The Scandinavian ballad tradition today is both a respected art form and an important basis of the popular Scandinavian
sing-along tradition. The song type is typically known as
visa in Swedish or
vise in Norwegian, and troubadours in the genre are called
vissångare in Swedish or
visesanger in Norwegian. In context, the Swedish word "ballad" is a subtype of "visa" that tells a story in many verses, similar to the medieval
ballads, as opposed to for instance lyrical songs about the beauty of nature. The Swedish ballads can be performed to a big orchestra but are often sung to fairly simple
accompaniment on guitar, or other instruments such as piano or accordion.
Sweden The genre started with
Carl Michael Bellman in the late 18th century. In the 19th century, poetic songwriting fell into decline in favour of academic student choirs, until it was revived in the 1890s by
Sven Scholander. Poets increasingly continued the tradition of having their poetry put to music to give it a wider audience. In the early 1900s, a lot of poetry of the 90s poets
Gustaf Fröding and
Erik Axel Karlfeldt had been put to music, and the popularity of those poets largely depended on the troubadours.
Birger Sjöberg (1885–1929) was one of the early popular troubadours. Sjöberg published the poetry collection ''Frida's Book
(Fridas bok
, 1922), a light and humorous story of the young Frida
. In 1926, he reinvented himself with Kriser och kransar
(Crises and garlands''), a much darker collection of poetry. It is regarded as the foremost collection of Swedish poetry of the 1920s. One of the most renowned Swedish troubadours of the 20th century was
Evert Taube (1890–1976). He established himself as a performing artist in 1920 and toured Sweden for about three decades. He is best known for songs about sailors, ballads about Argentina, and songs about the Swedish countryside. A poet who is known for songs is
Nils Ferlin (1898–1961) who published six collection of poetry between 1930 and 1957. Ferlin melancholic but with a stinging irony, and very rhythmical which made them easy for friends and colleagues to put music to. The titles of some of the poems already from the start referred to them being sung as songs, such as "En valsmelodi" (which translates as "A waltz tune"), and the title of his first collection of poems, "En döddansares visor". Other well-known singer-songwriters in the Swedish ballad tradition after Evert Taube were
Olle Adolphson (1934–2004) and
Cornelis Vreeswijk (1937–1987). Vreeswijk's songs were initially
leftist protest songs where he took upon himself to speak for the weaker men of society. After his death, Vreeswijk also gained appreciation for his poetic qualities. A Swedish contemporary troubadour is
Lars Winnerbäck, whose folk-rock ballads, often infused with a poetic quality, mix a Christian socialist political message with a typically Swedish sensitivity to nature in the spirit of Vreeswijk, making him one of Sweden's most popular currently active musicians.
Norway The contemporary Norwegian ballad tradition, known as the "ballad wave" (), started as a cultural movement in the 1960s, greatly inspired by the Swedish ballad tradition and its modern representatives such as Olle Adolphson and Cornelis Vreeswijk. Some of its prominent representatives are
Ole Paus,
Lillebjørn Nilsen and
Finn Kalvik;
Alf Prøysen was also called a
visesanger, and influenced but in many ways preceded the Norwegian "ballad wave." == Notes and references ==