Scandinavian Aggression

Ymir’s Corpse Interviews is a Scandinavian Aggression initiative in which Rowdy Geirsson picks the metaphorical cloud-matter of authors and artists who make their own creations based on or inspired by the old lore of the Northlands. This time around we have Ludvig Swärd. Ludvig is the man behind Forndom, an atmospheric musical project deeply rooted in the lore and spirituality of the ancient North. Based in Sweden, Forndom has released four full albums of original music to date: Flykt, Dauðra Dura, Faþir, and Moþir. Forndom has also released Alster, which recomposes a selection of existing songs for the piano, and the single, Och med vinden ack de gunga, which commemorated Forndom’s 9th anniversary.

RG: So, Ludvig, welcome! I’m really excited to have a chance to chat with you a bit about your work with Forndom. I think I’ve mentioned to you before that Forndom has become a favorite of mine since I first discovered Faþir a few years ago. But that wasn’t even Forndom’s first album, of course. So to kick things off, could you tell us a little about when and how it all began?

LS: Thank you! Well I often mention the 25th of January, 2012 as the starting point of Forndom. Prior to that date I had been spending my youth being raised in a classical music environment, later turning towards black metal in my teenage years, having a band of my own during my gymnasium (high school) time, later to give it all up before turning 20 to focus upon photography. 



I started taking photos and uploaded them to Tumblr—which at the time was a lot more interesting than what it has turned into today. At one point I came across this other profile/blog that was sharing a lot of dark atmospheric content with very suitable music—and all of a sudden, I felt how I could use my music knowledge for something similar with my own page. The question was just how it would sound. 





During a visit to a black metal festival called “Arosian Black Mass” taking place in Västerås in 2011, I witnessed a performance by ambient act, Draugurinn, and experienced somewhat of a revelation. All of sudden, it was like I knew exactly how the music for my page was supposed to be. Surely, the music of Draugurinn has always been very different from that of my own, but it was nevertheless something within that music I found myself in: a dark Scandinavian atmosphere, which shared many of the familiar black metal traits, while still being something on its own. At the same time I also started to study religion at Stockholm University and quickly got a special interest for the Old Norse religion, which, of course, influenced the work even greater. 





It took a couple of demos, but towards the end I had accomplished a sound that I was looking for. Around the same time I also went to Norway for work, and during my short time there I managed to write an EP which was later finished back in Sweden. After uploading it to my Tumblr page I also released it on YouTube, and to my surprise, it did not take long until it had a lot of listeners. I shortly got signed to the Swedish label, Nordvis, whom I have stayed with until the present day. During the same summer, I recorded Dauðra Dura, which was finished in just about two weeks. Thinking back to that time, I get something of a nostalgic feeling; a time before it turned into today’s viking pop culture. Which I feel I share very little with.

RG: I know what you mean. I think the History Channel television show, Vikings, unwittingly launched this new alt-goth-pop-viking lifestyle that we now see everywhere. But I think that show also contributed to a rise in popularity and exposure for this dark ancient Scandinavian ambient sort of music (for lack of a better word). And this makes me wonder about the connections between and among musicians operating in this particular realm of the aural world. For example, Forndom’s most recent album featured collaborations with Thomas von Wachenfeldt, Janne Posti, and Draugurinn, who you have already mentioned. How did you enjoy the collaborative aspect and do you feel that the people involved in this world are generally supportive of one another?

LS: Yes, you are completely correct in that the exposure most likely would not have been as wide if it had not been for a series like that one and the pop culture that followed. In the end, with all the bad things, there is always something positive coming along, and vice versa. Personally, I have always felt myself closer to black metal and traditional folk and classical music communities, and thus this is also the kind of people I turn to for collaborations—rather than other artists that people tend to put within the same genre. And, of course, my label, Nordvis, and the other projects signed to it will always be a quick choice for collaborations, since we have always been a very small, close-knit, and helpful community.

When it comes to this darker Scandinavian ambient sort of music and the relationship we have towards one another, I think there is a lot of mixed feelings. Speaking only for myself, I appreciate just a handful of other projects out there, most of them having the same kind of musical background. But there are also a lot of projects out there that people tend to put in the same genre that I feel I have absolutely nothing in common with. So I guess that in the end it all depends on what kind of background we have, which, of course, is to be heard within the music as well, and how open we are towards music in general.

