In an extraordinary coup for music-loving CEO Caroline Downer, Tuggeranong Arts Centre will soon host a Norwegian super-group – the first in its new collaboration with the Sydney Opera House’s Utzon Chamber Music Series.

The super-group, Morten Qvenild on piano and electronics, Mats Eilertsen on double bass and electric bass and Håkon Stene on percussion, vibraphone, electronics, is led by leading contemporary Hardanger fiddle exponent Benedicte Maurseth, also a noted writer, theatre artist and composer.

Hardanger fiddle? Originally a 17th-century instrument, it’s similar to the violin, but with eight strings, four of which are “sympathetic”, meaning they create extra resonance and possibilities for chordal playing. 

Maurseth has toured internationally and composed for the Kronos Quartet, Prague Music Ensemble, Ensemble neoN, Marvel Studios and Norway’s National Theatre.

A prolific writer as well, her solo album Hárr was named by The Guardian as one of the 10 best folk albums in the world in 2022. That and her book Fiddlesisters, about female fiddlers, won her the Folkelarm Award and the SFF Prize for contributions to Norwegian folk music.

When I reach her by phone in Norway, Maurseth speaks of how her new album Mirra draws on the sound and movement of reindeer.

“I approach reindeer with imagination,” she tells me, dismissing any Christmas clichés and Rudolf jokes while reminding me that her new recording, Mirra, quite literally refers to the reindeer’s movement in circles.

The title track for her new record is partly based on the actual sounds that reindeer make, which she describes to me as “a really deep, grunting sound, the noise of licking and the sound of their hooves, even on the soft snow”.

“Mirra refers to how reindeer move in circles  – the deep grunting sounds they make, the licking, even the rhythm of their hooves on soft snow.”

In an ancient Hardanger dialect, Mirra describes how reindeer run together in a circling pattern, both to keep warm and to ward off predators.

The word was also used to describe a time when reindeer “teemed” in large numbers in Maurseth’s home area of Eidfjord in Hardanger, located on the shore of the Eid Fjord, about 150 kilometres east of Bergen. 

“These animals have lived there for thousands of years – they are incredible.” 

Her album blends natural rhythms with minimalist  and traditional textures, and repertoire we’ll be hearing in Canberra will be largely music from Mirra, but she is quick to remind me that its compositional and performance style has its roots in traditional music, “so it will be pleasing to the ear”.

Maurseth is well known for her work in the theatre, so I confess with some timidity that my knowledge of Norwegian theatre is based on having directed two plays by Henrik Ibsen.

“Ibsen is a good start,” she says generously, telling me how she has worked with Norway’s Nobel Laureate Jon Olav Fosse for many years –  she calls him “our contemporary Ibsen”.

“I played while he reads,” she says. “His writing, with its repetitions, commas and small variations, is just like Hardanger fiddle music.”

Polar Night and Midnight Sun, Tuggeranong Arts Centre, November 25.