The
Revheim
Lurs
In July, 1894, people from the
Revheim farm, close to Hafrsfjord (a fiord - see map below) in
Rogaland, Norway, were digging out a ditch at a large bog called
Revheimsmyra. At the bottom of the ditch, just above the layer of
sand, they found two long bronsetubes and two smaller pieces. This
turned out to be a pair of bronze lurs as can be seen on the
picture above.
A. Grimnes, an agriculture engineer who was in the vicinity at
that time, took measures and made drawings of the ditch (a
profile) and of the find. These drawings and the lurs are now kept
at the Museum of
Archaeology, Stavanger, Norway .
The Revheim lurs are smaller than the lurs found at Brudevælte - about 1 meter
50 cm long. The tuning is in F. At Ulvkær, north on
Jutland in Denmark two lurs were found in 1988 (this is the latest
known lur findings). The Ulvkær lurs are almost the same
size as the Revheim lurs.
2 - 300 meter from the bronze-lur find, at Fluberget, there are
some rocks where rock carvings were discovered around 1870. These
carvings are probably from the same period as the pair of
lurs ( 800 B.C.)
Map of Hafrsfjord and Revheimsmyra.
Revheimsmyra
Sound samples:
In 1958 the pair
of lurs were played on by two hornplayers from Stavanger,
Franz Dørr and Georg Dørr (father and son).
3 years later in 1961, a trombone
player at the Norwegian Broadcasting Orchestra, Gunnar
Rugstad, played on the Revheim lurs .
(all samples
in
MP3 format)
Some
recent
pictures from the museum (February 2008):
The Revheim
pair of lurs at the museum
The
mouthpieces
- almost like a trombone mouthpiece in size
Rune and
Olaf outside the museum
Picture of two replicas (December
2011):
The Revheim lurs replicas made by Andy
Taylor.
(Click on the photo to see a larger image!)
Replicas
was made from drafts and photos of the Revheim lurs in 2008,
by Andy Taylor,
UK.
(Photo by Terje Tveit, Stavanger Archeological Museum, Norway, 2011)
September 2013, the sound of the replicas: A short clip on YouTube
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