asprem heathen

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[The Pomegranate 10.1 (2008) 41-69] ISSN 1528-0268 (Print)doi: 10.1558/pome.v10i1.41 ISSN 1743-1735 (Online)

Heathens Up North: Politics, Polemics,and Contemporary Norse Paganism in Norway

Egil Asprem

[email protected]

Abstract

The variety of religious positions commonly grouped together under theheading contemporary Paganism permit no homogenous reading of thatphenomenon. As recent research on contemporary forms of Paganismhas owered in recent years, emphasis has been given to the nuances andcomplexities of this kind of these new religious currents. For instance it isclear that contemporary Pagan currents, such as Wicca, Ásatrú, and Ro-man Paganism, tend to vary signicantly between themselves on mattersof theology, sociological prole, and political tendencies. While varieties

in the social manifestations of given groups can be partly explained bydiverging religious/ideological content, it also holds true that ideologi-cal formations will be determined in part by the society in which theyemerge. This means that a contemporary Pagan current such as Ásatrúis not necessarily describable as one single tendency on a global scale,but will unavoidably be shaped by local conditions. Thus varieties withincurrents will tend to follow national and geographical borders, being al-ways locally situated, and adapted to local political, social, and religiousconditions. This article discusses the emergence and development of con-temporary Norse Paganism in Norway in light of the abovementionedframework. Special notice is given to the interplay between public dis-

courses on issues such as Paganism, the occult, neo-Nazism, and the rela-tionship between the church and state in Norway, and the self-fashioningof reconstructionist Norse Pagans. Through a partial comparison with thethoroughly discussed American context of contemporary Norse religionan argument is advanced that Norwegian Ásatrú came to bear certain dis-tinct marks that are due to and only explicable by specic, local culturalconditions.

Introduction

While recent decades have seen a thriving academic literature on modernPagan groups the scope of these studies has arguably had a somewhatnarrow focus Marco Pasi has argued that the almost exclusive focus on



42 The Pomegranate 10.1 (2008)

ited understanding of the varieties of contemporary Pagan religion.1 Itis for instance clear that the revival of Roman Paganism in Italy yields adifferent result than the revival of “Celtic” Wicca or Norse Paganism in

the English-speaking world. The emphasis in the systems that are to berevived are different; Pagan religions most popular in Anglo-Saxon cul-ture generally favour close interaction with nature and “green” values,while the revival of “the glory of Rome,” with its city-based temples andcivil religion, favours urban and centralistic religious concepts and hasindeed made possible the concept of a “Pagan imperialism.”2

I believe the point can be expanded further. While it is clear that whatcontemporary Pagans seek to revive will inuence the outcome, oneshould also expect results to vary according to where it is done. Differ-

ences in the political and cultural climate of nations favour differencesin religious ecologies. What this means is that studies of the dynamicsof, for instance, revivalist Ásatrú in the United States do not necessar-ily provide the full picture of Ásatrú generally. Even when much of theideological production of modern Ásatrú stems from an American con-text, its export to other countries is not to be viewed as a homogenisingprocess, but will always involve adaptation to local cultural and politi-cal circumstances.3 For this reason comparative studies of branches ofreconstructed Paganism that are supposedly “the same” but situated in

different habitats could provide an interesting line of research, whichpromises to reveal nuances and varieties that are contingent on the par-ticular cultural and political contexts of the movements.4

Analysing certain aspects of the modern (re-)emergence and devel-opment of Norse Paganism in Norway, with a distinct view on its placewithin a broader public discourse on Paganism, can contribute to this

1 Marco Pasi, “Western Esotericism and Neo-Paganism in Contemporary Italy: Ro-

man Traditionalism.” paper presented at the conference “The Development of Pa-ganism: History, Inuences and Contexts, 1880-2002” in Milton Keynes, England, 12 January 2002.2 “Imperialismo Pagano” was the title of an article published by Arturo Reghini in1914, and later the title of a book published by Julius Evola in 1928.3 Thus to the extent that such export and import takes place, it is to be viewed as aninstance of ”glocalisation” rather than globalisation, by which the local is an aspectof the global. Cf., Roland Robertson, “Globalisation or Glocalisation?,”in Globaliza-tion. Critical Concepts in Sociology, Volume III, ed. Robertson & Kathleen E. White,31-51 (London: Routledge, 2003 [1994].4 A valuable recent contribution to a comparative perspective on contemporary

Paganism is found in Michael F. Strmiska (ed.), Modern Paganism in World Cultures:Comparative Perspectives (Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio, 2005). See especially the articlesStrmiska, “Modern Paganism in World Cultures: Comparative Perspectives,”1-54;



Asprem Heathens Up North 43

line of research. Norse Pagan groups (Ásatrú and Odinism) and theirrelationship to political ideologies is one of the themes that have beensubject to a growing academic literature, at least since the second half of

the 1990s.5

However, these studies have mostly focused on the Ameri-can situation—especially on the political aspects pertaining to racialistideologies and white-supremacist movements; in the American contextthis connection seems to have been prevalent all along. The Nordic orScandinavian contexts, which are the historical homeland of the tradi-tions that contemporary Norse Paganism seeks to revive, have remainedlargely unexplored, however.6 Necessarily, so too have the political andcultural dynamics and complexities of Scandinavian movements, whicharguably differ from the American situation. By focusing on the Norwe-

gian context and the shared polemical discourse between Ásatrú move-ments and the public at large I will aim to show how these movementsand their political outlooks can come to bear the unmistaken mark ofthe specic culture within which they are formed.

