Snapsvisa

Snapsvisa (Swedish, plural: "snapsvisor") is a Scandinavian traditional drinking song which is used before drinking a short spirit shot known as the "snaps".

A typical "snapsvisa" is a short and vigorous and its lyrics tell usually about the delicacy and glory of the drink or singer's desire having the "snaps". Due to their shortness and mostly very openly glad character they are easy to learn. "Snapsvisa"s are famous and important part of traditional and family festivities in Sweden, Norway, Denmark and among Swedish-speaking Finns. Singing these drinking songs is also a viable part of Scandinavian student culture in the universities and thus are also very widespread among monolingually Finnish students in Finland, although "snapsvisa" is rarely met otherwise in Finnish drinking culture.

History of the using "snapsvisa"s during parties is quite old. Already in 1790 a Swedish poet Carl Michael Bellman published collection Epistles of Fredman ("Fredmans epistlar") including 82 songs and a year later another collection Songs of Fredman ("Fredmans sånger") of 65 songs both consisting of traditional Swedish drinking songs.

See also

*snaps
*drinking song

References

* [http://www.aurora.komvux.norrkoping.se/Pedagogical_Web/web_2006/utb7/swedish/Drinking_song.htm Drinking song – snapsvisa]
* [http://www.vinosprithistoriska.se/?id=887 Drinking songs at The Historical Museum of Wines and Spirits]
* [http://runeberg.org/fredepis/ Lyrics for the Epistles of Fredman] (in Swedish)
* [http://runeberg.org/fredsang/ Lyrics for the Songs of Fredman] (in Swedish)
* [http://www.tyy.fi/laulukirja/snapsilaulut.shtml Some examples on Finnish snaps-song from "The Student's Songbook" at University of Turku] fi
* [http://www.cis.hut.fi/parvi/Kie-98.505/ADS/index.html Academic drinking song culture in Finland]