Athabascan Old-Time Fiddling Festival

The Athabascan Old-Time Fiddling Festival is a four-day November festival in Fairbanks, started in 1983 and featuring Athabaskan, Yup’ik and Iñupiaq fiddlers. It reflects a fiddle tradition that came to Interior Alaska with Hudson’s Bay Company traders in the mid-19th century.[1]

Fiddle tradition

Fiddles reached Interior Alaska in the mid-19th century with Scottish, Irish, French Canadian and Métis fur traders working for the Hudson’s Bay Company. Several accounts name Antoine Hoole, a French Canadian company employee, as the first fiddler on the Yukon River, in the trading party that founded Fort Yukon in 1847. Over time the music blended with Athabaskan singing and dancing and with hymns taught by missionaries.[1]

Regional styles

Upriver music among the Gwich’in and Hän near the Alaska–Yukon border typically used a fiddle and guitar, while downriver music emerged about 50 years later with the Klondike Gold Rush, shaped by Koyukon, Lower Tanana and Deg Hit’an communities and played by larger ensembles.[1]

The festival

The source says the festival was instituted in 1983 by the Alaska State Council on the Arts and the Institute of Alaska Native Art, with Bill Stevens instrumental in developing it. It is held annually in November over four days, and around 2005 it split into two venues, one for faster upriver dances and one for slower downriver country-style dances. A citation title referring to the 31st festival in 2016 does not match an annual count from 1983, so the numbering may be inconsistent.[1]

FAQs

When is the festival held? In November, over four days.

When did it start? 1983.

Who brought the fiddle to Interior Alaska? Hudson’s Bay Company fur traders in the mid-19th century.

Sources

1. Wikipedia: Athabaskan fiddle

Editorially reviewed by Specialty Digest Editorial TeamLast reviewed November 14, 2026Researched and drafted with AI assistanceReport an issue