Kulning

Kulning or herding calls (called kauking and kaukning in some parts of Norway, in the province of Dalarna in Sweden and the former Norwegian provinces in Sweden, Jämtland and Härjedalen, also kulokker, kyrlokker or a lockrop) is a domestic Scandinavian music form, often used to call livestock (cows, goats, etc.) down from high mountain pastures where they have been grazing during the day. It is possible that the sound also serves to scare away predators (wolves, bears, etc.), but this is not the main purpose of the call.

The song form is often used by women, as they were the ones tending the herds and flocks in the high mountain pastures, but there are recordings of these calls sung by men. There is some speculation that it was one of the first ways to tame animals in herds (see domestication) in the Scandinavian and Ural regions, with prehistoric origins. The knowledge about it today originates, however, from regions near mid-Fennoscandia.

Acoustic characteristics

The song has a high-pitched vocal technique, i.e. a loud call using head tones, so that it can be heard or be used to communicate over long distances. It has a fascinating and haunting tone, often conveying a feeling of sadness, in large part because the lokks often include typical half-tones and quarter-tones (also known as "blue tones") found in the music of the region. Linguist/phonetician Robert Eklund, speech therapist Anita McAllister and kulning singer/speech therapist Fanny Pehrson studied the difference between kulning voice production and head-voice (sometimes also somewhat erroneously referred to as falsetto voice) production in both indoors (normal and anechoic rooms) and in an ecologically valid outdoor setting near Dalarna, Sweden. The song analyzed was the same in all cases, and was performed by the same kulning singer (Pehrson). Comparing kulning to head-voice, they found that partials were visible in far higher registers in kulning than in head-voice (easily observed up to 16 kHz) and that they were also less affected by an increased distance from the source than head-voice, with more or less unaffected partial patterns when comparing a distance of 11 meters from the source, compared to 1 meter from the source. In the outdoor setting, they also found that head-voice production exhibited a 25.2 dB decrease at 11 meters from the source, compared to 1 meter from the source, while the corresponding amplitude decrease in kulning was only 9.4 dB, which is a clear indication that kulning is well-suited to carry over long distances in an outdoor setting. Or, as the authors summarize the findings:

"it was shown that kulning fell off less with distance from an intensity point of view, and also that partials in kulning – but not in head voice – remained more or less unperturbed 11 meters from the singer, as compared to 1 meter from the singer. Both results help explain why kulning as a singing mode was developed for calling cattle that might be at considerable distance from the singer" (Eklund & McAllister, 2015).

Function and use

When a call is made in a valley, it rings and echoes against the mountains. The animals, a number of whom wear bells tuned so that the livestock's location can be heard, begin to respond to the call, answering back and the sound of the bells indicates that they are moving down the mountain towards their home farm. The kulokks can belong to an individual, but are sometimes family-based and are handed down so that a family's cows know they are being called and thus respond. A number of calls contain names of individual (sometimes the "lead") animals, as herds are not very large.

Comparison with other regional song traditions

In comparison with other song traditions used in northern Scandinavia, e.g. joik, there is no evidence that kulning has been used in religious rituals or for other purposes. It has been used on farms in stock-raising since the medieval times. The tradition is still alive today, although waning. Kulning is, however, similar to yodeling, a singing style also developed for long-distance sound propagation.

Kulning used in music

Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg based a few of his classical music compositions for piano and for orchestra on kulokker that he had heard. An early Norwegian opera includes a soprano aria that is half aria and half kulning. Kulning features in the music of some Scandinavian folk groups, for example Gjallarhorn and Frifot.

Kulning in the media

There are also other examples of kulning to be found in other forms of modern media:

• (2016) Jonna Jinton on Youtube as made several videos using kulning to call her villages cattle an show off its unique sound ^[1]
• Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky's film Offret ("The Sacrifice" – Sweden, 1986)
• TV series Vikings features aggressive kulning during some battle scenes.
• The 2013 videogame Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons features kulning in its soundtrack.^[2]
• The 2013 Disney's animated film Frozen features traditional Norwegian kulning by the vocalist Christine Hals in its soundtrack.^[3]

Notes

References

• Eklund, Robert & Anita McAllister. 2015. An acoustic analysis of ‘kulning’ (cattle calls) recorded in an outdoor setting on location in Dalarna (Sweden). In: Proceedings of ICPhS 2015, 10–14 August 2015, Glasgow, Scotland.
• McAllister, Anita & Robert Eklund. 2015. An acoustic analysis of the cattle call "kulning": performed outdoors at Säter, Dalarna, Sweden. I: Proceedings from Fonetik 2015. Working Papers 55/2015, 8–10 June 2015, Centre for Languages and Literature, General Linguistics/Phonetics, Lund University, Lund, Sweden, ISSN 0280-526X.
• Eklund, Robert, Anita McAllister & Fanny Pehrson. 2013. An acoustic comparison of voice characteristics in ‘kulning’, head and modal registers. In: Robert Eklund (ed.), Proceedings of Fonetik 2013, the XXVIth Swedish Phonetics Conference, Studies in Language and Culture, no. 21, 12–13 June 2013, Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden. ISBN 978-91-7519-582-7, ISBN 978-91-7519-579-7, ISSN 1403-2570, pp. 21–24.
• Tellenbach, Magdalena, - Lockrufe in Skandinavien: Funktion, Klang, Revival, Universität Wien, Geistwissenschaftliche Fakultät 1999 (in German)
• Johnson, Anna - Svenska locklåtar i nutidstradition: studier över storform och funktion, Institutionen för musikvetenskap vid Uppsala universitet, 99-0841282-5 ; 8:1 Uppsala 1981 (in Swedish)

External links

• "Kulning – herding calls from Sweden", PECUS. Man and animal in antiquity. Proceedings of the conference at the Swedish Institute in Rome, September 9–12, 2002. Ed. Barbro Santillo Frizell (The Swedish Institute in Rome. Projects and Seminars, 1), Rome 2004.