Hablingarnas Brudmarsch
Hablingarnas Brudmarsch is also known as a Gotländsk Brudmarsch, but not to be confused with the better known Gotlands Brudmarsch. The title means “The Bridal March of the people from Hablingbo”, a town on the island of Gotland in the middle of the Baltic Sea.
The tune is a wedding march credited to a fiddler known as Båtel Hannare. Doing my research, I was not able to get definitive information about him. But there was a fiddler in the neighborhood of Hablingbo named Båtel Johansson, who lived from 1849 to 1922. Until I learn more, I will assume that Hannare was Johansson’s nickname.
This is the second best-known wedding march from Gotland. Because of the difficulty in getting to Gotland from the mainland, Swedish fiddlers from other provinces did not mingle with Gotland fiddlers as much as those who were land-based. This is one of those tunes that did become widespread in the rest of Sweden, though.
Gotland music is more influenced by classical music styling than most Swedish fiddling. At the beginning of the 20th century a book was published, Gotlandstoner, that contained over 700 Gotland traditional tunes.
To the left is a photo of a church ruin in Visby, on the island of Gotland.