Actually I love to listen to Windir’s “Journey to the end”. It’s quite an epic song with so much to discover every time I listen to it. The original version sounds like this:

And there are – of course – some good covers out there.

One I really like is from Tordenskrall:

I think especially the technoid background gives it a special kick

And there is a piano cover I just discovered. Very amazing although it’s too short

Everytime I listen to this song I imagine myself somewhere in the Norwegian wilderness walking some place I will live in peace without the disturbances of the modern civilization. Thanks Valfar for this wonderful peace of music!

So many emotions in this song. And what an amazing performance:

Ola Nordal was so nice to translate the Norwegian lyrics into English. Many thanks for that

This is the village Sogndal in the Sogn district in Google Maps.

Größere Kartenansicht

As a fan of Windir I am very curious what are the other members doing after the death of Terja Bakken.
I discovered several bands which band members are living in the Sogndal. Some of them have nothing in common with Windir except the location.
Vreid I already mentioned. But there is more.
Mistur is one of those not-Windir-related bands. They are doing kind of melodic black metal as it’s best. They will release their first full album at August, 29th 2009. I can hardly wait… until then MySpace has to do it’s best
In Cor Scorpii two former Windir members are doing a great journey around melodic black metal. The influence of classic music is very well adopted to their music. They released their first full album in March 2008.
Sigtyr is a one-man-project. His music is very mystic and of course it’s metal So far he released (together with guest members) 3 demos. I can hardly wait for a full album

And one non-metal related project comes from this valley. Highslide JS it’s product is called. The idea of Thorstein Hønsi was to develop a tool where you can view large images to a thumbnail without popping up a pop-up or by reloading the page. Highslide JS works in almost every browser (only the paleozoic browsers are not fully supported) and there are a lot of descriptions how to implement it in several web-related softwares. I love it and implemented it in several websites I constructed.

I love this band. Do I have to say more?

Hvall, Steingrimm and Sture are known from their former band with Valfar, Righ and Strom. The three first mentioned guys founded with Ese the band Vreid (something like wrath) after the tragic death of Valfar.
The style of their music is hard to describe. It is not black metal in the sense of anti religious lyrics. It is not death metal in the sense of lyrics about death. It is not progressive metal like that kind from Enslaved. It is too hard for that. It is of course no pagan metal. The lyrics are far too actual for that kind of music. I guess it is some kind of ANSM. Anti national socialism music.
The topic of their songs is mainly about war and the resistance in Norway against those fucking bullshit nazis. Do I hate those zero-brain suckers.
I love the song “Speak Goddamnit” because of its strong lyrics and its well tuned music. The camera work is too static and Hvall is hardly to see. But the song remains amazing.

You can also listen to the song on the myspace site of Vreid.
I can hardly wait to see them live at Inferno Festival in Oslo

The music of Windir is amazing. I loved it since I discovered this disbanded black metal combo. It is so sad that Valfar † died too young. I wonder what more ingenious music they would have produced.
Nevertheless I discovered an Interview with Valfar on youtube which I have to share. But beware: black metal music in the background and the language is Norwegian which means most of you won’t understand what’s spoken but you will get the scent of it

Careful, this is about Metal.
I love Enslaved right from the first time I listened to their music. It’s hard to sort their music to one metal style. I guess it is something inbetween of Black Metal and Progressive Metal. Anyhow their music sounds unique IMHO.
One song of them I love especially is Path to Vanir. The song is about a dying person who is waiting for his death and to meet the gods of Vanir. The video is obviously made during winter

The only bad thing about this song is, it is too short. Nevertheless especially the last 50 seconds are truly amazing. I could listen to this part over and over again.

A couple of days ago I discovered the amazing band Windir from Norway. Unfortunately the band doesn’t exist anymore. The band vanished in late 2004 when the singer of Windir Terja “Valfar” Bakken died at the age of 25. The rest of the band didn’t have the strength and wanted to leave the band Windir in respect of Valfar.

The band was and still is pretty unknown and something like a insider’s tip. I liked the music right from the start. That reminds me of Arcturus. I liked the music from them right from the start too and bought all the albums. But in the case of Windir this is pretty hard. The two demo tapes are not sold by any shop (as far as I know).

The song Immortality from the demo album Sogneriket is amazing. They released this demo album when Valfar was 16 or 17. When I think back what I did in this age I remember only crap but nothing creative.

I wonder what Windir would be if Valfar did not die… better not think about that :s