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126presence of a polyphonic singing tradition. But as we may agree, “the absence of datadoes not mean the absence of the phenomenon”, so at least some forms of late pan-European style of simple polyphony with at least occasional parallel thirds might well becharacteristic of Finnish social singing as well. At least, I remember myself, how thegroup of my Finnish friends were singing on a wedding of my Georgian friend Nasi andrdFinnish Laif on February 23 1988. They were singing in unison, but steadily finishingall the musical phrases with the major third.IcelandFinding a live tradition of polyphonic singing in Iceland was one of the highlightsof the study of European polyphony – both professional and folk. A live tradition ofpolyphony in Iceland was particularly important for musicologists studying medievalEuropean polyphony, because of its clear connections to the earliest types of organum[Organum was the first type of European professional polyphony, that appeared at theend of the 9 th – beginning of the 10 th centuries]. Angel Hammerich published apioneering article about the Icelandic two-part singing tradition twisongur, then BiarniForstain published 42 examples of twisongur, and finally John Laif recorded onphonograph the examples of twisongur. Phonograph recordings proved the correctness ofthe transcriptions made by Forstain. The term twisongur literally means “two-singing”,and it is a traditional technique of the two-part performance of secular and sacredmelodies. Hornbostel’s description of twisongur as “fifths organum with crossing parts”is quite accurate (Hornbostel, 1986 [1930]). Most of the time the parts move in parallelfifths in twisongur style, and at certain moment the parts shift places (the top part goeslower and the low part goes higher that the top part). Therefore the second part usuallyfinishes with the note that the first part started at the beginning of the song. The leadinggenre of Icelandic traditional music, Rimur (epic songs), was also performed in twisongurstyle. Here are two typical examples of the earlier type of twisongur:Ex. 73. Iceland (Hornbostel, 1986:310, #36)Ex. 74. Iceland (Hornbostel, 1986:311, #4a)The tempo was usually very slow, and the sound of “empty” parallel fifths is veryspecific. Interestingly, in late medieval Europe parallel fifths were considered the biggestcompositional mistake that a composer could make in composing polyphonic music. Bythe way, parallel fifths were considered a very serious mistake not only by MedievalEuropean music theorists. I remember myself doing very much feared harmony tests at