OUR WAY IS WOLFISH
IF WE RIDE ON THIS JOURNEY...

 

—“ATLAKVIDHA,” POETIC EDDA¹

8

COUNT QUISLING

AS THE CHURCH BURNING AND MURDER TRIALS UNFOLDED IN NORWAY, VARG Vikernes began to take on an almost mythical role. Endless daily tabloid stories spewed forth headlines about his alleged deeds. Varg’s artistic pseudonym of “Count Grishnackh” on the early Burzum albums provided the press with a perfect soundbite with which to deliver the nation its first real bogey-man in fifty years. The media tag of “Greven” (“The Count”) triggered just the right images in the readers’ minds: a perverse self-styled aristocrat, outside the law, who enacted his libertine fantasies of destruction with a belief in immunity from punishment for his crimes. “The Count drank my blood!” and other sensational, revelatory headlines bestowed Vikernes with the added compulsions of a sadistic vampire, regardless of the fact that the entire story was probably a complete fabrication.

In truth, by this time Vikernes had disowned his previous “Count Grishnackh” pseudonym. “Varg” was not his birth name either, but he knew it suited his character well. In a magazine interview Vikernes explained the symbolism of his new designation, and his distaste for the one he was born with: “I couldn’t stand [the name Kristian] ... which means Christ and Christian. The word Varg has a great meaning for me. I could speak about this matter for an hour. Anyway briefly, if you make a diagram of this word, you’ll see that it’s the combination of the vertical and horizontal of the words Amor (the strongest feeling), Roma (the center of the world) and Grav (grave). Besides, Varg derives form an archaic Nordic language and means wolf...”² As with his two deceased associates, Dead and Euronymous, Vikernes would be destined to fulfill both the overt and hidden essence of his self-given appellation.

Varg now states he originally adopted the title of “Count” for completely different reasons than the media picked up on. He explains, “Count comes from Comtes [sic; in fact, the term is comes], a Latin word, which means ‘companion, partner’ and the idea was that I am the partner of the people, but of course nobody realizes that. It was turned into all this Dracula, evil bullshit—typical.”³ The second part of Vikernes’s old pseudonym came from his beloved Tolkien books, where Grishnackh is an evil character on the side of Sauron.

VIKERNES’S NAME DIAGRAMS DRAWN DURING PRISON INTERVIEWS

Although Varg contributed to the hysteria in his own ways (in a similar manner to some of the contemptuous courtroom behavior by Charles Manson during his infamous trial a quarter-century earlier), he is correct that the portrait painted of him by the newspaper stories is quite at odds with reality. As he explains:

 

Like my girlfriend says, she hates “The Count” but she likes me. It’s something I can say as one of my own feelings as well. I don’t like the Count. If I met him I would beat him up, because he seems like a complete idiot. But I know that it’s not me. It’s like a shadow of mine that’s created by the light put on me by these Zionist journalists. The only thing they want is to have a Satan; without that they cannot force people into Christianity.⁴

 

 

Varg’s contempt of the media’s portrayal of his personality is mirrored by his disgust for the court hearings in which he was convicted. He is quick to point out the absurdities and ironies that came to the fore during these proceedings.

 

VARG VIKERNES

 

THEY HADN’T FOUND ANY REAL EVIDENCE AGAINST YOU?

 

They still have no evidence. They don’t have one single technical proof, nothing. The only reason I’m sentenced is because of those people, who might have done it themselves, saying that I did it. That’s the only reason I was found guilty. It’s all based on testimony, from people who were later found guilty of lying in court! Perjury!

 

LIKE WHO?

 

Jørn Inge [Tunsberg, guitarist in the band Hades]. Another zero, an anonymous guy.

HOW DID HE KNOW ANYTHING?

 

Because he’d burned it, quite simply! Or he was a part of it. He said that I burned [Åsane Church] in court, and I was found guilty. But he was part of the burning as well, and during his case when he said he was not, they didn’t believe him. That’s the system.

 

YOU WOULD THINK IF PEOPLE WERE REVEALED TO HAVE LIED ABOUT THEIR OWN ACTIONS, THAT WOULD CALL THEIR EARLIER TESTIMONY ABOUT OTHERS INTO QUESTION.

 

Yeah. And also I had an alibi for one of the churches which I was found guilty of burning. Ironically, I killed the witness—I killed the alibi! But still they had the police interview, he’d told them that in an interview. We should have had that as a proof, but nobody mentioned it. I wasn’t allowed to speak to the court.

That’s typical trial bullshit. Like my psychiatrists who examined me, one of them was a Jew and a Freemason! The other was a communist. My lawyer was a homosexual. The other lawyer was a Freemason. The one single Christian faith healer in Norway was in the jury! Can you imagine? In other words, a person who says, “I can look through you and with the power of Jesus pull out the evil spirits who make you sick”!

NORWEGIAN HEADLINE: “DID YOU BURST IN THE SUN, VARG?” [A PLAY ON THE IDEA FROM NORWEGIAN FOLKLORE THAT TROLLS BURST WHEN EXPOSED TO SUNLIGHT]

NORWEGIAN HEADLINE: “‘I AM THE SON OF ODIN AND SATAN’—AND HE IS FINANCED BY THE KU KLUX KLAN”

 

HOW DO THEY PICK THE JURY? ISN’T IT RANDOM?

 

Officially, but it’s quite suspect when they find “at random” the one Christian healer in Norway. Also there were at least two Freemasons in the jury. All of them were pensioners; there was only one person who was-n’t elderly. It was just a big act, all of it bullshit.

The other attorney, for the guy accused of the same crime [the Øystein killing], was a Freemason as well, and actually gave evidence against his own client in court, just to get me sentenced! Snorre had some information, and it was very important to find out whether he knew it before the police had told him, or if he learned it from the police. His so-called defense lawyer testified that he did know it before the police talked to him.

Also I had said the guy had nothing to do with it, and was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. And he said, “Yes, I had something to do with it, I accomplished the plan and everything.” Very good defense lawyer, who told him to say that!

 

HOW DID YOU GET YOUR LAWYER?

 

Officially he’s a very good lawyer, but I’m very dissatisfied with him because he didn’t let me speak. Every time a witness lied, I wasn’t allowed to say anything, even though the judge asked, “Do you want to say anything?” My lawyer told me, “Don’t say anything.” Of course you believe your lawyer, right? Especially when he’s supposed to be so goddamned good. So I didn’t say anything. But instead, as they lied, I could have revealed the lie. And punks were testifying against me, from the Blitz squat [in Oslo]. It was stupid. Also they brought in a Swedish girl who was insane, and didn’t mention that to the jury. Not one single word that she was insane.

 

CLINICALLY INSANE?

 

Yeah. She was witnessing against me saying I’d drunk her blood from her neck and everything, and they believed this!

 

BUT YOU KNEW HER?

 

Yes, through letters or something; I met her a couple of times.

 

IS THIS THE PERSON THE MEDIA CLAIMED WAS YOUR SWEDISH GIRLFRIEND, MARIA?

 

Exactly. I only met her a couple of times.

NORWEGIAN HEADLINE: “THE COUNT WON’T SAY WHO SET THE FIRES: ‘I KNEW ABOUT THE CHURCH FIRES’”

For a number of reasons, Vikernes found himself at the center of the Black Metal controversy, both in Norway and the rest of world. In one sense this can be viewed as a result of the massive media coverage he and his Doppelgänger, “The Count,” received; on the other hand, Varg’s status as spokesman or figurehead is fully warranted by his own history, for he does appear to be the personality who gave focus to the ideas welling within the scene, and led people into action. As Vikernes states, “there was one person who started it,” clearly implying it was he himself. The combination of strong belief in his own role, along with his impressive ability to incitingly voice his opinions, have both ensured Varg’s continued influence, even from behind bars.

The fascination with Vikernes on the part of the media and his fans and listeners is not based on mere hype alone. Until the time of the Bergens Tidende article and Varg’s subsequent arrest, he was admired by most everyone in the scene, and Burzum was considered a band that pioneered the aesthetics and dynamics of the modern wave of Norwegian Black Metal. Even after the killing of Euronymous, when many developed a fierce and abiding hatred for Vikernes, he is still often spoken of with a certain degree of deference.

 

There is one person who has always stood by Varg’s side and spoken out rigorously in his defense: his mother Lene Bore. Not only has she attempted to improve the public perception of her son, she also visits him frequently, helps him deal with correspondence, and assists in business matters relating to Burzum.

A number of Burzum albums have been released since his imprisonment and all have sold admirably well on the worldwide market. Royalties for the record sales are received by Lene Bore, a fact that allegedly allowed for the development of serious trouble in the future. Lene Bore also helped provide the money for recording and releasing the early Burzum releases on Aarseth’s Deathlike Silence label, and as a result she had occasion to meet a number of Varg’s friends in the Black Metal scene. Her comments are interesting, for she has dealt with an amazing amount of unrest as a result of her son’s actions over the years, and some of her impressions of Varg’s life are quite different from his own.

 

LENE BORE

 

WHAT WAS VARG LIKE AS A CHILD?

 

Varg was a loving boy. He could be very joyous and happy. Varg had very strong reactions and he was not good at hiding these or adjusting to situations. He never liked organized play or organized sports. He was very good at playing on his own, with a very rich imagination, but as soon as he had to adjust to others in the kindergarten it didn’t work so well. He never liked the kindergarten or school.

 

HOW DID HE GET ALONG WITH HIS FATHER?

 

His father was very authoritarian and wanted things his way. Their relationship started going bad quite early. His father wanted things his way and Varg had his own ideas about how things should be done. Possibly because he had these problems with his father I had a very close relationship with him. I often felt that it was appropriate to look after him a bit extra because of all the conflicts between Varg and the school, his father, and so on.

 

YOUR FAMILY SPENT A YEAR IN IRAQ. WHAT WAS THIS LIKE FOR VARG?

 

I think it might be here that Varg’s dislike toward other peoples started. He experienced a very differential treatment. The other children in his class would get slapped by their teachers; he would not be. For example when they were going to the doctor, even when there were other children waiting in line, Varg would be placed first. He reacted very strongly to this. He could not understand why we should go first when there were so many before us. He had a very strongly developed sense of justice. This created a lot of problems, because when he saw students being treated unfairly, he would intervene, and try to sort things out.

 

DID YOU REALIZE WHAT VARG WAS INVOLVED WITH IN HIS LATER TEENAGE YEARS?

 

I never knew about the Satanism part of it. I’ve never seen any signs of it either in his apartment or at home, apart from the way he dressed, which just got worse and worse. I had to see it as a teenage phenomenon, and that he would grow out of it, because all his friends looked almost as bad as him. I felt this as a real blow because when my sons were little, the first punks started to appear, and I wondered what their parents had done. And then my son ended up looking even worse.

 

WHAT WERE HIS FRIENDS IN THE BLACK METAL SCENE LIKE?

 

When his friends came home to me, I got to know them a bit. I didn’t think they seemed like criminals. They were quite easygoing boys. I was very relieved that there was no nonsense with drinking and drugs or crime.

 

DID YOU KNOW ØYSTEIN AARSETH?

 

I met him a couple of times and felt that Varg initially looked up to him a lot. He was very proud that he was the one who had gotten the record contract and not the others. That Øystein, who was five years older, achieved such an enormously strong grip on Varg, made me a little wary. I confronted Varg with this. He said it was nothing to worry about.

Øystein behaved like an alright fellow when he was at our house, even though he might look scary to people in the street. People might think that of my son, too, but I had to relate to them based on how they behaved towards me. I’ve never seen anyone have such a status with Varg as Øystein did in the beginning. Varg was very disappointed after a while. He lived with Øystein for a few months and then I think he saw things from a completely different angle.

