Faroese instruments:
72.
"Látipípa" made of a marsh marigold (0:24)
73. Goose feathers
(Wilhelmina Larsen from Dalur blowing) (0:27)
74. Fjaðurlás (lit. "Feather
lock") (0:39)
75. Snurra (lit.
“Spinner”) (0:35)
72.
"Látipípa" made of a marsh marigold (0:24) 
Recorded by Kári Sverrisson in Saltangará, 11 August 1999.
Recording of sounds
from a látipípa, which I made out of a marsh marigold stem and leaf one fine
summer's day in 1999. With a fingernail, you cut a narrow slit, perhaps two
centimeters long, somewhere down the stem. You then blow through the end that
has been growing in the ditch or stream bank. Some people pluck off the leaf.
Wilhelmina Larsen says that she remembers how, when she was a little girl in
Skálavík, the idea was to have as many látipípur as possible in your mouth at
once and to get them all to sound. In such a case, there really isn't room for
all those leaves.
There is another type of látipípa also
made out of a marsh marigold stem and leaf. You make sure that the stem is open
at both ends. You then chew one end flat with your teeth, put it into your
mouth and blow (on that end). This produces a completely different sound from
the one on this recording. It resembles more the sound produced on a goose
feather (no. 73 on disc 2).
Something common to both of the látipípur
and the grass stem is that the sound of these pipes was said to foretell rain.
“To blow for rain" is a fairly common expression. Older people especially
often became angry with children who went around blowing on these things in the
midst of the haying (as in this case).
73. Goose feathers
(Wilhelmina Larsen from Dalur blowing) (0:27)
Recorded by Kári Sverrisson in Tórshavn, 4 November 1999.
You make a látipípa from a goose feather
by cutting off the entire quill of a reasonably large wing feather. You then
have a piece of quill that is open at one end and closed at the other. You make
a small lateral cut a centimeter or more away from the open end, and then
continue cutting down towards the closed end, stopping a centimeter or so from
the end itself, thus creating a reed. Now the pipe is finished. You put the
closed end in your mouth and blow. If the pipe works, it produces a shrill
bagpipe-like sound. Which is quite natural, because this reed is just the same
as the reeds (made of various materials - bamboo is common) which are used in
many European bagpipes and other reed-blown instruments from for instance North
Africa. Wilhelmina, here blowing on three goose feathers at once, explains that
it was just the same with goose feathers as with the other látipípur; you tried
to blow with many feathers in your mouth at once, in order to make as big a
sound as possible.
The same type of instrument was also
cut from straw (this is possibly the látipípa to which Sigmundur í Lon from
Nólsoy refers, nr. 48 on disc 2). This was done in the autumn, when the barley
was cut.
74. Fjaðurlás (lit. "Feather lock")
(0:39)
Recorded by Kári Sverrisson at Argir, 29 April 2000.
The feather lock is
made from goose feathers, which are put together into a quadrangle. In the
middle of this quadrangle a small cross is spinning around a thinner stem, for
instance a sewing needle.This cross spins, when you blow in the feather, which
has a hole, that points to the cross. There are various ways to make feather
locks.
75. Snurra
(lit. “Spinner”) (0:35)
In his book “Føroysk
barnaspøl” (Faroese children’s games), Bókaforlagið Grønalíð, Tórshavn 1979,
Marius Johannesen writes like this about the ‘snurra’:
“The snurra is the flat tendon disc on each
side of the vertebrae, which, when they become oblique, cause, what we with a
modern word call ‘slipped disc.’ We use the disc of a pilot whale.
Two holes are made in
the middle of the ‘snurra’ , and a thread about 80 cm long is threaded
through the holes and tied together.
Now you take the curve of the threads on each thumb, you twist the thread and when you pull carefully, the twist is
undone while the ‘snurra’ spins another twist the other way and like this, you
may continue as long as you like.”
It is Jónheðin Tróndheim, who first blew in
the feather lock and then pulled the ‘snurra’.
76. Blades of grass (1:07)
Recorded by Kári Sverrisson in Saltangará, 21 March 1999.
On this track we hear a recording of
sounds produced with a few blades of grass. Like the sound of the látipípa,
this sound is sometimes heard in the summer, and practically everyone has tried
playing this easily accessible instrument. The blade of grass, which should be
reasonably wide, is put between both thumbs, and then one blows down into the
opening between the thumbs. The sounds produced can be high or low, depending
on how one blows or how wide the blade of grass is. One could call this a very
primitive kind of clarinet.