APPENDIX III

“SATANISM IN NORWAY ” written and translated by Simen Midgaard

If, by the turn of the century, someone chooses to publish a work entitled “The Wooden Churches of Norway,” several of the descriptions will stick to some standardized phrase like “burnt by Satanists in 199-.” The word “Satanist” will at that time be commonly understood, if not in its full breadth.

Before this decade, knowledge about Satanists was the province of few, and it was not the Norwegian, black-clad and long-haired church-burners that would appear before one’s inner eye. There was a Church of Satan in the U.S.A., publicly recognized and entitled to tax exemption, as well as some smaller groups spread around the Christian world, usually with a hedonistic, life-approving philosophy. The darker element would indicate that they had read Jung’s theory about the “Shadow,” the repressed archetype in man.

The type of Satanist that has become commonly known in this country is a quite unique Norwegian variety. They make music, and they probably believe in Satan, being Satanists. During the night they might get the idea of going out to play with candles in churchyards, knock over tombstones, or simply burn the entire church down, especially if there are holidays coming up. Fortunately for them, most Norwegian churches are made of wood, so they can soak the wooden walls with gasoline, light it, and run off. What probably fills their head when, at a safe distance, they enjoy the church spire’s silhouette turning black in a fiery column, is the delight of genuine power, that they have demonstrated it, and that they have wreaked revenge. They despise people in general, whom they view as sheep. “God” is just the god of a hypocritical society and state that attempts to cleanse people’s brains with spiritual chlorine.

Satan opposes this head-on. He is the individual that does not acquiesce, that is not tempted and fooled by sweet lies, falsely associated with the term “spirit” and disgracefully given the name “religion.” He is the metaphysical opposite of everything feeble and dorky, to put it in popular youthful terms, and awakens the memory of the Italian poet from the turn of the century, Carducci, who initiated his “Hymn to Satan” by lauding the latter as the origin of the clear, rational thought.

 

The kick these modern Devil worshippers get when contemplating a successful arson attack on a church, is a juvenile boost of subverting the pathetically frail security of the domesticated and truth-fearing herd. Let us say that this is the case, and dwell a little on such a perspective. What does it mean for this subculture’s ability to survive? If they keep going like this ten more years, that could mean that they will amuse themselves with ten more churches each year. That would amount to a hundred, and I see no reason that it should not happen. The history of the Church will then look more like a history of war. But at that time the movement will have made itself thoroughly noticed, and succeeded in making the term “Satanist” a part of the index of Church history. They will simultaneously have made themselves exemplary for new heroes of the same ilk.

It is the ultimate rebellion, executed with a spiteful sneer and harsh grin, against a metaphysic that shows a so-called almighty, but oh-so-deedless god indeed, so inconsequential that you must have maggots in the brain to really believe in, or do so because you are a hysterical coward—afraid of death, of loneliness and darkness, the core of what these well-fed youngsters have established as true and real, and which they worship with skulls, ritual murders of hamsters, Saturnian music, and all kinds of petty sadistic acts that hardly escape attention in a small town, where it seems that most Satanists are inhabitants.

 

Let it be known: these Fauves definitely have a point. If the Christian god should be given metaphysical status as something fundamental, then the opposite must also exist, if only as an overcharged symbol. It is a point which makes me think that these “youthful pranks” will continue for a long time to come, as the message is simple, easy to fathom, and already understood.

A cult has arisen. Without proper arguments or any established philosophy, but with an aesthetic as tough as weeds, which is significant of kitsch. Elvis-worshippers have no ideology, either. If the teachings of the Satanists are rejected as idealistic kitsch, then the Church from which their sectarian condition has originated should be vulnerable to similar criticism.

Technically speaking the Satanists, if they can be said to be organized at all, form a Christian sect. The only alternative godhead within the dominating religion in Norway is Satan. He is as Christian as Jesus, if viewed as a phenomenon of religious history. And the church-burners are probably members or ex-members of, if not the State Church, at least a comparable Lutheran variation, baptised and confirmed. From a bird’s-eye view there will then be no doubt: the youthful Satanism is an extreme breed of Christianity where serenity, truth, and honesty exchange gods for their opposite. Dogmas disappear in the sect’s teachings, but that is what signifies sects. This is a banality, but it should be better understood.

Society has no idea of what it is dealing with. By the Church’s thousand-year anniversary it has not grasped that the demand for logical consequence and rationality also can find a religious variety, which—contrary to the lie of eternal life—worships the ecstatic contemplation of truth, which is death, for nothing is more true. With that within sight, reality will suddenly feel close and near. To make it even more intense, one worships it in all shapes and colors, with texts, pictures, and music, like any other religion. The Truthful as the Good, and therefore the Beautiful, is a basic Aristotelian principle that has definitely not passed the black-clad by. When this seems to be the reality in the heads of these self-styled fog-bursters, it would be naive to think that they are moved by a weaker force than one that has always made enthusiasts force the truth, contrary to society’s beliefs.

My conclusion is that this society is facing a movement that it will take a long time to establish a clear view upon, and that any lightly considered action against it may be like putting out a fire with gasoline.

 

[Originally published in Morgenbladet, 1995.]