Biography
Founded by former Gorgoroth drummer Einar “Kvitrafn” Selvik, the Norwegian project Wardruna crafts music that is at once beautiful, dark, and haunting, weaving strands of global folk traditions, ancient instrumentation, rock, and ambient textures into something that defies easy categorization. Rooted in Nordic heritage and performed on regionally specific tools such as deer-hide frame drums, flutes, kraviklyr, jouhikko, and goat horn, the ensemble surfaced in 2003 and has issued a series of acclaimed recordings, among them the Runaljod trilogy issued from 2009 to 2016 and centered on a sequence of ancient runes, as well as scores for the historical television drama Vikings and the video game Assassin’s Creed – Valhalla. Themes of sorcery, spirit animals, and animism shaped the multi-charting 2021 release Kvitravn, while the dialogue with the natural world continued on 2025’s Birna (“Bear”).
Selvik’s longstanding interest in Old Norse and the Elder Futhark guided the project toward predominantly ancient, sometimes self-fashioned instruments, lyrics delivered chiefly in that tongue, and raw shamanic vocals. The core trio is completed by singers Gaahl (né Kristian Espedal, likewise of Gorgoroth) and Lindy-Fay Hella. Conjuring the presence of nature and the icy gloom of a Norwegian winter evening, Wardruna’s body of work shares certain affinities with Finnish band Tenhi yet registers as older and distinctly Norse in character.
The first installment of the planned trilogy arrived in 2009 with Runaljod: Gap Var Ginnunga, an album intended, together with its successors, to encompass all twenty-four characters of the Elder Futhark. Because the runes carried magical associations and individual occult significance, Selvik often captured performances in locations tied to each symbol, occasionally under open skies. The cycle reached completion with Yggdrasil in 2013 and Ragnarok in 2016; Gaahl departed amicably the year before.
Selvik contributed his knowledge to the second season of Vikings in collaboration with composer Trevor Morris and later took an acting role on the series. In 2016 he joined Enslaved’s Ivar Bjørnson to establish Skuggsjá. Returning to Wardruna, he issued the intimate acoustic set Skald in 2018—an album whose title denotes a Viking-age “composer and reciter of poems honoring heroes and their deeds”—featuring both new solo pieces and live-in-studio renditions of earlier material. The subsequent studio album, 2020’s Kvitravn (meaning white raven, Selvik’s personal totem), explored the symbolism of sacred white animals and their spiritual attributes; it topped charts in Canada and Austria while reaching number two in Germany. A concert document, Kvitravn – First Flight of the White Raven, followed in 2021.
For a symphonic concert series in 2023, Einar Selvik joined forces with Faroese singer/songwriter Eivør and the Danish National Symphony Orchestra. A fresh cycle began the next year with the assertive single “Hertan,” leading to the six-track album Birna, a meditation on the bear as the “lost sister of the woods,” which appeared in early 2025.
Selvik’s longstanding interest in Old Norse and the Elder Futhark guided the project toward predominantly ancient, sometimes self-fashioned instruments, lyrics delivered chiefly in that tongue, and raw shamanic vocals. The core trio is completed by singers Gaahl (né Kristian Espedal, likewise of Gorgoroth) and Lindy-Fay Hella. Conjuring the presence of nature and the icy gloom of a Norwegian winter evening, Wardruna’s body of work shares certain affinities with Finnish band Tenhi yet registers as older and distinctly Norse in character.
The first installment of the planned trilogy arrived in 2009 with Runaljod: Gap Var Ginnunga, an album intended, together with its successors, to encompass all twenty-four characters of the Elder Futhark. Because the runes carried magical associations and individual occult significance, Selvik often captured performances in locations tied to each symbol, occasionally under open skies. The cycle reached completion with Yggdrasil in 2013 and Ragnarok in 2016; Gaahl departed amicably the year before.
Selvik contributed his knowledge to the second season of Vikings in collaboration with composer Trevor Morris and later took an acting role on the series. In 2016 he joined Enslaved’s Ivar Bjørnson to establish Skuggsjá. Returning to Wardruna, he issued the intimate acoustic set Skald in 2018—an album whose title denotes a Viking-age “composer and reciter of poems honoring heroes and their deeds”—featuring both new solo pieces and live-in-studio renditions of earlier material. The subsequent studio album, 2020’s Kvitravn (meaning white raven, Selvik’s personal totem), explored the symbolism of sacred white animals and their spiritual attributes; it topped charts in Canada and Austria while reaching number two in Germany. A concert document, Kvitravn – First Flight of the White Raven, followed in 2021.
For a symphonic concert series in 2023, Einar Selvik joined forces with Faroese singer/songwriter Eivør and the Danish National Symphony Orchestra. A fresh cycle began the next year with the assertive single “Hertan,” leading to the six-track album Birna, a meditation on the bear as the “lost sister of the woods,” which appeared in early 2025.
Albums
Singles
Live
