STREET ENTRANCE LEADING TO HELVETE SHOP
Add to this a gloomy ambience enhanced by lit candles, and the resulting atmosphere was tailor-made for scaring the occasional Christian who would drop in to check out the machinations of the Devil on earth. To other people, it was downright silly. Aarseth was not unaware of this, and somehow cultivated it too. He had always been cognizant of the theatrical side to Heavy Metal, as the Kiss picture discs on the wall attested.
Additionally, Helvete had a spacious basement that would be used for photo sessions, parties, and other social gatherings. It functioned as spare lodging space for guests and those that lived too far away to get home after an excessive night about town. The basement was where Varg Vikernes lived when he was visiting Oslo. The reins were, however, gradually tightened on what the room could be employed for, since some would use it as a place to take girls they picked up while out drinking. Eventually, the cellar became too damp and clammy to serve any function at all.
Helvete quickly gained a substantial cult following. Specialist record shops are often able to make more money than the number of their customers would suggest, as members of subcultures defined by music tend to buy everything within “their” genre. Thus, the shop became a meeting point for the nascent Black Metal scene as well as for all kinds of people interested in the harder ends of the music spectrum. As Helvete coincided with the boom of Death Metal music, the shop attracted music fans that would in no way share the Black Metal scene’s outlook. Aarseth was not above making money by selling music to them, and the shelves contained bands like Metallica and Godflesh.
Aarseth tried to be like his shop. He realized the responsibility that comes with being in a band that has decided to maintain a certain image. Like Helvete, Aarseth would be a manifestation of the Black Metal aesthetic. He was always dressed in black from head to foot, his hair dyed black for added effect. He sported long, aristocratic mustaches and wore knee-high boots. His black leather biker jacket was decorated with badges. His rather slim frame bore the mark of many hours in the gym, but could not hide the fact that his height was hardly imposing. When talking, he seemed stern and serious, sometimes with pomposity verging on the theatrical. He would do his best to maintain this façade towards outsiders and the younger members of the developing scene.
CELLAR OF HELVETE, 1992
Anyone conversing with him for more than a few minutes would get an impression of a man very different from his carefully constructed image. If he took a liking to you, that side would be revealed in full. Aarseth was an enthusiast by nature, hardly appearing “evil” as he would run around his shop like an overgrown kid. You could be treated to listening to goodies from his private record collection, fetched from the back room where Aarseth lived for a time before he could raise the money to buy his own apartment. There he kept his sizable hoard of records, books, videos, and other personal possessions.
Having been a music fan for so long, his record collection also included lots of material that was hardly standard Metal fare; he had a specific taste for German electronic music like Kraftwerk. This was not popular within the scene in its more orthodox days. His stern appearance was also probably influenced by Kraftwerk’s image as faceless and machine-like. Such obsessions on Aarseth’s behalf had the rather strange effect that many people in the scene would later claim to be huge fans of electronic music.
Politically, Aarseth was a long way from the nationalist and often pseudo-right-wing sentiments that are so prominent in Black Metal today. He proclaimed himself a communist, and for a while had been a member of the Rød Ungdom (Red Youth), the youth wing of the Arbeidernes Kommunist Parti (Marxist-Leninistene) —The Marxist/Leninist Communist Workers Party. Though rather few in number, the party had an appeal for intellectuals, including many prominent writers and politicians, and thus maintained a strong grip on Norwegian cultural life for many years. Rød Ungdom was aggressively anti-Soviet, and looked to China and Albania for inspiration. Despots like Pol Pot were also viewed as models of resistance against Western imperialism.
While the Party no longer glorifies these dictatorships, no formal excuse or apology has never been made for these ideological excesses in the ’70s and ’80s. This was what attracted Aarseth; the idea of strong leaders shaping the world appealed to him greatly. He eventually broke with Rød Ungdom, allegedly because he realized at a certain point they were “just a bunch of humanists.” However, he would keep his convictions, if that was the right word, for it is hard to say how much of this was truly heartfelt and how much of it was part of his “evil” act.
