(written by Islander)

For most people (definitely including this writer) the name Tjaktjadálvve will be a tongue-twister. Apart from wondering how it is pronounced, I also wondered what it meant, and so I spent some time searching for an answer.

One thing I found was an interview from last fall in a Hungarian publication of Matthew Bell, the Australia-born but Sweden-residing musician behind the black metal project he named Tjaktjadálvve. With some help from an online translation tool, I saw that Bell gave this answer about the word’s meaning:

The word means “autumn winter” in the Sámi language. A lot of my music is based on my experiences in northern Sweden, so the name seemed perfectly fitting. Continue reading »