Estonian Kannel
Estonia's plucked box zither, a small winged or trapezoid instrument carved from a single piece of wood and strung with wire or gut strings, played to accompany regilaul, the ancient runic-song tradition shared with Finland's kantele and Lithuania's kanklės. Folk songs and folk archaeology place the kannel in Baltic-Finnic music for well over a thousand years, and the instrument was long the companion of song and dance in the village. It survives and flourishes in the folk revival, where ensembles play both the small historical kannel and enlarged chromatic versions, keeping the oldest instrum