He was an ardent collector of Eastern Bloc memorabilia and political trinkets like badges and flags, some of them picked up on Mayhem’s travels (before Dead’s suicide the band had played a few shows in East Germany and Turkey on one ill-fated tour). His correspondence with people from those areas would also help him tremendously. Some of the treasured objects in his collection were heroic photographs of Nicolae Ceaucescu, the former dictator of Rumania and one of Aarseth’s idols. “Albania is the future,” he would muse to anyone willing to listen.
It is hard to say why Aarseth’s particular brand of communism never caught on in the scene. An explanation might be that with leftism’s strong tradition in Norway, and prominent public figures having defended Pol Pot and Stalin in the past, the trappings of communist dictatorships are not shocking to the Norwegian mind in the way that a runic symbol would be for its association with the Quisling regime of World War II.
The aura surrounding Helvete attracted many young people later to gain fame in the scene. They would start their Black career by lingering in the shop, literally hanging around there for hours. It would be extremely annoying for Aarseth to have teenagers hovering in the shadows of his store all day perfecting their “evil” act, but he was too polite to tell them to beat it. After Aarseth’s death, many of these same peripheral young fans would claim to have been his close confidants.
VIKERNES IN CORPSEPAINT
An intriguing question is who or what produced the sudden and severely intensified “pro-evil,” Devil worship ideas that both Øystein Aarseth and Varg Vikernes began projecting in underground interviews and toward their companions. Many in the scene today blame it on Varg, but judging by interviews with Aarseth from this period he was on a similar track. In reality, it was probably a case of two charismatic personalities egging each other on. Vikernes takes credit for this, although he disassociates himself from the sexual proclivities he claims Aarseth engaged in as a result:
We were joking about the Satanism. Øystein and all these guys in Oslo were saying how they were Satanists. I reasoned that if you’re a Satanist then you invert everything that Christianity was. Øystein wasn’t serious about Satanism at all, though. But I tried to provoke him, in a way to say, “You’re not a Satanist, you don’t follow anything.” So I was provoking him about what Satanism was, and he was following me. He was having anal sex... because in the Bible it says that you shall not let the sperm fall to the ground, and we reasoned that if you shoved it up someone’s ass, into the sewer, then that’s the worst thing you can do—that’s Satanism. And he said “Yes!” We didn’t realize he was bisexual and actually homosexual. Some weeks before I killed Øystein, another guy joined me on a trip to Oslo, and he told me that he had once searched Øystein’s drawers and had actually found a dildo with shit on it. He was a homo, always saying how pussy was disgusting. We didn’t want anything to do with him.11
Vikernes also later wrote down his recollections about Aarseth’s video collection and the type of material he was fascinated by, stating that Øystein spent large parts of his time watching child pornography—disgusting films with hermaphrodites having anal intercourse with “men,” so-called “snuff ” films where ordinary people are kidnapped and tortured to death in front of the camera. For example—I have been eagerly told descriptions of what these films are like from [Aarseth]—dildos with nails are pushed into women’s crotches, or they are nailed
to tables through their labias.12
ONE OF THE FAMOUS EURONYMOUS PROMOTIONAL PICTURES FOR MAYHEM, 1991
In its basic form, the type of Satanism preached in the early stages of Black Metal was just an inversion of doctrinal Christianity. Whereas international Satanic groups like the Church of Satan view Satan in an archetypal or symbolic sense, to the Norwegian teenagers he was most certainly real. In a similar manner to fundamentalist Christians, they viewed the world as eternally locked in a struggle between good and evil—the only real difference being which side they chose to fight on. However, in many ways the Black Metalers were more sternly “Christian” than the average follower of the Norwegian State Church.
In the late 1950s, conservative theologian Ole Hallesby asked a Norwegian radio audience: “If you die in your sleep tonight, do you know where you will go?” His provocative question had the effect of pouring gasoline on a debate that had already been ignited regarding the existence of Hell. Even then, subjects such as this were becoming something of an embarrassment within the Church. In later years, overt acknowledgment of Hell and Satan have been nearly taboo in Church circles. Like exorcism, they are topics that are simply not discussed.