RG: I have to admit, I hadn’t really thought about it like that myself. So that’s an interesting insight. But before we delve much deeper into the substance and aesthetics of Forndom itself, can you explain a little about what the name, Forndom, means for the folks out there who don’t speak Swedish or another Nordic language?

LS: The name Forndom is actually not any official Swedish word but created by myself. I was first leaning towards Fordom (“in the old times”) but since this means “prejudice” in modern Norwegian I felt that it forced me to think differently. So I just combined Forn which means “ancient” in the Scandinavian languages, and combined it with the suffix –dom—thus I had a word that was clear and made very much sense as “of what is ancient,” while still being unique and without the risk of being confused with anything else.

RG: That makes a ton of sense—I was not aware of the Norwegian word, and can definitely understand why you opted against that particular spelling. Plus, Forndom is a great name, it really captures the whole idea of the project. And on that note, let’s get into the actual music of Forndom. It is very heavily imbued with the spirituality and ethos of pre-Christian Scandinavian society—in as much as we know about the culture and beliefs of the era, that is. You mentioned studying Norse religion at Stockholm University, but at at what point did you first become interested in these concepts?

LS: Being Swedish, the echoes of the old Scandinavian society was, of course, with me in the periphery as long as I can remember. But the deeper interest probably started when a teacher of mine who had great skill in storytelling brought up the Norse myths during a lesson on religion. I remember this had a great impact on me, and I started to dig deeper on the subject myself. The very same teacher also introduced me to black metal some years later, and then came Bathory and other bands such as Amon Amarth that were working with the same theme. When I was a teenager I also got to know a live-bassist with the band Ofermod who was speaking very deeply upon “orthodox black metal” and its influences from Kabbalah and the Qlippoth. I suppose his way of telling me things that for me were completely unknown and unfamiliar also triggered the need to dig deeper in the subjects I wanted to know more about myself. And as my greatest interest at the time was the Old Norse religion, it created an urge to investigate it even deeper—far more than was known to the average person—which I later did during my university studies. For me the greatest interest was never the objects of the ancient Scandinavians, nor what they did or accomplished, but rather their mindset, and the ability to get into their mind and how they created their religious conceptions. Somehow, I think that is the greatest way to make them come alive and speak from worlds beyond. 


RG: Do these ideas about the mindset and religious conceptions of ancient Scandinavia extend beyond the world of music and performance into the realm of personal, day-to-day life for you as well?

LS: Yes, I would be lying if I was denying that Old Norse spirituality has a deep impact on my daily life, too. What I think that many need to understand though is that one cannot take a concept that belongs to a society that was a reality more than a thousand years ago and think that it will make complete and perfect sense. Religion is, after all, nothing but a mirror of a lived society and needs to be reflected in everyday life in order to make sense. So in order to fit into a modern-day society, you also have to revise it and think of the fundamental philosophy. Think of Odin, for example, who was known to be a very dark and feared god that mostly attracted the warrior elite of the society. If you turn to what was actually surviving after him in the remaining hundreds of years after the official Christianization, it was his magic aspects that in many ways—and especially by Christian officials—were equated with Satan. And even if it might be easy to think that this was nothing but a demonization of an old heathen god, we cannot deny that the view of the very same god in the pre-Christian era was not very different in its fundamental atmosphere. But this was just a mere example. Of course, there are many other aspects of him as well as other gods that can still be applied to our modern society, but, of course, that also demands studies upon the nature of the god / goddess and how they were understood back in the day. 





For myself, it is mostly the philosophical parts of the religion that are used in my everyday life, as well as the official and nonofficial rites done for different occasions. And also the religious reflections when composing the music and lyrics for the albums. Truth is that I always looked upon Forndom as a religious project where many songs are written like psalms; reflections upon the religion and its gods and goddesses.

RG: So how does this play into your creative process? For example, you mention rites—are there certain acts you perform, places you like to visit, etc. that help contribute to or are necessary for finding the right spiritual/mental state for creating new compositions?

LS: Yes, first of all the wooden statue that I often use for live performances is not only used on stage but also within my home. For me, the picture of the god and the worshiper and their communication and relation have always been a great source of inspiration; the father and the son, the god and the human, the world of the dead and that of the living. 





