The turning of the sun, changing of the seasons, the winter hibernation and spring rejuvenation of the bear, the heartbeat that sustains life from the first gasps out of the womb until our final breaths… so much of the natural world is cyclical, yet it’s easy to lose sight of this within the chaos and disarray of the modern world. Wardruna have returned after a four year slumber with their latest opus Birna — yet another masterclass in connecting past to present, but more importantly reforging the bond between humanity and nature that is so essential to the various crises we face today. Using the she-bear as thematic guide, the Norwegian folk group take us on a journey with what is perhaps their most cohesive album to date — one that gathers all the best elements of Wardruna into a single, beautiful package.
With its tribal beats and dark ambience replete with mouth harp and spoken word, it’s hard for the opening of Birna not to evoke where Wardruna’s musical saga began with 2009’s Runaljod – gap var Ginnunga. As a listener for almost a decade at this point, this is what makes their newest album so special. It takes us back to familiar paths, but like a winter forest experiencing the first warmth of spring it feels entirely rejuvenated from its predecessors. Perhaps the biggest aid in this regard — if not the incredible slew of backing musicians that Einar Selvik and Lindy-Fay Hella have accumulated over the years — is the phenomenal production on Birna. The sound here is just massive like the titular creature; booming, cavernous, taking us right into the she-bear’s den. Bigger drums than those that closed the Runaljod trilogy on Ragnarok, more incredible vocal lines than those that graced Yggdrasil — save “Helvegen,” of course — there’s just so much more richness to Wardruna that is captured here.
A heartbeat rhythm is what opens Birna on the aptly titled “Hertan” (heart), and this remains a constant throughline on the first three tracks of the album. The heartbeat of the bear, the band, the earth, of time itself is felt so deeply in just the first few minutes of this song. And it only gets more thematically appropriate from there — the centerpiece of the album is a duology that lulls us into a slumber alongside the she-bear. “Dvaledraumar” (Dormant Dreams) is the longest (non-Skaldic) Wardruna song to date, an atmospheric, slowly building meditation anchored by a drum beating at the rate of the hibernating bear’s heart — nine beats per minute. A bright kulning call at the end wakes the she-bear from her slumber into the bright light of day and calming sounds of spring that is “Jord til Ljos” (Earth to Light). And the group push the mysticism of the bear even further out from there, from den to earth to sky with the album’s emotional peak in “Himinndottir” (Sky-daughter) — featuring the women’s choir Koret Artemis to haunting, triumphant effect — that examines the bear’s celestial origins in many indigenous cultures, guiding mankind to edible flora while also being one of the most dangerous fauna to encounter; a role not too distant from the gods of pagan religions themselves. “Hibjørnen” (The Hibearnator) closes out the bear section of the album in minimalist Skald fashion, featuring just the beautiful sounds of Einar Selvik’s voice and kravik lyre from the perspective of the bear herself.
These first thematically connected 50 minutes of Birna make for a tremendous journey all on its own, and you could almost stop the album here; yet Wardruna regale us with three more tracks, two that expand the sonic palette a bit more and a returning track that reminds us what this album is all about. The galloping romp “Skuggehesten” (The Shadow Horse) is perhaps the heaviest and most stereotypically “folk-ish” song the band have ever written, and “Tretale” (Three-Tale) once again takes us back to the mystical, atmospheric sounds of gap var Ginnunga. And finally the album concludes with “Lyfjaberg” (Healing Mountain), first released as a single in June 2020; a song desperately needed for healing then, and perhaps even more pertinent now.
With the recent devastation of the fires in Los Angeles county, and the uncertain future the USA (and the rest of the world roped in with us) faces, the relationship between humanity and the natural world is more important, but perhaps more frayed than ever. We only get one Earth, and no amount of extraterrestrial colonization fantasies from delusional oligarchs is going to change or fix that. Wardruna are playing but one small part in mending the bond between us and the beautiful world we inhabit through their entire ethos of “sowing new seeds and strengthening old roots”; this applies especially to the place Birna now holds within the entire Wardruna saga. Myself and several other members of the Nine Circles staff will be traveling to the Blackfeet Nation this summer to see the group headline the long-awaited return of Fire in the Mountains, and the connection to be felt with both the band, the beauty of the Rocky Mountains, and the natural world is without a doubt going to be something special, and spiritually necessary right now. Birna has truly come out at the perfect time. As “Lyfjaberg” tells us:
“Leave it behind on Healing-Peak / Where the rivers and streams / dance northwards and down / That mountain mends all those who climb“
— Colin
Birna will be available January 24 through By Norse Music. For more information on Wardruna, check out their official website.