Andreas Tophøj and Rune Barslund are musical storytellers. Like the bearers of sagas in their own Scandinavian culture and the bards and seanachies of the Gaelic tradition, this fiddle and accordion duo from Denmark record events in their melodies. The story behind their own journeys to becoming one of Denmark’s leading trad music units, with honours including Track of the Year at the Danish Folk Awards 2012 for their The Danish Immigrant EP and Andreas’s nomination for Artist of the Year title at the same awards in 2015,reveals quite different engagements with the music. While Rune grew up with Danish traditional music from early childhood and took up the accordion at the age of six, Andreas didn’t become aware of folk music until his mid-teens. Andreas had begun playing classical violin at the age of nine and had just made the decision to take up guitar instead when he went along to a class Danish fiddler Harald Haugard was teaching. “I think the main reason I was attracted to the music was the social aspect,” says Andreas. It was when Andreas was living in Odense that he and Rune first met. Soon afterwards, Rune left to study Irish music for a year in Limerick, where he came under the tutelage of Derek Hickey, from De Dannan, and took whistle lessons from Thomas Johnston, says Andreas. “But he only attended the first semester, after which he stayed on because he loved the music and spent the rest of the time in a freezing cold house and playing sessions in local pubs, he added”.

At the same time Andreas was across the Atlantic, playing old-time American music and bluegrass in Boston. Then a further period of first-hand study took Rune to Finland, adding another influence to the music he and Andreas make as a duo. “Our travels have definitely had an impact on the way we play,” says Rune. “It can be a challenge playing in a duo because you’re really quite exposed, compared to say in a trio or quartet, but it’s also easier to improvise, be spontaneous. It certainly keeps us on our toes.” These days they tend to playdown the exact origins of the duo as too prosaic for their credentials as storytellers, preferring the equally true angle of becoming friends through playing together in informal sessions. The music they play–mostly self-penned compositions, and some traditional tunes too–may come from a variety of sources but there’s a unifying quality in everything they work into their repertoire. “It has to be a good tune,” says Rune. “If you have a strong melody it’s easier to create a good arrangement but if the melody isn’t so strong, the arrangement can become contrived as you try to compensate.

So, the melody is all-important.” And the story? “The story is important, too,” says Andreas, adding that ultimately he and Rune are entertainers and communicators–musically and verbally. “Sometimes it can be more entertaining to tell a lie,” he says. “And just as the music will change subtly and spontaneously, from performance to performance, so will the story. I think the audience know when to trust us 100% and when to suspect we’re not being entirely truthful. And if not, it gives them something to talk about in the car on the way home”.

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