Biography

Primal neofolk in the name of Föld Anya, Earth Mother, also known as Boldogasszony, “The Happy Woman,” and the songs of old. We recall the rhythms of the world, from the murmuring streams to the wild fury of the Jötnar. We channel old ways, of animistic life, forgotten rituals, and primal musics, coursing from the spirit of the more-than-human world before humanity. We revel in the animality that is our nature.

“When the neofolk band Nøkken + The Grim take the stage, an air of beautiful confusion sets in among the uninitiated…It is folk and ritual music molded into an ecstatic frenzy, alternating between uplifting nature worship and the soundtrack to a sylvan horror film.”

-Shane Burley/Protean Magazine

Nøkken + The Grim began in Austin, Texas in 2015 and debuted their first album Treason to Our Nature in 2018 at The Thicket. They’ve been involved with numerous projects, including a live premiere of Evil Dead: A Nightmare Reimagined with Hollywood composer Joseph LoDuca at MondoCon2019, and they’ve shared the stage with drag superstar Louisianna Purchase.

Nøkken + The Grim is inspired by Magyar and Norse spirituality and folklore, focusing on the living world, respect for Life and Land, and decolonization. The group gets its symphonic sound from blending traditional folk influences with modern electronic and horror film scores, and they have recorded soundtracks with composer Brian Satterwhite, including Paper Birds (2019), The Mark of War (2018), The Next Kill (2018), Sour Bear, and Boneyard Alaska (2019). The group has performed as a regular as part of Yeast by Sweat Beast (YXSB), the longest running experimental music festival in the United States. In 2019, they collaborated with cinematographer Andrew Savage to debut a folk horror short film Vox Terrae. They are active supporters of BLM and indigenous rights and have been featured in Left/Folk’s compilations, In Solidarity: Songs of Struggle and Resistance and Left/Folk II: Resilience as Praxis, alongside other bands like Ulvesang and Sieben. Fehérló Gortva performs with his life partner Stephen Ian Savage, who are both LGBTQ+, and their friend Karoline Leal.

Photo (c) Michael Connell, Taylor, TX, 2019.

Press

“To put them under one genre would be considered a grave sin. Soaked in mythological elements and Pagan backgrounds, each member of Nøkken + The Grim brings their own unique flair…”

-Brutal Resonance

Folklore

Nøkken is a water-horse spirit and fiddler. Legends have told of this shapeshifting fiddler who lures humans to their demise in the murky river. He is also known as Bäckahästen, the brook-horse. Nøkken draws inspiration from his Norse and Magyar folkroots and his kinship with nonhuman life. He is joined by Ajatar on viola, the Finnish dragoness, mother of nature spirits and bearer of forbidden knowledge. Peryton, The Black Stag, performs on electronics and winds. He was once the Csodaszarvas, the Magyar White Stag of legend. His feathers and fur have turned black with soot, and his desecrated spirit rages in agony, fused with technology.

In bygone days, Nøkken would seduce humans with his fiddling. Sometimes he would appear as a seemingly tame horse offering himself to be ridden. Those who would fall under his spell would witness his true form as they drowned: a monstrous tangle of fangs and river plants. He has guarded the sacred wild places from human trespassers. The Horse is linked with the currents and rhythms of life, the pulses of trance, allowing shamanistic practitioners to travel to other worlds in an ecstatic state. In Norse beliefs, the eight-legged horse Sleipnir is responsible for guiding journeys to other spiritual realms. The White Horse is a god in Magyar beliefs who usually has an unusual number of legs similarly works with the Magyar shaman, known as a táltos. Prior to Christian colonization, Finno-Ugric peoples practiced animal worship and a shamanistic/animistic spirituality. This survives among Indigenous Finno-Ugric peoples, such as the Mansi, Khanty and is a part of Magyar and Sámi revival of shamanistic traditions. The water spirit Nøkken/Bäckahästen is of a similar nature and perhaps, in long lost traditions, was related to the two. It is said that his music could make “the trees dance and the waterfalls stop”.

Csodaszarvas is the Miraculous Deer god in pre-Christian Magyar beliefs, and is responsible for guarding sacred knowledge and secrets of magic. They take the form of a brilliant white Deer, who often guides others to unknown lands. He recalls the crazy wisdom, running along pathways to new insights and transformations of the spirit. Csodaszarvas is linked to Föld Anya (Earth-Mother) who, with Ég Apa (Sky-Father, also known as Isten), gave birth to life in the Magyar creation story.

In contemporary times, Csodaszarvas’ fur and feathers have been scorched black with the soot of modern industry. Driven to madness, he has infested humanity’s machines with his wild calls and taken the name Peryton after the man-eating stags of Jorge Luis Borges.

Ajatar, the Finnish witch of the woods, mother of woodland spirits, is sometimes a woman and sometimes a violent serpent. Like the dragon Tiamat, she carries with her forbidden knowledge of the underworkings of reality, the touch of which drives humans insane. Once recognized as an aspect of divine nature, she was corrupted by mankind’s misunderstanding into a bearer of pestilence and death, treated as a “demon”. She recalls the ways of ouroboros, the serpent eating its tail, the primal symbol of life-death. Thus, she is of a dual nature, both teacher and destroyer, live-giver and life-taker.