DUG046
Jul på Sunnmørsk
Nokre ler og nokre gret
Artist: Jul på sunnmørsk
Album title: Nokre ler og nokre gret
Label: Dugnad rec
Catalog number: DUG046 (+DUG013 on side C/D)
Release: 3rd December 2023
Formats and pricing:
- LPx2, gatefold with booklet from €18
Shipping:
- From Norway to Norway
- From Slovenia to EU and rest of the world
Press
Nokre ler og nokre gret is a mature and wide-ranging album that marks the 10th anniversary of Jul på Sunnmørsk. As the title suggests — Some Laugh and Some Cry — the album moves between humour and melancholy, playfulness and gravity. It reflects the emotional complexity of the Christmas season, making room for longing and joy, togetherness and loneliness, tradition and change.
The songs revolve around Christmas as a lived experience: not as a polished fantasy, but as something shaped by weather, memory, family, food, longing, exhaustion, warmth, and belonging. Several of the lyrics bring forward details many will recognise from coastal Norwegian Christmases, where festive ideals are often accompanied by rain, practical realities, and a certain understated humour. The result is an album that embraces both tenderness and irony, lightness and depth.
The material also opens space for contemplation and nostalgia. Alongside playful and humorous moments, the album touches on the more fragile sides of the season: what it means to miss someone, to feel outside of tradition, or to hold on to rituals that connect us to place and history. In this way, Nokre ler og nokre gret becomes an album about emotional contrasts as much as Christmas itself.
The musical expression is equally varied, combining reinterpretations, original material, and renewed traditional sources into a unified whole. The album feels spontaneous and alive, while also carrying a stronger sense of depth and reflection than before. It is a record that celebrates the playful and the unpretentious, while allowing room for resonance, vulnerability, and stillness.
With Nokre ler og nokre gret, Jul på Sunnmørsk presents a Christmas album that is both warm and distinctive: a record where laughter and sorrow coexist, and where the season is allowed to appear in all its contradictions.
“We would like to thank everyone who has faithfully come to our concerts over the past ten years. Many thanks to presenters, collaborators, and all those we have worked closely with for so many years. Because of you, we have been able to carry on this beautiful Christmas tradition year after year.
Special thanks to the wonderful Fredrik Ingebrigtsen, who has been our regular sound engineer and always creates great working conditions for us, and to Jan Ivar Ekroll, who helped start the project and has often joined us as a guest, both on vocals and trumpet.
Many thanks to Dugnad rec for wanting to release our music. Through this project, we have met many wonderful people and made new friends. Several of you have asked for our first album, Jul på Sunnmørsk (2018), on vinyl. That is why we are pressing both albums for this double vinyl release.”
Artist bio
Jul på sunnmørsk is a Christmas music project created by musicians from Sunnmøre on the west coast of Norway. United by a shared love of music, their home region, and the spirit of Christmas, the band reimagines old and new, familiar and lesser-known holiday songs in vibrant Sunnmøre dialect.
At the heart of the project is a playful, inventive approach to both language and arrangement. Vocalist Siril Malmedal Hauge not only sings in dialect, but reshapes the lyrics to reflect the textures of a true Sunnmøre Christmas: the beauty, the nostalgia, and the sometimes amusingly typical details of the season. In Jul på Sunnmørsk’s world, “Let It Snow” becomes “There’s no snow, only sleet and rain,” and winter romance is filtered through coastal weather, local humour, and Norwegian Christmas traditions like crisp pork crackling, pinnekjøtt, and the scent of the Christmas tree.
Musically, the band combines warmth, virtuosity, and spontaneity, moving freely between jazz, folk influences, and richly imaginative reinterpretations of Christmas classics. Their repertoire also includes original material, such as Siril Malmedal Hauge’s “Sju slag,” as well as Norwegian adaptations like Joni Mitchell’s “River,” reimagined as “Elv av is.” The project has also explored local folk traditions, drawing on melodic variants from the Sunnmøre region found in the folk music archives in Volda, further deepening the idea of what “Jul på Sunnmørsk” can be.
Since releasing their debut album in 2018, Jul på Sunnmørsk has received glowing press and built a devoted audience through concerts filled with humour, energy, and musical joy. The album was praised internationally for its “wildly inventive jazz interpretations of Christmas classics,” was named the best Christmas album of 2018 by records.christmas, and has been featured on NRK radio and television. With sold-out and warmly received performances across Norway, Jul på Sunnmørsk has established itself as a distinctive and much-loved holiday tradition: unpretentious, playful, and deeply rooted in both place and musical craft.
Credits
Lyrics, vocals, flute - Siril Malmedal Hauge
Harmonica, accordion - Sondre Ferstad
Piano, Rhodes, Wurlitzer, clavinet, synthesizer - Kjetil Jerve
Double bass, percussion - Martin Morland
Drums, percussion - Henrik Lødøen
Recording, mix - Dag Erik Johansen, Athletic Sound
Mastering - Mattias Fridell
Cover art and design - Henrik Koppen
Henrik / Kjetil / Siril / Sondre / Martin