 

WHAT OCCURRED WHEN VARG LIVED THERE?

 

I’m not completely sure, but I think Varg was very shocked by things he experienced when he was in Oslo with Øystein. These things were disillusioning toward the image he had of Øystein. He was not the person Varg had thought him to be. I know he was very disappointed that Øystein came forward in the media the way he did after the church fires. He felt let down.

VARG, AGE 5

Furthermore, I know that Varg no longer wanted to have a record contract with him because Øystein did not follow up on his part of the agreement. He owed Varg a lot of money, but instead of paying it back, he bought himself expensive furniture and spent the money in very unserious ways. The mutual confidence was broken because many of the agreements they had, for example regarding distribution of the records, were not followed up by Øystein.

Thus Varg’s confidence was weakened. So when Varg got a record deal with someone else, there developed an enmity between them because Øystein would have to compete. After the church fires, I didn’t know what had happened. Øystein had to close his shop because of them. In retrospect, I heard that Øystein had said he could live off selling Burzum records by mail order the rest of his life. He didn’t need the shop anymore. If he had counted on living off this, and Varg broke with him, it is clear that his income was disappearing. Therefore, Øystein felt let down, too.

 

HOW DID VARG DEVELOP HIS CURRENT BELIEFS?

 

I have no good explanation of how Varg [came to hold such extreme viewpoints]. He had a strong need to rebel, and sometimes chose the paths that would be the most oppositional.

 

COULD THIS BE MORE OF A GUT REACTION THAN A CONSCIOUS IDEOLOGY? A PROVOCATION?

 

It usually started with that. But I feel that he now has gotten well into the ideologies he stands for, that he means what he says.

 

DID HE EVER EXPRESS HIS IDEAS TO YOU?

 

He liked to talk with people like me who disagreed with him, to have his own opinions confirmed. Very often he would say, “I won’t bother to talk with you any more, you’re hopeless.” But I thought he was even more hopeless than me.

HOW DID YOU FIND OUT ABOUT HIS INVOLVEMENT WITH THE ARSONS?

 

I began to have suspicions about the business with the churches when he once told me that he thought the police were quite useless because they couldn’t catch the people behind the church burnings.

I reacted when Åsane Church burned. We were in the mountains, but Varg didn’t want to come with us. When I talked with him on the phone he asked if I had heard about it. I confirmed that, and said that I thought it was awful. I asked if he agreed. He didn’t. He thought it was completely okay. That astonished me. But I didn’t really think he had been involved in it.

A YOUNG VARG

WHY DO YOU THINK THE CHURCHES WERE BURNED?

 

I have tried to ask him why they did it, and I have gotten the impression that it was mostly the excitement he was after. I don’t think there was a strong ideological motivation behind it.

 

THE MEDIA CREATED THE IMAGE OF “THE COUNT,” BUT DIDN’T VARG ALSO CONTRIBUTE TO THIS HIMSELF?

 

This was all based on the first interview he did. All subsequent media treatment was based on that. He incited it himself by exaggerating and making himself sensationalistic. They would wind each other up in interview situations. It was as if the worse it was, the better. He is stuck with that image. He has tried to reach the media with other points, but they are never heard. It is as if the media wants that twist to it.

 

WHAT DO YOU RECALL ABOUT VARG’S INTERVIEW IN BERGENS TIDENDE?

 

It was very embarrassing, because it was about my son. He had told me about the newspaper interview beforehand, that it was very exaggerated and that I was not going to like it. He said he was considering to contact the journalists because he felt he had exaggerated so much. I had never expected it to look like it did. I think he was quite desperate for publicity around his recording project. I think he expected to get a small piece at the end of the newspaper—instead he got the entire front page.

 

DID VARG’S RACISM INTENSIFY AT A CERTAIN POINT?

 

If he had racist tendencies to begin with, I am sure that they came to the surface when he lived in Oslo.

VARG VIKERNES

 

WHEN DID YOUR INTERESTS IN WORLD WAR II GERMANY BEGIN?

 

It’s difficult to say. When I was three years old we moved to a road named Odinsvei, “Odin’s Walk,” and we were playing with the neighbor. He had German toy soldiers, but he always wanted to have the American soldiers, because they were the big heroes in his view. So I ended up with the German soldiers, as he was five years older than I. And I actually came to like them. It developed from soldiers to running around with SS helmets and German hand grenades and a Schmeizer with a swastika on it. In time we tried to figure it out—what the hell does this mean? That’s how it really began, and it developed. I was a skinhead when I was 15 or 16. Nobody knows that. People say that suddenly I became a Nazi, but I was actually a skinhead back then. It was in waves—in ’91 I was into occultism, in ’92 Satanism, in ’93 mythology and so on, in waves.

VARG AS A TEENAGER

 

HOW DOES YOUR MOTHER FEEL ABOUT YOUR RACIAL VIEWS?

 

You know how fathers tend to be afraid that their daughter might come home with a black guy? Well, my mother was actually afraid that I was going to come home with a black girl! She’s very race conscious. She was raised in a very Christian family and when she was 12 or 13 she told her parents, “The Virgin Mary is a bitch who doesn’t even know the name of her baby’s father!” and a lot of things like that. She could just as well be my friend as she is my mother.

 

WHAT ABOUT YOUR FATHER?

 

I have very little contact with him. They’re divorced. He left about ten years ago. There wasn’t any big impact. I was glad to be rid of him; he was just making a lot of trouble for me, always bugging me. He was in the Navy. We were raised very orderly; it was a good experience. I had a swastika flag at home and he was hysterical about it. He’s a hypocrite. He was pissed about all the colored people he saw in town, but then he’s worried about me being a Nazi. He’s very materialistic, as is my mother really, but that’s the only negative thing I can say about her. The positive thing is that she’s very efficient, and in business I have to have someone take care of my money and I can trust her fully. I know she will do things in the best way.

NORWEGIAN HEADLINE:

“BLOODY TRIANGLE IN THE SATAN SCENE”

 

YOU GREW UP IN THE MIDDLE EAST?

 

Iraq, in Baghdad. I went to school there one year. My father was working for Saddam Hussein! They were developing a computer program to control the economy of Iraq. He brought the family with him when he was working there.

 

WHAT DO YOU REMEMBER FROM THAT TIME?

 

A lot of things. I visited Babylon, for example—which doesn’t exist anymore because Saddam tore the whole place down—the ruins of Babylon, and a lot of mythological sites. There were a lot of dangerous things that happened, like being chased by dogs with rabies.

 

WHAT WAS SCHOOL LIKE?

 

It was an Iraqi elementary school. The English school couldn’t take us because they were full. I went to a regular Iraqi school. I could use some basic English. I think it was my mother’s idea, because she didn’t want us to stay home, bored. We couldn’t go out too much because of the rabid dogs and all this, so she put us in school, just to keep us active.

VIKERNES PROMO PHOTO, 1993

 

YOU HAVE SIBLINGS?

 

I have a brother, one and a half years older. He’s studying at a technical school. He’s a security guard. Actually he was selling alarms to churches—fire alarms! The Police were asking, “Isn’t he the brother of Vikernes?” Yes! He was making money from it!

 

WHEN DID YOU BECOME AWARE OF RACIAL MATTERS?

 

When I was six years old I had a quarrel with a teacher, and I thought, “You monkey!” I called the teacher a monkey in Iraqi elementary school. Of course normally they’d hit the children right then and there, but they didn’t dare to hit me because I was white.

The first contact I had with colored people was in Iraq, and after I moved back to Norway it took years before they started to move into the area, upper-class Norwegian society. In Bergen it’s a more aristocratic society I was part of, because of my mother mainly. I had very little contact with colored people, really. In Bergen we are still blessed with having a majority of whites—unlike Oslo, which is the biggest sewer in Norway.

 

DID YOU START TO SEE THINGS CHANGE?

 

When I was a skinhead there still weren’t any colored people, but there were these punks—that was more the reason I went over to the other side. But of course the main reason is weapons: German SS helmets, Schmeizers and Mausers and all these weapons. That’s what they shot British and Americans with. Great! We hated British and Americans.

SINCE THE WAR, EVERYTHING GERMAN HAS BEEN TABOO IN NORWAY AND NORWEGIAN KIDS ARE EXPOSED TO A LOT OF AMERICAN CULTURE AS A RESULT.

 

And I responded with hate toward American culture! Like when reading the war comic books, it was always the Americans and British shooting the Germans, like one British soldier shooting a whole platoon of Germans. This is bullshit, it wasn’t true of course. We didn’t like it. We liked the Germans, because they always had better weapons and they looked better, they had discipline. They were like Vikings. The volunteers from America were tall, blond guys, who looked much more like the ones they were attacking than some Dagos who were waving them good luck when they left home. It’s pretty absurd. The volunteers, the good men die first.

 

DID YOU FEEL LIKE YOU FIT INTO BERGEN SOCIETY?

 

Not really. Although in Bergen we have 90% of all the occultists in Norway. If you go up in the mountains around Bergen every other time you will meet some occultists. There are a lot of occult groups in Bergen—the O.T.O., the Aleister Crowley groups, etc. They have their own large groups at the university. The only real shaman in Norway lives in Bergen.

 

HOW DID YOU FEEL IN THESE SURROUNDINGS?

 

I was mostly socializing with weapon-freaks. My hobby was shooting guns, militia training, and playing in the woods with a shotgun.

 

BUT YOU HUNG OUT WITH SKINHEADS IN BERGEN?

 

There were no skinheads in Bergen. My brother shaved his head and I cut my hair short. But we were into the weapons, German weapons, and these attitudes like war means to fight, peace means to degenerate. Our big hope was to be invaded by Americans so we could shoot them. The hope of war was all we lived for. That was until I was 17, and then I met these guys in Old Funeral.

 

WHEN DID YOUR INTEREST IN MUSIC BEGIN?

 

I started playing when I was 14, playing guitar...

 

WHAT WAS THE BAND YOU PLAYED IN, OLD FUNERAL, LIKE?

 

These guys were just interested in eating. They didn’t care about my sawed-off shotgun or my dynamite, or any of these things. They were just interested in hamburgers and food, they had absolutely no interest in the weapons that I liked. Eventually I also lost interest in my weapons as well. Then came more music, and an interest in occultism developed.

VARG IN PRISON, 1995

 

WHAT INFLUENCED YOU TOWARD THAT?

 

I got interested in occultism through other friends. We played role-playing games, and some of these guys (all older than me) started to buy books on occultism, because they were interested in magic and spell casting. They showed me the books and then I bought similar things. But the music guys weren’t interested in that stuff at all, they only cared about food.

 

WHAT WAS THE MUSIC LIKE?

Originally it was Thrash Metal, and then it became Death-Thrash or Techno-Thrash, and I lost interest. I liked the first Old Funeral demo. It had ridiculous lyrics, but I liked the demo and that was why I joined with them. They developed into this Swedish Death Metal trend; I didn’t like that so I dropped out. But I played with them for two years.

 

WHAT OCCURRED AFTER YOU LEFT?

 

My own band, Burzum. It really began earlier as Uruk-Hai, and after I left Old Funeral I started calling it Burzum. An Uruk-Hai is the typical berserker in the Tolkien stories. There’s a lot of Norse mythology in Tolkien. We were drawn to Sauron and his lot, and not the hobbits, those stupid little dwarves. I hate dwarves and elves. The elves are fair, but typically Jewish—arrogant, saying, “We are the chosen ones.” So I don’t like them. But you have Barad-dûr, the tower of Sauron, and you have Hlidhskjálf, the tower of Odin; you have Sauron’s all-seeing-eye, and then Odin’s one eye; the ring of power, and Odin’s ring Draupnir; the trolls are like typical berserkers, big huge guys who went berserk, and the Uruk-Hai are like the Ulfhedhnar, the wolfcoats. This wolf element is typically heathen. So I sympathize with Sauron. That’s partly why I became interested in occultism, because it was a so-called “dark” thing. I was drawn to Sauron, who was supposedly “dark and evil,” so I realized there had to be a connection. That’s the reason I liked the book in the first place, because of the veil of hidden mythology.

