Midsummer is upon us, and that means that the crops are planted and growing, the sun is high, and I will be heading to my grove to celebrate in a Norse-focused ritual. As in years past, this ritual, and thus the accompanying song, will be focused on golden-haired Sif and her mighty husband and protector Thor. In our group's understanding, Sif is associated with agriculture and grain in particular, as her golden-hair references the fronds of the wheat plant, and Thor's role is to make sure that those trying to destroy said crops cannot succeed, even if it feels like the real reason has more to do with weeding and fencing.
Musically, this is in the style of some Scandanavian folk dance music I was listening to for inspiration. These dances known as pols date back a mere 400 years as best as we can tell, and as such are probably not pagan in origin, but are about as closee as we're likely to get to pagan Norse music. The 9/8 rhythm sounds complicated at first, but can be easily understood as 3 big beats in a basic oom-pah-pah, but each beat is divided into 3 parts rather than the more common 2. In Celtic music, the rhythm would be known as a slip jig and be a bit faster, but Scandanavian dances tend to be more relaxed pacing. Other than that, it's pretty standard D major harmonies.
All works are copyright by yours truly, but may be distributed under Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike 4.0. That means, in short, you can use them yourself and your grove, and play the song to your heart's content both in private and in public, but must give credit where credit is due, and if you're planning on selling something involving this song we need to talk about that first.
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