Ik sprak voor jullie met vocalist Björgvin Sigurðsson.

First of all, congratulations with your first CD. It sounds very good. How did you came up with the concept of this cd? And where did you get the inspiration for the name Skálmöld ?

Thank you so much.

The concept is the work of our bass player, Snæbjörn. He´s the one responsible for all our lyrics. He came up with this story of Baldur and we all felt that it was a great story, a great concept. We just needed to fill in the blanks with some quality songwriting.

Skálmöld is an old Icelandic word. A word that was being used to describe the situation in Iceland in 13th century when the biggest families were fighting over power and influence in Iceland. There was almost a civil war raging at that time in our history. We found this name to be well suited with our music, since we seek inspiration in our history, our Viking heritage and old poetry.

And the direct translation is Age of Swords, which is pretty cool.

When you start to create a album, how do you guy's work together? Does someone starts spitting idea's or does everybody join in a massive brainstorm?

Almost every song on the album is the result of us working together. Someone shows up at rehearsal with an idea for a song and together we work it out. Sometimes we delete parts from the original idea, add some others, restructure it or whatever. So the music is a co-operation between all band members.

Its not evident to release a cd in these times of internet downloading. How do you think of it, and the internet as a whole? Offensive or an interesting way to attract more fans?

It´s true. Nowadays you can download almost any album long before it is officially released. But metal fans tend to be very loyal and once they hear something they really like they look for the official release and buy the album. The internet is a great to way attract new fans, and once they become fans they will buy your album, not just download it. Skálmöld for example had some fans spread all over the world long before we ever released an album. Were it not for the internet they would never have known we ever existed.

Skálmöld is not widely known, but what would you say against a person to convince him to give you guy's a try?

If you like your music epic, powerful and melodic you should definitely give our album a try. Plus it´s so varied that you´re bound to at least find some moments on the album you´ll enjoy.

As a band, you are heavily promoting your fresh album. Do you have any plans beyond that, for the future? And of course would you like to explain it to our readers?

We will be playing Heidenfest this year, along with several other great acts. The tour will happen in late September and October and there will be 24 dates, spread all across Europe.

Beyond that… we´re just eager to find some time to write new material. We already have some song ideas but we haven´t had the time to finish them. But I can tell you that some of them sound excellent. So late this year and at the start of the new year I hope we will find time to come up with enough material for a new release.

Where do you guy's like to perform the most? In a closed hall like 'Trix' or a large festival like Graspop or Wacken? And why?

We have mostly played in smaller venues. We played at G! Festival in July and then Wacken in August. I find the smaller venues to be more fun. You can really feel the audience on your skin and the show tends to get a lot more intense.

The response to your gig's is mostly very good, but each night is different. What do yo do to try and get the crowd along?

Every single gig we give ourselves 100%. There´s no secret formula, we just go out there and give all we got and enjoy the moment. We have often gotten the comment that it is so fun to see us live ´cuz we are always smiling on stage. I find that to be positive, although we are pretty serious about what we´re doing. It´s supposed to be fun playing music.

I know it sounds cliché, but is there anything else you would like to say to our readers and your (new) fans?

I´m hoping to see as many of you as possible at our future gigs. I guarantee that we will give all we got. Stay metal folks.

Thank you for this opportunity and loads of success in the future!

Thank you so much. It was a pleasure.

Skál!