V
One of those musicians taking the Nordic belief and worldview very seriously is 22-year-old Varg Vikernes. Using the name Count Grishnackh he founded the musical project Burzum in 1991. He discovered this name, which means “darkness,” as well as his pseudonym, in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, a work that impressed him greatly in his youth.
I became interested in Varg Vikernes when I saw photos showing him in a shirt of chain mail, holding ancient Nordic weapons; and by reading grim, warlike statements he made in various interviews. To date, several records by Burzum have been released. The first two, the LP Burzum and the Aske 12”, came out in 1992 on the Norwegian Deathlike Silence label run by Øystein Aarseth, who also owned the Helvete record shop in Oslo. In 1993 the LP Det som engang var (That Which Once Was) was released on Cymophane, and one year later the CD Hvis lyset tar oss (If the Light Takes Us) on the British label Misanthropy, who have since re-released all the previous records on CD. On the first records he still sang in English, then he decided to solely use his mother tongue.
The first song I heard by Burzum was “Det Som Engang Var”on the CD Hvis lyset tar oss. Even now this song remains for me the most beautiful and powerful work of Burzum; its symphonic sonic violence is impressive over and over again. It is a fourteen-minute-long composition full of grim, blazing beauty—dark and fateful. The uniquely hair-raising, screaming-at-the-heavens vocal of Varg Vikernes turns the piece into an expressionistic shriek-opera, the words of which are probably incomprehensible even for Norwegians. The song was composed in the spring of 1992. Another work which fascinates me very much is “Tomhet” (Emptiness), on the same CD. This song too has an extraordinary length; from my point of view it is an exceptional soundtrack to the Norwegian landscape—that is, Norway as I imagine it, a country ruled by silence and storm, solitude and natural violence.
The songs of Varg Vikernes are about dreams, visions, the past, about light and darkness, winter and war... Conceptions and expressions from Nordic mythology do not appear directly in the texts, but they are very clear and distinct in many interviews and in texts he has written in the last two years. In one of these texts about the Nordic belief system he also discusses the Oskorei. Provocative statements in some interviews gave him the image of a National Socialist and/or a Satanist:
“I am no racist because I do not hate other races. I am no Nazi either, but I am a fascist. I love my race, my culture, and myself. I am a follower of Odin, god of war and death. He is also the god of wisdom, magic, and poetry. Those are the things I am searching for. Burzum exists only for Odin, the cyclopian enemy of the Kristian god. I do not consider my ideas to be extreme at all. That which stupid people call evil is for me the actual reason to survive. Conflict is evolution, peace degeneration. Only blind people can deny that.”
When all the churches were set on fire in 1992, the officials soon suspected the Black Metal musicians. Some were arrested and sentenced. Varg Vikernes was also accused of having burnt two churches. From January to March of 1993 he was in prison, but had to be set free as they could not prove he had any connection to the arsons. However, his sympathy for the torchings was evident—the destruction corresponded to his Nordic Nietzscheanism.
On August 10, 1993, Varg Vikernes had a conflict with Øystein Aarseth, who had released his first records. The reason seems to have been the rights of the Burzum works and a large sum of money. The dispute escalated; they started to fight one another with knives and Varg Vikernes stabbed Øystein Aarseth to death. Some days later he was arrested. In spring, 1994, he was sentenced to twenty-one years in prison, the highest penalty in Norway. The trial created quite a stir; headlines about the deed, and Black Metal “occulture,” were in many newspapers and magazines. Several record shops and distributors refused to stock Burzum and some other Norwegian bands; at the same time Burzum bootlegs appeared on the market. I distrusted the many rumors which I read in newspapers and magazines and decided to contact Varg Vikernes directly.
VI
“Let us look ourselves in the face. We are Hyperboreans—we know well enough how far apart we live. ‘Neither on land nor at sea shall you find the road to the Hyperboreans’: Pindar already knew that of us. Beyond the North, beyond the ice, beyond death—our life, our happiness. ... We have discovered happiness, we know the path, we have found the exit out of entire millennia of labyrinth.” (Friedrich Nietzsche, The Antichrist)
[The essay was originally followed by an interview with Varg Vikernes]
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[Originally published in the journal Aorta, PO Box 778, A-1011 Wien, Austria. This version is a revised translation by Kadmon and Michael Moynihan.]
APPENDIX III
“SATANISM IN NORWAY ” written and translated by Simen Midgaard
If, by the turn of the century, someone chooses to publish a work entitled “The Wooden Churches of Norway,” several of the descriptions will stick to some standardized phrase like “burnt by Satanists in 199-.” The word “Satanist” will at that time be commonly understood, if not in its full breadth.