Ironically, this is the State Church of a country where “Hell” was placed in the center of the capital city, in the form of a record shop which became the focal point of the gestating Black Metal scene. So while Satan might be nearly dead in the Norwegian Church, he was alive and kicking elsewhere. Jacob Jervell, a retired professor of theology at the university and a minister in the State Church, feels it unfortunate that many people involved in organized Christianity in Norway are reluctant to address uncomfortable issues. He is now primarily a writer of books on theological subjects.
JACOB JERVELL
HOW DO YOU EXPLAIN WHY SOME YOUNG PEOPLE WOULD BECOME INVOLVED IN AN EXTREME MOVEMENT LIKE BLACK METAL, AND WHY THE CHURCH WOULD HOLD NO INTEREST FOR THEM?
When young people encounter the flat moralism of the Church, they get the feeling that it doesn’t make sense. It is a very idyllic world that is preached about in the sermons. Black Metal music awakens powerful destructive forces in its listeners, forces that are not dealt with in church preaching, where they never received an answer to the question about what evil is. Instead they get rather idyllic, utopian sermons about sin. Young people don’t feel that this is relevant, so they become alienated. It is counterproductive; we end up with a lost generation. Young people might see the Satanic version of Christianity as more realistic than the one they have been taught by the Church. They feel it is something they can connect to—powerful forces that have a resonance within themselves.
WHAT IS THE POSITION OF THE CHURCH WITH REGARD TO SATAN?
The Church dutifully trots Satan out once in a while, but only because it has to confirm that the Church believes in him too, since he’s mentioned in the Bible. But when he’s trotted out, he’s just a harmless ghost, a ridiculous character. This leaves the church without any ability to formulate what evil is. And that is perhaps the biggest problem we have. The figure of Satan has enormous symbolic power. The word that is used as a substitute for it, “destructive,” has nowhere near the same content. And when the real sources are lost, evil can start to look attractive. On the occasions when I am asked to lecture about evil, it is never in a Church context—it is always for university students. So the word “evil” is coming back, but not in the Church. It is a pity that historians look at the Christian texts in a wholly different way than the Church itself does.
COULD VIOLENTLY ANTI-CHRISTIAN ACTS LIKE THE BURNING OF CHURCHES BE SEEN AS A REACTION TO A CHURCH THAT HAS BECOME MORE LIBERAL—WHICH MIGHT BE INTERPRETED AS A CASE OF THE CHURCH ABANDONING ITS OWN THEOLOGY AND BASIC PRINCIPLES?
Yes, as well as a reaction to it becoming more secular. As a result, if you want to “find yourself,” you don’t go to church. Incitement to thinking doesn’t come from the Church anymore; not even the incitement to behave morally. We are not able to expose modern society for what it is.
HOW HAS THE CHURCH REACTED TO THESE EVENTS?
The Church has not reacted at all, at least not in any sense that I can see, theologically. They are unable to make clear what evil is—even in a century as evil as ours, in which evil has been industrialized. The moralism is too strong, and the Church is unable to see that some things are beyond good and evil. The campaigns where refugees at risk of deportation were provided safehouses by local churches, on the other hand, elevated the Church’s consciousness.
BUT WOULDN’T THE CHURCH FEEL THAT THE CHURCH FIRES ARE THE TIP OF AN ICEBERG, THE MOST EXTREME MANIFESTATIONS OF A TREND WHICH JUST SHOWS HOW FAR YOUNG PEOPLE HAVE FALLEN OUTSIDE THE CHURCH’S SPHERE OF INFLUENCE?
No, then the Church officials start talking about how well they are doing with Christian youth choirs and getting young people to go to summer camps and so on. The Church is more preoccupied with arguing about whether they should bless homosexual partnerships.
SPREADING THE FEAR
During the period when Aarseth was releasing the first Burzum records on DSP and running Helvete, Vikernes had not arrived at any of the above judgements about his then close friend. Varg came to Oslo for a time and moved into the basement of the record shop, living in the barren space there along with “Samoth,” the guitarist of Emperor. The line-ups of many of the Norwegian Black Metal bands were extremely incestuous at this point, and Vikernes was even a stand-in bassist for Mayhem, and played on the debut full-length album they were endlessly trying to complete, De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas, “Lord Satan’s Secret Rites.”
