the sound of a nyckelharpa

Markus Lantto, an artist at LKV, has been kind enough to show me around his impressive collection of hand-made musical instruments. At the moment he is building a ten-string violin from scratch and rescued two broken violins to repair them. He has made also two guitars and my favorite without a doubt is a nyckelharpa. I have never seen one of these before (wikipedia link). The sounds is great and the instrument itself so beautiful. This was the first instrument he made, and each key is a different face carved in wood.

Here’s a little video of Markus playing the nyckelharpa. Although my camera mic probable doesn’t make much justice to the sound…
Click to Video (Quicktime)