“KULNING” – SCANDINAVIAN HERDING CALL

“Kulning” is a domestic Scandinavian music form, often used to call livestock (cows, goats, etc) down from high mountain pastures where they have been grazing during the day. It’s possible that the sound also serves to scare away predators, but this is not the main purpose of the call. The haunting song form is often used by women, as they were the ones tending the herds and flocks in the high mountain pastures, but there are recordings of these calls sung by men. When a call is made in a valley, it rings and echoes against the mountains. The animals – a num­ber of which wear bells tuned so that the livestock’s loca­tion can be heard – begin to respond to the call, answer­ing back, and the sound of the bells indicates that they are moving down the mountain toward their home farm. It has been used on farms in stock-raising since the medieval times. The tradition is still alive today, although waning. There are several video examples of kulning on www.youtube.com. Enter “kulning” and several video options will appear. Jonna Jinton, a Swedish artist, has several of these videos.