Welcome to the blog of Vasa Drängar, the Atlanta based men’s choir. Today we are covering the fourth installment in the series of Swedish Schnapps songs or snapsvisor as it is called in Swedish.
Originally people supposedly had first a whole shot, “Helan”, and then second shot was half a shot, “Halvan”.
Over time the tradition has changed to mean something a little bit different. The first schnapps is still called “Helan”, the whole, but in now it is simply the first shot of the evening or perhaps the day if this is a holiday party and we gat started earlier. The second Schnapps is call “Halvan” or the half, but again in this context it means the second drink.
For some people the two drinks might mean the end of the drinking for this particular occasion, but for others that are extra thirsty, the singing and the drinking continues. The third drink is called “Tersen” which is probably based on the music term meaning a third or in this case the third drink.
Each of these drinks of course have its own designated drinking song, or schnapps song, and many of these sequential drinks have more than one song named in their honor.
Which brings us today to the fourth drink “Kvarten”, which means quarter and it happened to be such a beautiful melody that it got the name “Vackra Kvarten” of course meaning the beautiful fourth.
A common theme in most of these songs is that from the very beginning it is made very clear that if you don’t drink the first one, you can’t have the second one. Similarly, you are not allowed to drink the third one until you had the second one and so on. Irrefutable logic at its best.
What is typically allowed, however, is to sip your drinks very carefully so that your first schnapps lasts for several songs. That way you can keep singing and participating even if the number of songs reach into the twenties.
Here is a sample of Vackra Kvarten. True to tradition it spells out that he who does not take the fourth cannot have the fifth either.