Watch it, here they come with all their resonating strings, catchy vocables and alcohol resistance. They’ll blind you with their melodies and drink you under the table, or at least they’ll have a damn good shot at it. I even heard tell of a Norwegian lass who kept the Shetlanders up all night - too proud to leave a party before a guest they nearly met their end. And it just so happens that very Norwegian is arriving in Edinburgh in a couple of weeks for the Scots Fiddle Festival so this is no empty warning!

There has been a real gathering of strength in UK/Ireland-Scandinavian crossover music in the last 10 years. With the term Nu-Nordic forming a neat umbrella over projects and bands that essentially form part of a line of musicians from the likes of SWÅP (Karen Tweed, Ian Carr, Carina Normansson and Ola Bäckström), Aly Bain & Ale Möller and Catriona MacDonald & Annbjørg Lien down through Baltic Crossing, Fribo, Auvo Quartet and Boreas to numerous genuinely great bands currently emerging.

(From experience this process takes a while unless your Nordic counterparts are resident here. It can take several years of travelling, meeting and playing, home recording and emailing before eventually rehearsing, performing and commercial recording. And the emergence takes time to build on both, or several, sides of the water.)

Of course, this musical meeting of minds is not a new idea, as eloquently expressed in Ewan MacPherson’s article for Living Tradition Magazine Issue 75. But there is a new energy and vitality that has swept in as a greater number of projects have arisen, each with its own sound and approach particular to the musicians. A key aspect of these projects has been the exploration of the space between the different music traditions as opposed to a collision or a splicing of them - a musical conversation that evolves according to each particular group of musicians.

My own band, Boreas*, has led to some interesting ‘conversations’ – songs in Scots written to old Norwegian song melodies, contemporary rhythms revealed and enhanced in Norwegian and Scottish dance tunes and new compositions emerging from that musical meeting place rather than belonging to any tradition or specific idiom. And the most wonderful thing for us hasn’t been the similarities in what we do, it has been the differences, that’s where the excitement lies I think, a celebration of the differences between us and how we can converse through them.

But the Vikings really are coming.. and some have been here for a while. There are a number of Scandinavian musicians already here performing and conversing skillfully with us locals. And while several Scandinavian performers will feature at the Fiddle Festival (Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh 13-15 Nov) Norway is also the Showcase Scotland partner for Celtic Connections 2010 so expect some of the best Norwegian bands to be blowing away audiences in the concert halls and festival club (you have been warned!) come January too.

* Sun 15^th Nov 2pm, Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh!