I think if they had done strategic and really bright analysis they could have learned something much greater about this, about Norwegians having a special relationship to nature. The Satanists could have done this much better, if their goal was to create a broad movement for going back to nature and also back to the heathen religion. If these deep-souled figures of strength like Vikernes had done that at that time they could have made something really big in Norwegian society. But I don’t think that was what they wanted.
DID THEIR ACTIONS MANAGE TO HAVE ANY EFFECT ON SOCIETY?
In 1995 in Norway you had a very strong movement toward religion—towards Christianity and towards the New Age kinds of things—everybody is going into religion now. I was just writing an article about the Labor Party, which actually has just now become positive toward having more Christianity in schools. They’ve spent fifty years after the war bringing down Christianity, and for the first time they’re saying now that we need more Christianity in the schools. It shows the times have changed. Maybe we have become conscious to some extent about the Christian culture when people start to burn down our churches—maybe, you can’t rule that out. It’s possible that when we see that in this country people are burning churches down then we have to make a statement against that.
I’m doubtful that the Satanism has had any great affect on society, but I could be wrong. I don’t know what people actually do or think all the time...
DO YOU THINK IT WILL CONTINUE? IS THERE AN IMPETUS FOR IT TO KEEP HAPPENING?
It’s not going to succeed in any way in Norwegian society, but it’s definitely going to go on for some years. That’s possible. I think they’re going to need strength, mostly because it has become somewhat normal now. When you burn down churches it’s not a big sensation anymore, we’re kind of used to it that they burn down churches sometimes.
I don’t think it’s going to get stronger; I think it will get weaker, and it’s going to move from Satanism into magic or these kind of things. The New Age religious movement is growing in Norway, and it becomes kind of linked together with those kinds of powers and occultic interests. I think they can grow in that way but then they won’t be Satanists anymore, they’ll be something else. That’s where the strong people are going to go, and you will get some mutated expressions of Satanism in the future.
If you are talking about what can survive from Satanism, I think the dramatic part will—the very interesting visual aspects, the drama. That aspect, as we see it now, that people make these huge performances, that they have roles they play. This drama aspect is going to survive as a religious phenomenon, it’s going to go on and I think it could be extreme and very interesting, but it’s not going to remain as Satanism.
IS THERE A SPECIFIC REASON FOR THAT?
The reason Satanism eventually will not last is because it doesn’t bring anything, or give anything back. Destruction doesn’t give anything back. It kind of wears itself out, because what do you get back from thinking or being like that?
GIVING THE DEVIL MORE THAN HIS DUE
Asbjørn Dyrendal is a Research Fellow at the Department of Cultural Studies at the University in Oslo. He has been primarily researching the new and emergent religions, especially Wicca. He has also done considerable investigation into the hysteria that has been running rampant in the Norwegian and foreign media about a Satanic conspiracy. Dyrendal has summarized his findings in a fascinating article entitled “Media Constructions of ‘Satanism’ in Norway (1988–1997)” where he offers a chronology of the shifting manner in which the Satan scare was presented there by the press.
According to Dyrendal, the horrifying tales of cult conspiracies and Satanic ritual abuse arrived in Norway a few years after their explosion in the tabloid press of America and Britain. The Norwegian State Church had addressed Satanism as a problem in its annual Bishops’ Conferences dating back to the late ’70s, but it was generally considered a small aspect of the general growth of New Age and occult trends in spirituality. Satanism per se was not a grave threat.
Satanism hit the newspaper headlines in the summer of 1988, beginning with a few oddball stories of alleged groups of Satanists gathering in small towns. In one case a pair of brothers stole items from a church, threatened people, and engaged in “worshipping Satan at midnight dances.”6 In another case a small Satanic ritual site was discovered during a drug bust. Concern was expressed by journalists and Christian commentators over the availability of Anton LaVey’s Satanic Bible in Norwegian bookstores (the book had been published in Danish, and the English edition also had international distribution), a theme which would resurface during the Black Metal hysteria years later.
In 1990 reports of Satanic ritual abuse exploded in the press. The hoopla was bolstered by statements from Willy Kobbhaug, a police lieutenant on the Oslo Vice Squad, who told the press he had evidence indicating criminal Satanic activity was becoming prevalent in Norway and was the object of serious investigation by the police. These revelations were met with skepticism from certain quarters (the “Satanic abuse conspiracy” tales having been widely debunked in America by that time), but regardless the media continued to describe disparate “Satanic” crimes in the context of an organized movement. In the heat of the hysteria about Satanic groups operating in Norway, the occult society the Ordo Templi Orientis was also accused of involvement in sacrifices and other criminal activity, but none of these allegations were ever proven, nor were they taken seriously by most in the police departments.
In his article, Dyrendal explains how the Satanic ritual abuse stories eventually dissipated, only to be replaced by the arrival of Black Metal to the headlines in 1993. He writes:
The main image of and debate on Satanism was being made by the sudden, high visibility of teenagers, mostly aged 15-18 years old (but ranging from 14 to 25), who were playing with the identity of being evil. Sometimes they would claim to be Nazis, sometimes Satanists, sometimes Odinists, and at other points they would refuse any label other than “evil,” spouting statements such as: “We’re not Nazis. The Nazis only hated the Jews, we hate everyone.” “We’re not racists, we want all people to suffer.” “If our music causes people to commit suicide, that’s good. It weeds out the weak.” The reason they got the opportunity to go on the record with this philosophy, was that some of them also acted: some attacked people, most attacked property—by desecrating graveyards and burning churches. ... During the period of 1991-1993, several people were beaten, some stabbed, at least one girl (15) was raped, allegedly by two 17-year-old arsonists, of which one was convicted of a lesser charge), and two people were murdered.7
Dyrendal notes the media served to create the impression of a large-scale Satanic assault on Christians in Norway. It is no surprise that this in turn sparked a fearful response from both the police and the Church, which in many instances may have been warranted:
In some places the interest in alleged ritual sites approached panic reactions, where anything unusual could be interpreted as signs of Satanist activity. The drive towards action was even larger among some churchgoers. Police and congregations several times kept nightly watch over their churches—with variable success. Some of these churches were burned down at later dates, when watchfulness was down. Not all were as conscientious as 67-year-old Victor Andersson, priest in the Trinity Church in Oslo. According to Aftenposten (6/8/93), he armed himself with an axe and kept watch in the sacristy at night: “If we are to survive as a cultured nation, society has to strike back at these plebeians (pøbelveldet),” said Andersson...8
After a period of sensationalist coverage, the media approached the Black Metal phenomenon in a more serious manner. A few different theories have been advanced as to why it took hold in Norway, some of which have already been presented in the interviews in this book. These theories range from negative cultural influences via music, role-playing games, and occultism, to criticisms leveled at the Church for its inability to reach out to youth in a manner capable of sustaining their at
tention. Some in the Church believed they must become more aggressive in their dealings with young people, and Dyrendal even mentions one conservative priest who wanted to bring back the practice of exorcism. Despite the varying proposed solutions to the problem, there was no doubt of the consensus that something was gravely wrong.
What is particularly fascinating about Dyrendal’s study is how it implicates the media. By printing lurid stories which highlighted gruesome (and undocumented) allegations about Satanic practices, the tabloid papers may have helped create the atmosphere for real-life criminal behavior that would later unfold. Dyrendal’s research would seem to partially vindicate Simen Midgaard’s theory that the original exposés on Satanic cults in 1990–91 provided the blueprint for the ideology of Norwegian Satanism that would develop in the Black Metal scene.
ASBJØRN DYRENDAL
HAS NORWAY IMPORTED AMERICAN STEREOTYPES ABOUT SATANISM?
If you look at the Norwegian media, there is not much written about Satanism before 1988 or ’89. Then some reports started turning up, almost exclusively about youth Satanists. There was a police raid on a nest of Satanists in Halden in which some rather down-and-out people were arrested.
[The “nest” Dyrendal refers to was uncovered during a drug raid that took place in southeast Norway. It contained an altar adorned with a picture of Baphomet, “ritual” knives, a skull, and tarot cards. The group consisted of people 16-30 years of age. Some of them were arrested for possession of marijuana.]
BUT THESE PEOPLE IN HALDEN HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH BLACK METAL, CORRECT? THEY SEEMED TO BE MORE INTERESTED IN DRUGS.
Yes, and one of them, a girl who claimed to have had the name “Lucifer” within the group, later turned up in the conservative Christian newspaper Dagen. She came out as having been born again. A year later, she was in the same paper again, saying that Satanists pray to Satan to crush the powerful Evangelical awakening in the border areas near to Sweden. These rumors seem to come from Evangelical circles in that country. And even though all of this really has nothing to do with Black Metal, it is interesting to note that the Black Metal culture later grew very strong in these parts of the country.
Apart from this rather sad coven, there were only some teenagers out in the countryside that were involved in Satanism. Then in 1990 and 1991, figures like Fred Harrison and Dianne Core came into the picture. Fred Harrison is a freelance journalist for the major Norwegian tabloid Dagbladet. He interviewed some English psychologists, psychiatrists, and “child-rescuers” about Satanism. As a result, on August 11, 1990, Dagbladet had a headline about Satanists eating babies and doing other abominable things. The year after, all this was repeated in the media by Willy Kobbhaug. Kobbhaug claimed to have seen similar cases in Norway. I have been told that he had recently come from a police seminar in the Netherlands where he had heard these stories.
Many of the Satanic survivor stories in Norway come from Christian subcultures. In Harrison and Core’s book Chasing Satan there is an abortion scenario that is reinterpreted, within a very Christian framework, as a sacrifice to Satan.
THIS SOUNDS LIKE WHAT IS CALLED A “BREEDER” STORY, IN WHICH THE SINISTER SATANIC CONSPIRATORS IMPREGNATE WOMEN TO PRODUCE BABIES WHO WILL LATER BE SACRIFICED TO THE DEVIL.
Yes, and it is part of an older myth, which dates back to the ’60s and early ’70s. In Sweden there was a “Satanic survivor” story in the ’70s. A woman claimed to have been a victim of a Satanic cult, and have been forced to participate in child sacrifice. The police didn’t find anything back then either.
After being supplied with these stories, the police and media started looking for Satanic cults that would fit this image. In typical fashion, the Ordo Templi Orientis was singled out, simply because they were visible. The O.T.O. is established in Norway, unlike the Church of Satan, Temple of Set, or other real Satanic organizations.
The police and press didn’t find the cults they were looking for. What they did eventually find, though, were caves with inverted crosses, stolen tombstones, and so on. In other words: Black Metal culture. They then tried to project this cult stereotype that they got from Kobbhaug onto what they found. It didn’t work.
WILLY KOBBHAUG [INTERVIEWED IN AUGUST, 1997—NO LONGER WORKING IN THE VICE DIVISION OF THE OSLO POLICE]
HOW DID YOU FIRST DISCOVER THESE STORIES?
I was involved with building up the child section of the Oslo Police Department. As a result, I got into contact with specialists working with children, some of them on seminars abroad. I wrote an article in the Oslo Police Dept.’s internal magazine in 1989 about these things. Dagbladet newspaper used some of this material and the ensuing rabble made me not write any more on the subject.
BUT POLICE ABROAD LIKE THE SCOTLAND YARD, THAT HAVE BEEN INVESTIGATING SIMILAR ALLEGATIONS, HAVE NOT COME UP WITH ANY EVIDENCE.
The problem with finding witnesses in these kinds of cases is that many of them have difficulty distinguishing fantasy and reality. Most of them are psychiatric cases. One might ask why they are so—is it because they have been subjected to quite horrible things?
DO YOU THINK AN ORGANIZED NETWORK OF SATANISTS WHO SACRIFICE CHILDREN EXISTS?
I intended to have evidence for this back then. I haven’t followed it in the later years, so I don’t know exactly how things are now. There is an organized Satanic network. But I don’t think they sacrifice children. Norway is a country with few people, and they are easy to keep track of. Children just don’t disappear like they would have to for this to be true.
ASBJØRN DYRENDAL
DID THE BLACK METAL SCENE MIMIC THE IMAGES OF SATANISM THAT WERE PRESENTED BY THE MEDIA?
This is an interesting phenomenon where people try to emulate the stories that are circulating. There you had a lot of young people who wanted to be Satanists. Where could they hear about what you do when you’re a Satanist? They had to get it through the media and Christian sources. They got the myths, and they tried as best as they could, by their rather modest means, to live up to them. You can see that in the early interviews with Varg Vikernes. There were situations where the journalists were trying to see this in light of the stories supplied by Kobbhaug, and where Vikernes played the appropriate role. He was hinting that many people disappear each year, that these might have been killed, and then said that he cannot comment on who was doing the killings. When asked if he has killed anyone: “I can’t talk about that.” He was building up to get the question of whether he had killed anyone, and then denying it in a manner which implied the opposite.
WHAT ABOUT THE CASE OF THE TEENAGER THAT DISAPPEARED IN TØNSBERG?
There is a lot of exaggeration in this case. That is understandable, given the fact that he was a priest’s son and obsessed with the occult. According to one story, he checked the number on the electricity meter in his home and discovered that it had three sixes in it. That would suggest a certain interest. The police don’t know what happened. He may have killed himself, which seems the most probable given how kids that age behave. But since it is an unsolved case, it remains open for speculation. His family tried to resolve it by hiring a private investigator, but the investigator didn’t come up with much.
WHERE DID THE BLACK METAL WORLDVIEW, IF YOU CAN CALL IT THAT, COME FROM?
You draw from the cultural resources that are at your disposal. Vikernes was very fond of telling people that he read LaVey and Crowley. However, what he has come out with in interviews indicates that he hasn’t understood it all very well.
Inverting cultural values seems to be the easiest way out in devising a rebellious ideology. Quotes like: “We are not racists, we hate everyone,” “We are not Nazis—Hitler only wanted to kill the Jews, we want everyone to suffer,” indicate both a need for opposition and use of the resources that are present. I wouldn’t call it a worldview, but more a relative self-identity, very dependent on the situation. There is little to indicate, judging from interviews with their parents, families, etc., that this is an identity they have taken w
ith them into everything they have done.
This group identity seems to have been internal from an early stage. It was directed towards the other members of the inner circle. It was not aimed at the rest of society before Vikernes. He was the one that actively solicited the media, the great publicity whore.
SOME OF THESE PEOPLE SEEM TO HAVE LIVED A KIND OF DOUBLE LIFE. ONE MOMENT THEY HAVE BEEN HAVING A NICE DINNER WITH THEIR MOTHERS, THE NEXT THEY ARE OUT BURNING CHURCHES AND KILLING PEOPLE...
To immerse yourself into a total lifestyle takes a lot of time. Most of the Black Metal people were young, still in their teens. Much of the criminal activity has been spontaneous, which is typical of juvenile delinquency. People have to remember that if you are as shoplifter or are violent, it isn’t necessarily apparent that you are a criminal. Crime is something that you do on the side, unless you have a career based around it.
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