ProgBlog goes to Norway
- garethsprogblog
- 2 hours ago
- 11 min read
I voted ‘remain’ in the 2016 referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union and hindsight doesn’t salve the hurt of the predicted self-inflicted mess the UK finds itself in thanks to the lies and apparent charisma of a couple of snake oil salesmen. Where are we now? Brexit true-believers suggest it wasn’t done properly and even the Labour government remains reluctant to admit what a disaster it has been lest they upset the ever-decreasing portion of the electorate who voted leave. Boris Johnson resisted attempts to minimise the economic damage because he didn’t have a clue how to ‘get Brexit done’ without exposing himself as a charlatan and the least worst scenario, a ‘soft Brexit’ with some form of customs union, was dismissed as a form of treachery by Brexit headbangers. One potential model was coined ‘Norway plus’. Norway, along with Liechtenstein and Iceland, is a member of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) and the European Economic Area (EEA). Norway plus, which was proposed towards the end of 2018, would have consisted of membership of EFTA and membership of the EEA, combined with a separate customs union with the EU to create a trade relationship similar to that between the EU and its member states today; critics of the proposal couldn’t accept that the UK would have to abide by EU regulations without any political representation in the EU's bodies, even though it encompassed an idealised wish list for a soft Brexit.
I’ve always been intrigued by Norway, from Scandinavian mythology to physical geography lessons during my schooldays in the early 70s. Unlike the UK, who did exactly the opposite with money from North Sea Oil extraction, the Norwegian government created two sovereign wealth funds. One of these was for reinvesting surplus revenue back into global stocks, shares and assets and the other, the smaller Government Pension Fund Norway, invested in Norwegian and some Scandinavian businesses, acting like a national insurance scheme.
Norway featured heavily in the second of my InterRail travels, Eurotrek ‘83, where 10 days were spent exploring the country from Oslo up to Narvik, well inside the Arctic Circle and the farthest north I’ve ever travelled, 68o28’ N. That trip coincided with campaigning for the 1983 Norwegian local elections so on our first afternoon in Oslo, university friend and fellow traveller Nick Hodgetts and I hung around with the Norsk Arbeiderpartiet (the Labour Party, who had a band on stage singing about social democracy) and the Greens. I really enjoyed Norway; the people, the landscape, the towns and cities, sleeping outdoors on the slopes of Fløyfjellet and waking above the clouds in the fjord below, picking redcurrants for a free night and breakfast at Åndalsnes Youth Hostel, and though the trains were frequently crowded, the travel was enjoyable, too. The journey up to Narvik was by bus, having unsuccessfully attempted to hitch a ride from Fauske. The road trip was just over 5 hours long, hugging the coastline and crossing two fjords by ferry. I described it as ‘cosmic’ in my diary, driving along quiet, unlit roads, climbing out of valleys and descending towards the head of a fjord with the mountains darker than the night sky. Just after midnight on the walk from Narvik bus station to the railway station, a casual glance towards the firmament revealed a constantly changing green shadow, fading, growing, shifting and finally dissipating; the aurora borealis clearly visible above the glow of the city lights. We managed to see a number of free live music performances on our travels and thought it striking that the predominant musical style and associated fashion throughout Norway was heavy metal, but it was almost impossible not to hear Mike Oldfield’s Moonlit Shadow or Irene Cara’s Flashdance being played on the radio or some local’s cassette player.
Whereas I’d started listening to Sweden’s Bo Hansson in the mid 70s and began buying Finnish prog in the mid 00s, I hadn’t actually paid any attention to music from Norway. A couple of years after my Norwegian trip, A-ha became the country’s top musical export with uplifting pop, though the trio themselves were irked that music critics couldn’t see beneath the shiny surface of their songs where the application of classical theory and a rich harmonic language made them mini-symphonic masterpieces straight out of the book of prog. Also around that time, the Norwegian love-affair with heavy metal evolved into Norwegian black metal, a sub-genre that peaked in popularity in the early 90s and was considered as a rival to Swedish death metal, prognosticating the rise of the third wave of progressive rock in Sweden, a form that wasn’t quite metal with prog sensibilities but more material close to the sound of Red-era Crimson; heavy prog, not prog metal which was more of a US thing. I’d used Jerry Lucky’s The Progressive Rock Files as a reference manual which was the source of my first interest in Anekdoten and Änglagård, expanding my knowledge of Swedish prog. This was eventually replaced with Lucky’s The Progressive Rock Handbook, a more complete and up-to-date volume with colour plates of album sleeves, one of which displayed both White Willow's Storm Season (2004) and Wobbler’s debut Hinterland (2005), neither of which, I’m ashamed to say, I paid any attention to at that time.
