Continuity of Culture 2

This week brings a certain appropriateness to writing about elements of culture passing from ancestor to descendant. Monday Sheila and I had a sneak-peek at the next generation of our family. An ultrasound gave us our first look at our baby-to-be, who we’ve taken to calling Bean. We are now completely overcome with anticipation; we can’t wait to meet it, and cuddle it, and find out its gender, and choose a name, and do all of those other impossibly important things. Everyone tells us the next five months will fly by, but I can tell you with no reservation that they can’t pass fast enough.

So it also seems appropriate to post a song loaded with joyful anticipation, and pair it with a slide show of ultrasound pictures. The song is Kylä Vuotti Uutta Kuuta (The Village Awaits the New Moon) by Värttinä, a group from Finland. I’ll confess the story within the song is a little less amazing than waiting for a baby…



The village waited for the new moon.
They said my brother would return
empty handed when he was off hunting.
They were wrong. The eagle caught
the duck.

…but the power in their voices gets the point across.

Sheila and I have spent much of the past several years’ worth of CD money collecting a good stock of music from most of the Scandinavian nations in honour of her Norse ancestry. Finnish is the most unique of the languages, and to my ears, the most ancient sounding. Sheila’s roots are Danish, but there is a common cultural and linguistic history to all the Northern countries, and the music illustrates this commonality. Then of course those crazy Vikings traded and raided their way through Ireland, Scotland, England, France, heck even Russia. It’s cool to listen to the music and compare and contrast it to Celtic or other European music. Which influences are modern, and which go back a thousand years? Who knows?

In the past month or so this collecting bug has developed into a desire to track down lullabies in culturally appropriate languages. Attribute it to nesting, but I want to have some traditional Danish, French, Gaelic, and English songs to sing when the time comes. What did my Great-Grandmother sing to my Grandfather? What did Olemor sing to Mormor? Somehow I feel like I could express the love passed down by a thousand generations, if only I could sing it in their words.

N