Seeing that the public discourse on Paganism is of great impor-tance in this respect, it is necessary to place the development of Norwe-gian Ásatrú within the context of the Satanism scare and media-drivenmoral panic7 that hit the Norwegian public in the early 1990s. In thisperiod a common view spread to the effect that a cluster of Satanism,

occultism, secret societies, ritual abuse, Norse religion and neo-Nazismwas on the rise somewhere in the shadows, acting in concert to threatenestablished society.8 This subversive alliance was seen as manifesting in

5 The most relevant studies would include Jeffrey Kaplan, “The Reconstruction of theÁsatrú and Odinist Traditions,”in Magical Religion and Modern Witchcraft, ed. JamesR. Lewis, 193-236 (Albany, State University of New York Press, 1996); Jeffrey Kaplan& Tore Bjørgo eds., Nation and Race: The Developing Euro-American Racist Subculture(Northeastern University Press, 1998); Jeffrey Kaplan, Radical Religions in America:

Millenarian Movements from the Far Right to the Children of Noah (Syracuse, SyracuseUniversity Press, 1999); Jeffrey Kaplan & Leonard Weinberg, The Emergence of a Euro- American Radical Right (New Brunswick, Rutgers University Press, 1998); NicholasGoodrick-Clarke, Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity (New York: New York University Press, 2002); Mattias Gardell, Gods of the Blood: ThePagan Revival and White Separatism (Durham, Duke University Press, 2003).6 A few exceptions include Michael Strmiska, “Asatru in Iceland: The Rebirth ofNordic Paganism?,”Nova Religio 4:1 (2000), 106–32; Strmiska and Baldur Sigurvins-son, “Asatru: Nordic Paganism in Iceland and America”.7 E.g., Stanley Cohen, Folk Devils and Moral Panics (London: Mac Gibbon and Kee,1972).

8 An excellent survey of how this moral panic was constructed by the Norwegianmedia is available in Asbjørn Dyrendal, “Media Constructions of ’Satanism’ in Nor-way (1988-1997)” originally published in FOAF Tale News: Newsletter of the Contem-




the violent outbreaks of the Norwegian black metal music scene, withthe infamous church arsons and “Satanic” murders (which of coursewere not qualitatively different from other murders) as central points of

reference.9

The rst part of my approach will consist in presenting someof the myths and realities of this moral panic, with its consequences forthe public conceptualisation of religious communities in occult and Pa-gan currents. Understanding the dynamics of this public discourse onPaganism in the early nineties is crucial to understand the problematicsituation Norwegian Ásatrú groups found themselves facing, and ulti-mately ghting.

A second aspect I will examine is the polemics within Norse Pagan-ism concerning political questions, especially racialism and right-wing

politics. One of the most frequently discussed neo-Nazi and also NorsePagan, organisations in Norway in recent years is Vigrid,10 an organisa-tion which blends a racist, anti-Semitic, conspiracy theorist and millena-rian neo-Nazi political agenda with an Odinist religious outlook. Mostimportantly, I will argue that the very emergence of this group forcedmore mainstream Ásatrú communities like Bifrost11 and ForeningenForn Sed12 into adopting an explicitly anti-racist position. In additionI believe it interesting to see how these latter groups actively engagein other political polemics as well, which are specic to the Norwegian

context, especially concerning religious liberty and the separation of theNorwegian church and state.

Norwegian) on the Satanism scare in general and its import to Norway, see Dyren-dal, “Fanden er løs! En utviklingshistorisk fremstilling av ’satanisme’ som moderneondskapsforestilling,”Marburg Journal of Religion, 5, no. 1 (2000). http://web.uni-marburg.de/religionswissenschaft/journal/mjr/dyrendal.html.9 A standard documentary history is available in Michael Moynihan & DidrikSøderlind, Lords of Chaos: The Bloody Rise of the Satanic Metal Underground (Los An-

geles: Feral House, 1998). It should be kept in mind that this book has been heavilycriticised for contributing to the mythologisation of the movement rather than clari-fying the dynamics actually involved in the scene.10 The Vigrid website is http://www.vigrid.net/. The only available study fo-cusing particularly on Vigrid is a recently submitted MA dissertation by Lill-HegeTveito at the University of Tromsø. It is valuable because Tveito gained access to theinternal workings of Vigrid, having conducted interviews with the leading gures,as well as witnessed initiation rituals; but less useful than it could have been due toat times rather severe methodological problems. See nevertheless Tveito, Kampen for den Nordiske rases overlevelse: Bruken av den norrøne mytologien innenfor Vigrid , (MAthesis, Det samfunnsvitenskapelige fakultet, University of Tromsø, 2007). In addi-

tion, at least one more MA dissertation dealing in part with Vigrid is being preparedby Mari Kristine Brækken at the Religious Studies department, Norwegian Univer-sity of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim.

http://web.uni-marburg.de/religionswissenschaft/journal/mjr/dyrendal.html



http://www.vigrid.net/








To my knowledge there have been no academic studies of contem-porary Norse Paganism in Norway; hence the present attempt must beseen as tentative rather than denite, probably far from the last word on

the issue.Racial Politics and the Odinism/Ásatrú Distinction:

Some Theoretical Issues

A distinction has commonly been made between two types of contem-porary Norse Paganism: Odinism and Ásatrú.13 This distinction reectsa combination of historical, theological, and sociological or socio-po-litical issues. Odinism is perceived as the more politicised movement,

closely connected with racialism and right-wing politics, while Ásatrúis to a greater extent a subset of the religious Pagan revival and thuscloser to other forms of Anglo-Saxon Paganism, such as Wicca and God-dess movements, and often contains withint itself a bigger variety ofpolitical sympathies. In line with this distinction it has been common todelineate different historical roots of the movements. Odinism is oftentraced back to the German völkisch and Ariosophic religious upsurge,especially in the forms it took during the politically chaotic period of theWeimar Republic,14 during which time cultic activities with sacrices to

