Thorrinn wrote:I would love any research of any court dances for the nordic people. I have had a hard time finding any of it.
If you're interested in court dances of
sixteenth century Nordic people, you're in luck. They danced the same French and Italian dances as were done in France, Italy, England, etc. Pavans, galliards, branles, allemandes and courantes that you can find in Arbeau's
Orchesography and the Italian dances from the works of Caroso and Negri. How do we know this? There are surviving copies of the dance manuals (printed books by this time) in various Scandinavian libraries, Scandinavian editions of the dance music for these dances, and contemporary accounts that mention them.
Yes, this is a trick answer. You really were after earlier dances, weren't you? Unfortunately, the earliest European dance instructions date from the mid-15th century. Dance music from earlier has survived, and vague written descriptions, but nothing that can be used to reconstruct medieval (12-14c) dances such as estampies, caroles, ductias, etc. (Earlier than that is even more obscure.) From musical sources, music theory treatises and illuminations, we can deduce that some of these dances were line or circle dances. Medieval Norse sources describe line (and perhaps circle) dances that followed a dance/song leader, where the leader sang the verse and the other dancers the chorus of the song. This form of dance survived in traditional dancing into modern times, but written documentation of almost all European folk dances goes back no further than the 18th century. This is true of the Faroese dances, which are (without documentation) claimed to be of medieval origin. Maybe some of them are, but we have no way of proving it.
Viki-vaki is an Icelandic poetic form and dance or dance game dating from perhaps as early as the 13c, evolving over several centuries and finally dying out in the 18c. The term is believed by some scholars to mean "wig-wag", or to move from side to side. Branle is a 16c French dance, usually done in lines or circles, moving from side to side. You may well have danced a branle or two. "Branler" means to swing (or move) from side to side. Kinda makes you go hmmmmmm, doesn't it.
I don't think that there was much of a court/countryside distinction for dance in the Viking and saga-periods. My gut feeling is that while there may have been stylistic differences, both in the dances and the subjects of the dance-songs, the basic dances were similar, if not the same -- those line and circle dances, sometimes men and women together, sometimes men or women only.
There are some "modern" folk dances, widespread in Europe and Scandinavia, that resemble the single branle (two to the left, one to the right). They are believed to be very old, mostly on the basis of their wide geographic distribution, but we have no early records. In Arbeau's book, the single branle is a three-beat dance done to three-beat music. However, in modern Scandinavia (and Brittany and Turkey), these three-beat dances are done to four-beat music, which means that the dance and music only match up every 12 beats. It's not easy in the beginning, particularly if you've had too much mead, but eventually it gets rather trance-like. It's tons of fun to do this to a long call-and-response song in a smoky hall or camp site. Just don't fall into the fire!
There are a few medieval Danish depictions of dancing:
Dance of Death, 1480, from a church in Noerre Alslev:
http://ica.princeton.edu/images/mills/18-057.jpg
Details of fresco, 1325, from church in Oerslev. From seeing the crowned figures, these are surely "court" dances:
http://ica.princeton.edu/images/mills/30-030.jpg
http://ica.princeton.edu/images/mills/30-031.jpg
A few seconds of a modern (and possibly earlier) chain dance to the 86-verse song Ormurin Langi (The Long Serpent):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gsy3hkcN ... re=related
Well, that was more than I thought I would say about the subject and still not say anything definitive, but at least one enquiring mind wanted to know. Who'd have thought it would be in an armor forum! Anyway ...
Cheers!
-- Signy
