Inertia Entertainment presents

Norwegian music collective Wardruna are now announcing the second part of the world tour that commenced in 2024. Over forty dates in Europe and the United States have been confirmed, including iconic venues and places such as the Pompeii Amphitheatre in Italy and The Greek Theatre in Los Angeles. Wardruna will tour in support of their new, highly acclaimed album Birna.

From the deep woods now emerges Birna, Wardruna’s sixth studio album. Through his never resting dialogue with nature, main composer Einar Selvik has been searching for the voice of the bear, our lost sister of the forest. Resulting in this release through Sony Music and By Norse. Birna – the she-bear in Old Norse – is a work of art dedicated to the warden of the forest, nature’s caretaker, and her battles here on earth. Slowly driven out of her habitat by modern day societies, she has entered a stage of permanent hibernation. As a result, the forest is gradually dying, longing for its pulse and heart – its shepherd. Birna calls for her return.

The rhythm of the bear embodies the very circle of life: When winter approaches, it goes to sleep in its den – back to the womb; its pulse slowing, its body encapsulated in an intermediate death. The heartbeat of the dormant bear, around nine beats per minute, can be felt throughout the Birna album.

«Dvaledraumar»(Dormant Dreams) and "Jord til Ljos» (Earth to Light), a two-song meditation creates a joint hibernation between animal and listener, and we return from the den of the bear more attuned, aware and contemplative of nature’s wonders, just in time for the freshly sprung buds. This cyclical process, so embedded both in nature and the worldview of older cultures, drives Einar Selvik’s every creative work.

Wardruna draws inspiration from immersion in nature, and the dialogue that takes place between all creatures, forces and energies present. “When I walk into a forest, I open my senses and listen for whatever nature cares to tell me”, Einar Selvik has explained when contemplating his creative process – his hunting for songs amid trees, air, rocks and sea. Boasting a distinctive new sound, while at the same time building on the musical roots so intrinsic to the Wardruna tradition, Birna truly nurtures the insight that has been at the core of Selvik’s philosophy right from the start: that to give place to something new, you must let something else die.