Danheim is a Danish one man band born in 2016 by an idea of the musician and multi-instrumentalist Mike Olsen. Since 2016 Olsen created and recorded mainly electronic and ambient music, but he’s moved towards the nordic folk music as a consequence of a strong bond with his origins and an interest in Norse mythology.

Olsen gave birth to a nordic folk with clear electronic peculiarities, keeping the nuances he usually used in the previous genres. The main feature you find in all Danheim albums is the constant use of percussions, more present than the projects previously treated. This makes the nordic folk music more lively in comparison with the one of Wardruna, Forndom and Söderberg which is more intimate and meditative. The constant use of percussions refers to the many battles of the ancient Viking people and the music is made more by events than harmonies because of the poor harmonic and melodic imprint in the songs. The artist himself describes his songs as the darkest side of the Viking period, adding a lively imagination… it must be an appropriate description, because you can feel darkness in every single work of Danheim and he could even create tension in some cases.

Up to 2022, Danheim’s discography consists of 8 full-lengths, in addition to several singles, all this in a relatively short time which indicates that the musician has his ideas quite clear. However, it must be said that everything turned out to be less diverse than the works of the other three projects, a range of colours… it’s like an interrupted speech with the previous album, taken up by the new one as a kind of continuity.

Nothing has been missed at Olsen, in fact in 2019 he also helped to the soundtrack of some episodes of the series “Vikings”, despite his intense activity in studio.
There’s something curious regarding his discography, all his work is available in streaming and in mp3 format, but you won’t find anything in CD except some limited copy created by him in CDr format (that means independently printed on a recordable compact disc); there’s therefore little physical market for Olsen, but rather a strong and very well organized digital identity.

Olsen often collaborates with other artists for his works, all of them active in nordic folk music. One example is Sigurboði Grétarsson, the Icelander multi-instrumentalist Kvæðamaðr who is in charge of the project; we can find him in three tracks of “Mannavegr” dated 2017, which is the first album of Danheim. After that we find him on “Fridr” and on “Runagaldr”, both dated 2018. Other valuable involvements in Olsen’s discography are Jonathan Barendsma, who is a German producer and singer, the leader of the Gealdýr project and on the album “Hringrás” dated 2019 and Janus Pedersen, founder of Heldom, interesting nordic folk project, even him from Denmark.
Surely Danheim’s discography must be listen to, at least because you completely feel yourself into a dimension made by ancient nordic rituals and Olsen is able to create them with great skill and he’s very good at carrying the listener.

Ends here this brief but intense roundup of notions regarding the main four nordic folk projects.
We invite you to listen to the music we’ve been talking about, do not restrict yourself on reading only, because it’s quite useless.
Remember, curiosity leads to knowledge, listen, listen and listen again! Even if you don’t know these names or you know them only a bit because they don’t “sound famous” or you don’t find them in the channels you usually follow, it doesn’t absolutely mean they can transmit amazing emotions… or, on the other hand, you don’t really like them, but at least you’ve listened to them and you’re able to say this with awareness.