And, of course, visiting grave fields, runestones, and other historical places has always been a great source of inspiration. In old Scandinavian laws we find the prohibition of the practice of “Útiseta at vekja troll upp ok fremja heiðni”—“Sit outside, awake trolls and practice heathenry.” Which, of course, is a sign of that this was a widespread practice that needed to be prohibited in the eyes of the church. And truth is that there is something special about visiting old grave fields during the night, or during a time of bad weather and not least if you spend a great amount of time there on your own; an experience that cannot fully be expressed with words, but rather needs to be felt. And, of course, this is something that I have been practicing over multiple occasions, and which always has left me with the greatest inspiration. 
In many ways I think that these places—the runestones, the grave fields and all things that remain of the past—also work as a gateway, a bridge towards those that lived before us.

RG: Are there any specific sources that are most inspirational for you—such as specific poems, stories, inscriptions, artifacts, etc. that have come down to us from this long ago era that you find yourself thinking about the most and returning to on a recurring basis?

LS: As I discussed earlier, the philosophical thoughts which you find a lot about in the Elder Edda are of deep importance for me. But if you look beyond that I am, of course, deeply inspired by the many sagas—the legendary as well as the Icelandic family sagas, and especially the ones that contain religious or moral content that can tell us a lot about how the ancient Scandinavians thought and arranged their world. But I also find a great inspiration within such simple things as kennings and other things. For example, I have a lot of songs named after horses. And this is both a personal homage to the horse as an animal, which meant a lot for me in my youth, but it also serves as another name both for the world tree, and on other occasions, for the hangman’s noose.

RG: I’ve always found it fascinating and wonderful how the ancient Scandinavians played with the language as much as they did—the old texts are full of metaphors that create vivid symbolic imagery, such as Yggdrasil being Odin’s horse like you mentioned. And that leads into another but related topic, since it is clear that imagery and aesthetics are a very important aspect of Forndom. You mentioned already that Forndom began with photography, and I noticed that the Forndom website also has a section devoted to photography where visitors may view some very good photographs of what I believe is Iceland. These images also appear on the cover of Moþir as well as inside its accompanying booklet. So it seems clear that the visual and aural qualities are both important in your work, but how do the two impact and influence one another in your creative process?

LS: Haha yes, although one of the reasons that it is still Iceland being depicted alone has a lot to do with that I’m far too bad in updating it with new photography. As I mentioned, Forndom actually started as a photography project where music was later added as a complement, but it was actually never meant to be a focus for it, even if music eventually took over. But if we look away from the sole photography, visual aspects are in general important when it comes to the creation of the music itself. I always visualize my music within my mind, giving it a certain context, even if it might be an instrumental song, and if I actually worked with Forndom full time and not do my day-to-day job as a teacher, I would definitely make a lot more videos than I do today to express this visual aspect even more. I think the visual aspect is also a wonderful medium where you can tell a story with symbols in a completely different way than the music. I also think it is a wonderful medium to express your knowledge in Old Norse religion, and equal to how text can sometimes have many layers of meanings, you can give the same to the visual aspects.

RG: I totally agree. I really appreciate when a concept is strengthened on multiple levels from multiple angles that nonetheless all remain consistent with the broader idea. It seems to me that the landscape itself plays a significant, recurring role in this capacity for Forndom, taking on significance visually, musically, and lyrically. We discussed Iceland a little, but it seems that the landscape of Sweden takes on a particularly special role—I’m presuming eastern Svealand, but please correct me if I’m wrong. What qualities of that landscape do you find yourself most drawn to, and how do you go about bringing them into the music and aesthetics of Forndom?

LS: Yes, that is correct! As I mentioned earlier, religion is always a mirror of a lived society, and thus the nature whereupon it is practiced plays just as an important part, too. I was born in Uppsala and moved to the center of Södermanland, the region south of Uppland, when I was around 9 years old. Many might think that forests play a great part for inspiration. And that is true, but only as a symbol for the unknown, the dark and uncultured. One has to remember that the Old Norse religion was agricultural—thus cultural fields, pastures, and meadows; places close to home were of the greatest importance, while everything else was seen as alien and dangerous. To me, this idea and understanding of nature plays a great part in how I also look upon it and how it inspires my work. Both of my home regions are also what used to be the center of the old Svitjod, the original “Sweden,” and anyone who has traveled through its countryside also knows how often ancient remains are seen by the roads, how placenames have stayed intact and not been changed for a thousand years that still to this day carry information of which god was worshiped in such places. And, of course, the imagination of how these places were a thousand years ago and how little else that changed within the rest of the rural society is a great inspiration. Walking among the grave field is a journey back in time and space where only the imagination sets the limit of what you are able to feel and see from the past.

