Siv Gøril Brandtzæg: Singing the news of natural disaster

A Kurrens néprajz előadás-sorozat keretein belül az ELTE BTK Néprajzi Intézetében ezúttal Siv Gøril Brandtzæg angol nyelvű előadására kerül sor, aki a természeti csapásokról szóló norvég ponyvák világába kalauzolja el az érdeklődőket. Szóbeliség és írásbeliség, szöveg és dallam, katasztrófák és tömegtájékoztatás. 

What can songs of the past and cheap prints tell us about how our forebears dealt with natural disasters? This talk will define disaster songs, a type of lyric which was circulated in cheap prints (in the Anglophone world known as broadside ballads) all over Europe, from the 16th to the 20th century. Using Norwegian songs as a starting point, the talk will present the literary and musical content of these texts. The presentation will also include singing examples, as part of an argument that a key to understanding the popularity and endurance of this transnational genre is to pinpoint its role in oral culture.

Siv Gøril Brandtzæg (b. 1980) is an Associate Professor of Comparative Literature in the Dept. of Language and Literature at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). She is the leader of a national project on Norwegian song prints, and has edited two books on song prints, and constructed a national database. She is currently finishing a monograph on natural disaster songs in Norway.

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