Kategori: nyheter

Vi i styret mener at kornølfestivalen er ett av de viktigste tiltakene som gjøres for å holde norsk tradisjonsøl og kveik levende. Festivalen skaper stolthet blant bryggerne og viser folk i Nordfjord og på Sunnmøre at norsk ølkultur er viktig. Vi har allerede påmeldte deltagere til festivalen fra Danmark, Sverige, Tsjekkia, Tyskland, Storbritannia, Nederland og USA.

Å arrangere ølfestival er mye jobb, og vi i styret har jobbet med det siden november allerede. Vi kommer til å legge ned mye mer jobb fram mot festivalen i oktober, men vi klarer ikke alt selv. Har du tid og mulighet til å hjelpe oss å skape stolthet rundt norsk ølkultur? I så fall blir vi veldig glade.

Se frivillig-siden for informasjon om oppgaver, hva du får, påmelding, osv.

Salget av billige festivalpass slutter om akkurat to uker. 1. august går prisen på festivalpass fra 500 til 700. Det lønner seg å kjøpe nå! Tikkio

English: The early bird sale of festival passes ends in exactly two weeks on August 1, and the price will then go from 500 NOK to 700 NOK. Better to buy now! Tickets here.

Alle hotellrommene på festivalen er nå utsolgt, så vi går over til å selge andre typer overnatting som erstatning. Vi starter med dobbeltrom i gjestehuset på Knausen Hyttegrend. Se info-siden for mer. Når disse er utsolgt vil vi gå over til å selge overnatting på steder som er litt lenger unna festivalen. Transport vil bli arrangert.

De som kjøper «Brewing + festival»-billetter får fortsatt hotellrom.

The hotel rooms at the festival are now sold out, so we are now switching to selling other types of accomodation. First out are double rooms in the guest house at Knausen Hyttegrend. See the DIY page. When these are sold out we will start selling accomodation at places a bit further away from the festival. Transport will be arranged.

Those who buy «Brewing + festival» tickets will still get hotel rooms as part of the package.

The video from last year’s festival had a piece of violin music in the background. It was not randomly chosen, because last year a fiddler opened the festival by playing the same tune. This is a traditional tune, or slått, called «Fanitullen». Traditional music obviously fits well with traditional beer, but why this specific tune? Well, there is actually a reason why it had to be this tune and not some other.

The name, Fanitullen, literally means «the devil’s tune.» Nobody knows who wrote it, but there is a famous legend of where it comes from, and this legend is why we chose it.

In 1724 there was a wedding in Hol, in Hallingdal, eastern Norway. Back then, weddings were celebrations that lasted several days, for which literally hundreds of liters of strong beer were brewed. It was a problem that sometimes people didn’t just drink, but also started fighting, and when every farmer carried a knife this didn’t necessarily end well.

Someone once told me they’d visited an old man on a farm in Hallingdal and spoke with him for a good while. Hanging on the wall he had an old knife with a pretty handle and a beautiful scabbard, but when they took the knife out of the scabbard they were surprised to find the blade was only 1cm long, with no edge. The old man laughed and told them it was «a wedding knife,» meant to be worn in weddings so the wearer need not fear becoming a murderer.

Anyway, at this 1724 wedding two young men, Levord Person Haga and Ådne Knutson Sindrol, started arguing. Eventually they took the argument outside, to settle it with their fists. Thus far the legend matches what court documents have to say, but then the legend takes off into territority not mentioned in the court documents.

The «kjøgemester», the man responsible for toasts and for serving the beer, decides to go down into the cellar and pour a beer bowl for the winner of the fight. Coming down into the cellar he’s surprised to find a fiddler, sitting on the beer barrel and tuning his fiddle, holding it the wrong way. Once he’s finished tuning he starts playing. And boy, does he know how to play! It sounded like «angry man’s words,» «fists pounding tables,» «it wept and cheered». The tune ends with the sound of «death.»

The tune gives the toastmaster the shivers, and he asks the fiddler where he learned it. «It makes no difference, but don’t forget it,» is the answer.

The toastmaster bends down to pour the beer, and is shocked to discover that the fiddler is not beating the tune with a foot, but with a hoof! He drops the bowl and runs out of the cellar, to find that one of the fighters has drawn his knife and killed the other.

The implication is that the devil’s fiddling has egged up the two fighters to the point that one kills the other.

The famous poem version of the legend ends with:

Fanitullen it’s named,
this wild tune,
and still the farmers play it,
and play it well,
but if those cruel tones sound,
where people are drunk,
then again comes the knife
from the halling’s scabbard.

(A «halling» is someone from the valley of Hallingdal.)

