Roots of Social Distance by Finntroll

Hello! I'm starting Friday Crazy Music Column and gonna write about interesting or unusual music and bands. I love music and I love to find out interesting facts about people in music. These days I live in Finland, but before moving there I have heard a lot about Finnish (and other North European) metal bands. It's like a hometown for everybody in heavy metal music. Funny enough, I have never been to any of such concerts here. 

I want to start weekly posts about Finnish metal bands, which I consider interesting or representative. This week we have Finntroll with a song Trollhammaren!

Probably this is the most bright and representative Finnish band in the field - it is quite heavy and has deep folk roots. But the weirdest thing is that even though all the musicians are Finns… all the songs are in Swedish!

The band formed around the idea of folk songs about trolls. The primary plot was based on a legend about some Swedish monks, who traveled to Finland ages ago as crusaders, bringing the light of Christ into this vast lands of barbarians. The legend says they met some local man, who was huge in size, with a long beard, all dirty and wild. He didn't quite like the outlanders and killed nearly the whole party of monks. This legend represents national features in some wildly exaggerated way.  

The legend made some explanation for the troll's stories. The band Finntroll, in fact, wrote a number of tales in the form of songs with heavy metal music. They used Swedish - I guess - for a couple of reasons: Swedish sounds tougher and ruder, reminding trolls sounding. Swedish could also represent the fact, that stories were told by Swedish monks, who faced the power of wild Finns. But I personally think, it’s more because Swedish is closer to English and would remind lots of English words, still sounding a bit like popular Rammstein. 

Give it a chance, but don't treat it too seriously. Like some form of heavy metal fairytales, you know.

#friday_crazy_music #finntroll