Hedningarna (The Heathens) is a Swedish, and for some years partly Finnish, folk music band that mixes electronics and rock with elements from old Scandinavian folk music. Their music features yoik or juoiggus, a traditional Sami form of song. History Hållbus Totte Mattson, Anders Stake and Björn Tollin formed Hedningarna in 1987. Hedning is Swedish for , while ar is the plural suffix, and na is the definite article (thus hedningar 'heathens', hedningarna 'the heathens'). They wanted to go far back to the roots of the Old Norse culture, including the use of ancient instruments not much used in current Swedish folk music. Stake, a trained luthier, also began to invent and build new instruments, to produce new sounds. In 1988, Hedningarna performed a major part of the music to the stage play Den stora vreden (roughly meaning The Great Wrath) which aroused great interest. Music arranger was Ale Möller. Their first album titled Hedningarna was released on Alice Records in 1989. In 1991, Hedningarna began their collaboration with Silence Records. They met the Finnish singers Sanna Kurki-Suonio and Tellu Paulasto. The album Kaksi! (Finnish for two) was released in September 1992. In 1993 Hedningarna was awarded a Swedish Grammis (the equivalent of Grammy) for The Best Folk Music Album of the year. The sales of Kaksi! reached 35,000 albums, which is very high for a folk music record in Sweden. British Sasha made a remix of Hedningarna's "Kruspolska" which climbed the charts in England. The third album Trä, meaning 'wood' in Swedish (a pun, since "Trä" also sounds a lot like the Swedish word for "Three": tre) was released in September 1994. Melody Maker wrote "it may sound alien, but yet it sounds like the most essential music on the earth." Hedningarna performed at the Roskilde Festival in the presence of 20,000 people on the second largest stage. In 1995, Hedningarna toured Scandinavia and abroad. A compilation album with songs from Trä and Kaksi! was released in the United States. By 1995, their albums had been released in Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Poland, Thailand, Great Britain and the U.S. The singers Kurki-Suonio and Paulasto stayed at home in Finland during 1996 for child birth and their studies. Paulasto decided to leave the band, and she was replaced by Anita Lehtola, who had been in the same class as Paulasto at The Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. Mattson, Stake and Tollin