 

WHAT IDEAS WERE THERE IN STARTING YOUR OWN PROJECT?

 

I’m not sure if I really knew what I was going to put into it. I don’t think it was that conscious. I wrote the lyrics to “Lost Wisdom,” which are very clichéd, about how we don’t know everything and the reason why is because the Christians ruined everything, to put it briefly. That’s the point, it’s like, “There’s something more in here.”

I also wrote the “Burzum” song, which appears on the Filosofem album. Very short, simple lyrics: When night falls / She cloaks the world in impenetrable darkness / A chill rises from the soil and contaminates the air / Suddenly, life has new meaning. Quite simple, more mystical really.

Later everyone thinks, “Oh, it’s all Satanism.” But to answer your question, I don’t think I knew what I wanted to do. It was more a matter of seeking, and I was doing a lot of experimenting at that time as well, with magic and runes and making magical weapons—which actually worked as well!

 

WHAT DOES THE WORD BURZUM MEAN?

 

It’s a fictional word, originally. Tolkien was a professor in Norse mythology and Norse language. When he wrote the fictional language in The Lord of the Rings books, it was very much based on Norse. So Burzum—“Burz” means night or dark, and if you take the word in plural it has “um” added, and becomes “Burzum,” meaning much night or darkness. Just like democracy claims to be “light” and “good,” I reasoned that then we obviously have to be “dark” and “evil.”

 

DEPENDING ON WHO’S CALLING YOU EVIL, IT COULD BE A COMPLIMENT.

 

Yes. But even though Burzum means darkness, it’s really the light of Odin. Darkness is light.

FROM REALITY INTO MYTH

One of Varg Vikernes’s most remarkable qualities is his ability to mythicize himself, recasting his own deeds in a new light. This is not to say the he creates outright falsifications, but rather he presents and recounts his actions selectively, amplifying certain aspects or details and ignoring others, presumably with careful deliberation.

As time progressed following his arrest after the murder of Øystein Aarseth in the latter half of 1993, Vikernes began to refer to his own ideology as heathen rather than Satanist. He increasingly downplayed the more childish Black Metal trademarks of “evil for evil’s sake” and a simplistic blasphemous attitude toward Christianity, and replaced these with a more thoughtful, encompassing point of view. Instead of being dedicated to Satan as he previously spoke of in older interviews (and most notoriously in the Bergens Tidende piece), Varg was now a comrade of the Norse high deity Odin, “the one-eyed enemy of the Christian ‘God,’” as he put it. Burzum now existed “exclusively for Odin.”⁵ It is true, as Vikernes explains, that a certain “Nordic” spirit had always existed within his music, thoroughly infused as it was with Tolkienisms. Whether Vikernes was ever really espousing of any kind of militant heathen outlook in his younger days is another question.

Speaking with a certain indignation to Terrorizer magazine a few years ago, Varg explained how the underlying themes of Nordic religion had always existed in his work:

 

Take a look at me and Burzum. I have been accused of being a Satanist who suddenly turned Odinic. If the same fucks had the least knowledge about Odinism they would see it in Burzum a long time ago. On the debut we have the song “War,” which hails the Odinic idea of dying in battle. “Ea, Lord of the Depths” is the Mesopotamian Aquarius, Odin is the Norse Aquarius. On Det som engang var (What Once Was) we start with a track called “Den onde kysten” (“The Coast of Evil”) which hails all those who drowned while in Viking [on sea raids]. “En ring til aa herske” (“One Ring to Rule”) talks about Germanic people and Draupnir, the ring of Odin. “Lost Wisdom” is obviously heathen, and “Han some reiste” (“He Who Journeyed/Fared”) is dedicated to Odin when he hung himself as a sacrifice to himself. On Aske (Ashes) the title described Odin’s Reich today and “God’s” tomorrow. The first track, “Stemmen fra taarnet” (“The Call from the Tower”) is about a call from Odin on his throne called Hlidhskjálf, and the newly released album has “Inn i slottet fra droemmen” (“Into the Castle of the Dream”), which is about the [faring] to Valhalla. These are the most obvious Odinic lyrics, written over a period from ’90 to ’92. The one and only “Satanic” title is “Dominus Sathanas” on the Aske album, translated as “The Ruler Adversary” or something similar. So where the hell do they get the impression of my being a Satanist from?⁶

 

The impression of Vikernes as a Satanist stems largely from his earlier pronouncements, not to mention his deep involvement with Black Metal. As for the latter, he now asserts that he no longer has anything to do with it. He simultaneously downplays the depth or importance of Black Metal, discounting the accuracy of sensational quotes attributed to him in the past, at the same time as he elevates the music as a worthwhile “passageway” for others.

The racial nationalism Vikernes now espouses would seem to be in stark contradiction to some of his prior statements and actions. As a result, his present agenda forces him to justify some of his previous outlandish remarks. Frequently he claims they were distorted or taken out of context—quite possible, given the tactics of many unethical journalists—or he attempts to present them in an entirely new context. Many of his critics accuse him of inventing these justifications for his actions as a form of ex post facto revisionism.

 

VARG VIKERNES

 

DIDN’T YOU GIVE CHRISTIANITY A LOT OF AMMUNITION, IN A SENSE, THROUGH SOME OF YOUR ACTIONS?

 

Sure. But even though they have a lot more people becoming more Christian—if one person becomes Christian, there are also three or four people who become heathen. That’s good. It’s like a bad thing that has to be followed with good things. And even though some of them go through Satanism, they will eventually end up with Ásatrú. We can see that again and again. We see it with Bathory, I see it in myself. I was interested in Satanism to where I advocated it—all the others as well, with the whole Black Metal community, or the Black Metal disorder—but now there’s a growing interest in pan-Germanic heathenism.

If I see some people talk shit about me who claim to be heathens, it doesn’t matter because at least they are heathens. I’m not interested in personal glory; the most important thing is to raise attention toward our own culture, our own heritage. With that in mind, it doesn’t matter if people become Satanists, because they will eventually arrive at Ásatrú.

 

ARE THERE REAL SIMILARITIES BETWEEN SATANISM AND HEATHENISM?

 

The one thing [the Satanists] lack is honor. When they say “survival of the fittest” they mean survival to the most callous. Survival to the guy who shoots you in the back. Survival to the guy who attacks you ten-on-one, or who cheats and lies. That’s Satanism.

 

HOW SERIOUS IS THE SATANISM IN THE BLACK METAL SCENE?

 

I wouldn’t describe it as serious at all. It’s image.

 

ALL THIS OBSESSION WITH BEING “EVIL”...

 

We were provoking them a lot. We were advocating what we called “true evil.” You probably remember some old interviews, where we said: this is evil, that’s evil, if you want to play Black Metal you have to be evil. We were just provoking them.

 

IT SEEMS LIKE A LOT OF STATEMENTS MADE BY BLACK METAL PEOPLE WERE OBVIOUS PROVOCATIONS.

Yeah, but there’s a very important thing: I never say anything to provoke, but I provoke intentionally to say something. Do you understand the difference?

 

THERE’S A METHOD TO THE MADNESS.

 

Yes, there’s a reason for it, a point.

 

WHAT ABOUT THE KERRANG! ARTICLE?

 

I never said I will become the dictator of Scandinavia myself. I did say that I support Stalin, Hitler, and Ceaucescu, and I even said that Rumania is my favorite country—an area full of Gypsies! But the point is that Rumania is the best example of communism, and when people can realize how ridiculously the whole thing works, they can see what it really is. So in that way it’s my favorite country. Of course that was misunderstood by the newspapers. The same with Stalin. I said I support Stalin. It may be a provocative way to say it, but if there wasn’t Stalin, Hitler would look even worse. Now at least we can say, look at Stalin—he’s worse. He killed 26 million.

I wouldn’t take Kerrang! very seriously. A lot was misquoted. Like that I said “just to walk down the street and kick a boy is stimulating”—that was taken out of context. It sounds like I was trying to be some tough guy, but I was explaining that there was no such thing as blind violence, because even if someone seems to hit another person senselessly, they do actually have a reason—their own pleasure, their own aggression. That’s a reason. So it’s not blind violence. They took away the point of why I said it and put it in another context.

 

YOU WOULDN’T DESCRIBE YOURSELF AS A SADIST?

 

No. I would say I’m quite normal. I can be very brutal but I can also be very kind. The opposites create the energy. On the one hand I can slaughter these idiots with a snap of my fingers, and it doesn’t matter at all; on the other side I can play with my daughter. There’s no contradiction in that. There’s no contradiction in being both total evil and total goodness.

 

HOW DOES GRAVE DESECRATION FIT INTO YOUR IDEOLOGY?

 

It’s quite simple. [The Christians] desecrated our graves, or burial mounds, so it’s revenge. The people who lie in the graves are the ones who built this society, which we are against. We show them the respect they deserve. I have absolutely no respect for the people who built this society. [The desecrators] can just smash their graves, piss on them, dance on them.

 

THERE’S NO POINT WHERE YOU WOULD SAY IT GOES TOO FAR?

No, nothing. Well, there was a T-shirt that Øystein printed which said “Kill the Christians.” I think that’s ridiculous. What’s the logic in that? Why should we kill our own brothers? They’re just temporarily asleep, entranced. We have to say, “Hey, wake up!” That’s what we have to do, wake them up from the Jewish trance. We don’t have to kill them—that would be killing ourselves, because they are part of us.

They just have a Jewish implant in their head which is called Christianity, which we have to get rid of. Once we get rid of that, they will be just as good as us. It’s an awakening. Wake them up, they’re sleeping. The way to wake them up is to burn the churches, desecrate graves, and all this.

It’s very important to let them know why people desecrate graves. The typical public reaction, which I saw in a paper in Bergen, is: “Why do they do it? I don’t understand why anyone can have pleasure from doing this.” But who the hell says they are doing it for pleasure? Of course it’s not for pleasure. If they don’t think it’s for pleasure, they believe it’s for fun. It seems to be totally beyond their comprehension that people might do something for another reason besides pleasure. It’s not for pleasure. People can act without the motive of enjoyment and pleasure.

 

IT’S MORE LIKE A POLITICAL TERROR STRATEGY?

 

Yes.

 

BUT WITH TERRORISM YOU NEED TO SHOW WHY IT’S DONE.

 

That’s why I want to release my book. It explains in detail why people burn churches. People say how it’s a tragedy, and how nice our culture is. But at the same time, our culture lies in ruins below the churches. How are we going to know our culture when they build churches on top of it? They say it’s not possible to tear down the churches, they’re protected, they have historic value. But if we cannot tear away the “historical values” we can never find what lies below them.

Like I mentioned about the Fantoft Church with the horg [heathen altar] which the church sits on top of—that’s blasphemy, severe blasphemy. There’s a natural circle there and you can see the horg, and the cross was put on top of it. If that’s not blasphemy I don’t know what is. This is the case all over the country—absolutely all of our holy sites have been desecrated like this, all of them. That’s the point of supporting church burning. When the church is burned we can say, “Now we will go under it and see what lies below.” That’s another reason for it.

