God of War (2018 video game) and languages from various Northern European folk traditions." He also wanted the score to be huge and varied, "full of peaks and valleys, tiny incantations and gigantic set pieces." The main Kratos theme in particular features low orchestral instruments, Icelandic choir, deep male vocals, powerful female vocals (in particular Faroese singer Eivør Pálsdóttir), folk percussion, and Nordic stringed instruments, such as the nyckelharpa and hurdy gurdy. The track "Witch of the Woods" uses a renaissance and baroque instrument called a viola da gamba, which is an ancestor of the modern cello. The Stranger's theme, found in the track "Deliverance", uses
Hurdy-gurdy originated from fiddles in either Europe or the Middle East (e.g., the rebab instrument) some time before the eleventh century A.D. The first recorded reference to fiddles in Europe was in the 9th century by the Persian geographer Ibn Khurradadhbih (d. 911) describing the lira ("lūrā") as a typical instrument within the Byzantine Empire. One of the earliest forms of the hurdy-gurdy was the organistrum, a large instrument with a guitar-shaped body and a long neck in which the keys were set (covering one diatonic octave). The organistrum had a single melody string and two drone strings, which ran over