Northern Expo shines a vital light on an overlooked remote music scene

There's always been a strong military presence here; in 1940, German planes destroyed two-thirds of the town’s buildings and two decades later, an American spy plane stationed in Bodø was shot down by the Soviets. The local air base was where the Norwegian Air Force's fighter aircraft were kept and F-16 fighters were on permanent NATO standby for several decades until activity was shifted to Ørland and Evenes in 2022.

Since then the city has reinvented itself around its numerous culture and nature offerings and this year became the first city north of the Arctic Circle to hold the title of European city of culture. Behind the project is an effort to keep its younger residents from moving away from area and that’s partly why showcase event Northern Expo located to Bodø for 2024.

The initiative, which began back in 2018 with an event in Svalbard, aims to show off some of the vibrant and largely remote music scenes in the northern part of Norway. Bodø becomes its home for three days of shows, storytelling and networking with a cross section of the world’s music industry. There are bookers, agents, managers and label staff here from the likes of Rough Trade, Bella Union and BBC Radio 3. Northern Expo’s focus this year is on a distinct spread of artists united by their envelope-pushing approach to electronic, folk, jazz, and rock. Among them are Bodø-born-and-raised Kristine Hoff – aka Maud – who makes heart-on-sleeve electronic pop, classical wunderkind Liv Andrea Hauge from Mosjøen who has an absolutely mastery of her improvisational approach to jazz piano, and Johanna-Adele Jüssi, who creates folk music from another realm.

Jüssi performs for us in a modest village on Fleinvær, situated between the Lofoten Islands and mainland Bodø. This archipelago has been transformed into music and performance retreat in recent years and its unique environment is suited to to a creative mindset: the absence of volume combined with the disorientation between day and night does remarkable things to the sense, we are told.

With her folk trio, Jüssi's songs range from delicate and whimsical to drony, mystical and devastating. The Estonian-born fiddler spent much of her life journeying around the Nordic region, Germany and the Shetland Islands before moving to Rundhaug, 400km north of Bodø. She has created her own lore styled after the origin stories of Norwegian artists - hailing from the imaginary realm of Gaupdalen, or Lynx Valley, a place Jüssi mentally teleports to whenever she is composing or performing.

The area's distinct identity is shaped by both its past and present. Norway popularised the slogan “High North, Low Tension,” in the mid 1980s to promote cooperation between itself and Canada, Greenland, Iceland, Sweden, Finland, Russia, and the United States, and in the mid 90s, these nations formed the Arctic Council, an intergovernmental body focused on environmental protection and cooperation.

Arne O Holm runs High North News, a, bi-lingual platform that covers the realities of the Arctic for people, society and business in the North. As a territory with borders to Russia, Holm is all too aware of the strange contrast between the beauty of the High North, and the ever present threat to everyone who lives there.

Scoring on all the right indexes, democracy reigns in the Nordics but, “one of the struggles we have is to promote these ideals," says Holm. “We have a very aggressive neighbour on the other side,” he reminds us. There is ever-increasing military and economic activity in the region but its success depends on cooperation with its neighbours, Holm explains. Despite being a remote society, the High North is modern and a very international part of the world. Almost everything produced here is exported. "We depend on international cooperation" asserts Holm. Highly incorporated with the US and Nato, Holm knows Trump’s decisions may figure more into the future of the High North come November should he win the US election.

Almost ten percent of Norway’s population lives above the Arctic circle – far more than in any other arctic nation – and much of its indigenous population also lives here too. The Sápmi region covers the land traditionally inhabited by the Sámi people and stretches across Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia. One of the aims of Northern Expo is to help both Northern Norwegian and Sami artists to connect to music industry partners outside Norway with a long term perspective and this year three musicians whose sound is founded upon the Sámi joiking tradition are taking part.

The joik is the chanting song of the Sámi – a key signifier of Sámi cultural heritage – and was for a long time condemned as sinful, and forbidden in Sámi area schools. The persecution of the Sámi people intensified in the 17th century and Christianisation led to Sámi shamans being burnt as witches and the beliefs of the Sámi people condemned as sorcery. Over the next 200 years, new borders restricted the Sámi's seasonal movements and entires communities were separated from one another. Towards the end of the 19th century, Norway decreed that Norwegian alone was to be used in education. Only recently have curriculums been developed to promote Sámi culture and begun to undo the damage done.

