Percy Grainger's ‘Nordic revolt against civilization’

Abstract

Abstract From his boyhood, Percy Grainger was inspired by Scandinavian literature, and especially by the Icelandic sagas. He travelled extensively in Scandinavia before the First World War and during summers at Svinkløv in Denmark he encountered a circle of friends who encouraged his interest in Scandinavian culture. Between 1922 and 1928 Grainger made three collection expeditions to Jutland with the Danish folklorist Evald Tang Kristensen, where they recorded and notated over 170 Jutish folk songs. These were an important inspiration to Grainger, as they introduced him to one of his folk heroes and to a regional culture which embodied some of his ideals. In these years, and for the rest of his life, Grainger was formulating a theory of Nordic culture which would account for his sense of himself as a nationalist composer. Grainger saw the colonial situation as rich in cultural possibilities, and sensed a parallel between colonial Australia and the Nordic world, particularly as it was represented in the sagas. He therefore felt that as a white Australian he was in a unique position to recover a tradition of Anglo-Nordic culture.