Svein Henrik Giske

Rukan Krukan

Rukan Krukan has its origins from the collaboration between The Norwegian Armed Forces Band -Western Norway, legendary Hardanger fiddle player Knut Buen and myself which in 1999 resulted in the album Concerto Grotto. It contains Norwegian folk music based on Knut Buens repertoire and extensive knowledge of Norwegian fiddler tradition and folk music in general. It was my joy and privilege to work with Knut on this project and the result was 10 arrangements for Hardanger fiddle and concert band.

Prior to the recordings, I listened to hundreds of tracks from Knuts records. One of the items that really caught my ear was a little childrens poem about the ogre Rukan Krukan. I was inspired by this funny, quite surrealistic text and I wanted to make it into a band feature for the recording.

The poem itself is virtually untranslatable, but the story is that Rukan Krukan goes skiing.
He unfortunately crashes into his daughter and her behind falls off.
However, he is a clever blacksmith (!) so he can weld her behind back on.

With a poem like that this just had to be an extrovert arrangement!
To give it all a more modern flavour I've mixed in references from jazz, rock
and other styles of folk music which eventually became Rukan Krukan.