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When I started at Nationen in the autumn of 2002, I signed articles in the same newspaper as Hans Rotmo did for a period. I was proud of it. I still am.
Rotmo left quickly, due to what we might call artistic disagreements. Rotmo had just found success with the album and play Bønder i solnedgang. A folk comedy about the aftereffects of social welfare, as Rotmo himself put it. Not all readers, and certainly not everyone in the agricultural house in Schweigaardsgate, liked the farmer’s jest, or titles like “Mother Earth is a junkie”.
Rotmo loved it, as he loved all bourgeois ire. The album “Vårres jul,” with songs about drinking, hell, and motorcycle repairs in the church, caused outrage in 1980. Only ten years later did the album resonate, featuring perhaps the most beautiful Advent song from rural Norway.
When young Rotmo arrived at the university in Blindern in the early 70s, it was as if the Beatles had met manager Brian Epstein: Everything fell into place. Rotmo sensed European radicalism, formed Vømmøl Spellemannslag, and made it Norwegian through the dualism of “vømmøl” and “porcelén”:
Vømmøl is small-scale farming, periphery, tradition, equality, self-sufficiency, and silence close to the earth, as colleague Hans Børli put it. Porcelén represents progress, industrialization, central governance, village cities, consumerism, fashion and trends, capitalism.
It resonated. The debut album “Vømmøl’n” stayed on the VG list for 49 weeks.
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Over the next 20 years, Rotmo was everywhere – with band projects Arbeidslaget and Heimevernslaget, and the solo project Ola Uteligger, books, and plays. He is mentioned in the triumvirate of trønder rock, alongside Åge Aleksandersen and Terje Tysland, but there was more folk than rock in Rotmo’s music.
He sang about Falkberget’s An-Magritt, who wondered “why some are poor and some are rich, and who decided it should be this way.” Tender tones about the last spring of Vømmøldalen, threatened by a great, great sea and power development. Wild songs about festivity, and waking up the next day with Tina and Mina in bed, “and at the foot of the bed lay the dog Jo.”
I had the experience of a reunited Vømmøl Spellemannslag on a slightly grumpy early June evening in the 2000s. The fog from Verdalselva, mixed with the scent of rain-soaked wool and moonshine, hung heavy over 3-4000 in the amphitheater.
They received four adult gentlemen as legends before the band rattled clumsily away with mandolin, lurk, and bass. Up front by the stage, a guy pulled a dead fox out of his old Bergans jacket and waved it in the air. In rhythm. In respect.
The respect vanished when Rotmo in 2015 called Muslim immigration to Europe pollution. Muslims will take over because the birth control pill hinders reproduction in Europe, said Rotmo, thus angering liberals, feminists, and immigrants alike. Rotmo drew parallels to European immigration that destroyed Native American culture, without calming tempers.
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In recent years, Rotmo toured with songs from his two Christmas albums. With his newly recruited Vømmøl Spellemannslag, he was to perform at the 50th anniversary of the Vømmølfestival. That did not happen. Cancer had taken its toll.
He received the Spellemannprisen, the Nord-Trøndelag County Cultural Prize, and the LO Culture Prize. I suspect that Rotmo would rather have the prize he receives when people gather for festive occasions in the countryside of Central Norway – and elsewhere in the country where people believe that where there is plow, there should be plow. Rotmo has written their festive music and their protest songs.
This Christmas, the Christmas party at my community center will again be interrupted by a burly guy who stands up at the table and starts a deep, drawn-out “iiii…” Then the rest of the hall will join in, as one voice: “In Vømmøladala there was a gang, hey for jussibassi jussibassi jom…”
I don’t know where the atheist Hans Rotmo is, but I like the thought that he will be listening.
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