Rimur Chanting

Rimur are long narrative poems, sometimes running to hundreds of stanzas, that retell sagas and legends under strict rules of alliteration and internal rhyme. They were chanted rather than sung, unaccompanied, in a flat and slightly nasal delivery that carried through a turf house on winter evenings and kept a whole household occupied for weeks. The form nearly disappeared in the twentieth century and survives now through a society of practitioners, a body of recordings and a steady trickle of musicians who borrow the melodies. Heard cold it sounds strange, closer to reciting than to singing, which is exactly what it is.

The main sights

• The chanting itself - unaccompanied delivery on a narrow set of traditional tunes.
• The verse rules - alliteration and internal rhyme holding every stanza to a pattern.
• The subject matter - sagas, legends and heroic tales retold at great length.
• Modern borrowings - Icelandic musicians using rimur melodies in new work.

When to go

There is no venue and no timetable, which is the main difficulty. Gatherings of the practitioners' society, folk festivals and city culture nights are where it turns up, mostly in Reykjavik and mostly in the darker half of the year. Recordings and archive collections are the reliable fallback for anyone who cannot catch a live session.

What to expect

This is not a tourist attraction and there is no daily performance to buy a ticket for. Sessions are in Icelandic and untranslated, so the sense passes most visitors by entirely. The sound is austere and repetitive by design, and some listeners find fifteen minutes plenty. Treat any live encounter as luck rather than a plan.

Nearby

Reykjavik's cultural venues and the manuscript exhibitions cover the same literary ground.