Mungalaten: A Song History
"Mungalåten," the tune from Munga, is a Swedish gånglåt, or walking march, associated with Erik Gustaf Englund (1862–1941), a blacksmith and nyckelharpa player who was born in Munga and was listed in contest results as from Tierp.[1] It was already a well-known march in his district under the name "Sjöfrun," apparently its oldest known title, and older fiddlers reportedly played a somewhat different version of it at weddings and dances before Englund's time.[1] Accounts of where Englund got it differ: Mossberg names "Sjöfrun" among the tunes he learned from his teacher Gustaf Smedmark, while Otto Andersson, as Mossberg reports, said he learned it from August Bolin and that it probably originated in central Uppland.[1] Englund himself told a legend to explain the old name: one evening a fiddler walking home across the ice of Strömmaren heard beautiful music from an islet, which went quiet as he came near and started again when he moved away, and once home he played the tune on his nyckelharpa.[1]
Elias Martin, View of Uppsala cathedral from the North, pen and black ink, watercolor, 18th–early 19th century. Uppsala, where Englund won first prize on the nyckelharpa in 1909; the view is a century older.
The march became famous at a contest for Roslagen fiddlers held on 2–3 July 1910 in Storstugan, the Coastal Artillery's building at Vaxholm.[1] Englund, who had won first prize for nyckelharpa at Uppsala in 1909, became everyone's favorite, and his march was played more than any other tune, earning it the second name "Storstugans marsch."[1] One of the judges, Gabriel Hedman, wrote it down, and Stockholms-Tidningen and Aftonbladet printed it with a simple piano accompaniment; the composer Felix Körling was quick to give it words.[1] A month later Englund was the only nyckelharpa player invited to the national fiddlers' gathering in Stockholm.[1]
An article by Anders Mossberg, printed in the nyckelharpa association's magazine in 2006, describes the march as played all over Sweden and in many places in Finland.[1] In 1970 the collectors Catherine Perrier and John Wright recorded Joël Jansson playing nyckelharpa in Uppland in a tune catalogued as "Mungalaten," and the recording is held in the CREM-CNRS sound archive in France.[2] A tune titled "Mungalaten" is also among the 48 titles listed for Mark Gilston's Scandinavian Tunes For Dulcimer, a book of Scandinavian songs arranged for mountain dulcimer.[3]
Sources
- Föreningen Nyckelharpan: "Spelmannen Erik Gustaf Englund" (Anders Mossberg, Nyckelharpan nr 2/2006).
- CREM-CNRS Archives: "Mungalaten (Le moulin)".
- Mark Gilston: "Scandinavian Tunes For Dulcimer".
- Image: Elias Martin, View of Uppsala cathedral from the North, pen and black ink, watercolor, 18th–early 19th century. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.