A lur, also called a lure or lurr, is a long musical instrument made of natural materials. It has no finger holes and is played using a mouth position similar to brass instruments. Lurs can be straight or curved in different shapes. The curves helped make long instruments easier to carry, such as when marching, and prevented loud sounds from reaching nearby people.
The word "lur" refers to two different types of ancient wind instruments. The newer type, used in Scandinavia during the Middle Ages, was made of wood. The older type, named after the newer one, was made of bronze and dates back to the Bronze Age. These older lurs were often found in pairs and placed in bogs, mainly in Denmark and Germany. Each instrument includes a mouthpiece and several connected parts or pipes. The length of these lurs could be between 1.5 and 2 meters. They have been discovered in Norway, Denmark, southern Sweden, and northern Germany. Drawings of lurs have also been found in rock paintings in Scandinavia.
Wooden lurs
The earliest mentions of an instrument called the lur appear in Icelandic sagas, where they are described as war tools used to gather troops and scare enemies. These lurs, examples of which have been found in longboats, are straight, wooden tubes about one meter long. They have no finger holes and are played in a way similar to modern brass instruments.
A type of lur similar to these war instruments has been used by farmers and milkmaids in Nordic countries since at least the Middle Ages. These instruments, known in English as birch trumpets, were used to call cattle and send signals. They are built and played like the war instruments but are covered with birch bark, while the war instruments are covered with willow bark.
Bronze lurs
Bronze lurs were used as musical instruments in ancient Greece and in northern Europe. A total of 56 lurs have been found: 35 (including broken or incomplete ones) in Denmark, 11 in Sweden, 4 in Norway, 5 in northern Germany, and 1 in Latvia.
Lurs today
The word lur is still used in the Swedish language to describe any funnel-shaped tool used for making or receiving sound. For example, the Swedish word for headphones is hörlurar (meaning "hearing-lurs"), and a telephone may be called a lur in modern Swedish (as in telefonlur, meaning "telephone handset"). In Finnish, the word luuri refers to the handset part of old landline telephones. In Norwegian, the word for foghorn is tåkelur, and in Swedish, it is mislur. The Danish butter brand Lurpak is named after the lur, and its packaging includes images of lurs.
The Icelandic composer Jón Leifs used lurs in some of his orchestral compositions.
The word lur has other meanings in Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish that are not connected to sound.