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 ac
t 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!
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