ANTI-GRISHNACKH CARTOON

THE WORLD ACCORDING TO VARG

During the first year of his incarceration, Varg Vikernes set about committing his views to paper. He wrote about the Norse gods and tribal practices as he viewed them, and attempted to apply these concepts to the modern world, as archetypal values and behaviors that could be reawakened. He also defended the actions which had landed him in jail with a twenty-one-year sentence. He detailed the killing of Øystein Aarseth, and justified it as an act of self-defense. He rationalized the burning and vandalism of close to fifty churches in Norway, explaining why it was reasonable and even necessary to rescue his fellow Norwegians from their Judeo-Christian slumber.

Varg desired to present his worldview in a systematic manner, although this was made nearly impossible under the circumstances he was experiencing in prison. He was at first allowed a computer, which he used for correspondence and for the preliminary texts which would form his nationalist heathen codex. Some of the essays he composed were forwarded to correspondents and began to appear in underground publications around Europe. Most of these concerned his investigations into the esoter ica of Nordic mythology and cosmology.

At a certain point, after he had compiled a large portion of his book, the prison authorities decided to take away his computer; presumably they were worried he was somehow employing it for nefarious ends. Varg recalls:

 

They confiscated the computer. “Okay,” I said, “if I’m not allowed to have the computer, send it out of the prison”—that’s my right. But of course the whole book was on the hard disk! So they prevented me from continuing to write the book, but still I got it out, and that’s better than nothing. I wrote it in ’94 and the second part in early ’95. I had to finish it quickly, before they took my computer away, which is the reason so many things are put into it all at once.⁷

 

Vikernes titled his tome Vargsmål, which literally translates to “the speech (or song) of Varg.” It is an allusion to certain Old Norse poems of the Elder Edda, a collection of skaldic lore and tales originating in the pre-Christian culture of the Germanic peoples. One of the more significant sections of the Elder Edda is titled “Hávamál,” “The Words of the High One,” a poetic monologue by Odin, offering counsel to his folk on Midhgardh (earth) in ethics, behavior, and noble aspirations. In it Odin also recounts some of his own deeds and sacrifices, for example how he stole the holy mead of poetic inspiration (which he later bestows to mankind) from the giant Suttung, and his shamanistic trial-by-hanging in which he receives the wisdom and knowledge of the runic symbols. By titling his treatise Vargsmål, Vikernes seeks to place himself in mythic lineage as a modern-day figure worthy of the ancient sagas.

The contents of Vargsmål are somewhat disorderly, as Vikernes himself is quick to point out. Due to his circumstances, much of this was beyond his control. As a result, he explains:

 

Everything is very concentrated; for uninitiated people it’s very difficult to grasp the whole with the first reading. I start out with the assumption that the reader already knows something about different mythologies. There’s nothing like a bibliography in the book—I’d intended to put something like that in there, but they took my computer away. Also the book suddenly stops, unnaturally. There’s also a lot of jumping from one subject to another, it’s sort of like different articles I wrote, that day one page, another day another page.⁸

 

The official publication of Vargsmål would only come about years after it was written. With Varg’s front-page notoriety there were certain publishers interested in releasing the book, obviously figuring to make a quick buck on the sensationalism that could be generated, but it appears that most backed out when they had a chance to review the actual contents. In addition to mythological commentary, the book brims with volatile statements and racial, anti-Christian, nationalist rhetoric. In Vikernes’s words:

VARG IN PRISON

[Vargsmål] contains a lot of Norse mythology, and cosmology in the heathen view, politics, and of course some notes about the murder. It’s very controversial. There’s a lot of things that really shouldn’t be publicized which are in the book. ... It may seem like an attempt to convince everybody that I know a lot, because there’s so much in there. It’s chronologically written. There’s a lot that’s directly illegal in the book—defamation of character, severe racism, and incitement to criminal activity. Some books are published and found to not be legal, and they’re withdrawn. My book has not even gotten this far. Nobody wants to release it in the first place! That’s a big problem. People don’t like the truth, and it can be very unpleasant for most people.⁹

 

 

Vargsmål contains more than just Vikernes’s ideas about mythology and racism—it reveals much about his own psyche. Varg’s consciousness of his own role in the world informs the text from beginning to end, and it is impossible to separate this from any “philosophy” or “religion” presented in the book. A brief excerpt provides ample demonstration of this:

 

To be a Chieftain does not mean having it better than others. It means having to abandon all your personal dreams, most pleasures, and your personal feelings. I would like to find a woman to live with in peace and quiet, far away from the world’s problems, but I cannot. It is my duty to sacrifice myself and my personal wishes for the benefit of my tribe. The reason I am Chieftain to begin with is not because I want to be—a Chieftain is condemned to a totally unhappy life without joy or pleasures beyond the absolutely necessities. It is my misfortune to be Chieftain, my dismal fate. It is nothing else than a toil and burden, but it is my duty. The Chieftain is the tribe’s greatest thrall. Many will say that this is a heroic presentation of myself. Let them say so. Just such unpleasant assertions I have to bear, it is some of the dishonor I have to bear as Chieftain.¹⁰

IN THE COMPANY OF HERETICS

Varg Vikernes serves the role of a pariah and heretic to Norwegians, similar on a number of levels to that of Charles Manson in America. Both profess a radical ideology at odds with, and at times unintelligible to the average citizen. Both insist they have done nothing wrong. Both espouse a revolutionary attitude, imbued with strong racial overtones. Both have become media bogeymen in their respective countries, and both knowingly contribute to their own mythicization. Both also understand well the inherent archetypal power of symbols and names—especially those they adopt for themselves. The enigmatic correlations between Varg’s name and his unique character will be explored in detail in the next chapter.

Vikernes has continued to amplify and project his heresies from behind bars, and on some level appears to see himself as a heathen avatar for his countrymen, the “Chieftain” of a Nordic resurgence. His stated goal is to awaken the rest of the Norse tribe from a Judeo-Christian, social-democratic slumber. It is unlikely he will achieve this—to the average Norwegian, Varg is a monster at worst, at the very least a demented renegade.

With his increasing nationalism, Vikernes has discovered his predecessor in Vidkun Quisling, the Norwegian political leader who founded a collaborationist pro-German government in the midst of the Second World War. Quisling was tried and executed for treason shortly after the war’s end. As a result his name has entered international vernacular as a synonym for “traitor.” In Norway, that name is still anathema even today. But what is scorned by the masses is sacred to Varg Vikernes, and he speaks of Quisling with reverent admiration.

 

VARG VIKERNES

 

I WAS UNDER THE IMPRESSION QUISLING’S RELIGION WASN’T PARTICULARLY PAGAN.

 

Oh yes, it was. I have a very esoteric book he released in 1929 about “Universism.” It’s called That Inhabited Worlds Are To Be Found Outside of the Earth, and the Significance Thereof for Our View of Life.

 

BUT I BELIEVE THIS “UNIVERSISM” IS QUITE CHRISTIAN.

 

No, it’s not. In his speech to the court he seemed Christian, but all his ideas were very un-Christian. He criticized Christians for believing that God created the world, because what about all the other worlds out there? This is what the book is all about. It was a very good position he took, very educated. He was far ahead of his time with some of his conclusions, which later, in 1980, scientists have confirmed. He knew all this back then, fifty years earlier. So that was definitely a pagan thing, although there was the image you have to give of being Christian—especially in court!

 

QUISLING’S PARTY USED THE OLD SUNWHEEL CROSS, BUT AS A CHRISTIAN SYMBOL, RIGHT?

VIDKUN QUISLING

They said the sun sign was a cross of St. Olav, and therefore they used it. But the youth division of National Union, his party, they were very heathen. They were actually going to open an Ásatrú church in Norway, just like Hitler and Himmler in Germany. But they were suppressed, typically.

Vikernes is correct that Vidkun Quisling did develop his own doctrine of mystical beliefs, which he termed “Universism.” In formulating this he drew heavily from ideas ranging from Gnosticism to Taoism, and philosophers from Nietzsche to Kant. The historian Hans Fredrik Dahl, one of Norway’s leading experts on Quisling and author of a two-volume biography, states that Quisling was most definitely a Christian—although he considered himself to be a lot more reflective than most of his fellow believers. Many inconclusive suppositions about Quisling’s personal philosophy have been advanced, based on the contents of the small volume Vikernes refers to, as this was Quisling’s only published essay which touched upon the subject. His philosophical project was to reconcile Christianity with science, and he left behind unfinished manuscripts for what was to become a major spiritual/philosophical work. He had compiled 930 pages of handwritten text but was never able to complete his opus. While these manuscripts have been available to researchers, few have actually bothered to look at them until a critical appraisal of the material was published in 1996.

According to another Quisling expert, Oddvar Hoidal, “Universism” would seem to encompass a certain sense of a will to power, à la Nietzsche, upheld and spurred on by a natural oligarchy:

 

The universe, [Quisling] said, was “the one living and true God” which had been given to the earth, and which would continue to exist long after the world had disappeared, creating new earths and new stars. It was up to man to recognize this, and to work for perfection here on earth. This was the “divine will” as he saw it. This development of the “divine will” would take place in many areas of organized social behavior: “religion, science, art, and practical action—led by an elite.”¹¹

Despite the fact that Quisling’s spiritual system may have paid a certain amount of lip service to Christian cosmology, Vikernes is correct that on one level it could be considered pagan or “pantheistic” in the sense of its dictionary definition as “identifying the Deity with the various forces and workings of nature.”¹² His statement that Quisling’s organization, Nasjonal Samling (National Union), was actively encouraging the development of the old Nordic religion is, however, misleading. Quisling consistently deferred to Christian forces both inside and outside of his political party, long before his trial for treason after the war.

WOODCUT OF QUISLING THE “UNIVERSIST”

 

A more fitting role model for Vikernes would be an early National Union activist, Hans S. Jacobsen, who later resigned from the party due to disagreement with Quisling’s direction. Jacobsen urged a more strident political outlook and specifically voiced his objections to the National Union’s official advocacy of “Christianity’s basic values.” As Hoidal explains:

 

[Jacobsen] favored instead the pagan element of German National Socialism, which opposed Christianity because of its Jewish origins, and which stressed the pre-Christian Nordic traditions of the folk. Norway’s conversion to Christianity, made possible by St. Olav’s death as a martyr at Stiklestad, was described by Jacobsen as the introduction of “something false and unnatural into our folk’s life.” It was therefore logical for him to condemn Quisling’s adoption of the St. Olav’s cross as the NS symbol, declaring that the party symbol itself was non-Nordic.¹³

 

 

Jacobsen’s mouthpiece for his ideas, which he hoped to insinuate into National Union, was a journal he published called Ragnarok, named after the Nordic myth of apocalypse and rebirth.

QUISLING’S NS PARTY CROSS

 

Hans Jacobsen is long forgotten in Norway, and only those reading the more detailed biographies of Quisling will ever hear of his activities. His name commands no attention today —unlike that of Vidkun Quisling, whose specter still looms from the not-so-distant past. Varg Vikernes is well aware of his basic similarities with Quisling, both for their extreme visions of a Norway exclusively for Norwegians, but also in the power of their very names to raise hackles on the necks of the average social-democratic citizen of today. As a result, Vikernes is quick to proclaim his relation to Quisling in both thought and blood.

QUISLING AT WORK

 

Varg Vikernes: It’s the fifty-year anniversary of [Quisling’s] execution on the 24th of October, 1995. I was trying to pay for a wreath, to lay a cross on his grave. It’s in Telemark. There will probably be a lot of people gathered there this year. I unfortunately cannot come. I have Quisling blood. Susanne Qisling, she’s born 1811 and died 1891, is one of my ancestors. One side of the family spelled their name without the “u.” Quisling actually means one who comes from a side branch of the king’s lineage. So it’s a noble birth, Quisling.