Wotan started to spring up among the disillusioned and displaced ranksof the German youth movements.15 These new religious and occulttrends soon gained the attention of people outside of Germany as well.One important gure was the Australian lawyer and Nazi sympathiserAlexander Rud Mills (1885–1964). Through adopting a sort of racialmysticism fused with Rosicrucian, Masonic, and conspiracy-theorist el-ements, he attempted to reconstruct a lost pre-Christian, “Anglo-Saxongolden age.” Most notable in this respect was his inuential book TheOdinist Religion: Overcoming Jewish Christianity, published in 1930.16 Rud

Mills’ Odinism was a distinctively Manichean system; it was based onthe “cosmic battle” between Anglo-Saxon Aryanism and Judeo-Christi-anity with its related powers. However, the religious overtones invokedthrough the names of Norse gods such as Odin, Thor and Loki couldarguably be seen as mere literary devices, serving to “Paganise” and

13 For a typical treatment of this distinction, see Kaplan, “The Reconstruction theÁsatrú and Odinist Traditions.”

14 The authoritative discussion of the development of Wotanist and Ariosophistmovements in Germany is Goodrick-Clarke, The Occult Roots of Nazism: Secret ArianCults and Their Infuence on Nazi Ideology (London: I. B. Tauris & Co Ltd, 1985).




“racialise” facets of the Christian god.17 His foundation of an AnglicanChurch of Odin clearly suggests this tendency; Rud Mills’ Odinist reli-gion was based on a template taken from Christianity, while the main

point seems to have been his political, racialist programme.Rud Mills’ programme was taken up and brought to the UnitedStates in the 1960s by Danish one-time anarcho-syndicalist Else Chris-tensen (1913–2005).18 Christensen, whom Mattias Gardell labelled “thegrandmother of racial Paganism,” founded the Odinist Fellowship inFlorida in 1969, the rst organised Norse Pagan group to appear inthe United States.19 Through the publication of her journal The Odin-ist (founded 1971) she was instrumental in disseminating new ideas onOdinism and Norse Paganism generally that would become inuential

for later movements as well. Apart from underscoring the connectionswith white supremacists, propounding a conspiratorial view of history,and emphasising the conceived “warrior ethics” of the old Norsemen,she formulated ideas which would also become inuential outsidecircles commonly denoted “Odinist.”20 These include especially her Jungian interpretation of the Norse gods as being “archetypes” geneti-cally engraved in the Nordic peoples and her political ideas on “tribalsocialism.”21

In the end, Jeffrey Kaplan has argued that “a knowledge of Mills”

and the Odinist tradition springing from him is one of the clearestpoints to distinguish Odinists from Ásatruers.22 While political agendasconnected to right-wing and racist ideologies seem to be more crucialthan the explicitly religious aspects in this kind of Odinism, Ásatrú isusually conceived of as a “more religious” and apolitical take on NorsePaganism. It is notable that such Ásatrú organisations started to appearin many countries about the same time, from the early and mid 1970s.Organisations popped up in different places, such as Great Britain, Ice-land, and the United States, seemingly without any formal contact.23

The Icelandic Ásatrúarfelagið was established by Sveinbjörn Beintein-son as early as 1972,24 the British Committee for the Restoration of the

17 Kaplan, “The Reconstruction the Ásatrú and Odinist Traditions,”194.18 Ibid., 195.19 Gardell, Gods of the Blood, 165-6.20 Ibid., 166; Kaplan, “The Reconstruction the Ásatrú and Odinist Tradi-tions,”195-6.21 Gardell, Gods of the Blood, 166.

22 Kaplan, “The Reconstruction the Ásatrú and Odinist Traditions,”195.23 Ibid., 199-200.24 This date is in accord with the organisation’s own website (http://www.asa-

http://www.asatru.is/






Odinic Rite in 1973, and the rst American society which tried to takeNorse Paganism in a different direction than Odinism, Steven McNal-len’s Viking Brotherhood, also saw its formative years in this period.

The Brotherhood would later turn into the Ásatrú Free Assembly, whichwould be the stem from which most later branches of American Ásatrúwould spring. One possible reason why all these movements appearedabout the same time can be the connection they have with the generalupsurge of new religious Paganism, especially from the 1960s onwards,which already would be present in the Western world at large by the1970s. A general interest in Paganism would bring certain people fas-cinated by the Eddas and Norse mythology to attempt a revival of thispre-Christian religion in a similar fashion as had recently been done

with Celtic Wicca.25

While this general differentiation between Odinism and Ásatrú hassome merit, they are still to be viewed as ideal types. As Mattias Gardellhas noted, there are self-designated Ásatrúers who are focused on therace issue and Odinists who are heavily involved with general Pagan, oc-cult, and religious practices26. As a substitute for this distinction, Gardellhas proposed to treat Norse Paganism as a continuum, with three chiefdifferent positions on the race issue. The antiracist position holds thatÁsatrú is a “universal” religion open for anybody and rather actively

combats racism.27 This position is believed to be the numerically strong-est even in the United States. The radical racist position is diametricallyopposite; this position denes Ásatrú/Odinism as “an expression of theAryan race soul and sees it as an exclusively Aryan path.”28 Lastly is the“third way” of Norse Paganism, which Gardell has termed the ethnic

Odinist Traditions,”199.25 Kaplan includes an interesting although short section on early “conversion sto-ries” among the main characters in the American Ásatrú community. This shows thatthere would have been a relatively big movement of unorganised and unconnectedpeople fascinated by Norse mythology encountered in storybooks already fromthe 1950s. As Kaplan notes, it would only be “a matter of time before organizationswould be formed to link these scattered believers.” Kaplan, “The Reconstruction theÁsatrú and Odinist Traditions,”197-99. For the emergence of Wicca and other Pa-gan groups in this period, see, e.g. , Margot Adler, Drawing Down the Moon:Witches,Druids, Goddess-Worshippers, and other Pagans in America Today (New York: Penguin,2006 [1979]); James R. Lewis ed., Magical Religion and Modern Witchcraft (Albany:State University of New York Press, 1996); Ronald Hutton, The Triumph of the Moon:

