The Tafjord song

Translated by Anne Marie Mac Queen Moe

The history behind the song

After the tragic landslide that hit Tafjord on the morning of the 7th of April 1934, a melody about the the tragedy was made, and had at least three different titles; "The Tafjord folksong", "The Tafjord song" and "The Tafjord disaster".

The song had been released earlier on a cassette from the "Frem fra glemselen" collection, wich are songs from days gone by. This collection is no longer available on sale in the shops.

Download

Tafjordportalen has tried to fint the right text an melody to this song. There has even been a recording of the song by the artists Torkjell Bjørstad and Frank Iversen.

You can download the song here (mp3)

Investigation

The recording was sent to norwegian broadcasting companies with a press release asking people about the song and especially about the author/composer of the song.

There has been an investigation with the record company TONO and the Norwegian Visearkiv (archives), but none of them have registered the original author. Reporters from Radio Storfjord (Ole Johan Slyngstad) and NRK (Odd Sørås) deided to take the case up on several of their radio programmes, discussing it with the listeners. Among these people was a lady by the name of Aslaug Rishaug, who was 86 years old. She had lost 8 of her brothers and sisters and both of her parents due the catastrophe. She told that only a few weeks after the disaster she met a streetmusician in Ålesund who sang about Tafjord. She talked to the mn and told him about her story, and the misician was so touched by it that he gave her the sobng. The song is the same that we have recorded and that now can be downloaded from this site.

Rishaug is shure that the street-musician must be the person that wrote the song since it was shortly after the catastrophe.

Many people has told us that it must be a man from the north of Norway that wrote the song. But Aslaug Rishaugs story denies this as she is most certain that it was not a dialect from the north of Norway that the street-musician spoke. This was in 1934 and the man could be between 25 and 30 years old.

The text

Here is the text translated for our english visitors:

Quietly the evening rests on Tafjord shore,
The mountains reflect on the water below
Fishermen are getting ready to turn in
in the little cottage where they live

This is when it happend, what we all now
and one can saw it was fate a calling
No one ever knew how bad it was to be
this evening in Tafjords tranquil bay

The landslide came and houses lay in ruins
No one knew a thing until they heard the waves' roar
many fought bravely against the waves' prey
Others quietly and peacefully into deaths sleep went away

Many here have to lose their young lives
away from mother and father, kin and wives
Many fought bravely, bravely for their brides
Everyone must one day wander to their God

Once more Tafjord lies as if it is forgotten
was it now as in her cold grave she lies and is hidden
That is now it can happen often in life's ocean
Everyone must one day wander to their grave