It all began one grey Octoberday in 2005 when the two old friends David Wiktorsson (guitars) and Henrik Kindvall (vocals) decided to start their own folkmetal band. At first, the whole thing was supposed to consist of mellow, acoustic folk-inspired music based upon the vast database of lyrics that Henrik had written. But that idea was soon skipped when they realized that a lot of the lyrics required a quicker approach to the music and thus, they began their own experimenting in fusing folk and metal.

This type of music was far from unfamiliar for the duo, since they both really liked the music of the swedish folkmetal band Otyg - and it's no surprise that the early works of Skald was heavily influenced by said band.
he two friends pondered for a while whether or not they should remain a duo or start searching for other members in order to be able to perform live. But they soon settled for the former, thinking it would suite the music better if there were only two people involved in the creation.
After discussing an appropriate name for their band, they finally decided to call themselves Skald - feeling that such name would fit their style of music perfectly.
hey then began the actual work of putting the songs together. At this point, things were done very rough and hastily, which resulted in the completion of their first demo "Sagor Från Skogstjärnen" (meaning "Stories From The Forest's Bog") as soon as the 25th of March 2006. No mixing was done and spending time on quality- and volume levels wasn't anything Skald did at this point. They felt that it was far more important in taking bad promo photos, as you can see :)

"Sagor Från Skogstjärnen" was only released as an MP3-demo, available to download online. The band's intentional thought was that all their music should be available for free and they never thought that they ever would be signing a record contract, but little did they know about the future...

Work on new material began almost immediatley after the first demo was released. The band intended to spend a bit more time on writing, producing and mixing and less on taking photos. And although these intentions became true, it was really not much that differed the second demo "Trolska Vemodsband" (meaning "Trollish Bonds of Agony") from their first, except that the cover was a major improvement. Swedish painter Johan Aronson was more than happy to paint the front cover for Skald after hearing what the title would be. The demo was released online on the 3rd of December the same year as the first demo and this is the point when Skald decided to take things a bit more serious than before.

The initial thought was that in 2007, the band would write a couple of new songs, re-record a couple of old ones and then record the whole thing in a proper studio, unlike earlier recordings. The 5-6 songs would then be sent to various recordlabels in hope of one day recieving a contract. The band posted this decision on their webpage, but before they even made a single move, Swedish label Unexploded Records contacted the band with the offer that if they financed the reording themselves, the label would release it. Skald never hesitated and signed the contract for one MCD.

Skald wrote two new songs ("Dansa Den Ondes Vals" and "Legenden Om Bergaskatten") and decided to re-record three for the upcoming MCD which quite soon got the title "I En Svunnen Tid" (meaning "In A Vanished Age"). The band housed themselves in Studio Eclipse, with producer Mattias Svensson from Vanmakt as the overseer. He also did the drum-programming for the MCD.

For the first time, the music of Skald featured a real bass - courtesy of Victor Dahlgren from Vanmakt - as well as violins, played by Emil G. Koverot from Blodsrit. "I En Svunnen Tid" was released on the 28th of January in 2008. Limited to only 500 copies, it quickly sold out and is now out of print.
After the release of the MCD, things became quite silent in the Skald-camp and they started to look around for other labels since the contract with Unexploded Records only applied for the MCD. But the band once more wrote a contract with the same label and set their aim for the "real" deal - the debut full-length album.

But by the year 2009, the band quickly realized that they had grown somewhat tired of folkmetal and certain changes had to be made. The band invested in new equipment, tried out new angles in which to approach the music. Yes, it's true that Skald laid in limbo for a while due to laziness from both members, but the band was never close to break up. Anyway, 2009 became the least productive year in the history of Skald so far.

With the arrival of the new year, the band felt renewed and after a while realized that they hade made close to fifteen songs. Out of these, ten were chosen for the full-length album. Four of these were released for free online as a demo-EP in consisting with the bands earlier "music-for-free" thoughts. The EP "Fjällälven" (meaning "The Mountain River") was released online on the 5th of October 2010, in celebration of the 5-year anniversary of Skald.
During the year, the band recorded guitars, bass, keyboards, mouth-harp and vocals. They had really hoped that the full-length would see the light of day during 2010 (hence, the reason why they took promo photos this year) but rather than stressing out the album, they decided to take it slow in order to make the album the best they could. The band also recruited Daniel Gadd from Omnispawn as a drummer.
Come 2011 and this is the year that the full-length album "Vitterland" (meaning "Witherland") will be released!