A journey into the tangled system of aching Tornedalian roots to try to untangle the mess, find the broken pieces, and let new branches grow. Three members of the music collective Höstorkestern sing and tell stories.

ROTVÄRK is a musical narrative by and with the music collective Höstorkestern about a Tornedalian root system that is discovered when the distance to the culture increases – through songs, legends, and poems. The storytelling performance ROTVÄRK is a journey into the soul where bilingualism is locked away, or contained.

Meänkieli is one of Sweden's national minority languages. Through oppression from the state and the church, the culture and language have been marginalized to such an extent that it is now in an acute situation with a risk of disappearing completely within just a generation or so.

From having been something many were ashamed of, intensive work is now underway to strengthen the status of Meänkieli, increase the opportunities for more people to learn it, and rebuild the culture again.

The musical story begins in the 1990s in Vittangi, a village in Kiruna municipality located by the Torne River, and extends to Västerbotten today.

The performance includes Höstorkestern's own songs and is performed in Swedish and Meänkieli, with elements of music from other bands and artists that have influenced the movement back to the lost mother tongue.

Höstorkestern is a music collective formed in 2013 with roots in Tornedalen and Malmfälten that has released four studio albums and is now working on its fifth. Today, the collective has more than 30 members scattered across the country. They tour in different sizes and musical configurations depending on which members are present at the venues where they play.

The EP Laakson laulut (Songs of the Valley) was released during the pandemic in 2021 in collaboration with the Culture Association Lava and ISOF (Institute for Language and Folklore) to create new music in Meänkieli, incorporating several dialectal variants of the language. Höstorkestern wrote the songs which were then translated by Tornedalians from places such as Jukkasjärvi, Kaunisvaara, Pentäsjärvi, and Övertorneå.