A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); ChasS. Clifton, Her Hidden Children: The Rise of Wicca and Paganism in America (Lanham,

Maryland: AltaMira Press, 2006).26 Gardell, Gods of the Blood, 152.




position. This position tries, not always too successfully, to distinguishrace from ethnicity and says that Ásatrú is linked with north-Europeanethnicity.29 This position could be linked with initiatives supporting oth-

er minority or endangered ethnicities’ right to practice their own ethnicreligion, as is actually the case with Steven McNallen.Both typologies outlined above are necessary when assessing the

Norwegian situation. It makes sense to speak of Odinism in a historicalsense, and it is also helpful in drawing up a broad distinction betweenNorse inuences in white-supremacist movements and religiously in-clined Norse Paganism as such. However, when approaching a closerlevel of analysis, Gardell’s threefold typology is indispensable to makesense of the diverging positions within the broader discourse of Norse

Paganism.

A Preliminary History of Norse Paganism in Norway

Early racialist Paganism in Norway

The völkisch fascination with pre-Christian myth and religion did makeits presence felt in Norway in the 1930s.30This fascination especiallymanifested in the milieu surrounding the Tidsskriftet Ragnarok, a journal

established in 1934 and edited by Hans S. Jacobsen. The members of theso-called “Ragnarok circle” can be seen as a counterpart to some of thePagan currents in Germany; especially there was much contact with theDeutsche Glaubensbewegung of Jacob Wilhelm Hauer.31.The articles ofthe journal presented what can be seen as an alternative position withinNorwegian National Socialism: a National Socialism “with an empha-sis on socialism,” it has been argued, but also with an emphasis on theNorse Pagan heritage and pan-Germanism.32 During the war years themost notable gures of this current represented a form of Pagan Na-

zism in opposition to Vidkun Quisling’s government, which they sawas a weak, bourgeois movement, but also against the increasingly moreimperialistic tendency of the Third Reich itself.33 Besides Jacobsen, oneof the most notable gures of this early National Socialist Norse Pagan

29 Ibid.30 The standard work on these trends in Norway before and during World War II

is Terje Emberland, Religion og rase: Nyhedenskap og nazisme i Norge 1933-1945 (Oslo:Humanist forlag, 2003).31 Emberland, Religion og rase, 38.




current was the writer and adventurer Per Imerslund (1912–1943),34 whoamong other endeavours fought with the Falangists in the Spanish CivilWar, on the Eastern Front against the Soviets during World War II, and

was personally responsible for the break-in at Leo Trotsky’s Norwegianhome in 1936. Another active member of the circle around Ragnarokwas the composer Geirr Tveitt (1908–1981), who dedicated his musi-cal work to revive Norse myth and culture.35This Norse Pagan trend,however, do not seem to have left any successors in a post-war Norwayanxious to root out everything reminiscent of National Socialism andthe years of occupation.

Contemporary Norwegian Ásatrú

The organised Norwegian Ásatrú movement started relatively late com-pared to most of its international counterparts. Although such move-ments popped up at various locations in the West from the early 1970s,there was no Norwegian counterpart to speak of until a decade or solater. The rst more or less organised attempt at establishing an activeÁsatrú movement in Norway took place in the mid 1980s. A studentassociation devoted to Norse religion had evolved at the University inOslo under the name Blindern Åsatrulag (BÅL). An attempt was made

at this point to register as an ofcial religious community, but the at-tempts stalled for various reasons.36 Not until a decade later were therst Ásatrú movements to gain ofcial recognition as religious commu-nities. The rst registration was a small and rather obscure group, OdinsÆtlinger (“Kindred of Odin”), in 1994, a group which seems to havebeen organised by a couple of friends and never expanded in scopefrom that.37 Of a much wider and more important impact however wasthe government’s ofcial recognition of the Ásatrú umbrella organisa-tion Bifrost on February 28, 1996.38 Together with the BÅL movement,

the initiative of this registration was taken by a local group of enthusi-astic young but serious Ásatrúers, Draupnir, located in the small town

34 An excellent and interesting biography of Imerslund has quite recently appeared:Emberland and Bernt Roughthvedt, Det ariske idol. (Oslo: Aschehoug, 2004).35 Emberland, Religion og rase, 311ff.36 Bifrost, “Bifrosts historie,” http://bifrost.no/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=213&Itemid=95

37 Rumour has it that the original intent was to avoid conscription to the military onreligious grounds. They only needed a religion, and therefore registered their Ásatrúgroup for this purpose. Harald Eilertsen, e-mail, 19 June 2007.

http://bifrost.no/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=213&Itemid=95








of Våler.39 Bifrost connected several distant local Ásatrú bodies and rep-resented the rst signicant presence of organised Ásatrú in Norway.After a schism in 1998 the other big organisation in Norway, Foreningen

Forn Sed, emerged as an ofcially recognised religious movement basedon “Norwegian folklore.”40 These two umbrella organisations hold themajority of Norwegian Ásatrúers today.

It is to be noted that the early student organisation BÅL, and thusthe rst major upsurge of interest in Ásatrú, grew out of a subculturewith general interests in Paganism and the occult. For instance, the rstChieftain of Bifrost, May-Britt Henriksen, tells how she got involvedin the Ásatrú scene through an interest in Thelema, ritual magic, sha-manism, and rune magic.41 Another former Chieftain, Harald Eilertsen,

relates how he had always been fascinated by the Norse myths, but thathis fascinations were also much broader, covering various occult cur-rents, including LaVeyian Satanism.42 This eclecticism makes the Nor-wegian Ásatrú movement quite conform to the development we cantrace in other countries; reconstructionist Ásatrú should be seen as apart of wider contemporary Pagan currents.