 

HAVE YOU EVER TALKED TO ANY OF THE ORIGINAL RELATIVES OF QUISLING?

 

No, they’ve changed their names, all of them. I’m considering changing my name back to Quisling.

MINISTER OF PROPAGANDA

Confined to prison and unable to record music any longer, Varg now seeks other methods of spreading his message. He lamented not being able to legally register his own religious organization in Norway due to his criminal record. Toward this goal he has, however, formed the Norwegian Heathen Front, a loosely knit operation through which he will issue propaganda. The members of German Black Metal band Absurd, also currently behind bars, are involved with a branch of the organization in their country.

Vikernes explains some of the NHF political outlook, and how he arrived at the name:

 

It used to be Norwegian Heathen Undemocratic Front, but we realized that we are not “undemocratic,” they are. We’re the democrats. What they call democracy has nothing to do with it. It’s the rule of the scum. So we left off “undemocratic.” The Vikings would choose a Chieftain, and after awhile if you are not pleased with him, you just drop him. Like they tried to drop King Olav, because he was trying to Christianize everyone. And they hail him today as some hero—bloody stupid!¹⁴

 

 

Another quote from Vargsmål explains his own position as “NHF Chieftain” more fully, imbuing his actions with Odinic significance:

 

I am Chieftain of a tribe that has taken the lead in establishing a Norwegian Heathen Front. As Chieftain I have to act like Odin, prostitute myself (as Odin did to get hold of Suttungr’s mead), meet dishonor (as Odin did when he learned womanly Seid [sorcery], which is shameful for a man to perform), expose myself to danger (as Odin did to find Mime’s well of wisdom), sacrifice myself (as Odin did when he tore out one eye to get to drink from the well of wisdom, and as he did when he hung himself from Yggdrasil), draw knowledge from history (as Odin did when he went to Urdr—the past—to get advice on the future), and a lot more that isn’t very fun or relaxing.¹⁵

 

 

Vikernes claims he already has a high degree of support among fellow prisoners. In recruiting from the public at large, he plans to employ his philosophy on the nature of women as a basis for NHF strategy. His awareness of the woman’s role in revolutionary activities is not unlike that of Charles Manson before him, although Vikernes claims to have arrived at it from personal observation during his Black Metal period.

 

VARG VIKERNES

 

WHAT LAID THE FOUNDATION OF THE MENTALITY OF BLACK METAL?

 

The groundwork of the Black Metal scene is the will to be different from the masses. That’s the main object. Also girls have a very important part in this, because they like mystical things and are attracted to people who are different, who have a mystique. When a girl says “Look how cute he is” when she sees a picture of someone, her male friends will think “She likes him. If I look like him maybe she will like me as well.” They turn toward the person she admires. The way to make Norway heathen is to go through the girls, because the males follow the girls.

 

THAT’S WHAT CHARLES MANSON THOUGHT.

Males aren’t extreme really. You find females are more to the left or more to the right than the males. Females are more communistic, more extremely Marxist-Leninist, or more extremely rightist than the males. They’re predisposed to such extreme things.

It’s like S/M, it’s a natural thing for women. Pain is a natural thing for women, just like lifting things is a natural thing for males. Females have to give birth, and if they didn’t enjoy pain, who the hell would ever lose their virginity? And we wouldn’t be able to inflict pain, or ever take the virginity of anybody if they were screaming. It’s a very natural thing that males are sadistic and females are masochistic. That’s the reason females are also attracted to things like Satan with a big dick, or these macho types. Why else would they be attracted to such things?

Once we’re aware of this we can do a lot of other things. We can build a lot out of that.

 

ARE FEMALES INVOLVED IN BLACK METAL?

 

I don’t know how the scene is today; I have no contact with it. I noticed that there are a lot of females writing to me, something like nine out of every ten letters. It’s because of what I just said.

In Oslo everybody fucks everybody in the scene. If one person gets a venereal disease, everyone does. The females I know in the Black Metal scene are not very intelligent, they are basically just whores. That’s a typical Oslo phenomenon.

The people I correspond with are not Black Metal girls at all. Some of them were, but they realized that I don’t like it and then they realized they didn’t really like it either. They were just doing it because they wanted to get in touch with certain people. The way to power is through the women. Hitler knew this as well. Women elected Hitler.

 

IN HEAVY METAL OR SKINHEAD SCENES THERE ARE USUALLY VERY FEW WOMEN.

 

I think there are more females than males in Ásatrú, it’s mostly girls.

 

WERE THERE MANY FEMALES AROUND YOU BEFORE?

 

There were mostly females, and only two or three guys—they were the snitches. Girls never snitch, with the exception of the Rumanian bitch. Girls never snitch, they’re quiet.

Recently there have been girls involved in the church burnings in eastern Norway. They weren’t caught but they were suspected.

 

WERE THERE GIRLS WHO KNEW ABOUT YOUR ACTIVITIES WHEN THEY WERE GOING ON?

Yes. They didn’t say anything. Like the girl who is the mother of my child—she knew everything but said nothing.

 

YOU HAVE A DAUGHTER?

 

I have a daughter with a fair, blonde Aryan woman. She’s three years old. I haven’t seen her for two years; the mother won’t allow me to. She believes the prison would be a bad influence. She’s over-protective. The girl is older than me, she’s quite extreme in many ways. My mother bought my daughter a sweatshirt which came from America, and her mother was upset because the image on it wasn’t Norwegian.

For an upcoming project, Vikernes explains a first step in putting his ideas into action in gaining support:

 

My girlfriend is going to have some pictures taken with my chain mail on, with a real Viking sword, and we’re going to make a poster that says “Norwegians—Fight for Norway!” with her picture and the address of Norwegian Heathen Front. That’s a direct teasing of the male lusts.¹⁶

 

Varg has high expectations for the NHF, but the image and ideas he projects are too radical and uncompromising to gain widespread support. Some of his ideological statements are so drastic, it is hard to believe even those on the extremes of the far right would be in agreement.

 

VARG VIKERNES

 

WHY AREN’T MORE PEOPLE SAYING WHAT YOU ARE?

 

The skinheads are like partying Americans, just drunks listening to Viking Rock. It’s typical that the guys who are skinheads are the ones with dark hair and dark eyes. A lot of racists have brown eyes. You can ask why, and it’s simple. They see that they are getting closer and closer to the aliens, the colored people. They realize that, shit, we have something to lose. The people who really could claim the Nordic heritage, they don’t bother. They don’t really think about it because it’s so obvious to them.

 

THEY DON’T CARE?

 

I don’t think they’re aware of the problem, because when they look in the mirror they see a true Norseman. They don’t see a mixture. It’s not so easy for them to become aware of it.

NAZIESQUE BURZUM IMAGE

 

DON’T YOU THINK BY MAKING COMMENTS ABOUT PEOPLE WITH BROWN EYES, YOU’RE ALIENATING MANY WHO MIGHT OTHERWISE SUPPORT YOU?

 

That’s true. In the [Vargsmål] I’m alienating them quite a lot, comparing brown eyes to looking into their ass. It’s very racial. Look at the sky, it’s blue. The sea is blue. The flowers are blue, and my eyes are blue. Behind the heavens are the stars, they are eternal wisdom. The ocean is a sea of wisdom. My eyes are blue—everything is in the blue eyes. But if I look into brown eyes I could just as well be looking up their ass; brown is like shit. Of course that makes an impact!

 

AND IT WOULD ALIENATE HALF OR MORE OF THE PEOPLE WHO OTHERWISE MIGHT BE ON YOUR SIDE.

 

That’s right, but I also say that people can have brown eyes, and it doesn’t matter. They’re not any worse than us, but they should not mate with a person of the opposite sex who also has brown eyes. They should mate with someone with blue eyes. Their son or daughter will probably have brown eyes, but when they mate with someone with clear blue eyes, then they will eventually be pure. This also goes for physical height, everything. So I don’t rule them out at all. People with brown eyes are just as worthy as we are.

 

WOULDN’T IT BE BETTER TO WAIT UNTIL YOU’RE IN A POSITION OF INFLUENCE BEFORE MAKING SUCH STATEMENTS?

 

That is a point, but still what I’m saying is the truth. I don’t say that such people are fucked up. We need them as much, but we have to be conscious about who we mate with.

Also by saying that, while I won’t get much support myself from people with brown eyes, they will not view others as so extreme. The more extreme I look, the more they will be able to follow, because ten years from now this will not be extreme anymore. They will follow the others who don’t say these things, but are still extreme. It’s pushing the line out further and further.

One can only wonder if Varg Vikernes has indeed pushed the line out so far in the distance that no one will ever catch up with it. He may realize this himself, and simply not care. He is all too happy to flaunt extremities and fly in the face of decorum without the slightest hesitation. In his role as a modern-day heretic, Varg is always willing to go one step further.

He will remain confined within concrete walls for many years to come, but this cannot stop him from continuing to formulate his political and social strategy. Under the circumstances, he has abundant time for such pursuits. In one of the letters received in subsequent months after the interviews for this book were conducted, Varg related that he had already followed through on at least one of his plans. He had now changed his name to Varg Qisling Larssøn Vikernes.

UNIDENTIFIED FLYING ARYANS

Since the publication of the first edition of Lords of Chaos, Didrik Søderlind again interviewed Varg Vikernes for a magazine assignment in March, 2000. Along with Swedish photographer Max Fredriksson, he travelled to the Trondheim prison on the West Coast of Norway, where Vikernes has spent the last few years practically alone. This means that although he is effectively hindered from applying his theories to practical life, the prison environment functions as a hothouse for Vikernes’s fertile mind.

Ironically, while Vikernes’s name is more or less synonymous with Black Metal, he takes great care to distance himself from that musical milieu. He even now claims the early Burzum releases—records regarded today as milestones of the genre—never were Black Metal music at all, instead classifying them as “standard, bad Heavy Metal.” He passionately distances himself from all forms of Rock and Roll, stressing that Rock’s roots in Afro-American culture make it alien to white people.

Even while rejecting his Metal past, Vikernes has kept Burzum alive, and taken advantage of the recording equipment he has occasionally been allowed to use during periods of his time spent in jail. Musically, Burzum has developed into a form of somber, ambient Electronica. Appreciated in combination with the mystical imagery of the liner notes, the later Burzum records could even be described as dark New Age music. This artistic direction was, however, effectively silenced when Vikernes’s access to recording equipment was cut off. Presently, Vikernes is no longer even permitted to listen to CDs. The only music he is currently allowed to experience must come via MTV—something which, in his case, might be considered a cruel and unusual form of punishment.

NORWEGIAN HEADLINE: “HE RUNS ‘HEATHEN FRONT’ FROM HIS CELL”

 

Denied a musical outlet, Vikernes has focused his strong creative drive on writing. His output has encompassed political tracts, a book on mythology called Germansk Mytologi og Verdensanskuelse (Germanic Mythology and Worldview), and fiction, including a short novel. His fictional works can be compared to the infamous neo-Nazi novels Hunter and The Turner Diaries, in the sense that much of it functions as a dramatization of National Socialist rhetoric. Vikernes seems to be slightly more aware of his literary limitations than the late author of the aforementioned books, Dr. William Pierce (a former physics professor who became director of the American racialist political group the National Alliance), who makes his characters’ tender pillow-talk read like political sermonizing.

The true test of political rhetoric is whether it serves to politicize its readers. Pierce’s books have certainly achieved cult status within the radical fringe, and The Turner Diaries carries additional prestige after having been publicly dubbed “the most dangerous book in America” by Bill Baker, a high-ranking FBI official. A strange indicator of the popularity of The Turner Diaries was the recent development when Pierce sold off his publication rights for the book in their entirety to rabble-rousing publisher Lyle Stuart. The Jewish entrepreneur quickly reissued the novel as a mass-distribution paperback through his Barricade Books imprint, complete with a new introduction offering justification for the edition as an educational tool illustrating the dangers of the radical right.

