Magnar Storbækken is an eminent craftsman. He is one of the very few instrument makers in Norway who continue to produce old-fashioned folk music instruments associated with traditional mountain herding and dairy-farming. These instruments include:

• Neverlur -a long wooden trumpet,
• Seljefløyte - a long flute without finger holes, traditionally made from willow/sallow bark.
• Bukkehorn - Billy goat’s horn/Ramshorn

He also makes flutes of horn and bone, as well as clarinet-type instruments.

  
Magnar has devoted much time and energy to making quality old-fashioned clarinets for use in playing Norwegian folk music. His instruments are acknowledged and appreciated among a host of professional and amateur musicians.

Magne has won several awards at the instrument exhibitions for Landskappleiken, Norway's annual nation-wide folk music competition. In 2004, he won a gold medal for a set of wooden seljefløyter (sallow flutes). Magnar has also served as a judge at instrument exhibitions.

Magnar often presents his instruments and instrument making at nursery schools and elementary schools, demonstrating them and playing them with the children. He was invited to take part in Ringve Museum's "Trumpet Day" for nusery schools in the city of Trondheim. A modest man, Magnar claims that he is not a "musician", however he has participated in performances playing neverlur and bukkehorn. In 2008, he was awarded the Egil Storbekken Music Prize.

Visit Magnar at naturinstrumenter.no

One of Magnar's horns (a real "ram's horn" /"goat horn"!) is played on the soundtrack to the Disney film FROST, which at the moment tops the U.S. Billboard charts.

Glory for Disney's "Norwegian" Adventure

 Disney's "Frozen", in which a winter animated Norwegian landscape plays a huge part, was nominated for two Golden Globe awards.

Trapped in an eternal winter world, the two main characters in “Frozen” fight to bring back summer. The movie is now picked as one of the candidates in the Best Animated Film category on the 71st edition of Golden Globe Award in Los Angeles on January 12th. "Frozen", competing with "The Croods" and "Despicable Me 2" for the glory, is also nominated in the Best Original Song category with Idina Menzel's track "Let it Go".

To create a convincing frozen landscape, Disney’s animators did their research, which included visits to a place that knows a lot about ice and snow: Norway. As a result, famous Norwegian sites, such as the wooden buildings on the Bergen waterfront and Oslo’s Akershus Fortress, find their way into the winter world of the new movie.

 Trolls, lutefisk and the Northern Lights also make appearances in the film, according to Norwegian broadcasters NRK. The main characters have Norwegian names such as Sven, Anna and Olaf.

See the actors and producers talking about the Norwegian influence here.

Norwegian actor Thorbjørn Harr, who did voice work for the Norwegian version, is pleased to see that movies are bringing Norwegian nature to the world. “I think the Norwegian movie industry as a whole has wanted to use movies to promote the country to a larger extent. This is very good,” he told NRK.

The movie premiered in the United States the day before Thanksgiving. "Frozen" sold tickets for $93 million after the five-day holiday weekend, taking the Thanksgiving-debut record from 1999 classic "Toy Story 2", according to Box Office Mojo.

"Frozen" premiers in Norway (where it is called “Frost”) on Christmas Day.