Before this decade, knowledge about Satanists was the province of few, and it was not the Norwegian, black-clad and long-haired church-burners that would appear before one’s inner eye. There was a Church of Satan in the U.S.A., publicly recognized and entitled to tax exemption, as well as some smaller groups spread around the Christian world, usually with a hedonistic, life-approving philosophy. The darker element would indicate that they had read Jung’s theory about the “Shadow,” the repressed archetype in man.
The type of Satanist that has become commonly known in this country is a quite unique Norwegian variety. They make music, and they probably believe in Satan, being Satanists. During the night they might get the idea of going out to play with candles in churchyards, knock over tombstones, or simply burn the entire church down, especially if there are holidays coming up. Fortunately for them, most Norwegian churches are made of wood, so they can soak the wooden walls with gasoline, light it, and run off. What probably fills their head when, at a safe distance, they enjoy the church spire’s silhouette turning black in a fiery column, is the delight of genuine power, that they have demonstrated it, and that they have wreaked revenge. They despise people in general, whom they view as sheep. “God” is just the god of a hypocritical society and state that attempts to cleanse people’s brains with spiritual chlorine.
Satan opposes this head-on. He is the individual that does not acquiesce, that is not tempted and fooled by sweet lies, falsely associated with the term “spirit” and disgracefully gi
ven the name “religion.” He is the metaphysical opposite of everything feeble and dorky, to put it in popular youthful terms, and awakens the memory of the Italian poet from the turn of the century, Carducci, who initiated his “Hymn to Satan” by lauding the latter as the origin of the clear, rational thought.
The kick these modern Devil worshippers get when contemplating a successful arson attack on a church, is a juvenile boost of subverting the pathetically frail security of the domesticated and truth-fearing herd. Let us say that this is the case, and dwell a little on such a perspective. What does it mean for this subculture’s ability to survive? If they keep going like this ten more years, that could mean that they will amuse themselves with ten more churches each year. That would amount to a hundred, and I see no reason that it should not happen. The history of the Church will then look more like a history of war. But at that time the movement will have made itself thoroughly noticed, and succeeded in making the term “Satanist” a part of the index of Church history. They will simultaneously have made themselves exemplary for new heroes of the same ilk.
It is the ultimate rebellion, executed with a spiteful sneer and harsh grin, against a metaphysic that shows a so-called almighty, but oh-so-deedless god indeed, so inconsequential that you must have maggots in the brain to really believe in, or do so because you are a hysterical coward—afraid of death, of loneliness and darkness, the core of what these well-fed youngsters have established as true and real, and which they worship with skulls, ritual murders of hamsters, Saturnian music, and all kinds of petty sadistic acts that hardly escape attention in a small town, where it seems that most Satanists are inhabitants.
Let it be known: these Fauves definitely have a point. If the Christian god should be given metaphysical status as something fundamental, then the opposite must also exist, if only as an overcharged symbol. It is a point which makes me think that these “youthful pranks” will continue for a long time to come, as the message is simple, easy to fathom, and already understood.
A cult has arisen. Without proper arguments or any established philosophy, but with an aesthetic as tough as weeds, which is significant of kitsch. Elvis-worshippers have no ideology, either. If the teachings of the Satanists are rejected as idealistic kitsch, then the Church from which their sectarian condition has originated should be vulnerable to similar criticism.
Technically speaking the Satanists, if they can be said to be organized at all, form a Christian sect. The only alternative godhead within the dominating religion in Norway is Satan. He is as Christian as Jesus, if viewed as a phenomenon of religious history. And the church-burners are probably members or ex-members of, if not the State Church, at least a comparable Lutheran variation, baptised and confirmed. From a bird’s-eye view there will then be no doubt: the youthful Satanism is an extreme breed of Christianity where serenity, truth, and honesty exchange gods for their opposite. Dogmas disappear in the sect’s teachings, but that is what signifies sects. This is a banality, but it should be better understood.
Society has no idea of what it is dealing with. By the Church’s thousand-year anniversary it has not grasped that the demand for logical consequence and rationality also can find a religious variety, which—contrary to the lie of eternal life—worships the ecstatic contemplation of truth, which is death, for nothing is more true. With that within sight, reality will suddenly feel close and near. To make it even more intense, one worships it in all shapes and colors, with texts, pictures, and music, like any other religion. The Truthful as the Good, and therefore the Beautiful, is a basic Aristotelian principle that has definitely not passed the black-clad by. When this seems to be the reality in the heads of these self-styled fog-bursters, it would be naive to think that they are moved by a weaker force than one that has always made enthusiasts force the truth, contrary to society’s beliefs.
My conclusion is that this society is facing a movement that it will take a long time to establish a clear view upon, and that any lightly considered action against it may be like putting out a fire with gasoline.
[Originally published in Morgenbladet, 1995.]
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