Released on Norwegian record label Hubro, Benedicte Maurseth‘s 2022 album Hárr, which won the prestigious Nordic Music Prize, drew from the silence and drama of the mountains, with the sounds of the Rock Ptarmigan, Great Snipe, and Mountain Owl granted equal billing with multi-instrumentalist Håkon Mørch Stene and bassist Mats Eilertsen. In his review of the album, Thomas Blake referred to the album’s immersive, improvisational, and uncompromising qualities, concluding that it “swells with a quiet beauty and bites with a keen experimental edge.”
Today marks the release of Simleflokk under månen, the second track from her long-awaited follow-up album Mirra, scheduled for release on August 22nd, 2025. Maurseth once again invites listeners to the vast Hardangervidda plateau, this time focusing on the wild reindeer native to her home area of Eidfjord. The album’s title, Mirra, is an old Hardanger dialect word describing the circling pattern reindeer form to stay warm and defend against predators. This new work, which continues the theme of ecosophy from Hárr, conceptually follows the reindeer’s annual cycle, sounds, and behaviour. The single “Simleflokk under månen” captures a striking moment in this rhythm. Following the autumn rutting season, the herds split; males depart, while females (simler) and their young form new groups. It is during this time that the females grow antlers to secure the best grazing for the calves they carry through winter. Maurseth imagines this scene of the female herd journeying together beneath the moonlight across the expansive, white Hardangervidda.
Talking about her new album, Maurseth shared:
“Only twice in my life have I seen wild reindeer. The first time was a large herd, probably several hundred animals. They ran tightly together with intense focus, blending almost completely into the gray-brown landscape around Dyranut on the Hardangervidda plateau. I was seven years old. Many years later, I witnessed them once again, by chance, heading east one spring day.
This, despite growing up in the mountains, at Maurset in Eidfjord, right at the base of the vast mountain plateau where I’ve wandered for years in every direction. There too, the reindeer have wandered for thousands of years. So they’ve never been far away, even though they remain elusive.
They dig through the snow with their hooves all winter to find food. They’re in constant motion, migrating. When the winter wind settles over the landscape for days at a time, the reindeer lie still and wait, without a sound. They endure fierce winds and blowing snow in their thick, well-adapted fur, up to minus forty degrees. They give birth to calves in the damp snow of spring. An hour or two later, the calf rises and runs after its mother. In summer, they flee from swarms of mosquitoes while enjoying lush birch shoots, reindeer lichen, and mushrooms. In autumn, they flee from hunters but gather again for the rutting season, before the females and males part ways once more, digging again through another white winter for nourishment.
They communicate with grunts and clicking sounds from their hooves, whether they step on wet marshland or hard ice. They live in herds, all to survive in this seemingly desolate landscape filled with rocks, glaciers, snow, rivers, heather, and moraines. This is where they belong.
Mirra continues the thread from my previous work Harr (2022), with ecosophy as its guiding stone, this time with the reindeer in the lead role. They are remarkable, beautiful creatures-but also threatened. Mainly by humans, who slowly but surely reduce their space, year by year. Unless we’re careful, the wild reindeer of Hardangervidda may disappear forever.”
Maurseth’s compositions blend the distinctive sound of her Hardanger fiddle with field recordings of wildlife, creating a unique and immersive soundscape. The music is hypnotic and repetitive, drawing inspiration from Norwegian folk traditions, American minimalism, krautrock, and free improvisation. The album’s sound was further developed in collaboration with musicians Håkon Stene (melodic percussion), Mats Eilertsen (bass and electronics), and Morten Qvenild (keyboards). In a poignant touch, the album also features guest appearances from other endangered species that coexist with the reindeer on the plateau.
Through Mirra, the listener is invited into a timeless, moonlit landscape to witness the life of these remarkable creatures. The project also serves as a critical reflection, highlighting that the wild reindeer are threatened, mainly by the slow, year-by-year reduction of their space by humans.
Pre-Order Mirra: https://maurseth.bandcamp.com/album/mirra