At the same time the connection with occultism has not been with-out its problems, both in matters of internal legitimation in the milieu,and towards the general public. One of the core issues that led to the

schism in Ásatrú was over the sometimes unclear boundaries betweenBifrost and other organisations and currents, especially the O.T.O. andeven Wicca. For the rebels in Forn Sed the heterogeneous attitude ofsome central members in Bifrost was seen as problematic. Similar strug-gles are known from the US, where the prominent Ásatrú spokespersonEdred Thorsson’s close afliation with the Satanic organisation Templeof Set sparked a schism within the American Ásatrú movement.

But the connection with the occult may also have lead to some ofthe stigmas the early movement received in the Norwegian public.

Throughout the important formative years of Norwegian Ásatrú in theearly 1990s Norway was ridden by moral panic. Over the span of someve years, everything smelling of occultism would seem suspect, asso-ciated with alleged Satanic ritual abuse (SRA) or church arsons. Shortlyput, the cultural atmosphere of the early 1990s in Norway did not par-ticularly favour heterodox new religions. For the purpose of this articleit is necessary to understand the development and seriousness of thepublic discourse on occultism and Paganism in Norway during this

39 Didrik Søderlind, “Politi mot æser,”4-5 in Morgenbladet Weekend, 8–11 July 1994.40 See http://www.forn-sed.no/

http://www.forn-sed.no/index.htm






period. It is to this development I will now turn.

The Making of a Modern Witchcraze

Allegations and fears of subversive, secretive, and grotesquely immoralconspiracies seem to be a recurring theme in Western history. As Nor-man Cohn has famously shown, allegations of child sacrice, illicit sex-ual practices and abuse, cannibalism, and demonic worship have beenraised against marginalised or adversary political and religious groupssince antiquity up to the modern period.43 Catilina’s political conspiracy,the early Christians, the Christian “Gnostics,” the Cathars, the KnightsTemplar, early modern magicians and witches — all these were simi-

larly characterized, without there being a shred of evidence for theirreality. In the 1980s and 1990s the very same themes resurfaced in thelate modern West, this time attributed to the resurgence of “Satanism”and “the occult” in general. Now as before, the moral panic resulted instigmatisation and false accusations.

As so many other post-war cultural products, the popular mythologyand demonology revolving around the idea of a clandestine, Satanic,subversive conspiracy was imported to Norway from the United States.44 In the United States the Satanism scare, linking “Satanic ritual abuse”

(SRA), “the occult” and subversive politics, ourished in the 1980s, witha history going back to the anti-cult movements responding to what wasportrayed as sinister new religious movements in the 1970s.45 Follow-ing research done by the foremost Norwegian specialist on the subject,Asbjørn Dyrendal, the media construction of the corresponding moralpanic in Norway can roughly be divided into three stages.46 The rstreports started to surface between 1988 and 1990. Following newspaperreports from June 1988 about youngsters who claimed Satanic beliefsthreatening and physically assaulting townspeople, stealing from

43 Norman Cohn, Europe’s Inner Demons.44 Two important studies of the panic in the United Sates are Jean S. LaFontaine,Speak of the Devil (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) and Jeffrey S. Vic-tor, Satanic Panic (Chicago: Open Court, 1993).45 Dyrendal, “Media Constructions”; idem, “Fanden er løs!”.46 For the development of ideas on satanism in Norway, see Dyrendal, “MediaConstructions of ’Satanism’ in Norway (1988-1997)”; and also Dyrendal and AminaLap, “Satanism as a News Item in Norway and Denmark. A Brief history,”in En-

cyclopedic Sourcebook of Satanism, eds. Jesper Aagaard Petersen & J. Lewis (Buffalo:Prometheus Books, 2008). More on the locally adapted version of moderen religiousSatanism in Norway can be found in Dyrendal and D. Søderlind, “Social Democratic




churches, and “worshipping Satan,”, a series of articles dealing withthe threat of “the occult” appeared.47 Among the issues dealt with werethe unveiling of a “Satanic chapel” in the small city of Halden, with

Eliphas Levi’s famous “Baphomet” portrait, an altar, knives, skulls andvarious “occult paraphernalia.” Worries were also expressed about thefact that Anton Szandor LaVey’s Satanic Bible was available in certainbookstores in Oslo.48 These early “worrying reports” were taken seri-ously mostly by certain Christian communities, while the general publicmore commonly received them as curiosities.

The picture became more serious from the summer of 1990 onward,when the SRA mythos appeared for the rst time to the general Norwe-gian audience. At this time, the Satanism scare started making headlines

in the biggest Norwegian newspapers, as well as in television broad-casts. This second stage of the media construction of Satanism spannedroughly from 1990 to 1992. It differed from the previous one both be-cause it introduced a new and more serious element to the mythology ofSatanism and because the myths were given higher importance in seri-ous, mainstream media. It kicked off in August 1990 with the publica-tion by freelance journalist Fred Harrison of a somewhat longer reportabout SRA claims in England. Through an interview with the Englishpsychiatrist Victor Harris, Harrison disclosed that leads on an elite Sa-

tanic conspiracy were now pointing towards Norway.49 The panic tookoff as these “leads” were “backed up” by the reports of the Norwegianpolice lieutenant Willy Kobbhaug of the Oslo police.50In an interviewpublished 11 June 1991, Kobbhaug revealed that he had been in contactwith a young girl in her twenties, who was gradually “remembering”SRAs through her therapy. Apparently, the “evidence” posed by thisgirl’s accounts revealed the existence of at least two operative Satanicsects in Oslo alone. As Dyrendal notes:

The story exploded into the media the following days, withheadlines like the following:“Sex and black magic in secret lodges”•

“Sadistic sex magic with 14 year olds” (• Dagbladet, 12 June 1991)“Police take action against Satanists” (• Dagen 12 June 1991)“Eva escapes from Satanic meeting” (• Dagbladet 13 June 1991)“Increasing interest for Satanism in Norway”• (Dagen 15 June1991)“Satanism is hatred towards life” (Vårt Land 19 June 1991)•

