Kulning: The Swedish Art of Herding Calls

Imagine standing on the edge of a jagged cliff in Jämtland, Sweden. Below you lies a valley dense with pine forests and dampened by a thick, rising mist. Your goal is to retrieve a herd of cattle scattered three kilometers away, deep in the grazing lands. You cannot see them. You cannot text them. And if you simply yell, your voice will effectively evaporate into the dense air and rustling wind.

Instead, you take a deep breath, stabilize your core, and emit a piercing, vibrato-free melody that sits comfortably in the highest register of the human voice. It sounds mournful to the untrained ear, but to the livestock, it is a clear command. This is Kulning.

For centuries, Swedish women have utilized this vocal technique to communicate over vast distances. But for linguists and acousticians, Kulning is more than a folk tradition; it is a fascinating case study in bioacoustics and the extreme limits of human phonetics. How does the human voice overpower the physics of mountain air? The answer lies in the unique intersection of pitch, formants, and the evolution of hearing.

The Fäbod Culture: Necessity Breeds Technique

To understand the sound, one must understand the context. Kulning (also known as kauking in some dialects) emerged from the fäbod culture of medieval Scandinavia. During the summer months, livestock were moved from the village farms to high mountain pastures to graze. This was a matriarchal domain; women and young girls lived in small cabins on the mountainside to tend the animals while the men stayed in the villages to harvest hay.

The terrain was rugged and the distances immense. Predators like bears and wolves were a genuine threat. The herders needed a way to call the animals home for milking and to communicate with herders on neighboring ridges. A standard shout—the kind you might use to hail a taxi—would strain the vocal cords and dissipate quickly in the forest. They needed a sound that acted like a laser beam rather than a floodlight.

The Phonetics of the Call: Anatomy of a Scream

From a linguistic and phonetic perspective, Kulning is distinctive because it defies standard singing conventions. While it shares the high register of operatic soprano singing, the mechanism of production is fundamentally different.

No Vibrato, High Larynx

In classical Western singing, vibrato (a slight, regular oscillation of pitch) is a desired aesthetic that adds warmth. In Kulning, vibrato is the enemy. The technique relies on a “straight tone.” A straight tone is acoustically more efficient for distance because the sound wave is consistent and focused, preventing the energy from fluctuating.

Phonetically, the sound is produced with:

• Head Voice/Falsetto: The pitch is exceptionally high, often soaring between 700 Hz and 1500 Hz (high G5 to G6 and beyond).
• High Larynx: Unlike the “lowered larynx” of opera which creates a round, dark sound, Kulning utilizes a higher larynx position. This shortens the vocal tract.
• Twang: There is a narrowing of the epiglottic funnel (the area just above the vocal cords). This creates a “twangy” or brassy quality, similar to the sound of a crying baby or a duck quacking.

The Vowel Shapes

Linguists will note that Kulning relies heavily on specific vowel placements. You will rarely hear a low, back vowel like the “a” in father /ɑ/ utilized for the high-pitch carrying notes. Instead, practitioners favor closed or semi-closed sounds that help focus the air pressure, blending into vowels like /y/ (as in the Swedish “fy”) or /i/ (as in “see”). These vowels facilitate the high-frequency resonance required to cut through the air.

The Acoustics: Why High Frequencies?

Here is the acoustic paradox: In physics, low-frequency sounds travel further than high-frequency sounds. This is why you can hear the bass of a nightclub from down the street, but not the melody. Low frequencies have long wavelengths that allow them to diffract (bend) around obstacles like trees and rocks.

So, why did Swedish herders evolve a high-pitched calling technique? If physics favors the low end, why not develop a deep, booming chant?

1. Overcoming the Noise Floor

Nature is noisy. Wind rustling through pine trees, rushing river water, and the bustle of insects create a constant “noise floor.” Interestingly, the ambient noise of a forest/mountain environment is predominantly found in the low-to-mid frequency range. If a herder used a low voice, their call would be masked by the sound of the wind.

Kulning operates at extremely high frequencies (1 kHz to 4 kHz). This allows the sound to sit above the ambient noise of the landscape. It occupies a distinct sonic space that nothing else in the Swedish mountains occupies, except perhaps birds of prey.

2. The Sweet Spot of Hearing (Fletcher-Munson Curves)

The success of Kulning isn’t just about the sender; it’s about the receiver. Whether human or bovine, mammalian ears have evolved to be most sensitive to specific frequencies. For humans and cattle, the auditory systems are highly sensitive to the range between 1,000 Hz and 4,000 Hz.

This sensitivity is an evolutionary trait—it is the frequency of a baby’s cry or a distress signal. By targeting this specific frequency range, Kulning requires less decibel energy to be perceived as “loud” by the brain. A Kulning call can effectively “hack” the auditory system, triggering an immediate alertness in the livestock.

3. Directionality

While low sounds wrap around objects, they are also omnidirectional—they spread out everywhere. High-frequency sounds are highly directional. By cupping their hands around their mouths (a variable waveguide), herders can aim the high-frequency waves of Kulning with surprising precision, bouncing the sound off a cliff face to redirect it into a valley.

Linguistic Pragmatics: Communicating with Cows

Is Kulning a language? In the strictest sense, no. It does not have a syntax or grammar. However, it functions as a sophisticated system of communication.

The calls are often a mixture of:

• Vocables: Non-lexical sounds, sustained vowels, and melodic ornamentations.
• Imperatives: Words like “Kom” (Come) or “Kom liljorna” (Come, lilies/little ones).
• Names: Cows were often given names based on their characteristics, such as Stjärna (Star) or Rosa (Rose).

The melody itself carries meaning. A long, melismatic, sorrowful tune might signal a calm evening gathering. A short, sharp, staccato blare might signal danger (a bear) or an urgent need to move. The cattle eventually learn to associate specific melodic contours with specific herders, much like a dog recognizes its owner’s whistle.

From Pasture to Performance

Today, the fäbod usage has largely vanished, replaced by modern farming and GPS trackers. However, Kulning has found a second life in music and linguistics.

In the world of Nordic folk music, artists like Lena Willemark and YouTube sensations like Jonna Jinton have introduced the technique to a global audience. It is frequently used in film scores (most notably in Disney’s Frozen II) to evoke an ancient, mystical atmosphere of the North.

For the language learner or the vocal enthusiast, Kulning represents the ultimate harmony between biology and geography. It serves as a reminder that before we had amplifiers, radios, or phones, we crafted the phonetics of our voice to overcome the obstacles of our environment. We didn’t just speak to the world; we shaped our sounds to fit it.

So, the next time you need to be heard in a crowd, don’t shout from your throat. engaging the glottal fry of frustration. Instead, think of the Swedish mountains. Find your head voice, eliminate the vibrato, and let the high frequencies cut through the noise.