A shifting cast of Swedes and Finns have produced five albums' worth of Nordic musical delicacies influenced by traditional sounds and instruments but updated with the latest electronics. They've also, in turn, influenced other Nordic bands such as Garmarna. The results are often delightfully unusual, deeply beautiful, and pretty tough sounding for folk music. As the notes say, "you can both headbang and stagedive very well to folk music." Mind-bendingly good in this concentrated, greatest hits format. If you like Garmarna, you cannot pass this up.

1. Varttina-style full-on vocal harmonies and a bit of joik vocalizing carried by a funky electro-bass and sweet fiddle
2. A delightful new track, albeit too brief, taking in some ska rhythms and sassy rapping
3. Techno with great harmonizing
4. More acoustic and more backwoodsy than previous tracks but still edgy
5. Insistent, repeating rhythmic foundation and wonderful flute
6. The roots of the folk-singing style employed here had been locked away in Russia for a half-century; Hedningarna seem delighted to re-embrace this ancient influence on Finnish culture
7. Doing without vocals for a bit, the group gets down with a stripped down fiddle-driven tune
8. Another new tune, this one based on a rockist-bagpipe axis, with a helping of fun vox
9. A folk dance instrumental
10. Featuring joik singer Wimme, this song is more somber and wistful
11. Starting in with some (comically) heavy guitar chords, this older rockist-bagpipe track doesn't work as well as track 8; bonus wanky guitar solo and (fake?) crowd cheering it on
12. Jolly, fast polka
13. Stately slow progression; love the trrrrilled "rrrr"s
14. Slow, with drawn-out vocals, like sweet taffy; nasty guitar noise though
15. Techno-folk, with accent on the folk
16. Minimalist, slow, and pretty
17. Slower, with a busy arrangement - lots of different themes at once
18. The lone song here from their first album, this is perhaps a good taste of the source folk material as this track is totally acoustic, very quiet, and very traditional; perhaps it was pre-"big idea" of jazzing up the traditional sound