51

47 Dyrendal, “Media Constructions”.48 Ibid.49 Ibid.




At this point the notion of a subversive Satanic underground, commit-ted to practices of ritual abuse — largely sustained by the “evidence”

provided by “experts” coming from certain psychotherapeutic strandsemphasising the (now largely contested or outright dismissed) conceptsof dissociation, multiple personalities and recovered memories52 —wasassimilated into a wider fear of “the occult” and secret societies. In fact,Lieutenant Kobbhaug gave a historical background of this gloomy con-spiracy, tracing it back to The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn,through the Ordo Templi Orientis and the Church of Satan. This my-thos, lacking any shred of historical accuracy, was further cultivated anddisseminated through the media. Consequently, the O.T.O., which was

the only one of these organisations actually present in Norway at thetime, would falsely be linked to several “Satanic” sex crimes in the timeto come.53

From mid 1992 onwards a third stage of the construction of “mediaSatanism” can be distinguished, with the rise of the Norwegian blackmetal music scene.54 While the ritual abuse furor reached its climax inthis year as well with the infamous Bjugn kindergarten trial,55 the SRASatanism mythology was still to be superseded by a uniquely Norwe-gian image of Satanism. The rise of a black metal scene some times styl-

ing itself “Satanic,” tied up with restless young musicians adopting apeculiar dress code (making them less than secretive, to be sure) andacting out an aggression cautiously portrayed by the media, took theSatanism popular mythology in quite a different direction. Interestinglythough, it has been argued that one of the very reasons that this move-ment emerged at this particular time may be due to the previous mediafocus on the allegedly elite bourgeois Satanism threat. Satanism hadbeen portrayed as the ultimate conception of evil in contemporary Nor-

52 Dyrendal, “Psychology and the Satanic Ritual Abuse Controversy. A Brief Re-search Review,” Skepsis (03.02.2007), http://www.skepsis.no/articles_in_english/psychology_and_the_Satanic_rit.html.

53 Dyrendal, “Media Constructions”.54 See Moyniham & Søderlind, Lords of Chaos.55 The Bjugn trial is widely considered the worst scandal in the Norwegian judicialsystem. Thirty people, including the local police chief, were prosecuted for sexualabuse of thirty-six named children and “an unknown number” of others in the kin-dergarten. Although the Satanic element was lacking in this case, there are othersignicant structural similarities. The evidence rested signicantly on “recovered

memories” taken at face value. In the end, all the suspects were found not guilty;an important element of the so-called “Bjugn-effect” has been a critical evaluation ofthe role of certain medical and psychological experts in Norwegian courts. A critical

http://www.skepsis.no/articles_in_english/psychology_and_the_satanic_rit.html







wegian society, and the rebellious youths simply drew on the construct-ed image and forged it in their own image to construct the new blackmetal “Satanism.”56 Thus the media itself may have played a signicant

role in the making of the Norwegian black metal Satanism fringe.57

The aggression associated with this “Satanic” fringe consisted of ar-sons (more than forty churches were set ablaze over a three-year pe-riod), attacks on young evangelists, one rape, and two murders.58 Oneof these murders, where Varg (Kristian) Vikernes, otherwise known as“Count Grisnakh” or simply “the Count,” killed his friend and com-panion Øystein Aarseth, known as “Euronimous,” the lead guitarist ofthe seminal black metal band Mayhem, was a publicity breakthroughfor Norwegian black metal “Satanism.” Perhaps ironically the Count

subsequently became something of a media pet and, accepting numer-ous interview requests, he exploited the opportunity to explain and dis-seminate his beliefs. The importance of this is the attention given to acertain political and religious amalgam by Vikernes and others of theblack metal fringe:

Some times they would claim to be Nazis, some times 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 hat-ed the Jews, we hate everyone.” Or, “We’re not racists, we want all people

to suffer.” Or, “If our music causes people to commit suicide, that’s good.It weeds out the weak.”59

As Dyrendal has noted, the views expounded by Vikernes in particularbecame quite inuential. Many people followed the Count in droppingthe label “Satanism” for that of “Odinism,” and were later to shave theirheads and join the growing National Socialist currents60. Through hismany interviews in the 1990s Vikernes became a worldwide icon of boththe real and imagined overlaps between black metal, Satanism, Odin-

ism and National Socialism61. For the purposes of this essay, it is per-

56 Dyrendal, “Media Constructions.”57 According to Tore Bjørgo a similar phenomenon seems to apply to the rise ofScandinavian neo-Nazi groups in the same period. In his doctoral dissertation heargued both that the media focus functioned as a motive and reward-system andprovided an “anticipation of more” effect which actually provoked neo-Nazi activistgroups to emerge as a kind of self-fullling prophecies. Bjørgo, Racist and Right WingViolence in Scandinavia, p. 203-207. Similarly Dyrendal notes in the case of “Satanism”that “[t]he stories became scripts for action and created reality”. Dyrendal, “Media

Constructions”.58 Dyrendal, “Media Constructions.”59 Ibid.




haps the imaginary links and overlaps, i.e., those monumental generali-sations existing only in the popular demonology, which are of greatestimportance. It is these that have posed a very serious threat to harmless

religious subcultures which in reality lacked any connection to eitherSatanic ritual abuse or neo-Nazism.

Being a Pagan while the stakes are ablaze

“Satanic crime” panic: The police intervene

As the people involved in establishing Norwegian Ásatrú generally hada background from various other occult and Pagan currents, including

Thelema and LaVeyian Satanism, the image created through the Satan-ism scare, serving as the backdrop to the development of Ásatrú, didobviously have an impact on the process. This is especially the case forthe third stage of the construction of media Satanism, concerned withthe links with church arsons and the black metal scene. But it also holdstrue for the period following from the mid-nineties, with the rise of aPagan, Odinist Nazism.

