Schottis Fran Porjus: A Song History
The title points to Porjus, a community in Jokkmokk Municipality, Norrbotten County, that grew up around a hydropower station built on the Stora Luleälven in the 1910s.[1] FolkWiki, the Swedish folk-music wiki, lists "Schottis från Porjus" as a schottis from Norrbotten in D, and its notation marks a pizzicato passage in the second strain.[2] The wiki also puts it on a short list of tunes suggested as a starting point for a Norrbotten repertoire.[3]
William Hogarth, A Lapland Hut, from Aubry de La Mottraye's Travels throughout Europe, Asia and into Part of Africa, etching and engraving, 1723–24. A Sami tent and reindeer in Lapland in the 1720s, shown for the region where Porjus lies; the engraving has no connection to the tune.
Spillefolk, a Danish online collection of tune notations, names Göran Lundquist as its source for the melody and states that the group J.P. Nyströms recorded it on the album Låtar i Norrbotten.[4] The Library of Congress catalogues that album as a 1979 LP issued in Luleå by Manifest, consisting chiefly of folk dances in the group's own arrangements.[5]
On the dulcimer side, the tune appears in Mark Gilston's Scandinavian Tunes For Dulcimer, a collection of Scandinavian songs arranged for mountain dulcimer, sold as a ZIP containing the 64-page book plus a separate PDF of each tune.[6]
Sources
- Länsstyrelsen Norrbotten: "Porjus kraftstation".
- FolkWiki: "Schottis från Porjus".
- FolkWiki: "Bra låtar Norrbotten".
- Spillefolk: "Schottis fr. Porjus".
- Library of Congress: "Låtar i Norrbotten" (J.P. Nyströms, 1979).
- Mark Gilston: "Scandinavian Tunes For Dulcimer".
- Image: William Hogarth, A Lapland Hut, from Aubry de La Mottraye's Travels throughout Europe, Asia and into Part of Africa, etching and engraving, 1723–24. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.