LYDIA SHERMAN WRITES:

Here is an English translation of “Vackert Väder,” or “Beautiful Weather,” the Swedish hymn which inspired the song by the quartet Kraja:

 In this sweet time of summer
Go out, my soul, and be happy for
The gifts from the great God.
Look, how the earth is decked
Look, how she, for you and me
Is in wonderful bounties. 

Is it already so fair?
Is it this glorious and green?
On this modest earth,
What should then not be there
In this splendour, when I am
For once being explained? 
 
When I hear the thrush singing clear, when the lark
jubilees all day, far above field and hills,
Then I can no more hold my tongue. My God, as long
as I exist for this life, I thank you.

     — Comments —

Thomas F. Bertonneau writes:

I send my gratitude to Lydia Sherman for offering the English lyrics to one version of “Vackert Väder.” However, for the sake of accuracy, these are not the words that the four young songstresses sing. Theirs is a secular version even though elsewhere they take hymns into their repertory. (And have the courage to do so.) In Swedish folksong, as in English, it is often the tune that bears the name and then there are many sets of verses that can be sung to the same tune. The four “Kraja” girls sing something like this: “Pretty weather, pretty, pretty weather; the sun will be glorious until, late in evening, he sinks into redness.” Later: “Pretty girls and their swains play in the sun,” and so forth. But this is not to diminish the sung interpretation, which surpasses the lyrics. The voices are bright and strong – and they are “bare voices,” naturally vital voices, never glitzed-up by studio processing. A professional singer once told me that it is possible to hear a smile. I hear smiles in every bar of what the Lestander sisters and their two friends sing. 

Many Swedes, hearing the non-religious words to the tune, will think of the hymnal words.

Laura F. writes:

Thanks to your reader for that tip about Kraja. My little girls are in love with them now.

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