A term coined by Andersson (1923) for a bowed lyre without fingerboard commonly used for folk music-making until the beginning of the 20th century in Finland, particularly in east Karelia, and in the Swedish communities of Estonia. Since the early 1970s there has been a revival in making and playing the stråkharpa in all these regions.
The Finnish instrument (jouhikannel, jouhikantele or jouhikko) has a flat soundboard let in to the box-shaped base (sometimes with convex or concave sides), which has an extension on the same plane as the soundboard, with a long, narrow opening on the right for the player’s left hand, or with openings on both sides of a narrow central arm. It has two or three strings of horsehair, gut or wire, which run from a string-holder over a straight bridge to the pegs, usually dorsal, in the upper end (for illustration, see Finland, fig.3).
The Swedish-Estonian ‘broad-holed’ bowed lyre (tallharpa, hiiukannel) has a flat, or sometimes slightly arched, soundboard in a box- or violin-shaped base. The base continues in two straight arms which form a yoke with dorsal pegs for three to five strings of horsehair, gut or wire. Of the two bowed lyres found in Sweden, one has the narrow opening, the other is the ‘broadholed’ type (see illustration).
The instrument is usually held diagonally, supported against the player’s knee, with the thumb holding the right arm of the yoke and the fingers stopping the melody string or strings with the knuckles. The other strings are drones. The bow, curved or straight, is held like a pencil.
The origin of the stråkharpa is uncertain. The earliest evidence of bowed lyres in Scandinavia is a bowed-lyre player sculpted in stone in Trondheim Cathedral, Norway, dating from the early 14th century. Andersson sees a connection with the Welsh crwth, but without a fingerboard, and claims that the instrument spread east to Finland and Estonia from Sweden. That plucked lyres were in earlier use in Scandinavia is confirmed by two lyre bridges, found in Broa i Halle, Gotland (8th century), and Birka, Sweden (9th century; see Rotte (ii), fig.2). The Arabic geographer Ibn Fadlan, in his account of a Viking funeral on the Volga in 921 ce, mentions a harp that was placed with the body of a chieftan to accompany him on his final journey. This could in fact have been a lyre. One might speculate that the use of a bow in playing string instruments, first mentioned in 10th-century Arabic writings, might have been encountered and brought back to Scandinavia by the Vikings.
See also Rotte (ii).
O. Andersson: Stråkharpan: en studie i nordisk instrumenthistoria (Helsinki, 1923; Eng. trans., 1930/R)
O. Andersson: ‘The Bowed Harp of Trondheim Cathedral and Related Instruments in East and West’, GSJ, xxiii (1970), 4–34
G. Larsson: ‘Die estnische-schwedische Streichleier: ihre Spieltechnik und ihr Repertoir’, Studia instrumentorum musicae popularis VI: Kazimierz Dolny 1977, 87–92
BIRGIT KJELLSTRÖM/STYRBJÖRN BERGELT