(Sweden) Here's Väsen in a performance from the Nordic Roots Festival that sets the house on fire. Pay special attention to Roger Tallroth's steel wristed guitar playing - it provides an amazingly interesting and varied rhythmic and harmonic bed for the tunes, as played by Mikael Martin on viola and Olov Johansson on nyckelharpa. The nyckelharpa, which looks like a cross between a hurdy gurdy and a stegosaurus' spinal plate ridge is in actuality a keyed fiddle, played with a special arched bow. It's been used in Sweden since the 1300s, and like the hardanger fiddle it has sympathetic strings under the main playing area.

(Sweden) Here's Väsen in a performance from the Nordic Roots Festival that sets the house on fire. Pay special attention to Roger Tallroth's steel wristed guitar playing - it provides an amazingly interesting and varied rhythmic and harmonic bed for the tunes, as played by Mikael Martin on viola and Olov Johansson on nyckelharpa. The nyckelharpa, which looks like a cross between a hurdy gurdy and a stegosaurus' spinal plate ridge is in actuality a keyed fiddle, played with a special arched bow. It's been used in Sweden since the 1300s, and like the hardanger fiddle it has sympathetic strings under the main playing area.