In a Mayhem interview from this period, actually answered by Vikernes, he lauds his bandmates, saying, “the ‘new’ Mayhem is, as I see it, better than ever! Hellhammer is the best drummer ever and Euronymous is a musical genius. Could it be better?”13 A few sentences later he promises that Hellhammer will also play drums for Burzum, although this never came to pass. On the second Burzum release, Aske (“Ashes”), bass playing would be done by Samoth, but with this sole exception Vikernes maintained his project entirely alone.
Promotional photos of Aarseth were taken shortly after the opening of Helvete. They show him cloaked in a black cape, candle or sword in hand, his face austerely decorated in corpsepaint, obscuring his small dark goatee under white make-up. There are also many earlier photos of Dead and Euronymous similarly decorated. Very few such corpsepainted portraits of Vikernes exist—the fashion seems to be something more particular to Aarseth. If it is true that Vikernes introduced the ideology of medieval-style Devil worship to Norwegian Black Metal, it must be also acknowledged that not a moment was lost before Aarseth began trumpeting it as his own. He summed up his attitude at the time:
I don’t think people should respect each other. I don’t want to see trend people respecting me, I want them to HATE and to FEAR. If people don’t accept our ideas as their own, they can fuck off because then they belong to a musical scene which has NOTHING to do with ours. They could just as well be Madonna fans. There is an ABYSS between us and the rest. Remember—one of the Hardcore [Punk] rules is that you must be open-minded (except for themselves), so we must be careful and avoid being open-minded ourselves. The Hardcore pigs have correctly made themselves guardians of morality, but we must kick them in the face and become guardians of anti-morality. 14
In the months following the opening of Helvete, the tone of such proclamations by Aarseth and Vikernes steadily intensified. They were not confining their viewpoints to themselves, but publicly stating them in fanzine interviews as well. People in the Metal underground began to take notice of these vociferous Satanic extremists from the remote North, and wondered if they could possibly be sincere. Aarseth and Vikernes were smart enough to realize that unless more serious actions were undertaken in the real world, their words would be seen as nothing more than empty rhetoric—or worse, a bad joke. They would simply have to prove Black Metal was no laughing matter...
THAT FIRE
WHICH NEVE
R BURNS OUT
WHICH YET BURNS LOW
WHICH FLICKERS OUT
YET THERE REMAINS
ALWAYS BENEATH THE ASHES
EMBERS
WHICH SMOULDER AND WAIT
FOR ONE TO BRING
DRY TWIGS AND WOOD
RED-HOT EMBERS
DREAMING OF BECOMING
A FIZZLING CRACKLING FIRE
ONCE MORE
AND SUCH IS THE FIRE
BURNING WITHIN OURSELVES.
—A LYRIC BY NORWEGIAN AUTHOR TOR ÅGE BRINGSVÆRD, PARAPHRASED AND RE-INTERPRETED BY VARG VIKERNES 1
6
ASHES
ONE OF NORWAY’S GREATEST HISTORICAL TREASURES IS THE STAVE CHURCH. These unique wooden congregation houses were built soon after the arrival of Christianity in Scandinavia around 1000 C.E. They continued to be erected up until the end of the Black Death, the bubonic plague which swept through medieval Europe in the 1300s. The name stave church is derived from the manner of their construction, which utilizes a strong post (stav in Norwegian) in the four corners of the main room.
The exterior of a stave church is commanding, often distinguished by gabled roofs and windows, with these smaller configurations leading to a sharp steeple. Entirely fashioned of wood, sometimes darkened or tinted blue-black from pitch, the more elaborate stave churches also bear intricate carved portals in ringarike-style Nordic interlace and interior motifs displaying remnants of heathen iconography. A dramatic example is a one-eyed carved head at Hegge and its vivid echoes of Odin in a state of ecstasy.
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