Ilja Zendman and Spike Bakker, members of the Dutch musical duo, Moro.
In a track on the band Moro’s recent album, “In Geardagum,” a bog sacrifice finds herself up to her chin in the muck. “I’m sinking,” said writer and performer, Ilja Zendman.
“There’s a lot of dying in our songs,” said her partner, Spike Bakker.
And there would be for a couple with a shared passion for medieval instruments, balladry, and the history behind it.
Moro’s new album with the Beowulf-inspired title, “In Geardagum.”
Bakker and Zendman formed the duo Moro in 2019, and released their first album this summer. The band performs folk music, covers, and their own, folk-inspired music, all with medieval instruments. “In Geardagum,” takes its title from the first sentence of the poem Beowulf. It can be translated to “in olden days,” or “days of yore.” The album covers traditional ballads like the Swedish “Herr Mannelig,” and “Villeman og Magnhild,” and original tracks like “Grendel,” but also reflects the couple’s story as Dutch reenactors who were asked back to lecture and perform at the Sutton Hoo burial site in England, after visiting as tourists with their Germanic lyres.
Bakker and Zendman caught the historical reenactment bug on a rainy day when they visited a medieval market. “We felt at home there,” Bakker said. It wasn’t long before his interest in all things musical got him into Germanic lyres, and as historic perfectionists, the couple traded their viking kit for 7th Century Anglo-Saxon garb. “We’re the only Anglo-Saxon reenactors from the Netherlands,” joked Bakker.
Moro demonstrating at the preHistorisch Dorp, pre-historic village, in Eindhoven, the Netherlands.
Moro’s musical history got interwoven with Sutton Hoo and Beowulf when the couple planned a trip to the site as tourists. Sutton Hoo is a site that derives its fame from the extraordinary Anglo-Saxon artifacts and ship burial found there in an archaeological dig in 1938. The ship and a lyre were quickly recognized as material evidence for passages from the Old English poem Beowulf.
“I had this fantasy in my head. I would love to play in front of the barrows,” said Bakker. He wrote to the British National Trust, which manages the site, and got permission. The couple soon found themselves explaining their lyres to other tourists and staff, and it wasn’t long before Sutton Hoo management asked them back for proper gigs, most recently to perform and lecture. A hit with the academic set, Bakker and Zendman have made contacts in the broader English medievalist community and have been invited to other sites. “They treat us like rock stars, but of course, we think they are the rock stars,” Bakker said.
Moro performing at Sutton Hoo this year.
“In Geardagum” is full of folk narrative. Their cover of Garmarna’s “Varulven,” or werewolf, a grisly sort of Red Riding Hood tale, is a story of a woman going to meet her lover, who is waylaid by a wolf. She tries to bargain with the wolf, offering him her shoes and other articles of clothing, but ends up devoured. “Ramund hin Unge,” is about a Danish folk hero charged with killing seven giants. Moro’s own “Grendel,” is about the man-eating ogre from Beowulf. Written with Dutch lyrics, the song has recitations from Beowulf performed by the English musician and Old English reciter, Russell Jenkins.
Zendman and Bakker write original songs in their native Dutch, but Zendman, the lead vocalist, sings all folk songs in their original languages, which, for her, are part of the stories. “I like languages. The music that we make has the languages that go with it. It’s all the pieces of the puzzle coming together,” Zendman said. Zendman is currently studying Old English so we may hear her reciting in future performances.
Zendman plays Germanic lyres on the album, mostly for rhythm and chords. She also plays background percussion. Bakker leads melodies with bowed lyres, the nyckelharpa, a fiddle with keys, or plays the lyre as well. The couple provides all lead and background vocals on the album.
Bakker and Zendman include songs inspired by the Sutton Hoo burial site as well. The instrumental “Raedwald’s Dance,” is named after the supposed nobleman who was buried in the ship burial. “Gimm,” is the Old English word for gem, in honor of “the Anglo-Saxon bling.”
The name Moro is Norwegian for “fun,” and Bakker and Zendman, for all their concern with getting historical details right, are definitely fun. They recently posted a video announcing a “Swedish classic,” only to prank viewers with a snippet from the Muppet’s Swedish Chef.
“In Geardagum,” came about almost as a joke, after Jenkins sent Zendman and Bakker a recording on which he covered one of their songs. Museum patrons may treat them like rock stars, but they don’t see themselves that way. But because they are perfectionists, what began as a lark turned into hours of recording for almost two months. Their venture produced an album with good sound and professional marketing, but they recorded it at home and print the compact discs there as well.
The sixteen tracks are lively and tuneful. Zendman’s delivery of folk lyrics is energetic and her voice has the brightness needed to carry the melodies, but also the warmth to make them satisfying. Bakker’s nyckelharpa (or other bowed lyres) is an effective instrument for carrying melodies. The backing chords or supporting melody from Zendman’s lyre playing makes for a surprisingly full sound from only two musicians. This is likewise the case when they both play lyres. The introduction of percussion definitely gives the impression of more players.
Fully half of the songs on “In Geardagum” are original works, played mostly on instruments that haven’t often seen the light of day since they were buried with kings in the Middle Ages. In addition to instruments already mentioned the album includes the bowed lyres, talharpa (tail harp), moraharpa (a keyed fiddle precursor to the nyckelharpa), and percussion instruments including hand drums, a cajon, or box drum, and the ghungroo, or angle bells. “Var nu uit” is a haunting funeral song dedicated to the man buried under mound number one at Sutton Hoo. “Het Veen” (the bog), an instrumental with spoken words over two Germanic lyres, is from the perspective of a bog body and a woman about to be a bog body, people sacrificed to peat bogs in ancient times.
Bog bodies have been dated much later than the age of the (reproduction) instruments Bakker and Zendman play, but this may be the closest the couple comes to what I imagine Anglo-Saxon poetry to have sounded like. In our interview, Bakker and Zendman both sounded frustrated that the Netherlands lacks the extant ancient poetry of England, but perhaps they are making up for this deficit themselves.
Bakker and Zendman have carved out an interesting niche as performing reenactors, particularly with their successes in England. For a folk music group that has only been active for about five years, the production of an album and regular gigs is impressive. Despite the paid gigs they occupy that middle space of performers with day jobs, and they are unusually supportive of the performers and artists they share that space with. Full disclosure, Bakker has shared lyre videos with me to help me identify how he has played a song. Of the lyre-players I have met online, Bakker and Zendman have been two of the nicest.
Moro’s music is available online and “In Geardagum” can be purchased by contacting the group through social media or by email at moromuziek@gmail.com.