The tungehorn ( no, tongue horn) is a

woodwind instrument Woodwind instruments are a family of musical instruments within the greater category of wind instruments. Common examples include flute, clarinet, oboe, bassoon, and saxophone. There are two main types of woodwind instruments: flutes and Reed ...

used in traditional Norwegian music, which has a single-reed attached to a conical cow or goat horn. The instrument is

single-reed A single-reed instrument is a woodwind instrument that uses only one reed to produce sound. The very earliest single-reed instruments were documented in ancient Egypt, as well as the Middle East, Greece, and the Roman Empire. The earliest types o ...

ed, with a separate reed body inserted into the instrument ('' heteroglot aerophone''). The reed, or ''tunge'' is generally made of juniper, but spruce, maple, and

birch bark Birch bark or birchbark is the bark of several Eurasian and North American birch trees of the genus ''Betula''. The strong and water-resistant cardboard-like bark can be easily cut, bent, and sewn, which has made it a valuable building, crafti ...

have been used, as well as metal. The instrument is minimally documented, and nearly became extinct, and thus is little known in modern Norwegian folk music. The instrument appears to have been mainly prevalent in Norway, where at least 160 instrument have been attested, 100 of them photographically. The core areas are

Hedmark Hedmark () was a county in Norway before 1 January 2020, bordering Trøndelag to the north, Oppland to the west, Akershus to the south, and Sweden to the east. The county administration is in Hamar. Hedmark and Oppland counties were merged i ...

, eastern

Trøndelag Trøndelag (; sma, Trööndelage) is a county in the central part of Norway. It was created in 1687, then named Trondhjem County ( no, Trondhjems Amt); in 1804 the county was split into Nord-Trøndelag and Sør-Trøndelag by the King of Denmar ...

and

Oppland Oppland is a former county in Norway which existed from 1781 until its dissolution on 1 January 2020. The old Oppland county bordered the counties of Trøndelag, Møre og Romsdal, Sogn og Fjordane, Buskerud, Akershus, Oslo and Hedmark. The co ...

, and

Agder Agder is a county (''fylke'') and traditional region in the southern part of Norway. The county was established on 1 January 2020, when the old Vest-Agder and Aust-Agder counties were merged. Since the early 1900s, the term Sørlandet ("south ...

. The instrument is not known outside of Scandinavia, though within that region several variants of the instrument are found. There are two different theories as to the origin of the tungehorn. One is that the instrument was inspired by the European clarinet that came to the region in the 1700s and was widely used in folk music in the 1800s. This theory finds support in the facts that the areas of greatest prevalence of clarinets coincides with the areas of the tungehorn, and that almost all the documented tungehorn date from the 19th and 20th centuries, with no known tradition prior to the early 1800s. A second theory argues that the folk reed instruments existed in Scandinavia prior to the arrival of the European clarinet, noting that a few known instruments pre-date the arrival of the European clarinet, and that the tungehorn's playing style is more similar to medieval instruments like the bagpipe rather than the orchestral clarinet.

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