The fiðla, or Icelandic fiddle, is a rare sight in modern Iceland, but for centuries this bowed instrument could be found across the country and its history weaves through the island’s stories and sounds. Unlike the modern violin it shares a name with in English, the fiðla has a design and cultural role all its own.
Origins and cultural echoes
First mentioned in Icelandic folktales from the 16th century, the fiðla was not described in detail until the 18th century, when Icelandic author Jón Ólafsson likened it to a cavernous box. A drawing of Sveinn Þórarinsson, one of the few well-known fiðla players, remains preserved in the National Museum of Iceland, highlighting the instrument’s presence in the nation’s memory even as documentation of its use is sparse.
The fiðla was part of a broader northern European tradition. In medieval Scandinavia, fiddles and harps filled the royal courts, such as that of the King of Sweden. Norse influence lingered in the region; for example, carved stone figures playing fiddles can still be seen in Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim, Norway. Yet, on the isolated shores of Iceland, the fiðla developed features unique to the local way of life.
Form, function and decline
The construction of the fiðla is simple yet distinctive. Crafted from a thin wooden box almost 78 centimetres long, the instrument tapers in width from 17 centimetres at one end to 14 at the other. Two brass strings, sometimes as many as six according to 19th century accounts, are stretched parallel to the box and anchored with nails. Two prominent tuning pegs sit at one end, measuring about 13 centimetres each. Unlike its more refined European cousins, one writer described the fiðla as “rudely fashioned,” with wire strings made of copper or brass.
By the late 18th century, foreign visitors like the Swedish explorer Uno von Troil noted the fiðla and the langspil, both played with a bow. The langspil, also a bowed Icelandic instrument, gradually became more common, and the fiðla’s role in Icelandic daily life began to fade. By the middle of the 19th century, its use had largely disappeared.
Today, three fiðlur survive in the collections of the National Museum, the oldest dating from around 1800. Their presence offers tangible evidence of the instrument’s role in Iceland’s musical heritage, even as many details of its music and performers have been lost to time.
Comparable instruments elsewhere include the tautirut, a bowed zither of the Inuit from Hudson Bay, and the gue, a now-lost fiddle-like instrument once found in the Shetland Islands. These connections hint at the shared threads of musical innovation across northern cultures, each adapting strings and box to local hands and ears.
Sources
- Wikipedia
- Wikipedia (Icelandic) in Icelandic
