Singing correctly in Norwegian

For more than a decade, St. Olaf Professor of Music Dan Dressen has been collecting Nordic songs for St. Olaf’s music library in Northfield, Minn. making a little-known repertoire available to singers piece by piece. He explains that a great number of Norwegian song composers are virtually unknown to American singers, and while the name of Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg is familiar to many, only “about a dozen [of Grieg’s roughly 170 songs] are heard in this country with any kind of regularity.” While Dressen’s collection helps connect singers with unfamiliar material, one problem is that few people are familiar with the Norwegian language. While numerous diction resources exist for more commonly sung languages such as English,