Today our dances come from three different Scandinavian countries (in northern Europe).

Norway, a spoon-shaped country, is known as “the land of the midnight sun,” because, due to the tilt of the earth’s axis, during the summer the north pole points directly at the sun, causing the area above the Arctic Circle to have continuous daylight for several weeks on end.

The Norwegians have a beautiful culture, including wonderful folk dances.

Lunden Reinlender:

Linerender (a reinlender reimagined as a four-wall line dance):

Oppdalsril is a flirting dance, with two women competing for a man (or two men for a woman):

I don’t know the name of this dance, but it’s delightful:

And here are some more young dancers doing several Norwegian folk dances. I didn’t catch the names of all the dances, including the first:

• at 0:50: Seksmannsril, six person reel
• at 2:29: didn’t catch the name
• at 4:54: the girl called it “Czechish Polka,” but I know it as Doudlebska Polka, and it is indeed Czech
• at 7:14: talking about the costumes in Norwegian and the English
• at 8:42: a Swedish dance, but I didn’t catch the name
• at 11:04: I heard the name, but I don’t know how to spell it
• at 12:50: “Three Clap Dance”

If you would like to watch more Norwegian dances, see my first post of Norwegian folk dances.

Now let’s travel on to Finland, which borders on Russia.

I know this dance as Ti Ti Tyy. We do it at Phoenix International Folk Dancers:

This four-wall scatter dance is known as Tokyo Polka, and I love it because the music sounds like video game music. What I didn’t know is that the music is based on a Finnish folk tune (Ievan Polka), the words changed to Japanese nonsense syllables. I think the dance was choreographed by an American, but I don’t know who.

I also like this adapted two-person version:

In this performance of Swedish-Finn Mixer, the dancers high-five each other as they pass. I don’t think that’s usually part of the dance; it must be a variation this group thought up.

Now let’s go to Iceland, a volcanic island between Norway and Greenland.

A vikivaki is a dance usually done to a folk song sung by the dancers. This song is Á Sprengisandi:

This one is Undir bláum sólarsali:

This dance is the “Loom Weave.” It starts out simple enough, but you’ll eventually see the couples weave over and under one another:

If you’ve made it all the way to the end, congratulations! That’s enough folk dancing for today.