6][7]

The Traditional Tune Archive notes that “Waltz from Boda” is the title generally used in the United States.[1] Its transcription is credited to Lani Herrmann, from playing heard around the San Francisco Bay Area about 1980, and the archive cites the tune in Matthiesen’s Waltz Book (1992) and on Contrablessings, an album by Vandy, Cammy and Edward Kaynor.[1]

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Sources

  1. Traditional Tune Archive: "Waltz from Boda".
  2. LIBRIS (National Library of Sweden): "Bodapolskan lever" (Boda mollkapell, 2025).
  3. LIBRIS (National Library of Sweden): "Dânsâ mâ mä litô" (Boda mollkapell, 2026).
  4. Smithsonian Folkways: "The Swedish Fiddlers: Music from the Gathering of the Fiddlers at Delsbo" (FW08471, 1978).
  5. Smithsonian Folkways: "The Swedish Fiddlers" liner notes by Samuel Charters (PDF).
  6. LIBRIS (National Library of Sweden): "Röjås Jonas kosmos Boda" (Jan Wolf-Watz, 2006).
  7. LIBRIS (National Library of Sweden): "Försök till inventering och uppteckning av folkmusiken i Boda" (Boda hembygdsförening, 2021).