My first taste of Norwegian prog was a set from Arabs in Aspic at the 2017 Porto Antico Prog Fest in Genoa. Not knowing what to expect, I was nevertheless impressed with their brand of prog which, though biased towards the heavy end of the spectrum, contained sufficient melody, variation and surprises to suit someone more accustomed to symphonic prog. They sang and communicated to the almost exclusively Italian crowd in excellent English, reminding us that we were united by progressive rock; they also formed the backing band for the Saturday headliner, space-rock legend Nik Turner. Four years later I received their 2020 album Madness and Magic as a birthday present.
I’m pretty sure I saw adverts for Rites at Dawn but it was From Silence to Somewhere that finally hooked me. One of the people I used to follow on Twitter had raved about the album when she got her copy of Rites at Dawn but again, I failed to follow up the recommendation. However, some casual browsing on Bandcamp early in 2018 took me to the Karisma Records page and without thinking I clicked on the link to the band and I ended up listening to From Silence to Somewhere which blew me away, so I immediately ordered a copy on vinyl. Hinterland (on vinyl), Rites at Dawn (CD) and when it was released in 2020, the Dwellers of the Deep LP all followed. Not willing to keep the band to myself I also bought Wobbler albums as presents for my brothers, both fans of 70s progressive rock. I initially couldn’t find Afterglow on vinyl so I bought it on CD, supplementing that with a 180g reissue on blue vinyl in 2022 along with a forest green vinyl reissue of Rites at Dawn. The music sounds like early 70s symphonic prog, largely thanks to a keyboard set-up that would not have been unfamiliar to Rick Wakeman while recording Fragile and trebly Rickenbacker bass. It’s a full sound, well structured, expertly played and nicely produced. Wobbler certainly aren’t afraid to stretch themselves with lengthy compositions, all of which could attract the criticism that they’re merely regurgitating music from more than 50 years ago, rather than progressing, but the band started out playing music that they liked without worrying about pigeonholing. I like it, too. I like it very much. Wobbler keyboard player Lars Fredrik Frøislie has produced two excellent solo albums, Fire Fortellinger (2023) and Gamle Mester (2025) which I pre-ordered as soon as I heard they were due for release. It’s not hard to detect traces of the Wobbler sound but the keyboard trio format of the former (Frøislie also plays drums with Nikolai Hængsle on bass) reminds me of Refugee’s 1974 self-titled debut, while Gamle Mester also features Ketil Einarsen on flute and recorders. Better still, a version of Fire Fortellinger with vocals in Italian by Stefano ‘Lupo’ Galifi is about to be released, under the title Quattro racconti !
It was while I was selecting a CD of Hinterland as a present that I came across another band allied to Karisma Records, Jordsjø, and after checking the reviews, bought the Jord CD. There are some similarities with Wobbler but in the main they play prog with a large dose of Scandinavian folk. It reminds of the An Invitation EP by Amber Foil, not only in the palette, but the feel of the music which evokes unidentifiable forces dwelling in some dark forest. I’m a big fan of the flute on the album which adds to the folk impression but the final track is something very different, though equally good – an electronica outing that could easily have been composed by Tangerine Dream in the mid 70s. It’s only since adding Nattfiolen, Pastoralia, the Nattfiolen Suite EP, Salighet, a reissue of Jord Sessions and the 2025 release Kontraster by Jordsjø/Breidablik to my LP collection that I realised that Postludium, the last track on the Jord CD wasn’t an outlier but an expression of Håkon Oftung’s interest in electronica; the Jordsjø multi-instrumentalist plays flute and guitar for Breidablik, a band whose oeuvre spans Berlin School electronica and ambient music.
A 2019 email advertising a Karisma sale directed me to Tusmørke, and after reading some album reviews on Progarchives I invested in 2018’s Fjernsya i Farver because Wobbler’s Lars Fredrik Frøislie and drummer Martin Nordrum Kneppen were in the line-up (Håkon Oftung, who had played with the band, was absent) and then I was given Airbag’s 2020 LP A Day at the Beach for my birthday that year. In 2022 it was suggested that I’d like the Canterbury leanings of Needlepoint, so I bought Aimless Mary and later put in a special request at Genoa's Black Widow Records for the Chronicles of Father Robin trilogy of LPs, a collaboration between luminaries of Norway's prog scene who had devised the concept while still at school together, reasoning that I could avoid the postage cost from Norway. My first White Willow LP, a reissue of 2004’s Storm Season was procured a few months ago.
In mid-2024, I was contacted by the press office for Ola Kvernberg, the jazz violinist and composer who had just released the last album of his Steamdome trilogy, Steamdome III: Beyond The End, a fusion of styles recorded with the Trondheim Symphony Orchestra which struck me as an updated Five Bridges Suite, displaying a willingness to embrace a variety of forms, traditional and modern, within a single innovative composition. Having liked part III, I had to buy the first two parts, both of which are also well worth adding to your collection with the first, simply named Steamdome, perhaps the closest to progressive rock.