It was in the late 70s and early 80s when things really began to change for Sámis in Norway. The construction of a hydroelectric power plant in the Alta River saw climate issues align with the assertion of the Sámi as an indigenous people with distinct rights over the lands in Northern Norway – and push that assertion onto the national political agenda.

Viktor Bomstad is among a growing number of young artists who are keeping the joik alive, both through revival and reinterpretation. Studying music in Oslo, with guitar as his main instrument, Bomstad started experimenting with joik during his high school years after discovering the music of ‘heavyjoik’ metal band Intrigue. Later on, he started incorporating joik in his music and it eventually became his main instrument.

The language spoken by the ancestors of Bomstad disappeared with his grandmother and Bomstad had to learn Sámi as an adult. “I didn’t really grow up with joik in my family, even though it was pretty close,” he explains. Bomstad’s debut album Sami Noise, released in December 2022, showcases a series of incredibly leftfield sonic experiments, welding together noise, joik, sampling and fuzz that reframe the textures and rhythms of joiking.

Emil Kárlsen is another Sámi musican with his own approach to the joik. Hailing from Storfjord in Troms county, just like Blomsted, he led indie-pop band Resirkulert since his teens but has dedicated himself to the joik in recent years and to collaborating more with other Sámi artists.

Kárlsen’ most recent release "Čávkkus" sees him joiking to connect with his hometown (now known as Oteren) “Joik, in a way, is a language itself," Kárlsen explains. "You don't need words. You use your dynamics in your voice, and that speaks to something inside of us. In that way I hope we are speaking to your hearts."

Completing the trio of Sámi artists is Katarina Barruk, who was raised in Sweden’s Lapland province, in the town of Lusspie. Barruk grew up with the Ume Sámi language. which is in the UNESCO’s red list of critically endangered languages with just an estimated 100 speakers. From the nine living Sámi languages spoken from central Sweden and Mid-Southern Norway to the tip of the Kola Peninsula in Russia, eight have independent literary languages while the other has barely a few elderly speakers left. Barruk’s father actually wrote the Ume Sámi dictionary and her own music is driven by the hope of keeping her language alive.

Like Bomstad, Barruk’s music is more experimental, knitted together by nature and being; live she can recall the otherworldly presence of Björk or The Knife, with her improvisational mix of folk, pop and electronica.

“​​I believe that the joik philosophy is my starting point – its emotional mindset, or certain places or events that I’m trying to revisit,” Barruk has said. “When you joik traditional joiks, it’s never just a case of making random sounds. It’s always a case of telling a story or a person or a place. I think that this philosophy is the basis for my improvisations. In improvised concerts, the outcome is not necessarily a traditional joik, but the philosophy is there. It’s the foundation for improvisations.”

The music I see in and around Bodø feels all the more surreal and profound given that we’re in the lightest city in the world. For all of June and some of July, the sun here is a constant - barely dipping behind the sparse highland, and making midnight feel like three in the afternoon. It’s a strange feeling emerging from an evening of music and drinking and feeling like the whole day is still ahead of you - but it's another unique part of Northern Expo’s approach to shining a light on the music, project manager Fredrik Forssman tells me. “There’s so many showcase festivals and summits etc around the world - Norway alone has four of them,” Forssman explains. “But the need for our artists and industry to get noticed and connect was there so we just had to do it different.”

And Forssman’s concept of 'different' runs through the entire showcase, from start to finish. A dramatically-staged opening event unites all the artists in Bodø at this year’s Northern Expo. The Sámi talent – along with Jussi, Maud and Hauge – are joined by Tromsø duo Nonne at Svømmehallen Scene, a former swimming pool repurposed as a live music venue, for a 90-minute immersive show, with impressive staging to match the quality of the music. The collective of musicians remains present for the entire three days, sharing their own journeys in music over meals, and making new friends. While comparable events do similar things through speed dates and forced networking, this unconventional approach to slow meetings feels entirely appropriate and in line with sustainability.

Everything I hear during my three days in Bodø is underpinned by a history and environment that can’t be compressed into short bursts - what’s happening here is creating the foundation for these artists to take their next steps outside Norway and extend their culture and music into the wider global landscape.