One particularly illustrating instance happened in the summer of1994. At midsummer the group Draupnir, which was to be very inu-

ential in the Ásatrú community later on, organised a blot62 in Våler, arural, agricultural area in the Norwegian province of Telemark, closeto the Swedish border.63 The members of Draupnir were very young:it consisted mostly of girls aged 15-16 at the time, and few were olderthan 20.64 The blot organised in 1994 can be seen as an important forma-tive event in the history of Norwegian Ásatrú; it has even been pointedout that it was “the rst public blot on Norwegian soil in a thousandyears.”65 Several persons connected with the BÅL movement in Oslowere invited to participate in this midsummer blot, the intention being

to gather as much of the existing community as possible. There wereto be problems, however. Of the thirty to forty persons invited, onlythirteen made it there66. Among those who never made it were two ofthe most prominent members of BÅL, Egil H. Stenseth and May-Britt

62 A Norse religious ritual, traditionally involving some kind of sacrice to one ormore Norse deities.63 Harald Eilertsen, e-mail message to author, 3 June 2007.. Eilertsen was present in

1994, and much of what follows is his account of the episode. He was later to act asChieftain of Bifrost, over the years 1999–2003.64 Ibid.; Didrik Søderlind, “Politi mot æser,”4.




Henriksen67.The reason for this unexpected low turnout was that the Norwe-

gian National Criminal Investigation Service (Kripos) had intervened by

contacting the local police force. They were warned that certain personsmust be cut off and preferably the whole event stopped. Kripos fearedthat a group of Oslo-based Satanists would show up, and the blot endwith the destruction of the nineteenth-century church in Våler.68 Apartfrom stopping the participation of these two central people, the outcomewas that several of the young members of Draupnir were called in for aday-long interrogation by the local police. The blot itself was in dangerbecause of these actions, but the members of the group were nally re-leased and the meeting could take place more or less as planned. By the

Ásatrúers who were permitted to participate it was even deemed a verysuccessful one, and in the end a network of contacts was established,which would later lead to the formation of Bifrost.

Becoming mainstream: Bureaucratic and academic obstacles

The organisation that would become known as Bifrost experienced dif-culties in the process of registering as an ofcially accepted religiousorganisation. A few interesting remarks should be made from the point

of view of Bifrost’s encounter with the bureaucracy in the registrationprocess. The problems encountered can to a certain extent be seen as acontinuation of the stereotypes forged during the Satanism scare, butthis time empowered by serving partially as the basis of the Ministry of Justice’s decision-making.

According to Norwegian legislation, a religious community can ap-ply for ofcial recognition, and, should it succeed, be granted some ofthe same rights and benets as the Norwegian State Church, includingpublic funding in accordance with the size of the community.69 However,

in order to be accepted, the legislation gives certain conditions, includ-ing that the religious community must submit an ofcial creed and thatits content must not be “in conict with public morals.”70 Obviously, thecall for a creed is already contrary to a religion which considers itselffundamentally non-dogmatic, as Ásatrú and other contemporary Pagangroups commonly do. Bifrost itself certainly felt this demand problem-atic.71

67 Eilertsen, e-mail message to author, 3 June 2007.68 Ibid.69 See the legislation in ”Lov om trudomssamfunn og ymist anna,”especially § 19.




But the fact that the content of this creed is also to be subjected toevaluation against the standard of “public morals,” however dened,has also been a source of conict. In 1996 a small Ásatrú group in north-

ern Norway (not ofcially connected with Bifrost) applied for regis-tration under the name Det Norske Åsatrusamfunn (The NorwegianÁsatrú Society). Their application was rst accepted by the municipalauthorities who handle such cases. However, shortly after, the Minis-try of Justice intervened and decided on the contrary that the societywas against “public morals.” A series of interesting arguments weredeployed against the society being ofcially recognised. The ministry’sdecision rested primarily on expert comments from two historians of re-ligion associated with the Centre for Viking and Medieval Studies at the

University of Oslo.72

Curiously, the text of the decision does not appearto contain much academic subtlety, stating for instance that

First we nd reason to point out that the pre-Christian religionof the Viking Age has long since left our civilised world. Thesocietal and cultural context which Norse heathendom was anexpression of is today extinct. A central point in Åsatrusamfun-net’s creed is magic. Magic is a general denotation for wordsand acts of a ritual character which aim at an immediate (super-

natural) inuence on natural phenomena, animals or humans,their possessions or life conditions. Black magic happens in thehidden and with destructive intentions. In the Ministry’s opin-ion it is in conict with right and morality to have black magicas a part of one’s creed.73

The reference to the extinction of “authentic” Norse heathendom(whatever that might be) and the strikingly naïve denition of magic israther remarkable. That a religious society is deemed as immoral on the

basis of magic, portrayed as an antisocial and subversive practice, is alsovery curious, as one would almost start to wonder whether the Ministry

tion of Wiccans in Finland as described by Titus Hjelm, ”United in Diversity, Dividedfrom Within: The Dynamics of Legitimation in Contemporary Witchcraft,” PolemicalEncounters: Esoteric Discourse and its Others, eds. Kocku von Stuckrad and Olav Ham-mer (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 291-309.72 “Centre for Viking and Medieval Studies,” Norwegian Research Database,http://dbh.nsd.uib.no/n/english/institution/?key=7387&language=en The Min-

istry’s decision and argumentation in this case is cited in Arne Fliet, Melding for året1998 fra Sivilombudsmannen,(1999), 51-6. Fliet was “parliamentary Ombudsman”during the period. See note 80 below. His report is publicised online at http://www.

