Huldur Chamber Choir

Huldur Chamber Choir will host a concert for its premier album, Í fossgljúfri, at Langholtskirkja on Saturday the 23rd of May at 14:00. The choir will perform a packed programme of new Icelandic choral music, most of it written by young composers within the choir. There will be a short intermission in the concert where guests are welcome to enjoy some refreshments and coffee, free of charge. The regular ticket price is 3900 kr. but students and the disabled pay 2900 kr. and children 12 years and younger get free admission. It will be possible to buy CDs at the concert.

The album, ‘Í fossgljúfri’, is a journey through the dreamlike landscape of Icelandic oral and choral tradition. On that journey you will hear of trolls, the undead, cut off toes, love between man and elf and eery faces on the window. The concert is the last of four on the choirs tour for the release of the album. The tour starts in Stykkishólmur on the 14th, then the choir will go north and host a concert in Akureyrarkirkja on the 15th of May. Then on the way back there is a concert in Borgarneskirkja on the 17th and finally a grand release-concert in Reykjavík at Langholtskirkja on the 23rd of May.

We urge you to come and listen and we look forward to seeing you!

ABOUT US:
Huldur was founded in 2021 by Hreiðar Ingi Þorsteinsson. In the choirs short life it has become a vital part of the tapestry of choirs in Reykjavík. Huldur has held around four concerts each year and premiered around 50 pieces of new Icelandic choral music. The choir has also been an important place for young people interested in music to try their hand at composition, poetry, solo singing and conducting. Last summer Huldur was invited, along with 17 other choirs from all over the world, to perform at the European Youth Choir Festival (EJCF) which is held every two years in Basel, Switzerland.
But that name, what does it mean? Huldur is a being of Icelandic (and Scandinavian) folklore that dwells in waterfalls, rivers and even on the bottom of the ocean. The name can be translated to ‘the hidden’ or ‘the covered’ and huldir (plural form) are usually malevolent beings. One such story can be found in a collection of oral histories which Ólafur Davíðsson compiled. There is on story from the south of Iceland about a belief that the huldur would take people that were traveling at late hours around the waterfall. Similar folklore was widespread around Southeast Iceland and probably further afield. Many Icelandic poets have used the figure of the huldur in their writings. Two such poems are on the album, Í fossgljúfri, the first is called Huldur by Grímur Thomsen and the second Bláir eru dalir þínir by Hannes Pétursson. In Grímur’s poem the huldur lives deep in the ocean and controls the billowing ocean with her langspil, fiddle and voice. In Hannes Péturson’s poem, like in the folklore, she lives in the waterfall sewing sunlight into the droplets of the waterfall.