Danish singer/songwriter, storyteller and academic Christine Kammerer likes to think of herself as a “new Scot”. She was first drawn to Scotland on being introduced to Scottish folk music traditions in her early teens and visited for the first time when she was 18. “My soul felt alive and at peace at the same time,” she recalls.
“Having the world literally tower over you made me feel small in such a comforting way. Like I’m part of a great whole. The tonality of Celtic folk music makes me feel the same, and my desire to feel the same in my home country of Denmark actually inspired the work I went on to do after finishing my masters.
” Advertisement Advertisement Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Kammerer holds a degree in Musicology and Comparative Cultural Studies and for the past six years she has specialised in ancient Nordic music, with a focus on the Viking Age. “Through studying the sources of early music and playing around with older tonalities and scales on lyres, bone flutes and lurs, I started to feel the same soul connection to the music, even to my heritage, which I did to Celtic folk music and to Scotland.
Since diving deeper into the history of the Vikings and discovering the deep connections between Scotland and Scandinavia, I discovered how much we and the music actually have in common.” It was a natural next step for Kammerer to move to Scotland on a Global Talent visa. Since moving to Edinburgh in 2022, she has co-founded the successful Whisky and Witches evenings, combining folklore, fusion music and the water of life, as well as writing and recording her new album Echoes of the North, which she describes as “a symphonic fusion of the tonalities of Nordic and Celtic folk music and a beautiful meeting between the two cultures, as it has musicians from Denmark, Norway and Scotland performing together.
“The songs have come together over the past decade,” she says, “and many of them have been ‘harvested’ as I travelled around Scotland – melodies which came to me when I allow the landscape to speak, and I listened with my whole being. I breathe differently in this landscape, which is both raw and romantic, where you feel the echo of the ancient in everything.” For her Scotsman Session, Kammerer has chosen to perform a Danish language album track called Jeg Kender et Danmark, which translates as The Denmark I Know.
“It is kind of a protest song,” she says, “objecting to a world which increasingly treats people like numbers on a spreadsheet, only measuring the value and worth of a person in coin and what they can produce. It’s a song about the need to amplify empathy and equality, embracing difference, and finding the courage to fight for our beliefs, inspired by those who came before and the battles they fought.” Echoes of the North is available to buy on www.
christinekammerer.bandcamp.com .
Whisky and Witches is at The Mother Superior, Edinburgh, from 2-24 August as part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
