Vasa Order of America
Scandinavian Folk Dance
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(RIGHT) Midsummer is one of the important celebration in Stockholm, at Skansen there a plenty of activities to enjoy. Here it is some Folk dancing. There is an introduction of each dance in Swedish, followed by English one.

Scandinavian folk dances are generally done in couples, with the exception of a few virtuoso solo dances.  They include turning dances as well as set dances for groups of couples.  Swedish and Norwegian dance rely heavily on the turning forms, some of which are based on Continental European turning dances.  Danish folk dancing is dominated by set dances for four couples and ring dances, which largely date from the late 1700's to late 1800's. 

For social occasions it is customary today to dance one or two dances with one partner and then dance with another person.  In classes, partners are often rotated to speed learning.  There is no expectation that one attend with a partner, as it is usual to dance with many different people during a session. 

The man's and woman's steps are usually complementary and are sometimes a mirror image of one another.  Whether one is leading or following in a dance, it is always interesting to be in tune with the music, your partner, and the other dancers in the hall.  The dances engage a person's intellect, body, and social skills.  

Some dance distinctions respect national boundaries, but there are many similarities which transcend national borders.  There are dozens of dances now documented, but they can be organized into several major styles.

Slängpolska (Click Here - Slängpolska, video)

The Slängpolska ("släng" Swed. for "toss, throw, chuck") is a Swedish folk dance and sometimes also the description of certain folk music tunes. The dances bearing the name slängpolska can be divided into two major types.

The first type is for two or four people, and is one of the sixteenth-note versions of the polska. The dances of this type usually have in common that they are danced on the spot, either during parts of the dance or during the entire dance. Focus is on different holds and on the divisions between them, and these divisions could be responsible for the name slängpolska. A typical slängpolska of this type could consist of two basic set positions: one in which the couple is spinning around one another while holding crossed hands outstretched with centrifugal force, the other in which the couple is spinning around one another in a closer position while holding the partner's shoulders and arms. The division between the two parts of the dance is then made by e.g. both dancers spinning out from their hold and then spinning once on their own with a clap of hands, followed by a returning to the hold. A common dance step consists of four steps distributed in the following way over three beats: one long, two short, one long ("one...-two-and-three...") Beat 1, 2 and 3 have almost equal stress and length, which also is reflected in the corresponding music. A very free variant of this slängpolska type, consisting of walking through the room with different holds and turning on the spot with different holds and the same walking steps, could just as well be danced to 2/4 or 4/4 time music, as do the related norwegian dances gangar and bonde, but in Sweden it is most commonly danced to 3/4 time music.

The second type of slängpolska is more related to other polskas than to the above slängpolska type, in that the couples move counterclockwise around the periphery of the room, and choose to do so with or without rotation clockwise around an internal axis, one full rotation for each measure. The music and dances in this category share a high tempo, givin a "tossing" feeling, which is often reflected in the rotation part of the dance in the form of a jump or a lift as part of the step reoccuring in every measure until the couple decides to dance without rotation for a while. The name has been used from midwest Sweden (Värmland) to the north of Sweden, and there is a large diversity in music and dance character, since the name mainly refers to the tempo. Both in midwest and north Sweden there are examples of dances which can both be danced as a slower "polska" and as a faster "slängpolska" with retention of the basic steps.

One of the potential origins of hambo is the polka-mazurka, a dance with many turns that was popular in Europe during the second half of the 19th century. The term polska-mazurka can also be found in notebooks from the beginning of the 20th century used by Swedish farmer folk-musicians. Mazurka is however today in northern Europe the name of a different dance than hambo, mazurka is played faster with a fast and short jump on the third beat.

One of the turns in the dance was developed in about 1900 to a free-standing dance and was danced using older polska music, for example slängpolska, or other variants of polska, but with stronger emphasis on the first beat. In the early 20th century, an easier variant of hambo existed with a short forward step per beat for the first two measures before the turns began. The variants of hambo that are danced today, with so-called dalsteg (dal step) on the first two measures, was probably spread in the 1910s and 1920s.

Another potential origin is hambo-polska. From about the middle of the 19th century until the beginning of the 20th centory hambo-polska was a very popular dance in parts of Sweden. Printed music exist for maybe a thousand hambo-polskor from this period. The title in printed music can however often be just polska. Hambo-polska, the dance and the music, is a mix between an older polska and newer dance like hambo without dalsteg and no particular stress on the first beat. Music is mostly in major. One theory is that the younger men who worked in the bigger town adopted their steps to new trends in the towns or did not learn the older dance but the younger women who still worked in the old villages kept the steps from an older polska.

The very common use of accordion as the dominant instrument for dancing music 1910 - 1957 was probably one of the reasons for more stress on the first beat in hambo.

Trekarlspolska ("Dance of the Three Guys") in which one fellow tries to flirt with every woman he sees. And the second dance appropriately called the Oxdans shows what can happen when a man wants all the girls to himself!

                  Oxdans