Book Review of Fiddling for Norway: Revival and Identity, by Chris Goer

Missing Figures Book Review of Fiddling for Norway: Revival and Identity, by Chris Goertzen. After extensive field research in Norway, Chris Goertzen explores and sorts a folk genre, which by nature resists tidy taxonomy. Fiddling for Norway: Revival and Identity is a successful ethnographic documentation of a musical tradition that is learned primarily by insiders through oral/aural channels and by customary example. Implicitly he asks: how can a book culture audience understand a tradition that does not depend on notation for maintenance or transmission? Likewise, how might we classify a collection of such music? He begins by describing in detail how the revival of Norwegian fiddling took place in the later nineteenth century and what its dimensions and scope have been up to the present. Goertzen’s field methods include participant-observation of local and national fiddle contests in Norway, starting with a year-long stay, while teaching at the University of Trondheim in 1988-1989. He attended the District Fiddle Contest in 1988, the largest national fiddle contest for the normal fiddle, in Rà ¸ros. There he was able to hear and record players from around the country play two contrasting tunes each, which gave Goertzen a large collection to consider. He later returned to Norway during the summers of 1991 and 1993 and conducted interviews, made more field recordings, and mined the largest archive of music for the fiddle, Rà ¥det for Folkemusikk og Folkdans (the Council for Folk Music and Folk Dance), at the University of Trondheim for past interviews and field collections. Goertzen points out that the archival holdings privilege the oldest of musicians and repertories, indicating a belief of Norwegian scholars that â€Å"the pres... ...luable book with appeal for ethnomusicologists, scholars of Scandinavian and European culture, historians, and lay audiences. As Goertzen says, these fiddlers, their large repertoires, and the holdings in archives comprise a diachronic living museum of enormous size. Chris Goertzen has done the English-reading public a great service by producing such a splendid study of this lively folk institution. Works Cited Cowdery, James R. 1990. The Melodic Tradition of Ireland. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press. Geertz, Clifford. 1988. Works and Lives: The Anthropologist as Author, pp. 1-24. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Fiddling for Norway: Revival and Identity, by Chris Goertzen. University of Chicago Press, 1997. ISBN 0-226-30049-8 (cloth), 0-226-30050-1 (paper), notation, bibliography, index, 16 figures, 17 plates, xv, 347 pp. Cloth $57, paper $22.50