Crossing Grieg: 200 Years of Music and Migration - International Edvard Grieg Conference, Bergen, 5 – 7 November 2025
The International Edvard Grieg Society (IGS), the Grieg Research Centre at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Music and Design, University of Bergen, Kode Art Museum's Composer Homes and the Grieg archive at Bergen Public Library invite music researchers to the International Edvard Grieg Conference 2025.
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In 2025, the Crossings festival commemorates the bicentennial of the first organized emigration from Norway to America. Since 1825, when the Restauration sailed from Stavanger to New York the first Norwegian emigrants were followed by almost a million people, settling in North America. Today, the Norwegian American community counts almost as many people as living in the home country, and many of them nurture their cultural heritage to cherish their origins.
This year’s conference invites contributions which take on the cultural connections between Norway, Scandinavia, and abroad, and shed light on various critical perspectives of migration and music.
- Examine the emigration of Norwegians to the USA and the footprint of Norwegian immigrants in American musical life. One of the most prominent in his time was the Norwegian virtuoso Ole Bull, but many other musicians and composers remain unknown and deserve new attention.
- Study the impression music by Grieg and other Norwegian or Scandinavian composers made in shaping international perceptions of Nordic culture, as cultural soft power and for transnational nation branding in different periods of the 19th and 20th century.
- Examine how Norwegian/Scandinavian emigrants maintained their cultural identity through music across generations; how music helped cope with nostalgia and cultural displacement; the role of heritage music in social events, religious practices, and celebrations among emigrée communities globally.
- Examine how Grieg’s or other Norwegian or Scandinavian composers’ music has been adapted or reinterpreted in film music, jazz, or rock, or other musical genres globally.
- Study the impact of musicians immigrating to Norway, bringing new impulses from outside to Norwegian musical life.
Invited speakers:
Laura Ellestad
Associate Professor, Department of Traditional Arts and Traditional Music, Faculty of Humanities, Sports and Educational Science, Campus Rauland
Randi M. Selvik
Professor emeritus, NTNU – Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Program
Wednesday 5 November
Bergen Public Library, Auditoriet
11.00 – 12.00 Registration
12.00 – 12.15 Opening and welcome note
Julie Andersland, Head of the Bergen Public Library
Daniel Øvrebø, Chair of the International Grieg Society
Monica Jangaard, Secretary of the International Grieg Society
12.15 – 12.30 Jorunn Eckhoff Færden, Norway
Short presentation of the Grieg Collection
12.45 – 13.30 Lunch break (free for active participants)
13.30 – 14.15 Keynote: Laura Ellestad, Norway
Performing Norwegian-American identity: Bygdedans and Old-Time Music in the Upper Midwest, 1900–1970.
14.30 – 14.45 Short video presentation from exhibition at Vesterheim Museum
‘Lost tunes from a Norwegian immigrant's notebooks revived by Midwest musicians. Johan Arndt Mostad (1833-1909).’ From exhibition at Vesterheim Museum: ‘Hand Me Down the Fiddle - Norwegian Fiddlers, Fiddles and Fiddle Tunes in the Upper Midwest’. Curator: Beth Rotto (USA)
14.45 – 15.15 Marla Fogderud, USA (president, IGS)
How can you forget Old Norway? – Norwegian musical influences in the Upper Midwest
15.15 – 15.45 Final discussion, Arnulf Mattes, Norway (moderator)
Migration, identity formation, and Norwegian musical heritage in the USA - past and present
15.45 – 16.00 Emigrant songs from the University Library of Bergen Special Collections
Daniel Henry Øvrebø, senior academic librarian, UiB, and Aleksander Setsås, guitar+vocals
Thursday 6 November
Gunnar Sævigs Sal, Grieg Academy
09.00 – 09.30 Registration
09.30 – 10.15 Keynote: Randi Margrete Selvik, Norway
Foreign musicians and theatre directors in Bergen in the first half of the nineteenth century and their influence in the musical life of the city.
