Scandinavian Arctic culture receives some of the most memorable poetic and musical cinematic treatment to be found in this year’s Sundance slate, with the premiere of FOLKTALES, directed by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady. It is not surprising that this documentary has become quite the darling at Sundance. The film knits together stunning imagery of a Norwegian landscape hundreds of miles north of the Arctic Circle, the incredible bonding between young people and sled dogs, and the experiences of finding self-esteem in a folk school program that harkens to the mid 19th century and is timeless and as relevant as the Norse mythology upon which its mission was established.
This is not the first time that Ewing and Grady have made a documentary about unique educational programs. For example, in 2005, The Boys of Baraka chronicled the experiences of 20 boys from Baltimore who spent their seventh- and eighth-grade years at a rural boarding school in Kenya. Jesus Camp followed the experiences of young Christian evangelicals. FOLKTALES is the first one where the filmmakers have Gen-Z youth as subjects.
At Pasvik Folk High School, wilderness survival and the care of sled dogs comprises the educational program, underpinned by elements of Nordic myths. While the folk school’s students mainly comprise young people, many of whom are taking a gap year in their education, anyone from around the world and in any age group can enroll at Pasvik.
FOLKTALES follows the experiences of three students, who participate in a nine-month term and are at the cusps of deciding what pathway they should pursue in life: Hege and Bjørn Torne, from Norway, and Romain, from The Netherlands. Hege is still processing the grief of her father who was killed in a violent assault. Bjørn Torne is awkward in social settings and worries that people are turned off by his impulsive chattering. Romain is introverted and lacks self-confidence and, in fact, leaves the program after a solo wilderness trek that did not go well but then returns to complete the program.
Eventually, the friendship between Bjørn Torne and Romain warms, thanks to a funny conversation about beets and borscht that any two male teens can relate to and laugh about. The end result of the appearance of all three students in the film is remarkable, considering that each of them would not have sought out being in camera on their own at the outset.
One fascinating tidbit is how each of them paired up with their own sled dog to care for, during their stay at the school. They were perfect fits: Bjørn Torne found his canine doppelgänger who was just as rambunctious. Romain selected a dog who was painfully shy as he was. Hege selected the oldest dog, reflecting the fact that her closest living room was her grandfather. In an interview with The Utah Review, Grady said her favorite pairing was Bjørn Torne and his dog, Billy. “Both are intelligent and so talkative that they can’t sometimes read the room,” she explained. “I teased him about having the same personality as Billy and he agreed right away that was true, which delighted me.”
The attention to Nordic folk culture gives FOLKTALES its integrated and resonant cinematic composition. Norse mythology is ubiquitous in the country’s cultural identity. In Pasvik, the pertinent narrative revolves around the Norns, Yggdrasil and the World Tree — the elements which allow humans and gods to weave their respective futures. Therefore, the students learned to knit sweaters. A symbolic scene in the film captures a tree where strings are added to signify the completion of a lesson and others that are cut when a life has ended.
Grady said that she and Ewing were impressed at what they observed at Pasvik. “No tests, no homework, no milestones,” she said. “The whole experience is figuring out what your character is made of and the extent to which you can push yourself physically and mentally. The intention is that anyone on the planet can become better individually, by entering as a member of a group and gaining confidence and self-reliance.”
Just as rewarding as observing the students make progress was watching the efforts of the teachers, including Iselin Breivold and Thor-Atle Svortevik. “My husband who was a social studies teacher for many years said they did everything right as teachers, in their exchanges with students. He said they were top notch and gave them five stars,” Grady said.
When the film screened last Sunday at the Rose Wagner Center for Performing Arts, the audience gave a standing ovation. Even more heartening for Grady was the fantastic response the FOLKTALES team witnessed at a special screening in the same venue earlier this week in front of 500 young Utah students. “They were really engaged and many asked if they could attend the school,” Grady added.
In an interview with The Utah Review, composer T. (Todd) Griffin talked about how much he looked forward to researching the writing of the score for FOLKTALES, which was the fifth time he has worked with the directors.
“The images of the young people in this vast beautiful setting struck me initially along with the tactile sounds that were happening simultaneously,” he said. “It was exciting to dive into traditional Norwegian music practices, which I was not familiar with but I wanted to bring those instrumental sounds into the film.”
He connected with Zosha Warpeha, a Minnesota-born composer and violin player who received a Fulbright in 2019 to go to Norway and research the Hardanger fiddle (hardingfele) folk techniques. The violin, which is well known in Norway’s fishing and farming communities, has four strings just like the classical violin but there also are four sympathetic strings underneath the bridge of the instrument. The strings are not played directly but the vibrations produced by the upper strings as they are bowed produce a sound enriched with a haunting resonance that evokes the sounds one would expect to hear in the Arctic landscape of FOLKTALES.
Griffin also learned to play the willow flute (seljefløyte), a simple instrument that comprises a tube with a transverse fipple mouthpiece and no finger holes. The player varies the force of air blown into the mouthpiece, and the end of the tube is either covered or left open. Again, the sound is enriched with natural overtones.
The music at the opening of the film is just as striking as the imagery of the Arctic Norwegian wilderness. To achieve the gossamer, icy blue steel, and nighttime translucent effects, Griffin scored it for a minimalistic ensemble that included bass flutes and vibraphone, along with the Norwegian folk fiddle and flute.
Griffin, whose scores have been used in films that have premiered at Sundance consecutively for 16 years, said that FOLKTALES was one of the most difficult. “It took a lot of trial and error,” he said, adding that some of the initial score ideas did not pan out in alignment to what Ewing and Grady envisioned in the storytelling. “For months, we banged our heads on the table about the opening sequence. I originally thought about scoring and recording it with a full orchestra,” he added. Griffin said that the benefit of having worked on five projects with Ewing and Grady was that “we had built enough trust in the relationship to go through difficult periods of sorting out what would work for the film.
One of the films presented by Impact Partners Film, FOLKTALES received an Utah Film Center fiscal sponsorship. For festival tickets and more information, see the Sundance website.