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In 2020 Sigur Rós released Odin’s Raven Magic, a live album based on a medieval Icelandic poem that had been discredited before being re-evaluated. Written and first performed 18 years earlier, it saw the post-rockers collaborate with a number of leading lights of their country’s art scene. The band’s Georg Hólm took Prog behind the scenes.
“We’ve never felt any pressure from any labels,” says Sigur Rós bassist Georg Hólm with a gentle yet icy firmness. “They know when they take us aboard that we do what we want do to. It’s always come naturally to us – it’s not often we go in and say, ‘We want to make this kind of record.’ We write a bunch of songs and then realise, ‘We have a full record here; we should release it.’
“That’s how they each have an exciting feel to them.When we were making Kveikur [2013], we thought maybe it should be a little more aggressive, and that was it – we said nothing else and started writing. It’s always a natural process.”
In 2002 that process led them to collaborate with a fascinating figure in Icelandic culture. Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson is a chief of the Ásatrú Fellowship, a neopagan religious order. In that capacity he presided over Hólm’s marriage in 2005. But he’s also a cult figure on the Icelandic music scene, composing award-winning film scores and playing in bands such as new wave outfit Þeyr and David Tibet’s Current 93.
“Hilmar’s a very wise man,” says Hólm, “a master of so many things. He’s unique; a fantastic character – it’s great being in the same room when he’s telling stories about things. He’s the best storyteller.”
When Reykjavík Arts Festival approached Hilmarsson to write a piece for their 2002 event, he contacted Sigur Rós with the idea of a work based on Odin’s Raven Magic (Hrafnagaldur Óðins), a poem taken from the Edda, Iceland’s rich medieval literary canon. It tells of the Norse god sending two ravens across the world, and the birds returning with portents of doom that spell the end for humans and gods alike.
The poem is part of the Edda’s overarching narrative of Ragnarök – a great final battle that will sweep away the old world and make way for the new. While the poem had long been discredited as fake, by 2002 it had been re-evaluated by scholars and readmitted to the canon.
“Hilmar had wanted to do something with it for a long time,” recalls Hólm, “and it seemed to fit perfectly. We all contributed to the composition; it was a true collaboration. We created little riffs then added to them with strings and a lot of electric instruments, samplers as well as guitar, bass and drums.
“We felt free; that we could do whatever we wanted to do. A lot of the ideas came from us playing around with the stone marimba.” A sonic trademark of Odin’s Raven Magic, the custom-made marimba was hewn from over 70 pieces of stone by sculptor Páll Guðmundsson. Spanning five octaves, it often took Hólm, Hilmarsson, Jónsi and another member of the ensemble to play the parts.
Also on the project was violinist Maria Huld Markan Sigfúsdóttir. She and her ex Sigur Rós keyboardist husband, Kjartan Sveinsson, took on the lion’s share of arrangement for the orchestra and choir, with lead vocals performed by Steindór Andersen. The fishing boat skipper, another renowned guardian of Icelandic folk traditions, worked with Sigur Rós on 2001 EP Rímur.
He sang Odin’s Raven Magic in the original medieval Icelandic, adding to an entrancing, highbrow listen with classical and rock forms colliding, as the band, orchestra and choir come together in spine-tingling form.
The performance heard on the album was recorded in 2004 at La Grande Halle de la Villette in Paris, with the choir of the Schola Cantorum of Reykjavík and L’Orchestre des Laureats du Conservatoire National de Paris. The piece prevously debuted at London’s Barbican Centre in April 2002, before transferring to its patron festival in Reykjavík the next month.
“We did two days of rehearsals before The Barbican,” recalls Hólm, “and it didn’t really work as we wanted it – it didn’t flow. At the hotel, Kjartan, Maria and Hilmar were running around, printing new sheet music and tearing their hair out trying to make it work. It was quite stressful; but we got it right and performed it a few times after that.”
Clips have appeared on YouTube ever since, but Hólm is glad that the definitive version is now available. “We’ve been messing about with it for so long – in the end we just said, ‘Let’s stop thinking about it and let go of it.’ We haven’t released anything in a while either, so it just felt right.
“I think it’s perfect timing. The world is going to hell and the poem is about the beginning of the end, and the gods know it’s the end for everyone. But with every end there’s a beginning – that’s what Ragnarök is.”