The opportunity to revisit Norway surfaced in August this year. Crystal Palace Football Club were drawn against Fredrikstad FK in a Europa Conference League play-off and as a long-standing fan of Palace, I attended the home game and immediately after securing a ticket for the away leg, booked flights (Fredrikstad is a one hour train journey from the capital) and found some suitable accommodation for a five night stay in the centre of Oslo.
I’d been informed about record stores after posting on r/progrockmusic and I’d made a short list of albums I wanted to add to my collection so apart from a football match that took up half a day including travel, there was plenty of time to take in the culture and visit as many record shops as I wanted, despite the rainfall. The weather wasn’t the only difference from my visit in 1983 when it was warm and sunny; I couldn’t recognise anywhere because of the redevelopment of the dock and harbour areas and on this visit, it seemed that there were building or engineering works everywhere you turned. But to be fair, we didn’t stay in the centre of the city in 1983, spending one night at the Hostel Oslofjord in Stabekk and another couple of nights at the Haraldsheim Youth Hostel to the north of the city where the nearest station was Grefsen. Apart from one day spent in the city centre, visiting the rather impressive Rådhus (City Hall, celebrating its 50th anniversary this year) for the Tourist Information office and hanging around Eidsvolls Plass, a park running north west from Stortinget, the parliament building, Oslo was used as a base to see more of the country, heading out south west to Stavanger, north to Gjøvik, west to Flåm via Myrdal and Bergen, then finally heading to the far north with stops at Åndalsnes, Trondheim, Bodø, Fauske and Narvik. I was a bit stingy with my rolls of film in 1983 and for some reason took a disproportionate number of photos of Eidsvolls Plass, the site of political campaigning for upcoming local elections where Nick and I hung around with the Arbeiderpartiet (Labour Party) and the Greens. Coincidentally, the booths and different political parties were there again this year and I had another flashback when I saw a branch of Peppe’s Pizza (Norway’s no.1) which Nick and I regularly frequented as we travelled through the country and even into Denmark.
I managed to visit four record stores (Big Dipper, Platekompaniet, Råkk & Rålls and Filter) and make purchases in three (all but Filter), adding a reissue of White Willow’s first LP Ignis Fatuus, the Jordsjø LP by Jordsjø, Ruphus’ debut album New Born Day on CD (the first pressing LP in Råkk & Rålls was out of my price range) plus a couple of other LPs and some CDs selected as Christmas presents; much to my surprise, a day trip to the old part of Fredrikstad also turned up a couple of pre-loved LPs.
Back home in the UK, I made a last minute decision to attend the annual A Day in September boutique festival, organised by the London Prog Gigs group and held within easy reach of ProgBlog Central at The Bedford in Balham, a former hang-out when I rented a flat less than 10 minutes’ walk away and where I was living when I embarked on the 1983 InterRail trip. Of the five bands playing, I really wanted to see Bergen’s Seven Impale – who I’d included in my research prior to the Oslo trip – and Zopp, Ryan Stevenson’s neo-Canterbury outfit playing at a gig in London for the first time. It was actually Seven Impale’s first ever UK performance and they’d flown into London that morning and were making the return trip after their set and a Sunday roast; vocalist/guitarist Stian Økland had spent four years in Cardiff and understood the tradition of a roast dinner on Sunday, so he asked the audience what roast he should eat. After cries of ‘beef!’ somebody, I’m not saying who, offered the far better suggestion of a vegan roast dinner. I dithered at the merchandise stand, not knowing which LP to buy, having listened to bits of their debut album City of the Sun (2014) and their latest album Summit (2023), eventually plumping for the latter. They’re a difficult band to pin down to a specific sub-genre, playing complex, dark and heavy prog with parts reminiscent of early Van der Graaf Generator, some Frank Zappa, prog jazz, and maybe a little Zeuhl. The set was excellent – just my sort of prog.
For a country with a population of a little over 5.5 million, there’s an incredible amount of progressive rock being produced in Norway and there’s also the means to distribute the music. The three stores where I bought albums were genuinely epic, each with its ‘prog’ subsection and with well informed, helpful and friendly staff. After a 42 year gap between visits, I’m hoping that there’s not going to be such a long wait before I visit again, and include Bergen in the itinerary, too.
Postscript:
The results of Norway's 2025 General Election (held on 8th September) resulted in a victory for the red-green bloc, similar to the result of the Municipal and Local elections in 1983, when the Arbeiderpartiet won the most seats. In a reflection of world politics, the main opposition is now the right-wing populist Progress Party who relegated 1983's runners-up the Conservative Party to third place.