Vikernes’s medium for spreading his ideas has largely involved his initiative the Heathen Front, an organization designed to “promote Heathenism, nationalism and Germanic folkish solidarity on both religious and political levels, as this is the only future for our whole existence” (according to its homepage, <www.heathenfront.org>).

Trying to pinpoint Vikernes’s exact role in the organization is difficult, especially since the Heathen Front officially denies that Vikernes is in charge. While this might be true, the claim may also be an attempt to keep Vikernes out of trouble, as it would be illegal for a Norwegian prisoner to lead a political group. In the early days of the Heathen Front, the organization’s mailing address was one and the same with Vikernes’s private P.O. box prison address. This would, of course, mean that any prospective members would have their letters read and, one presumes, registered by the authorities. And this actually strengthens the Heathen Front’s assertion that Vikernes is not the leader: it would be very hard for him to do an effective job of it. Whatever his official role may be, Vikernes certainly has left a strong mark on the Heathen Front. Its program was written by Vikernes, and this is a mix of rather orthodox National Socialist doctrine and neo-Heathen, anti-Christian ideas, along with some emphasis on environmentalism.

Vikernes’s chance at influencing the National Socialist world (and perhaps even expanding his readership beyond that cultish environment) will most likely depend on how well his books and writings are circulated. These are currently distributed by the Allgermanische Heidnische Front. The AHF, a more widely-encompassing branch of the Heathen Front, was launched by Vikernes with the ambitious aim of reconstructing Europe as a Heathen National Socialist utopia, cleansed of undesirable elements such as Jews, political dissidents, homosexuals, and bisexual men (bisexual women will, for some reason, be allowed to live—maybe for their potential use in a wholesome National Socialist menage à trois?).

The Allgermanische Heidnische Front and its subdivisions in Norway, Sweden, Belgium, Denmark, Holland, Iceland, Germany, and Sweden (with “affiliated subdivisions” in Russia, Finland, and the U.S.A.) are probably little more than Internet tigers. While the AHF’s policy of concentrating on producing web pages might be a bid to attract intellectually inclined youthful recruits rather than the streetfighters that make up much of the younger rank-and-file of other European National Socialist organizations, the focus on the Internet may have a more pragmatic motive.

One of the wonders of the Internet is that, in theory, a single person with a little know-how, a modem, and an acceptable computer can create web pages just as impressive as those of any huge organization. And, still theoretically, a loose group of e-mail correspondents across Europe can take on the appearance of a tremendously organized international network. In addition to its functioning as a political equalizer, the added attraction to all this is that Net know-how is mainly the field of younger people—exactly the sort the AHF has aboard. But while Vikernes’s network might theoretically consist of one teenage computer nerd per country, each still living in his parents’ house, such an estimation would probably be way off the mark. So how real is the AHF?

It is, of course, difficult to estimate the numbers of such an organization. The Heathen Front divisions themselves are not very helpful, and even if they would give out such information, it is a well-established National Socialist sport to exaggerate membership figures. On the other hand, history has clearly demonstrated that political groups, especially of the extremist variety, do not need impressive membership rosters to make an impact. And whether the AHF will be noticed in the future probably depends most on if it can succeed at recruiting young Burzum fans (its most realistic recruitment base) into political activism—or at providing a conduit for them into more militant groups and scenes.

COVER OF A DOCTRINAL BOOKLET BY VIKERNES

 

Let’s take the Swedish division of the AHF as an example. While the various Heathen Fronts are deliberately vague in giving out information, a reasonable scenario would be that the Swedish Heathen Front consists of a handful of core members, along with an outer echelon of somewhat active hangers-on.

Commenting via e-mail from his base in Gothenburg, SHF representative Mattias states that “Our activity consists mostly of educating our members. ... Besides recommending certain books ... we also work to give them the feeling and understanding of the need for ... healthy living and the risks and harmful aspects of contemporary society.”

He also explains their recruiting strategy: “We don’t approach the great masses, but rather let individuals from the masses approach us instead. This is probably why so many see us as an ‘Internet project’ or as inactive and passive. We work, but make little noise, and not much of what we do appears on the surface.”

Regarding the aims of his group, Mattias states: “We fight not only to secure our existence genetically; this is a struggle for the Germanic spirit, our spirit—for the BLOOD. The driving force is the love of our own people, our culture, and our race; not contempt and hatred towards other races.”

This all sounds harmless enough, even if some of the rhetoric implicit in the arguments might carry a threatening undertone. To further underscore this sub-text, the SHF has informal links to the hardline National Socialist group the Nationalsocialistisk Front. The latter group rose to infamy in Sweden when three men associated with it killed two policemen during a bank robbery. One should, however, bear in mind that the links might not necessarily mean much. National Socialists in Sweden are as much a minority as they are everywhere else, and young activists are likely to rub brown-shirted shoulders with members of other groups in informal settings like concerts, meetings, and parties. It does definitely mean, however, that the SHF has taken a step into the Swedish Nazi world, which on numerous occasions has demonstrated that it has the will and organization to put its words into action.

How much of a magnet do the various Heathen Fronts around the world serve as for young rebels? This is hard to say. One thing that certainly facilitates any magnetism is the cult of personality that has grown up around Vikernes as a result of his music and notoriety as an underground figure—even among people who do not agree with the former Count in all matters.

A good example of this fandom is the website <www.burzum.com>. Here, a short piece of prose details a young Burzum fan’s pilgrimage to the site of the Fantoft church burning in tribute to Varg Vikernes. And while the author of this “Fantoft Report,” a young lady who identifies herself only as “Jessica,” stressed in a later email message that she does not necessarily agree with Vikernes’s politics, she was enthusiastic to pose for a photo inside the re-built Fantoft stave church wearing a Burzum T-shirt.

Another element that clearly adds glamour to Vikernes’s public figure is his uncompromising political stance. This Weltanschauung has a purity and consequentiality that smacks more of an artistic project than a practical political model. Although Vikernes is in many respects an orthodox National Socialist, he seems far harsher in his policy ideas than even the Third Reich.

For example, while the Third Reich was in some ways a modern welfare state (at least for those whose blood and ideology were in line with NS doctrines), Vikernes asserts that military veterans who are disabled in future wars for the greatness of Germania should commit suicide rather than be a burden on the resources of the Nation. One wonders how a society will fare that expects this of its heroes, even if Vikernes claims they have the comfort of knowing they will be reincarnated.

One of the strangest manifestations to ultimately come out of the black metal subculture must be Kulturorgan Skadinaujo. The publication’s name means “Cultural Organ Skadinaujo,” the latter word being an archaic version of “Scandinavia.” It calls itself a “Pan-Scandinavian periodical,” which is underscored by the fact that it prints articles in both Swedish and Danish, although the operation is based in Norway. Its appeals for “greater Scandinavian cooperation” are intermixed with articles about excursions into the great outdoors, etymology, and Norse traditions. The staff claims to be mystified by the attention given to them by anti-fascists, remarking, “We have no political agenda, least of all a fascist one.” Kulturorgan Skadinaujo is also an association that has, according to representative Vegard Chapman, “rather few” members. Chapman claims that the members are “mainly people with an interest in local history. Environmentalism is possibly also a common denominator.”

THE HEATHEN FRONT’S NORDICIST “CULTURAL ORGAN”

BACK COVER SLOGAN OF THE KULTURORGAN SKADINAUJO: “THE ORGAN PROCLAIMS THE [SCANDINAVIAN] TRINITY”

 

But it seems obvious that the combination of Norse symbolism, blood-and-soil mysticism (“Scandinavia is the trinity we live and breathe for, manifested in rock and earth, flesh and blood,” states their website), and reprints from the Norwegian WWII-era radical Nazi magazine Ragnarok will gain them attention from antifascists, no matter how unwelcome. Another red flag for the antifascists is the fact that the journal’s columns often feature the byline of Varg Vikernes. Skadinaujo carries advertisements for Vikernes’s Heathen Front organization, and also sells his political tracts. To suspicious outsiders, then, the magazine immediately comes across as an attempt to dress up Varg Vikernes’s ideas by trading in the brownshirts for academic tweed.

The journal appears to be the work of young students, some of whom have adopted an academic writing style. Though the fanzine-style musings that occasionally appear in its pages detract from its academic tone, the main reason why Skadinaujo seems doomed to fail as a scholarly venture is the fact that it reviews books like the pseudo-archaeology of Graham Hancock side by side with properly executed scholarly works. The end result is hardly something to show your professor.

For all Kulturorgan Skadinaujo’s aspirations of being apolitical and academic, it seems very unlikely that anyone would read its magazine, join the association, or contribute to its work who is not already comfortable with its overt connections to Vikernes and to a certain political outlook. It is therefore unlikely to be seen by anyone—apart from its own editors—as anything other than fascism with footnotes.

In addition to advocating hardline Nazi policies and strict racial Odinism, Vikernes has begun to venture into the wild world of UFOs, although he strongly stresses that his thoughts on this subject are personal opinions and do not represent an official Heathen Front position. This does not, however, lessen the dramatic impact of his claims. He has taken to interpreting the Old Norse texts as proof of—or at the very least circumstantial evidence for—contact between humans and extra-terrestrials in ancient times.

 

 

VARG VIKERNES

 

WHAT ARE THESE FLYING SAUCERS THAT PEOPLE ARE TALKING ABOUT?

 

The UFOs are pre-programmed robots sent out from Sirius. When they discovered the earth, they realized that they could create life here. But our planet was too far from the sun. Therefore they set off nuclear explosions to move the earth, something that explains the asteroid belts outside earth and why there are glass sheets in the Sahara desert, something that would have required tremendous heat to create.

As the earth moved, the equator also shifted. And the equator is the Midgard Serpent [the World Serpent of Norse mythology that encircles the world while biting its own tail]. So this corresponds with the myth where Thor fishes the Midgard Serpent. The “Voluspá” [a section of the Elder Edda] states that the gods move the celestial bodies, and the Volva seeress who narrates the “Voluspá” tells us that she comes from a world before the present one.

The “world before the present one” is, in Vikernes’s opinion, another planet. When the earth reached a suitable climate, the space travellers set about creating life. Through gradual improvement, the gods’ robots cultivated terrestrial flora and fauna on the Ur-continent of Lemuria—the crown of their creation being, of course, the race of man.

On the not-yet-lost continent of Atlantis, however, all was not well. The giants—one of the primitive prototypes for what would become Homo Sapiens—grew jealous when the gods created the Aryan man.

And in the same way that Hymir sent all his trolls out to wreak revenge on Thor for having gone fishing and catching the Midgard Serpent in one of the most well-known of the Norse myths, a war was waged on Atlantis. After the conflict, the island sank into the ocean and the Aryans sought refuge on other continents, where they eventually mixed with lower races of men. The Atlantean Aryans only survived as a pure race in Northern Europe, where they can produce children like Vikernes: blonde, blue-eyed, and long-skulled.

The UFOs are still here, watching mankind (and, presumably, taking special note of its Aryan contingent), occasionally abducting people and mutilating cows to keep track of our development.

According to Vikernes, the basis for his claims is clearly apparent in the Eddas (with assorted tidbits to back it up from the Vedas and other Indo-European sources). Vikernes quotes the “Rigsthula,” another section of the Elder Edda, to recall the time when the alien-gods walked among men:

 

 

VARG VIKERNES

 

IN WHAT WAY DO THE EDDAS SUPPORT THE IDEA THAT ALIENS TAMPERED WITH HUMAN DEVELOPMENT?

