When you travel the globe kitted out like Viking warriors, there’s a lot of potential for misunderstanding. Just ask Heilung.
“We come with weapons. Swords, spears. They’re sharp. There are places in the world you really have to argue that these are theatre props and not meant for battle,” Maria Franz, the experimental folk group’s singer, says with a laugh from her home in Copenhagen.
“There are certain elements that we simply can’t bring. I have a human bone that I’m playing on. We have many interesting questions with this project.”
Heilung use the bones as percussion instruments; their music supersizes the pre-Christian musical traditions of northern Europe into astonishing spectacles – think Viking funeral mixed with a battle from The Lord of the Rings.
When they last played Dublin, in January 2023, it was like witnessing a pocket Ragnarök on the Liffey, with Franz as the haunting ringmaster, dressed in antlers, a shamanic cape and a head-dress inspired by the Celtic horned god Cernunnos. The good news is that they will conjure that magic all over again when they play in Ireland in April.
“We have a very weird sense of time when we perform,” says Franz, whose background is in the Danish prog-rock scene. “It feels like five minutes and an eternity at the same time. Things shift around. It is safe to say most of us go into some sort of trance.”
Heilung have tunes to rival the costumery: their 2022 single Anoana, for instance, which sounds like Kate Bush standing strong at the gates of hell, features a mesmerising droned solo played on a Norse bowed lyre.
But they see themselves as more than a band. “Heilung” means healing in old German, and their ultimate goal is to whisk the listener off to an ancient time and place, one free of social-media overload and climate-crisis angst, where communing with the natural world was part of what it meant to be human.
“There’s a whole Facebook group dedicated to people who have felt some sort of healing experience after going to our [concerts],” Franz says. “It’s heartwarming to hear, because it is the name of the project, and it is also very clearly a mission to take people on a journey – from the moment they’re entering the room to the sound of birds and the scent of incense – and guide them through all the human emotions, from love to fear to anger.
“For me, I interpret a Heilung concert into a lifespan of a human down to one hour 40 minutes, where you’re going to get thrown into this rollercoaster. And when it’s done, and the final note is clinging out, you should leave feeling more relieved than you did when you when you entered.”
That dedication to bringing the past into the present extends to reviving what is believed to be the oldest complete song known to humanity: a 3,400-year-old composition called Hymn to Nikkal. Uncovered by archaeologists excavating the royal palace of Ugarit, in northern Syria, the song – discovered complete with musical notation and tuning instructions – has been resurrected by Heilung, who include the spooky choral piece on their most recent LP, Drif.
The group’s producer and musical director, Christopher Juul, brings up Nikkal in answer to a question about their influences and whether they feel any commonality with similarly atmospheric musicians such as Dead Can Dance or even Enya. Heilung have lots of influences, he says, all long dead.
“At its core it always starts at its source material – which is a historical epoch,” he says. “It can be an actual text from our Nordic prehistory or even another place in the world. Or it can be a direct piece such as you can see with the Nikkal piece, where we have dug up an actual written-down piece of music from Mesopotamia, which is believed to be the oldest written-down piece of music. Our inspiration comes from source material – and none of them are alive today.”
As you might expect of a Germanic experimental folk ensemble who want you to connect with the universal child within, Heilung are serious about their craft. In person, Franz and Juul are earnest and not exactly brimming with banter (though Franz reveals she has learned all about the Irish housing crisis courtesy of the Blindboy podcast). But you need to be serious when it is your mission to whisk the audience off to an ancient world by essentially re-creating a pre-Christian shamanic ritual night after night.
“I feel that in the modern day and age, so many feel a lack of connection to our roots. There is a growing consciousness around finding our way back to nature – getting closer to what feels real,” Franz says.
There has never been a better moment to take that journey, she believes, pointing out that the rise of artificial intelligence is a reminder of the importance of human attachment.
“We now see the beginning of an age of questioning everything we see and hear. Is it artificially made or is it actually a person making it?” she says. “AI is becoming so good at imitating what we’re doing. A live experience with something that feels so tribal and ancient … it’s going to feel more and more important for people to connect to something like this.”
