Peggy Larson demonstrated kulokk — a traditional Norwegian method of calling in livestock using song. (Photo by Denise Lana)
The Norwegian practic of kulokk stands in stark contrast to the monosyllabic calls many Midwest farmers use to call in their herds from the fields.
Peggy Larson, who demonstrated the melodious method of cattle calling during this year’s Nordic Fest, said the use of elaborate songs to bring cows, goats and other animals down from the mountains dates back to the Middle Ages in Norway. Teenage farm girls in Norway would take herds to higher mountain pastures for grazing in summer months, according to a piece Larson authored in 2017 for The Norwegian Ameriocan Magazine. “They had high voices that could be heard by animals up to 3 miles away,” Larson said. “Some of the songs had no words and were just melodies, but other songs called the animals out by their names.”
She said the girls would sometimes stay with the herds on the mountain for up to three months and make cheese and butter while tending the herds. The kulokks were also sometimes sung to keep predators away, Larson said, as Norway’s mountains were teeming with wolves and bears and some feared folklore creatures such as trolls and huldra — trolls which lived under the grass in the mountainside and appeared as beautiful women to lure farmers to their doom.
“When it was time for the cattle to be milked and to rest for the evening, each girl used her own musical call to bring them in,” Larson said. “There were many girls around the mountaintops with their herds, and each herd knew the call of their own mistress.”
Larson, herself a globally accomplished jazz singer and voice teacher, studied kulokk in preparation for her master’s thesis and, in 2007, she traveled to Norway to immerse herself in the culture and research kulokk firsthand. When she arrived back in the states and found herself traveling in Wyoming, Larson decided she was going to try her hand at kulokk. She stopped along a wide Wyoming field and began calling to a herd from the road — her powerful falsetto chant swirling on the wind.
“Before long, one turned and started walking towards me,” Larson said. “Soon, the whole herd was gaping at me from across the fence.”
Larson hosted kulokk classes at Vesterheim Museum in Decorah last year and has demonstrated her skill during the 2023 and 2024 Nordic Fest celebration. She performed for audiences both Friday and Saturday during this year’s festival, including a kulokk titled “Hoyre du Mann” — or “Hear This Man.” The herding song tells the tale of a huldra who tells a farmer to get out of bed, get dressed, take his gun from the wall and shoot birds, warning him to not harm her, lest he be cursed with bad luck for the rest of his life.
As gloom and doom as some of the lyrics may have been, most kulokk melodies were as enchanting and sweet as the Nordic countryside. Larson also performed a more ethereal example and translated the Norwegian lyrics.“She is saying, ‘Let’s go, cows,’ and then she calls them by name, and she says, ‘you’ll be happy to come home with us,’” Larson told her audience.When traditional farming began dying out in the 1950s, the tradition of kulokk almost died out with it. As Larson described, the hippy culture of the 1970s revived the organic farming movement and breathed new life into the nearly extinct kulokk traditions. The singing of songs to herd animals became popular once again, but this time around, farmers started recording the calls because, according to Larson, people who heard them would stop what they were doing because the calls were so beautiful. “Archivists began to record the calls in the 1970s,” Larson said. “There are many samples in the Oslo and Valdres Folk Music Archives. Several Norwegian folk and jazz singers also performed kulokk.”
Kulokk has become so popular in recent times that Larson has been invited to host numerous workshops, lectures and demonstrations across the United States, including her sessions at Vesterheim. She has lived in Europe — mainly Amsterdam, the Netherlands — for 26 years, where she was a jazz singer and jazz and world music choir director. Larson taught voice at the Rotterdam and Arnhem Conservatories of Music, and she led the vocal groups Tamam and Peggy’s Angels. She taught at McNally Smith College of Music in St Paul Minnesota for 10 years and retired in 2015.
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