THE HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE NYCKELHARPA
From Sören Åhker's book "Bygg Sveriges Nationalinstrument" (Build Sweden's National Instrument). He also sells everything you need to make one yourself. If you would rather buy an instrument ready made than build one, Sören is the man to call. His website is highly recommended!
We are familiar with fifteen depictions dating from the Middle Ages of instruments which are believed to be nyckelharpas. The oldest image, dating from 1350, is in Källunge church on Gotland. Two representations of nyckelharpas have been found in a Danish church, one in Skåne in and yet another in Medelpad. All other identified and preserved images are located in Uppland.
The oldest preserved nyckelharpa we know of is dated 1526. It is in the Zorn Museum in Mora. It is a single harpa, or enkelharpa, with one melody string and no resonance strings. In the beginning the Mora harpa had twelve keys in a row and two drone strings which sounded constantly from the bow action. This harpa was constructed with separate curved sides. Building with separate curved sides seems to have disappeared during the 1600s. The building method which survived involved hollowing out a block of wood and making the bottom, sides, neck and pegboard all out of one piece. Most likely, both construction methods were in use during the Middle Ages, but only the latter method survived into the 20th century. It is interesting to note that the older abandoned construction method of separate sides and bottom is now the favored method.
Two nyckelharpas from the 1600s have been preserved, one from Finland and one from Norway. Both are so called mixture harpas, which means that an additional string lies next to the melody string and that every key has two tangents. There are two drone strings in addition to the aforementioned strings.
Resonance strings were introduced to Scandinavia during the 1600s. These are underlying strings that do not come in contact with the bow hairs. Resonance strings increase an instrument¹s sound by vibrating in sympathy when a corresponding note is played on a melody string.The contra-drone harpa, or kontrabasharpa, was developed during the 1700s. An additional melody string was added and positioned such that the two melody strings were on opposing sides with the bass and drone strings in the middle. Similar to previous models this new string also had a row of keys and each key was furnished with two tangents.
The early 1800s saw changes in the mixture harpa. By selectively removing a tangent or two, a player varied the chords created when pushing in two keys at the same time. The instrument was equipped with a second row of keys placed below the first row. This was ground breaking innovation and a big step toward the development of the modern harpa. The silver-drone harpa, or silverbasharpa, was born. However the name silverbasharpa was not used until Mats Wesslén decided to use a silver wound bass string. Other experimental harpa types were also developed, combinations of earlier described models, for example the contra-drone-mixture harpa and contra-drone harpa with double-key mechanism.
In 1925 a nyckelharpa player by the name of August Bohlin paved the way for our modern chromatic nyckelharpas (which can be played in any key). He developed a third row of keys, whose tangents affected the G string. In the 1940s Eric Sahlström further developed Bohlins harp type into the modern chromatic harpa. Today there are also nyckelharpas with four rows of keys, but these have not gained wide acceptance. It is Eric Sahlström's type that is most commonly played. For those interested in furthering their knowledge, two excellent sources are "Nyckelharpan" by Jan Ling and "Nyckelharpsfolket" by Gunnar Ahlbäck.
Click here for The American Nyckelharpa Association's web site