Völuspá is the working title for a new documentary film project by American filmmaker Hans Fjellestad. The name is borrowed from the seminal Eddic poem composed in the late tenth century, which is a primary source for the study of Norse mythology.

The film is set in Northern Norway, within the Arctic Circle, from Tromsø to the North Cape. Scheduled to shoot in two stages - over Winter under the Northern Lights, and the following Summer, under the Midnight Sun - the intention is to collect images, music, stories and experiences from the people living in the area, including the indigenous Saami communities, and construct a compelling picture of life in the North.

Fjellestad is familiar with Scandinavian languages and culture, and has developed working relationships with agencies and organizations in Northern Norway interested in supporting this project.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION:

I tell of giants from times forgotten.
Those who fed me in former days:
Nine worlds I can reckon, nine roots of the tree.
The wonderful ash, way under the ground

From the south, Sun, companion to the moon,
Threw her right hand round the edge of the heaven,
Sun did not know where her hall might be,
The stars did not know where their place might be,
The moon did not know what power he had.
- excerpt from Völuspá

The Northern regions have been enveloped in myths since time primeval. The classical Greeks dreamed of the Hyperboreans that lived to the North of the Northern Wind. They were thought to be both robust and carefree. Nietzsche used the Hyperboreans as a simile for his "Übermensch." Poets of the Romantic Age had reveries of the far North. The main character of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, for instance, dreams of the North Pole as a scene of beauty and great pleasure. Edgar Allan Poe, however, regards the Northern maelstrom as a place of horror.

In the pre-Enlightenment era, the Northern tracts were first and foremost associated with evil. This region was the realm of Satan and, because of this, it was also the place where witches thrived. The literal entrance to Hell itself was thought to lie somewhere in Finnmark, the northernmost province of Norway. The indigenous people of the North, the Saami, had a reputation all over Europe of being masters of witchcraft and sorcery.

It was not until the late 19th-century that such myths were dispelled, but the North is still cast in an aura of mystery.

Völuspá (or Prophecy of the Seeress) is an Eddic poem that tells the story of the creation and coming destruction of the world related by a volva or seeress in a shamanic trance to the god Odin. It is considered a sacred text of the old Scandinavian religion and a primary source for the study of Norse mythology. The poem was composed in the late tenth century, as pagan beliefs were superseded by Christianity. However, the Völuspá does not present to us Teutonic mythology in its ancient or purely pagan form, but a cosmogony that has been subject to much foreign influence.

So it is this poem that serves as a conceptual source for the film, and gives us our working title. It is not so much the literal significance of the poem to Viking ontology that is important here, but more its utility as a bridge, a metaphor, to take us into new territory - above the Arctic Circle in Northern Norway - to explore the frontiers of nature, mythology, survival, improvisation.

When Americans think of the frontier images appear of undiscovered wilderness, prairies waiting for pioneers to tame them. Frontier life is a rough and tumble, on the edge existence when man and nature are still in conflict, fighting for domination of the land. In some places, frontier life is never left behind - the best a community can manage is to maintain a controlled chaos. In the critically acclaimed feature documentary Frontier Life (2002), Fjellestad explored the city of Tijuana, Mexico to discover unique expressions of border culture. Fjellestad and producer Ryan Page looked deeper into the frontiersman archetype with Moog (2004). In Völuspá the same production team will search a very different environment, namely the Arctic North, for similar themes.

Known as the Land of the Midnight Sun, almost one-third of the country of Norway lies within the Arctic Circle. Bordering Finland, Sweden, and Russia, Arctic Norway is a region of low rugged hills, glacial plains, lakes, and coastal flats. Most of the area rests on old bedrock that has been worn down through repeated glacial activity. The vegetation represents a transition between the Arctic and the boreal forest with many subarctic species. There are only patches of permanently frozen ground. The Gulf Stream keeps the climate somewhat temperate in this place where approximately 150,000 people live and thrive. Lying directly northward is the Barents Sea, an arm of the Arctic Ocean. Adventurous travelers can journey even further north to the Svalbard archipelago, where seals, walruses and polar bears sun themselves on ice floes and scientists from all over the world conduct their research.

Norway's indigenous population is primarily Saami (apx 20,000 living in Finnmark), whose ancestors migrated to the area 10,000 years ago, possibly from Mongolia. Originally living as hunters, gatherers, and fishing people, many Saami became pastoralists by the Middle Ages and domestic reindeer herding remains their most distinctive occupation. Traditional Saami religious views were essentially animistic, with shamanistic features. They believed that all objects in nature had a soul. Today, to find culture, is to find and recognize those spiritual resources in which the people of Saamiland base their livelihood. The culture of the Saami is broadly understood through their way of life, how they make a living. The nature of their lands, enterprises and the sources of livelihood, new as well as old, form an important part of that cultural background and identity - an ethos that translates easily across other cultures and communities in the region.

A tiller of the ground, body and soul; a worker on the land without respite. A ghost risen out of the past to point the future, a man from the earliest days of cultivation, a settler in the wilds, nine hundred years old, and, withal, a man of the day... All but nothing in all humanity, only one speck. Then comes the evening.
- Knut Hamsun, Growth of the Soil

Joik is a traditional Saami chant, perhaps one of the oldest forms of music in Europe. It was once an important part of Saami religious practices, which is probably the reason why it was branded taboo by the early Christians. In fact, it seems to share something in common with the religious chanting of Native Americans, such as Navajo Peyote songs.

Joik is improvisative by nature, and actually has no object. One does not joik about someone or something, but one simply joiks someone or something. In fact, it is altogether impossible to envision joik in terms of subject and object. The joiker is considered an integral part of the chant, openly self-aware and reflexive, perhaps showing us that in the search for truth the artist is located squarely within a set of cultural values - tradition, environment, personality - and reveals herself and her methodology through her work.

Joik, as well as other forms of Norwegian folk music and art, has begun to evolve and develop in a post-modern context. Musicians are experimenting with fusions of the local musics with popular forms from the rest of Europe, America, India, Africa and beyond. Similar to the Nortec aesthetic in Tijuana, where the sounds of norteño and tambora are appropriated and fitted into modern electronica, these new instantiations of Arctic music express their own balance of identity and integration, the local and the global, that is frontier life.

Like joik and like most documentaries, our Völuspá project is improvisative, a process of discovery - intuiting where to be and when to be there. This proposal should only give the reader a sense of approach and context. The base location of the film will be Tromsø (population 56,000), capitol of the Troms province, which borders Finnmark to the North, Sweden and Finland to the East and Southeast. Regular trips to outlying areas are also planned, including Hammerfest and the North Cape - the northernmost corner of Europe and last frontier before the North Pole. So this is where the stories will be discovered. Production will begin in Winter, in perpetual twilight, and continue in Summer, during the season when the Sun never fully sets. That is the when.

This film promises a glimpse into an unfamiliar world, where new modes of creative expression are possible. The producers are well-equipped for the process - with extensive research, a knowledge of Scandinavian culture and language, and alliances with Norwegian arts and culture organizations. They are currently seeking further financial support from private investors and organizations in the U.S., Europe and Mexico in order to finally launch this project.

Contact Producer Ryan Page for more information.