Langeleiken i Trøndelagsområdet

Abstract

In 2011, Elisabeth Kværne and the author started a registration and research project on the history and development of the langeleik, the traditional Norwegian long-fretted board zither. In this article, I have looked into and examined the registered instruments from the Trøndelag area. This includes the two counties of Southern and Northern Trøndelag, as well as the Swedish border areas of Härjedalen, which was a part of Norway until 1645. The examined material consists of seven instruments from Trøndelag and two instruments from Härjedalen. Additionally, I have included the two neighbouring counties of Hedmark with five instruments and Nord-land with two instruments, as geographical reference areas. The intention of the article was to look into a range of aspects of the langeleik in order to document variation in the material and to investigate whether the langeleik examples from Trøndelag possess any features special for that region. Then I related this to the material from the two selected reference areas. The three main aspects I prioritised were dimension and shape, design, and decoration and surface treatment.