Swedish kulning is a form of singing used mainly by herding girls (and occasionally herdsmen), who live in the mountain fäbodar (mountain villages) during the spring and summer months.
The term kulning is generally used to describe all kinds of Scandinavian high pitched herding calls, but it specifically refers to “cow calls” and is a term specifically from the region of Dalarna.
Kula is also known by many other dialect terms but for the purpose of this paper, I will use kulning, kula , and “herding call” or “herding tune/song” in reference to other herding type songs.
A kula is specifically used to call cows (“ko” in Swedish, “ku” in Norwegian) and is usually sung in longer, melismatic phrases, whereas calls for goats and sheep are usually sung in shorter phrases, sometimes even spoken or interjected with animal noises such as barking, bleating and bird like sounds (See Appendix 2).
Kula are mainly sung without words on syllables like “dee”, “do”, “oo”, “ee”, “hoh” and so forth.
Sometimes a kula may also contain actual words, particularly in the case of warning or distress calls, or in herding songs.
At one time kulning (‘kool-ning’ - cow calls) were found in all areas of Scandinavia and Iceland and today is still used in regions including Sweden, Norway and some areas of the Ural Mountains in Russia. However it is most prevalent in the regions of Bohuslän, Värmland, Dalarna and middle Uppland, Sweden.