RG: I’m also curious what the conceptual journey has been like from one album to the next? To me, the first two albums (Flykt and Dauðra Dura) seem tightly linked through the concepts of movement/travel in both time and space, a longing for the past, a connection to the Swedish landscape, and the transition between life and death. While these concepts remain present in the third and fourth albums (Faþir and Moþir) clear allusions to Odin and the notion of fatherhood leap forward in Faþir, while the same is true of Moþir but in regards to goddesses such as Jord and Ran and the notion of motherhood. What were the thoughts and processes you experienced and how did they impact the concepts you wanted to bring forward as you progressed from one album to the next?

LS: That is an interesting observation on the first two releases, and probably it is true, too, even if there was never any actual thought at the time to what I wanted to express. I think Flykt was written in a time where I was in many ways trying to find myself, which in many ways can be considered a journey while Dauðra Dura was linked to death and its realms, the rites of passage and many other things, which, of course, can be seen as a journey, too. So you are very correct. I remember that during my studies, the concept of family constantly came up as a fundamental part of the Old Norse religion, so when I was about to write Faþir I thought that it was also a perfect choice to follow up with a trilogy with different themes that could be connected to this concept. The first took up the father and son relations, the second the son’s relation to the divine and earthly mother as well as other feminine aspects of life, and the third and last of this trilogy will be highlighting the brother. This last concept, which is yet to be heard, will have a special focus on brother-to-brother relations, betrayal and loyalty and perhaps to the greatest content—brothers in arms and war. But it will not be the typical war-themed album focusing on war with thoughts of glory and fame and longings to Valhalla, but also incorporate the horrors of war, personifying the war itself in the image of Odin. A lot of the inspiration for this album will not be taken simply from the Viking Age concept of war, but rather in longer perspectives: how brotherhood was during the Second World War, and how it is during war even to this day. How it can make people come together and unite, even in the hardest of times, and also how it can affect men going back to normal society, when war is all you know, as has been seen during multiple occasions in history. 





The brother-connected album will be the last part of the family-connected concept of the albums, but of course, it will not be the last one to come, even if I work with album concepts more individually ahead. 


RG: Oh, great! I was wondering what might be next for Forndom. And the concept ties nicely into the prior two albums—I’m already looking forward to it! Do you have any sense of when we might see its release, or is it still too early to say?

LS: It is still too early to say since there is a great load of recording process going on even after the album has been composed in full. And since I spend my regular days working as a teacher, the process usually slows down after the summer holidays. But my goal is to have as much as possible done by the autumn, so I can focus on the lyrics and vocal recording by the autumn and hopefully have it released by next year. The last albums have had a bit too long of a process, stretching out with about 4-5 years in between the releases, but I highly doubt the wait will be equally long this time.

RG: That’d be great if it’s released as soon as you hope. And that concept behind it sounds fantastic and fascinating, too. But as we’re nearing the end of this interview, just one last question for fun! If you could experience any event at any site located in today’s Sweden back in the forntid days, what would you choose and why?

LS: Without any doubt at all, that would be the renowned sacrificial feasts of old Uppsala. I don’t think this needs any long description with anyone familiar with it. But since it is constantly mentioned as a center for Old Norse belief in multiple sources, I would definitely give anything to see it in its original form. The sacrifices hanging from the trees, the sacrificial hall / temple, and in general just breathe in the atmosphere of this place.

RG: Oh, yeah, I can’t imagine a more impactful religious site to visit from that era. Even visiting now, you can get the sense that this was a special place although we don’t know exactly how things happened at the height of the pre-Christian period, which I think in some ways just adds to the allure.

LS: Yes, although due to the fact that it is a rather well-known and crowded place, it would perhaps not be the first place to visit to achieve the tranquil state of inspiration like from grave fields mentioned earlier. But that does not take away the fact that it remains one of the most important sites when it comes to the cult and practice of Old Norse religion.

RS: Well said. And thanks so much for taking the time to chat with me. It has been great learning more about the behind-the-scenes of Forndom and I already can’t wait for the brother-themed album!

LS: Thank you so much for the lovely questions and great chat, too! Looking forward to sharing everything that awaits with you and all others too!

Dear Web Prowler, since you’re here, please check out Forndom’s website and social media accounts via the links below—and give the video for “Tunridor” off the Moþir album a view-listen also!

Forndom’s official website

Forndom merchandise via Nordvis

Forndom on Spotify

Forndom on Instagram

Unless otherwise noted, all images associated with this interview are © Ludvig Swärd