 

One example from the myths: Odin says that the humans are useless, and sends Heimdall down to earth to improve them genetically so that they are worthy of entrance into Valhalla. And which bloodline is it that is worthy to enter Valhalla? Not the bloodline of Karl, who has red hair, and not the bloodline of Thrall, who has dark complexion. No, only Jarl’s bloodline [the ones with blonde hair] are taught the runes: the Knowledge. The other races are the failed experiments.

Our forefathers possessed knowledge of natural phenomena that they should not otherwise have been aware of. One example is the ozone layer, which the old ones called Svalin and which was a shield between the earth and the sun. If Svalin fell down, the earth would burn. How could our forebears have known this if they had not been in contact with those who were far more advanced?

Thor had red hair, but all our ancestors had blonde hair prior to the degeneration of the Viking Age. But the planet Jupiter is the colour of rust! And Thor protected men against uncontrollable natural forces, just like Jupiter’s gravitation protects earth. ... Why does Thor have a belt of strength? Does not Jupiter have a ring around it?

While all this might seem like a mouthful to deal with, little of it is new. There exists a considerable body of literature on the subject, written both by believers and debunkers.

The myth of Atlantis has proven to be an enduring theme running throughout Western occultism. And like so many other esoteric mainstays, the legend of this mysterious sunken island—which one provided a home to advanced, almost godlike inhabitants—was integrated into National Socialist occultism. The idea that the Atlanteans were somehow more advanced than current civilization was notably promoted in the late nineteenth century by Helena Blavatsky, whose Theosophical movement was a considerable influence on mystically inclined German ariosophists, many of whom who were the proto-National Socialists of the 1920s and ’30s. A number of the central tenets of National Socialism were influenced by earlier ariosophic occult groups, and related organizations such as the Thule Gesellschaft were instrumental in developing the NSDAP.

VARG IN PRISON, 2000

 

A modern sub-genre in this world of speculative history and pseudo-science is that of Nazi UFOs. The belief in UFOs has been adopted by elements of the Nazi movement with predilections towards the occult. Today, with the idea of National Socialism being shunned by most people on the planet, this mystical branch of the movement may even be the most successful. The world of esoteric Hitlerism intersects in many places with broader New Age phenomena, and UFO theology in particular.

The roots of Nazi preoccupation with flying saucers are complex, and date back to before the Second World War. Clear indications exist that the Third Reich had a program for developing flying saucers as part of its war machine. There is little concrete evidence, however, that the UFO program ever really got off the ground—in any sense—although the stories surrounding this are as contradictory as most UFO evidence in general.

A further complication is the fact that when American fighter pilots started spotting strange flying objects during the end of WWII, dubbing them “foo fighters,” a persistent rumor spread among Allied fighter pilots that these were some kind of German secret weapon.

After the war, the UFO myth entered the subconscious of the West, with the rumored UFO crash at Roswell and alien abduction stories becoming standard features in modern folklore. And while many of the contemporary myths dramatized by the tremendously successful TV series The X-Files might seem fantastic, the strangest ideas are the ones that people actually seem to believe in. One such notion is that life on earth was to some extent spawned by creatures from another world.

The chief popularizer of the theory that aliens initiated or tampered with human development is the Swiss author Erich Von Däniken. In his opinion, many otherwise inexplicable feats of ancient man (for example, the building of the Pyramids) can be understood by the fact that early men were assisted by extraterrestrial visitors.

While it might be easy to dismiss Von Däniken’s theories of UFOs being “Chariots of the Gods” as nonsense (the number of books that criticize his theories rivals his own prolific production), they are in no way obscure. Däniken has sold more than 54 million books worldwide, and the so-called “Ancient Astronaut” field which he made a household phenomenon has grown into a thriving pseudo-scientific subculture, seemingly tailor-made for an audience reared on hippie and New Age ideas and for whom “open-mindedness” seems tantamount to a willingness to accept anything so long as it has a scent of incense or ancient scrolls.

In his 1976 book The Sirius Mystery, Robert Temple made the curious claim that an African tribe called the Dogon possessed remarkable astronomical insight into the brightest star in the sky, Sirius. This included knowledge about Sirius’s two companion stars, which are entirely invisible to the only optical instrument possessed by the Dogon—the naked eye. If the Dogon, thoroughly isolated from the centers of modern science in their residence 300 km south of Timbuktu in Mali, West Africa, really knew about such astronomical tidbits, it would indeed be baffling. And combined with revelations about Dogon legends that their forefathers were bestowed with wisdom by the entity Oannes, who descended from the stars, the The Sirius Mystery provided a real jolt to the imaginations of its readers. Interest was renewed in 1998 when Temple republished the book, now subtitled “New Scientific Evidence of Alien Contact 5,000 Years Ago.”

VARG IN PRISON, 2000

 

While the circumstances that led to the creation of the book are convoluted (as any arguments dealing with ancient astronauts invariably are), at the root of the mystery lie the writings of the French anthropologists Marcel Griaule and Germaine Dieterlen, who did research on the Dogon in the 1930s. Twenty years later, the Frenchmen published their story of how the Dogon had revealed this astronomical knowledge about Sirius (Sigu Tolo in the native language) to them.

But other anthropologists who later visited the area have been unable to find the same astronomical knowledge circulating among the Dogon, and the most realistic hypotheses seem to be that the one Dogon informant who divulged the information to the two Frenchmen either learned his Sirius lore from earlier visitors (of the human variety), or indeed from Marcel Griaule himself, a keen astronomy fan who took along star-charts to help extract information. Either wittingly or unconsciously, the Dogon native might have had this knowledge transferred to him from his interviewer—or else Griaule overemphasized what was passed to him through his interpreter, thus finding exactly what he wanted to. Furthermore, many of the Dogon’s astronomical “facts” are just plain wrong.

In the world of the pop esotericism, however, the fact that claims are exposed as lackluster or even fraudulent often has little bearing on their continuing distribution via the myriad magazines and bookshops that cater to alternative ideas. As such, it is hardly surprising that the idea of gods from Sirius also pops up in Varg Vikernes’s outlook. It should be noted, too, that such a claim may be con-nected to traditions in various occult circles regarding a preoccupation with Sirius—hardly surprising, since it is the brightest (although not the closest) star in our skies.

VARG IN PRISON, 2000

 

The same year the aforementioned Sirius Mystery was published, Israeli author Zecharia Sitchin released his book The Twelfth Planet. In interviews, Zecharia Sitchin has stated that his “Earth Chronicles” series of books “is based on the premise that mythology is not fanciful but the repository of ancient memories; that the Bible ought to be read literally as a historic/scientific document; and that ancient civilizations—older and greater than assumed—were the product of knowledge brought to earth by the Anunnaki, ‘Those Who from Heaven to Earth Came.’ I trust that modern science will continue to confirm ancient knowledge.”

Sitchin was first attracted to this peculiar field of research because he was puzzled by the Nefilim, who are mentioned in the Old Testament’s Book of Genesis, Chapter Six. There, the Nefilim (also spelled Nephilim) are described as the sons of the gods who married the daughters of Man in the days before the great flood, the Deluge. The word Nefilim is often translated as “giants,” meaning that the Old Testament asserts there were days when giants walked upon the earth. If this sounds a bit like the occult narrative of Varg Vikernes, it only becomes more so when Sitchin claims that the correct and literal meaning of the word Nefilim is “those who have come down to earth from the heavens.” Fallen angels procured the daughters of men as mates, which Sitchin takes to mean that the space-farers mixed their superior DNA with that of primitive mankind, leading to a quantum leap in human genetic and cultural evolution which spawned the blossoming Mesopotamian cultures.

 

Dr. Michael Rothstein is assistant professor in the Department of History of Religions at the University of Copenhagen. He is an internationally published researcher in the fields of contemporary religions, and is especially interested in the ways people believe in UFOs.

 

DR. MICHAEL ROTHSTEIN

 

WHY IS BELIEF IN FLYING SAUCERS SO WIDESPREAD TODAY?

 

Time changes, and so do humans’ ideas about themselves and the world they live in. The UFO myth was conceived as a response to Cold War fears, but gradually it took on other perspectives as well. Today it represents a modern tale of human intercourse with what is non-human or beyond human (either positively or negatively)—a tale which has been told since the dawn of humanity. Thus ideas of UFOs may be considered a modern representation of ancient religious sentiments expressed in a language suitable for a modern, industrial, space-traveling, Sci-Fi–reading society.

IN YOUR WRITINGS, YOU HAVE ARGUED THAT CENTRAL TENETS OF THE UFO MYTHOS DERIVE FROM WESTERN ESOTERICISM, MAINLY THEOSOPHY AND ITS IDEA OF “HIDDEN SPIRITUAL MASTERS” THAT ENLIGHTEN HUMANITY. DOES THIS MEAN THAT PEOPLE WITH AN ESOTERIC WELTANSCHAUUNG ARE MORE DISPOSED THAN OTHERS TOWARDS AN INTEREST IN UFOS?

 

Not necessarily, but it surely means that certain interpretations of the alleged UFOs will appear more frequently or naturally to those involved in esotericism compared to others. Individuals such as George King and George Adamski, for instance, had careers as occultists prior to their UFO interest. This lead them to explicitly theosophically inspired understandings of their new field.

 

IS THERE A SPECIAL CONNECTION BETWEEN NATIONAL SOCIALISM AND UFOS?

 

In certain ways, yes. Nazism has always had some kind of relation to the occult and certain Nazi groups (often outside the actual Nazi parties) have made a special point out of it. However, this really is fringe stuff. What is more interesting is the fact that UFOs on many occasions have been interpreted as devices developed by Nazi scientists, as German secret weapons. This is, I believe, more interesting than notions of clones of Hitler hiding under Antarctica in huge UFO-related facilities. Nazis are in many ways the demons of the modern world, at least most people find them disgusting and dangerous, and any association between the bewildering UFOs and these groups points to a certain understanding of UFOs as sinister or demonic.

 

IN THE EYES OF MOST MILDLY SKEPTICAL PEOPLE, VON DÄNIKEN’S WORK HAS LONG BEEN DISCREDITED, BUT THIS DOESN’T SEEM TO SHAKE THE FAITH OF HIS SUPPORTERS. WHY IS THAT, AND IS IT SOMETHING PECULIAR TO PEOPLE THAT DABBLE IN “FAR OUT” PHENOMENA, OR IS IT A COMMON HUMAN TRAIT?

 

The phenomenon is known throughout history, not least of all in the history of religions. What is important to note is that leaders, ideologists, prophets, etc., actually can do very little to elevate themselves and claim authority unless people are willing to bestow this kind of authority upon them. As long as people wish to believe, they will readily accept authorities that support their beliefs. The phenomenon is not that Von Däniken is able to persuade people of anything. The phenomenon is that people want Von Däniken to provide material for them to believe in. Furthermore, this is not in itself a “far-out” belief. Any belief in things out of the ordinary could be considered “far out”: God, for instance, or the Resurrection of Christ, flying yogis, whatever. People’s minds operate in this way, and it lets them develop coherent worldviews that make the world approachable and intelligible.

 

VARG VIKERNES SEEMS TO READ THE EDDAS LIKE VON DÄNIKEN READS THE BIBLE, INTERPRETING IT AS MEMORIES IN MYTHOLOGICAL FORM OF HUMAN CONTACT WITH ALIEN GODS. WOULD SUCH A READING BE POSSIBLE WITH MANY OLDER RELIGIOUS TEXTS? FOR INSTANCE, THE VEDIC TEXTS OF ANCIENT INDIA MENTION THINGS THAT CAN BE INTERPRETED AS FLYING VESSELS.