The tradition has it that one should be careful about playing this tune, because it can excite people to violence. Another story has it that if two people got angry at each other at a wedding or other party, the fiddler might choose to play Fanitullen to provoke them to fight. Alternately, he might play a tune called Meklaren (the negotiator) to calm them down.

Today, of course, nobody believes in this stuff, and now Fanitullen is just a famous piece of traditional music. In fact, one of the most famous pieces. A curious detail is that the preferred tuning for playing it is A-E-A-C#, known as «troll tuning.»

Despite the violence, the reason we chose it as our theme was the fantastic backstory, with the composer of the tune literally sitting on the beer barrel. The whole story is a reminder of a time when beer brewing was so common that a holding a wedding without serving hundreds of liters of home-made beer from the farm’s own grain was literally unthinkable.

This tradition of the wedding beer is memorably captured in arguably the most famous of all Norwegian national romantic paintings, the «Bridal Procession on the Hardanger Fjord.» The painter, Adolph Tiedemand (who also did the painting above), had lived with the farmers and was perfectly well aware that a farmer’s wedding without beer would be an absurdity. So he took care to include some in the painting, although it’s not immediately obvious.

This tradition has some relevance for us, because not a few of today’s farmhouse brewers brewed their first beer for their own wedding. This brewing for weddings is one of the reasons the farmhouse ale survived at all.

Of course, another reason to pick this tune is that’s it’s just a great piece of music.

Vi har lagt ut en ny type overnatting på Tikkio: dobbeltrom i firemannshytte på Knausen Hyttegrend. I motsetning til hotellrom som koster 1950 koster dette 900 fredag-søndag. Ulempen er at du kan måtte dele med noen som har det andre rommet, om dere ikke bestiller en hel hytte (2 rom). Mer detaljer på infosiden.

We’ve added a new type of accomodation through Tikkio: a double room in a four-man cabin at Knausen Hyttegrend. A hotel room costs 1950 NOK, but this is just 900 NOK Friday-Sunday. The downside is you may have to share with someone staying in the other room, unless you’re a group of four. More details on the DIY page.

Våre venner i Ale Apothecary lagde en video som viser litt av det som skjedde på festivalen i 2018.

English: Our friends at Ale Apothecary made a video showing some of what happened at the festival in 2018.

Mika Laitinens bok om sahti og gårdsøl, Viking Age Brew, ble publisert i dag. Boka er en grundig innføring i særlig sahti, men også gårdsøl generelt. Den tar for seg historien bak, kulturen, og aller mest hvordan man faktisk brygger disse ølene i praksis. Spesielt bra er informasjonen om hvordan man brygger råøl, hvordan man bruker einer, og om ulike typer urter.

Mika kommer på festivalen og holder foredrag og demonstrerer sahti-brygging. Han vil også ha med seg boka, så folk kan kjøpe den og få den signert.

English below the image.

Mika Laitinen’s book on sahti and farmouse ale, Viking Age Brew, was published today. The book covers especially sahti, but also farmhouse ale more generally. It gives a in-depth overview of the history, the culture, and perhaps most of all how to actually brew these beers in practice. The parts on brewing raw ale, using juniper, and using traditional herbs are especially strong.

Mika will be at the festival to give a talk on sahti and give a demonstration brew. He will also be selling the book, and you can get your copy signed.

Kåre Frøland kommer på Kornølfestivalen for å holde foredrag om humledyrking. Kåre driver Fletre Humlehage på Voss, Norges eneste kommersielle humleprodusent. Han dyrker flere sorter, og har lært mye om hvordan man kan drive humlehage i praksis.

In English: Kåre Frøland will be giving a talk at the Kornølfestival (in Norwegian!) about his commercial hop farm, the only one in Norway.

Da er billetter for campingen lagt ut. Hvis du kommer med campingvogn eller bobil kan du kjøpe camping-billett (med eller uten strøm) og bo på campingen fredag-lørdag på festivalen. Campingen er 100 meter fra festivalen. Det er tilgang til toalett.

Festivalbillett må kjøpes separat.

English: Camping tickets are now available. These let you park your camping wagon or motor home near the festival hall. Entrance to the festival must be purchased separately.

I år har vi invitert Mika Laitinen til å komme og demonstrere brygging av sahti på festivalen på lørdag. Mika har studert sahti i flere år, han har skrevet flere bøker om ølbrygging på finsk, blant annet en om sahti. Han driver også bloggen Brewing Nordic. Han er kanskje den fremste eksperten på sahti, og en dreven hjemmebrygger.

English: This year we have invited Mika Laitinen to come and show us how sahti is brewed during the Saturday of the festival. Mika has studied sahti brewing for several years. He has written several books on beer brewing in Finnish, including one about sahti. He writes the blog Brewing Nordic. He is probably the foremost expert on sahti, and an experienced home brewer.