Hey dear people! 🙂
Today, I’d like to share with you a song from a very interesting Swedish group that I recently discovered. RO.T (Rebecka O’Nils Trio) set Swedish-language poetry from the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries to music. They are influenced by classical and folk music. Apart from Rebecka O’Nils who composes melodies for the poems that the group performs, the other two thirds of the trio are Jenny Klefbom, who arranges harmonies for the songs, and William Bülow O’Nils who arranges them for guitar.
This particular song comes from their debut album, which focuses entirely on the poetry of Harriet Löwenhjelm. Löwenhjelm was born in the latter half of the 19th century. She was artistically inclined from an early age and, originally, she wrote her poems as a way to complement her drawings and paintings. Some of her poems are very well-known in Sweden from what I’ve read. Sadly, she lived only until her early thirties, as she had contracted tuberculosis, and spent her last months in a sanatorium in Småland.
I like the poem itself, as it definitely speaks to my angsty nature, but RO.T’s interpretation makes it even more beautiful and full of meaning.
The (possibly slightly inept, and literal, not poetic) translation below is written by Bibielz.
I am afraid of mists in the valley
And the moon sucks my blood
Oh, I stood at home on the doorstep
I might regain my courage
But I am afraid of mists in the valley
And the moon sucks my blood
Oh, , I stood at home on the doorstep
I might regain my courage
But I am afraid of mists in the valley
They rise so pale from the soil
As if white ghosts they walk
Though the moon is not full yet
He still sucks my liver
Oh, I am afraid of mists in the valley
And the moon sucks my blood
Oh, I stood at home on the doorstep
I might regain my courage
But I am afraid of mists in the valley
My Inner MishMash 
Mists in the valley really are scary.
You lose your temperature [thermoception] and your vision especially if you don’t know the valley so well or its topography.
They rise so pale FROM the soil.
[Fromm was a very famous psychoanalyst back in the day – Eric Fromm I am thinking of – and there was another one called Freida Fromm-Reichmann]
Would “beneath” or “under” the soil fit the song better?
[or the way that ghosts behave?]
He still sucks my liver – what a gross and gory lyric!
{I still think anything to do with organs misplaced or outside the body is gross}.
And I think of AMERICAN PIE – the Don McLean version when I saw your lyric about the doorstep.
“I stood on the doorstep
I couldn’t take one more step”.
The moon and the tides may or may not have a way of behaving like that – symbolically [sucking someone’s blood].
[it puts vampires out of a job…]
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Yes, you are definitely making a good point about mists in the valley.
Lolll about Fromm. I obviously meant to write “from” but must have typed a double m accidentally, and my Mac kindly capitalised the F for me. 😀 I wasn’t using a Braille display when translating and had an English speech synth (which doesn’t really make a difference when reading both) so didn’t even catch it. The original word there is “ur” which means either “from” or “out of” in Swedish, so “under” or “beneath” wouldn’t really work.
The liver thing is quite gross indeed. When I first heard this song I actually thought I must have misheard/misunderstood something and have a twisted brain myself, but turned out not to be the case. But when you expose yourself to a lot of folklore, it’s easy to conclude that the moon must be really awful – can put a spell on people, properly traumatise people… and even suck out one’s liver as we now know. –
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