10.30 – 11.00 Steven Luksan, USA
Leif Erikson in Seattle: Norwegian opera in the New World
11.00 – 11.30 Laura Loge, USA
The Norwegian women who migrated and the music they made
11.30 – 11.45 Coffee break
11.45 – 12.30 Wojciech Stępień, Andrzej Ślązak, Poland, Colin Levin, USA
Lecture-recital: Away from home – Songs and piano music by Scandinavian composers
12.30 – 13.00 Drue Fergison, USA/France
Edvard Grieg and America
13.00 – 13.30 Lunch break (free for active participants)
13.30 – 14.15 Øyvind Aase, Norway
Troldhaugen – as a meeting point for international musicians
14.15 – 14.45 Karina Valnumsen Hansen, Norway
Edvard Grieg’s «Spring»: language dispute, the «Nordic», and soft power
14.45 – 15.00 Coffee break
15.00 – 15.30 Margrethe Støkken Bue, Norway
Composers’ work catalogues: Terminology and contents
15.30 – 16.00 Arnulf Mattes, Daniel Øvrebø, Ulrik Bjørnstad Haug, Norway
Short presentation: Grieg and Norwegian Musical Heritage digital work catalogues
Friday 7 November
Gunnar Sævigs Sal, Grieg Academy
10.00 – 11.30 IGS General assembly
11.45 – 12.00 Sally Garden, Scotland
Film preview: Edvard & Nina Grieg in Vienna 1896-97 – The Story of Nina’s Dagbok
12.00 – 12.30 Monica Jangaard, Karina Valnumsen Hansen, Johannes Holtmon, Norway
News from the collections at KODE composer homes
12.30 – 13.15 Lunch break (free for active participants)
13.15 – 14.00 Concert with Laura Loge (sopran) and Steven Luksan (piano)
Commemorating 200 years of Norwegian Immigration to the USA
Registration for the conference:
Observing participants: Please fill in our registration form.
All applicants must pay for their own travel and accommodation. There will be a small conference fee per day (250 NKR) for registered participants, covering lunch (free for active participants).
Accomodation:
You may book a room yourself at Hotel Terminus, by sending an email to booking@zanderk.no with reference number "354323".
The price is NOK 975 per night for a single room and NOK 1175 per night for a double room. Breakfast is included.
Deadline for this price is 22 October. After this date, the hotel cannot guarantee price or availability.
Organizers:
The International Edvard Grieg Society
is a non-profit organisation, aiming to create a worldwide network of scholars, performers and music listeners who cherish the music of the Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg.
Grieg Research Centre (UiB)
The Grieg Research Centre at University of Bergen does research on Edvard Grieg's works, his historical importance and cultural relevance in the past and the present. The centre's goal is further to contribute to international research on the diverse traditions in Norwegian music succeeding Grieg and the close exchanges between regional music and international currents.
Kode Art Museums and Composer Homes
Troldhaugen, Lysøen and Siljustøl, the homes of three of Norway's greatest composers and artists through the times – Edvard Grieg, Ole Bull and Harald Sæverud – are a part of Kode Art Museums and Composer Homes. Kode is one of the largest museums for art, craft, design and music in the Nordic countries.
The Grieg Academy - Faculty of Fine Art, Music, and Design, University of Bergen
The Grieg Academy – Department of Music was established at the University of Bergen in 1995 and is now one of three departments at the Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design (KMD). Our profile is modelled on internationally recognised performing arts environments (classical, jazz, folk music), composition, music therapy, musicology and music education.
Bergen Public Library and the Grieg Archive
In 1906, ten months before his death, Edvard Grieg, together with his wife Nina, bequeathed his handwritten scores, articles, artistic correspondence, printed music and books, as well as other materials to Bergen Public Library, “on the condition that it be maintained and made accessible to the public of Bergen.” Since then, Bergen Public Library has preserved Grieg’s legacy and made it available to a wider audience through extensive digitization of the materials: Edvard Grieg Archive. Since 2012, the Grieg Archive has also been part of Norway’s Documentary Heritage (the Norwegian section of UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register).
