look on the hfaa pages for the AmeriKappleik Live! CD
with Loretta Kelley and others...i have videoed her at
a festival and was fascinated with the sound of her
fiddle. http://www.azaleacityrecordings.com/ArtistsPages/LorettaKelley.html
The sound is composed of a lot of double stops
and some of the intervals are modal or somehow created
tension by the sound of them...i used to think that
Norway may have had influences from the middle east
due to their proximity to the ocean and maybe some
Moorish or Phoenician influences might have gotten
into their music, since the sound was so foreign to my ear.

I have also recorded this instrument as played by
Torkel Hammer, a regualar at the Strawberry music fest.
he claims there is often a (pagan-pre-christian) symbol
on the top of the fiddle
(either at the scroll head or carved into the top)
which angers the gods in heaven, and on the back of the
hardanger fiddle are (Christian)designs which anger the devil, so
all the super natural forces are challenged by it's playing.
(that is something like what he said...hard to re-create it)