This year's London Jazz Festival incorporates a mini season, Scene Norway, that "explores and celebrates the wide range and exceptional quality of the Norwegian arts scene"; this will include Terje Isungset playing on instruments made of ice. To the casual reader, Norwegian jazz may sound like a byword for obscurity. In fact, it has one of the most vibrant and innovative scenes in Europe. Here are five ways in.

1. Jan Garbarek (pictured) is the towering figure of Norwegian jazz, a saxophonist of cool tone with a wide range of interests. Officium , in which he wove improvisations around the polyphony of the early music choir, the Hilliard Ensemble, was an improbable bestseller, but he has also worked with Indian musicians on Ragas and Sagas , and with Norwegian folk singers. His "Molde Canticle"' repeats the same 21-note phrase for half an hour, spinning gradual variations in tone and backing. Garbarek's records for the modish Munich record label ECM are well-known (as well as Officium , try Twelve Moons or Legend Of The Seven Dreams ). But more idiosyncratically Norwegian is his collaboration with the poet Jan Erik Vold on the Buddhist concept double-album Ingentings Bjeller (The Bells Of Nothingness), on Pan Records. You don't need to understand Norwegian, or indeed Zen, to lose yourself in it. (Available from Scandanavian online retailer www.cdon.com)