 

Surely any, and I do mean any, ancient text could be interpreted along such lines. Historically speaking it is nonsense—but most, if not all, religious representations could be termed nonsense when considered from a scholarly point of view. What we see is contemporary interpretations, a radically new exegesis. Religious texts do not carry a complete meaning. Rather, their meaning is created through the process of interpretation, and interpretations vary over the years.

As hinted by Rothstein, one of the most unusual marriages of UFO lore and National Socialism is the idea that the Third Reich is alive and well under the Antarctic ice-cap, keeping watch over the world by means of its flying saucers and waiting for the day to return and free the world from Zionist bankers, communists, and other enemies of the Aryan race. This particular theory fits snugly with a popular older belief alleged to have been held by some Nazis, namely that the earth is hollow.

The most eloquent spiritual representative of such ideas in the present day is the Chilean dignitary and author Miguel Serrano, a former diplomat (to India, Yugoslavia and Austria) who counted both Carl Jung and Herman Hesse among his circle of friends. Serrano authored a number of books in the 1960s and ’70s concerning his yogic pilgrimages across India and personal accounts of magical love rooted in alchemy and allegory. In the late 1970s he began writing a series of texts to delineate his faith of “Esoteric Hitlerism,” which encompasses beliefs regarding the hollow earth and the existence of secret Nazi UFO bases in Antarctica. His book Das goldene Band (The Golden Band) addresses these topics specifically, but since publication in German in 1987 it has been banned as illegal Nazi propaganda by the democratic government of that country. Nevertheless, the book continues to circulate, primarily as a downloadable text file via Internet sites like the “Thule-Netz.” While some commentators might try to dismiss Serrano’s ideas as simply a recruiting technique for more overt political initiatives, they are undoubtedly a sincere expression of his mystical outlook.

 

Mattias Gardell is a lecturer in religious anthropology at the University of Stockholm. He has studied radical religions extensively, and is the author of a book on the Nation of Islam, Countdown to Armageddon.

His latest research project has involved a year of travelling around North America and interviewing figures involved in the neo-Nazi and Ásatru movements, two milieus that sometimes overlap—and especially so in the case of Varg Vikernes.

 

 

MATTIAS GARDELL

 

SOME ANTIFASCIST COMMENTATORS SEE THE NAZI PREOCCUPATION WITH UFOS AS A TACTICAL MOVE TO SPREAD THEIR POLITICAL MESSAGE INTO CIRCLES THAT SEEM TO SWALLOW VIRTUALLY ANYTHING. HOW CORRECT DO YOU THINK THAT IS?

 

That is hard to estimate. I know that some propagators of NS ideology, such as Ernst Zündel, would fit that description. His main drive is Holocaust revisionism. He reasons that most people believe the Holocaust took place because the Jewish control over media and education is almost total. To find an audience (outside the National Socialist scene) receptive to his ideas of a “Holohoax” he would need to find free-thinkers who are willing to accept as true knowledge things that most others would reject. And when he finds people who willingly accept as credible the idea that the earth is hollow and populated by a superior race with a high-tech culture that now and then visits the outer-earthers in its flying saucers, then he knows he has found such an audience.

 

WHY DOES UFO THEOLOGY, IF THAT IS THE RIGHT WORD FOR IT, STRIKE A CHORD WITH PARTS OF THE NAZI OR RACIALIST MOVEMENT, AND HOW COMMON IS UFO THINKING IN THOSE CIRCLES TODAY?

 

It’s getting more and more common. Fascination with UFOs and theories about extraterrestrial links and/or Aryan extraterrestrial origins date back to the 1940s and 1950s, but they have really made a breakthrough on the scene today.

I think that part of the reason why Aryan revolutionaries are so receptive to these theories is related to the fact that both UFO theologians and white National Socialist racists hold as valid knowledge what is rejected or ridiculed by mainstream society. A believer in one kind of stigmatized knowledge tends to be receptive or open to other kinds of stigmatized knowledge—the fact that it is not accepted as true by the universities and mainstream media is interpreted to mean that it must be something to it. This might—in part—explain why white racists tend to be open to all kinds of alternative medicine, ideas of lost worlds, parapsychology, alternative religions and alternative science, including UFO theologies.

The UFO theories put forth by Varg Vikernes, even if they might seem novel when taken in a heathen and National Socialist context, are nothing new. Vikernes, however, claims that his ideas have developed primarily through what he calls “deep intuition”—literally from the “blood.” Such ideas of blood as a carrier of hereditary information are common in Nazi circles, and can in some way be compared to Carl Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious. Whether one believes this or not is irrelevant, as it is hard to imagine that Vikernes arrived at his “flying saucers from Sirius” conclusion as the result of some racial genetic memory when the UFOs are flying all around him.

One example of how the UFO myth permeates Vikernes’s immediate environment is in the Norwegian orthodox Hitlerite organization Zorn 88, recently renamed Norges Nasjonalsosialistiske Bevegelse (The Norwegian National Socialist Movement), whose magazine, Gjallarhorn, Vikernes has occasionally contributed to. Erik Rune Hansen, Gjallarhorn’s editor and the secretary of the NNSB, has publicly claimed to have seen a UFO and Gjallarhorn has carried a number of articles with an esoteric slant.

Dabbling in UFO lore has a long tradition in Norwegian right-wing and Nationalist thinking. One reason for this might be found in the continuing influence of Vidkun Quisling’s philosophy of Universism, which included speculations about the existence of life on other planets. For some of the political activists who stepped into the vacuum left after Quisling’s execution for treason, the post-war preoccupation with UFOs melded perfectly with elements of Universism.

One prominent figure in this confusing landscape—although he can in no way be seen as a direct successor of Quisling—was Anders Lange. He was secretary of the ultra-patriotic and staunchly anti-communist Fedrelandslaget (Fatherland League) in the 1930s. The most prominent personality involved with the Fedrelandslaget was Fridtjof Nansen, a Norwegian national icon who was famous for his daring exploits in the polar regions and his relief work in the famine-stricken Soviet Union. During the latter period, Vidkun Quisling served as one of his most trusted helpers.

Anders Lange seems to have been considerably more radical than Nansen and most of his comrades in Fedrelandslaget. In his younger days in the 1930s, Lange said he considered himself a fascist and supporter of Mussolini. But as with many others, the war caused him to distance himself from totalitarian opinions, and in the post-war era he emerged as a fierce opponent of state intervention in private affairs, although his politics still retained a racial slant.

Lange was an avid dog enthusiast. As an extension of running his own kennel, in 1948 he began publishing Hundebladet (loosely translated: Dog News). The newsletter soon came to deal with matters far beyond the canine realm. Anders Lange was a firm believer in a tolerant editorial policy, which led to his publication becoming a rallying point for all sorts of alternative perspectives.

One such avenue of thought that manifested itself in Hundebladet was UFO speculation. The newsletter regularly published articles and items relating to flying saucers. Lange might have seen this as a logical extension of his interest in Quisling’s Universism theories, but regardless it certainly attracted readers who were far more interested in extraterrestrial spacecraft than politics.

The apex of Anders Lange’s political career came in 1973, when he formed Anders Langes Parti for sterk nedsettelse av skatter, avgifter og offentlige inngrep. This mouthful translates to “Anders Lange’s Party for a Drastic Reduction in Taxes, Rates, and State Intervention,” and the name encapsulated the crux of the party’s platform. After a television debate in which Lange posed with a sword, the ALP (as it was known for short) won five percent of the vote and Lange entered parliament as its representative, where he made quite an impression with his flamboyant personality, no doubt assisted by his ever-present glass of egg liqueur. The egg liqueur not only served as a tonic for Lange’s voice (in the ALP’s heyday, Lange would give speeches almost daily), but also became a political protest in its own right. Enjoying a glass during television debates had a strong symbolic value in a country with strict alcohol restrictions—precisely the kind of “State Intervention” that the ALP staunchly opposed.

 

Per Bangsund is a respected Norwegian journalist, editor and publisher who has written extensively on Norwegian post-war radical right politics.

 

PER BANGSUND

 

WHY DO YOU THINK ANDERS LANGE WAS SO INTERESTED IN UFOS?

 

I guess it’s easy to understand why people with extreme ideas about the purity and nobility of Nature easily fall for quasi-philosophies about the Universe and see UFOs as a manifestation of something “out there.” As far as I can remember, UFOs were not a big issue in Hundebladet. The fight against fluoridated water was far more important!

The ALP would never really make the transition into mainstream politics. The year after establishing the party, Lange passed away. However, his legacy has been stronger than anyone could foresee, as the ALP later mutated into what became known as Fremskrittspartiet (The Progress Party), which grew huge in the 1980s as it rode on the same neo-conservative tidal wave that dumped Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher into office. In recent years, Fremskrittspartiet has become one of Norway’s biggest parliamentary presences, although by its very nature the party tends to bounce up and down in opinion polls.

 

One figure who has followed the party from its inception to its present state is attorney Eivind Eckbo. He assumed the post as leader of the ALP when its founder passed away, and retained the position for six months afterward. He has also held posts for Fremskrittspartiet.

 

EIVIND ECKBO

 

HOW DID ANDERS LANGE’S PARTY WORK?

 

The ALP was based more on coincidences than conscious action. It was really more of a protest movement than a party, but it grew the way it did because it struck a chord with many people. Anders Lange was a dynamic character; in his time with Fedrelandslaget in the 1930s he would drive his truck around the countryside holding political rallies. You can say what you want about Anders Lange, but he was the only Norwegian of the twentieth century to whip up a political party from nothing; all other new parties have been splinter factions of already-established parties.

While UFOs hardly seem to have been a major point in Lange’s worldview, or that of the people that surrounded him, he remains a highly visible figure that certainly helped to introduce notions of extraterrestrial visits into radical political circles. Because the circle around Lange was very informal and political distinctions appear to have been secondary, some of the rebellious types who surrounded him later emerged as more moderate politicians, while others moved into nationalism and National Socialism.

It is possible that Varg Vikernes may have arrived at his Aryans in Space theories on his own, but in light of the long-standing connection between UFOlogy and the Norwegian radical right, it is hard to imagine such a voracious and informed reader as Vikernes re-inventing the wheel—or, in this case, the saucer.

Depending on which way the prison authorities decide to calculate the remainder of his sentence, Vikernes will be released from prison on August 22, 2005 or 2007. Vikernes claims to have taken the lengthy prison sentence well so far, joking that “time flies when you’re having fun,” and comparing his life to that of a monk or hermit who chooses isolation from outside distractions to better focus on his work and studies.

When asked whether he now regrets having killed Øystein Aarseth, he sticks to his old explanation that it was a pre-emptive strike because Øystein had planned to kill him. “To regret killing Øystein would be to regret being alive,” he says.

 

VARG VIKERNES

 

DO YOU THINK THAT YOUR WORLDVIEW WOULD BE DIFFERENT IF YOU HAD NOT BEEN LOCKED UP?

 

To be honest, I think I would have been dead if I wasn’t arrested. Let me put it like this: when the police caught me, I had 150 kilos of dynamite, and I was waiting to have some machine pistols delivered. I suppose it would have gone awry.

 

IT WOULD APPEAR THAT EVERYTHING YOU SAY IS DIAMETRICALLY OPPOSED TO WHAT ESTABLISHED SOCIETY STANDS FOR.

 

We even count the weekdays differently, so it clashes there, too. But the purpose of all this isn’t to do contrary things to what society is doing. And it cannot be explained as youthful rebellion either—I’m too old for that. Unless you say that I’ve been in jail so long that I’m still mentally a teenager. For prison is a closed environment, and many people don’t develop when they socialize with junkies.