Heilung’s music “is composed with the purpose of altering your state of mind, through the use of the beats and the frequencies and the tempos and everything”, she says. “I am surprised at how large we were able to get with this project because I thought it was much more niche. In the beginning I was, like, this is going to be for a handful of people.”
Heilung began in 2014 when Franz and her partner, Kai Uwe Faust, met Juul during a Viking re-enactment in Copenhagen. Faust was a tattoo artist from a strict Christian family in rural Germany who wanted to set his poems about the ancient Norse to music. Juul, a producer and composer, agreed to supply an appropriate soundscape in exchange for tattoos. Later they invited Franz to join. In 2015 Heilung self-released their debut LP, Ofnir. It featured not only those percussive bones but also goatskin drums and a Hindu ritual bell.
Heilung do not elevate Nordic culture above other traditions, but their music does draw deeply on the musical prehistory of northern Europe. As they are no doubt aware, that legacy has sometimes been appropriated by racists. In the United States, for example, Celtic crosses and Nordic runes have been weaponised by fascists as symbols of “European” identity. Do Heilung have to be vigilant about attracting the wrong crowd?
“We keep our commentary free, as much as possible, of politics. We do have a human side,” Juul says. “We do of course advocate for unity and also that people need to take care of this planet we are walking on, right? A lot of these political ideologies you see springing up has been repeating itself through history.
“A thing you will find even in our lyrics are stories about how, for instance, the Celts were defeated by the Romans. Basically two opposite sides beating each other We … are not a comment on modern-day politics. We’re quite the contrary. What we are trying to do is to make something that unifies everyone.”
If they are political in any way it is that they believe in a shared humanity. They begin each concert with a chant: “Remember that we all are brothers.” It is an appeal for empathy and solidarity. They also believe that going back to the past can offer escapism from the challenges of the present.
“We have seen a lot of change. In Ireland, you also have a lot of change with how the church has shaped the country. A lot of what we come with talks about a time before the church. I’m pretty sure that the fascination for the symbolism and some of the folklore can be a relevant break in turbulent times,” Juul says.
“To a time before all these things changed into what it is today. Maybe there is an alternative there that can open our eyes to respecting our surroundings a little bit. If you dig down in your own culture as far back as you can go, you will find similar traits all over the planet … We believe there is something that connects us all.”
As well as the ancient weapons that they bring on the road, a big talking point with Heilung is their “warrior choir”, an ensemble of supporting singers who are of mixed gender and naked from the waist up. Nobody blinked when the dancers appeared on stage semi-nude in Dublin two years ago. (If Dubliners want to see half-naked people roaring in public they need only walk through the city centre at closing time.) But the choir provokes a stronger response in other parts of the world.
“No one is more nude than the others. Somehow people have a tendency to talk about it only if it’s [a] woman. Our first line, we always say, is we are all the same. We are all of equal value. That creates complications when a religion dictates around the planet that one gender is worth more than the other,” Juul says.
“That is something we are challenged with. We will not bow down to this. Everyone in our tribe is equal value. We don’t see that necessarily as a provocation or a political statement: it just is. I hope the world will continue feeling that too. When you, for instance, see a documentary about tribal and indigenous people, maybe in the 1980s or 1990s or whatever, I don’t think anyone sexualises that. They shouldn’t do that with us either.”
The birdsong that is the first sound you hear at a Heilung concert is more than simply an aesthetic choice. “It is also about playing on primal feelings,” Juul says. “When you’re out in nature, let’s say in the past, we were designed to look for eyes in the forest looking at us, right? We are designed to know different things around us – to sense danger but also to sense a friend.”
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To hear a bird sing, he says, is to feel safe. “These things, I believe, are very important to activate in our system, instead of just locking ourselves into a concrete building all the time. It is to be immersed in this kind of thing. And when you feel these birds, for instance, in the beginning, that can maybe give you a little bit of a home feeling, for instance. For others it can be exotic. The function is the same. We know it’s birds, so we know it’s safe when we enter this space. These are the things we are intending to amplify for you – to feel more relaxed at the end of a turbulent journey.”
