Vocal music
Norwegian folk dance ("bygdedanser") includes participatory social dances and dances performed for an audience like "springar", "gangar" and "halling". The Norwegian "gammeldans" tradition, and those of other ancestries, continues in ethnic communities in Minnesota, where waltzes, schottisches or "reinlander", and polkas are newer forms of old-time music. Vocal music includes short poetic songs called "stev", emigrant ballads which expressed nostalgia for Norway and express hope, despair and loss about life in the United States. By the 1930s the Finnish epic "Kalevala" was still read and sometimes sung.