As well as playing songs on my ukulele on Friday evening, I encountered an instrument I wasn’t familiar with: a nyckelharpa. This is a Swedish “keyed fiddle”, quite different to a regular fiddle and nothing at all like a harp.

The instrument is suspended round the players neck on a strap, so it sits like a guitar, but it is played with a bow. You can’t lean over to look closely at your fingers or you risk poking yourself in the eye! There are four main strings, that seemed to sit round about the range of a viola. Rather than pushing them onto a fingerboard, you “stop” them by pressing keys which lift pegs, shortening the vibrating length of the string and raising the pitch. In addition, there are a set of thinner resonant strings (an extra 12 on this instrument, I think). Those aren’t directly stopped at all but resonate depending on which notes are being played on the main strings, giving a reverb effect.

I don’t think it is an instrument I’d seek out to add to my collection but I’d be very happy to come across more of these in future and get to play along side them.