The next step was to bring that music back to life, so after seven years of research, making some extinct instruments from scratch (which led to some “very crappy” failures, Selvik says with a laugh), the result was a new band, Wardruna.
Meaning “the guardian of the runes” (or possibly “wisdom”, or “secrets” – it’s a word that doesn’t exactly translate), the band’s first album, released in 2009, featured Einar and bandmates Gaahl (also ex-Gorgoroth) and former punk/electronica musician Lindy-Fay Hella using resurrected Stone Age, Bronze Age, Viking period and medieval instruments including goat horns, deer-hide drums and uniquely Nordic instruments like the kraviklyra and tagelharpa (both ancient stringed instruments), layered with haunting vocals including chants, throat-singing and more, to recreate music that had not been heard in centuries.
Driving, ethereal and haunting, Wardruna immediately found an audience that loved the sounds they didn’t even know they had missed.
“It was not something I anticipated,” Selvik admits, “and it wasn’t on my radar at all. This was just something that I couldn’t not do.”
Since then, and despite deliberately small output – Wardruna restrict the number of gigs they play and have released only five albums in 20 years, including three based on Norse runes and one based on the attributed sayings of the Norse god Odin – the band has built a worldwide following.
“I would like to say just how moving it is to see how diverse our audience is,” says Selvik.
“You have people bring their kids and their grandparents, you have everything from metal fans to people who normally go to the opera or jazz club, all ethnicities are represented … It’s just such a powerful thing.”
In 2013 that power exploded when Selvik was asked to help score the music for the global hit TV series Vikings.
Suddenly the sounds of Wardruna were everywhere and once again, as Selvik suspected it would, the same chord of familiarity was struck.
This summer those world-spanning songs are coming to Australia and New Zealand for Wardruna’s first-ever tour to this region.
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For Selvik it’s a chance not only to showcase the music he has helped rediscover, and release the band’s fifth album, but to learn.
“The Australian Aboriginal culture was, of course, a huge inspiration in many ways when I started on this project,” he says.
“Because when you’re searching in the ruins of your own very fragmented history, it’s only natural that you look to other indigenous cultures, both neighbouring and on a global scale … and what you find is that the similarities are again much more common than the dissimilarities.
“Actually, the Bronze Age lur [a 2m-long wind instrument Wardruna use] can be played with the same technique as a didgeridoo!” he says.“That is fascinating to me.”
Wardruna play the Palais in Melbourne on January 23 and the Enmore Theatre, Sydney, on January 25.
