It’s just before midnight on Friday. A few hundred couples circle the floor of a school gym. On stage, violinists play a rhythmic music which cycles repetitively. Coloured with sad, minor notes, it sounds like a stately ancestor to bluegrass. Hands joined, the couples raise their arms above their heads. The woman spins. Breaking the link, the man suddenly bobs downwards, hops up and spreads his arms apart in a come-hither gesture. His partner’s raised hands say no. Linking arms at the waist, they resume the circuit.

Dr. Feelgood: Taking No Prisoners (with Gypie 1977-1981)

Kveikur is really the first new album from Sigur Rós since 2008’s Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust. Their last, 2012’s Valtari, only had two fresh tracks and was otherwise redone offcuts or previously shelved material. The creative process leading to the appearance of Kveikur further differs from its predecessor as the band are now a three-piece, after the departure of keyboard player Kjartan Sveinsson.

Anything said about A won’t affect its sales. Guaranteed to sell millions, it’s the first album from ABBA’s former singer since 2004’s all-covers set, My Colouring Book. It’s also the first to contain original material since the one which preceded that, 1987’s I Stand Alone. In keeping with the privacy with which she leads her life, she’s not prolific. Fältskog’s return is newsworthy and welcome, so it’s deeply depressing that A is so feeble. Worse than that, her personality is hardly evident.

“Are you thirsty? I’ve got water and beer.” The car’s trunk is opened to reveal a picnic-style plastic cooler. But this is a taxi, so in goes the case. “If you’re hungry, I’ve got liquorice.” It’s unusual hospitality, not what’s expected from a taxi driver. Even one this young, hip and, well, blonde and classically Nordic looking. It was a fine, if surprising, welcome to Denmark and smoothed the departure from Billund airport, a functional facility adjacent to the original Legoland, one of Scandinavia’s top tourist draws.

Nine people are on stage. Male and female. None is singing. All are dancing. No instruments are being played. For a 20-minute, three-song segment of Swedish art-dance electro-tricksters The Knife’s London show the sound was of a live concert, but nothing else was. Then, for “Networking”, the stage emptied and the music continued. All that was left were lights beaming into the audience.

Continuing its voyage through Scandinavia’s music, theartsdesk opens the latest chapter in Norway with Still Life With Eggplant, the 16th album from Trondheim’s prolific, long-lived, occasionally challenging and always vital Motorpsycho.

Shaking The Habitual’s centrepiece – the seventh of its 14 tracks – is the 19-minute “Old Dreams Waiting to be Realized”. A tone which ebbs in and out, it’s occasionally underpinned by distant rhythmic colour. Although thoughts inevitably turn to the similarly lengthy “SDSS1416+13B (Zercon, A Flagpole Sitter)", the 22-minute amelodic experience exemplifying Scott Walker’s recent Bish Bosch, the astonishing Shaking the Habitual is, over its 97 minutes, an album retaining connections with what is recognisably music. Even so, it’s still pretty far out.

Santa has returned home, but he wasn’t the season’s only visitor from the Nordic lands. The crop of recent music in from the region embraces genre-crossing jazz, vintage-style rock, the expected electropop, cross-border collaborations and a seven-year-old Finn. Exploring all corners of Scandinavia’s music, theartsdesk journeys where no one else does, landing in Norway first for some finely formed jazz.

Gil Scott-Heron: The Revolution Begins – The Flying Dutchman Masters

Kieron Tyler