http://dbh.nsd.uib.no/nfi/english/institution/?key=7387&language=en


http://www.sivilombudsmannen.no/files/1998.pdf






of Justice itself believed in the efcacy of black magic, and turned downthe application from the fear of crimen magiae. Indeed, the very samestatement goes on to warn against the possibility that the society’s creed

could open up for what the Ministry of Justice calls “Satanic rituals.”74

It would seem that the Satanism moral panic still had a rm grip on theNorwegian Ministry of Justice in 1996. Åsatruselskapet did, however,le a complaint to the parliamentary Ombudsman, an ofcial organ thatevaluates complaints concerning injustice or maladministration on thepart of public administration.75.The complaint was found relevant bythe Ombudsman, which strongly advised the decision to be examinedagain and also suggested that the bureaucratic procedures for such cas-es should be re-evaluated.76

Similar problems with the same ministry were faced by Bifrost. Bi-frost succeeded in registering with the municipal authorities, but short-ly after led a request to change its name to Åsatrufellesskapet Bifrost(The Ásatrú Fellowship Bifrost), which they felt was more precise. How-ever, the Ministry of Justice rejected their request on the grounds thatthe very title “Ásatrú” could be perceived as “defamatory” by “somepeople.”77 The ministry’s report explicitly stated that the expert com-ment of Professor Gro Steinsland78 at the Centre for Viking and Medi-eval Studies was heavily weighed, especially her apparent commentary

that modern Ásatrú would represent “a historical falsication,” whichamong other things would have “negative consequences for all seriousactivities concerning the Viking Age.”79 It would seem that the Ministryof Justice in this case lent themselves to the worries of one academicianspecialising in pre-Christian religion, concerned that her eld of studywould be somehow devalued by the presence of an “inauthentic” copyof her eld of study. As the parliamentary Ombudsman quite reason-ably concluded, the anxieties of one academic milieu that their agenda

74 Ibid.75 The word “Ombudsmann” is untranslatable, but see the ofcial website for adescription of the ofce’s area of responsibility: http://www.sivilombudsmannen.no/eng/statisk/som.html.76 Fliet, Melding for året 1998, 56.77 Ibid.78 Steinsland is widely considered one of the top experts on pre-Christian religionand society in Scandinavia. She recently published the most authoritative introduc-tory book on the subject, now used in undergraduate level at most religious studiesdepartments in Norway: Gro Steinsland, Norrøn Religion: Myter, riter, samfunn (Oslo:

Pax forlag A/S, 2005). Curiously, her scholarship has been an important source ofinspiration to many reconstructionist Ásatrúers, despite the controversy mentionedabove.

http://www.sivilombudsmannen.no/eng/statisk/som.html







would be hurt by contemporary Ásatrú should not be allowed to serveas the only reason for not accepting it as a religion.80 The Ombudsman’sreport therefore advised changing the decision. This suggestion was

later followed, and the movement is today known as ÅsatrufellesskapetBifrost. However, as we will see later, these unpleasant experiences withbureaucratic authorities made Ásatrúers disenchanted with Norway’sclaims to religious liberty.

Racialism and the Neo-Nazi connection: The emergence of Vigrid

Through a series of interviews with the press after the murder trial in1993, the venerated black metal musician Varg Vikernes became an idol

for skinheads with an inclination towards Paganism and for contem-porary Pagans with an inclination towards National Socialism. Frombehind prison walls he launched and organised his own Odinist organi-sation, Norsk Hedensk Front (Norwegian Heathen Front), which at onepoint through its web pages called for “euthanasia” of homosexuals andthe physically impaired.81

According to Vikernes himself, he had already held both Norse Paganand National Socialist beliefs for many years, with only a short periodof dabbling with Satanism more or less as a media strategy in 1992.82 He

had never considered himself a “real Satanist.” At any rate, his explicitNational Socialist and Norse Pagan beliefs in the interviews from prisonpersuaded many “Satanist” adherents to follow in his footsteps, shav-ing their heads and now hailing Odin and Hitler instead of Satan.

Although Vikernes represents an extreme, debates on the relation be-tween racialism and Ásatrú seems to have been present in the Norwe-gian Ásatrú community generally at this early stage. The accusation ofan unclear position on this issue in Bifrost featured again as one of thelegitimating arguments from what became Foreningen Forn Sed during

the schism in 1998.83 As we will see later, a very outspoken position wassubsequently taken by Bifrost.

The connections between Norse Paganism and National Socialismwere to get more serious attention a few years later. On 27 January 2001Benjamin Hermansen, 15, was stabbed to death in Oslo, in what was a

80 Ibid., 57.81 “Greven driver hatgruppe fra fengslet – Fengsel fungerer som adresse for nazi-

gruppe” in Monitor – antifascistisk tidsskrift (undated). http://www.magasinet-mon-itor.net/artikler/hedensk.htm#kom1 .82 Vikernes, ”Part I – The Origin and Meaning” in A Burzum Story, 2004 http://

http://www.magasinet-monitor.net/artikler/hedensk.htm#kom1



http://www.burzum.org/eng/library/a_burzum_story01.shtml

http://www.burzum.org/eng/library/a_burzum_story01.shtml






racially motivated assault. The aftermath of the murder, which was tobe known as the “Holmlia murder” after the place were he was killed,sparked a heated debate about racism, violence, and neo-Nazism in

Norwegian society. In the debates that followed, an organisation knownas Vigrid, headed by the already known neo-Nazi Holocaust revisionistTore Wilhelm Tvedt, started to catch attention. Vigrid’s dubious claim tofame was that some of the involved suspects had been members of theorganisation.84 The organisation was unique on the Norwegian neo-Na-zi scene in that it did (and does) promote a variety of Odinist religiousframeworks in which it interprets its racist and especially anti-Semiticideology. While this had been a quite common mix in other countriessince the 1960s, especially in the United States, it has not been a fea-

ture of the Norwegian right-wing milieu. It is interesting to note thatin Katrine Fangen’s charting out of the Norwegian right-wing activistmilieus of the mid-1990s, she does not mention Odinism or Pagan irta-tions as a position one would typically encounter.85

It would seem that Vigrid does not directly relate to other histori-cal Odinist movements and writers, from Rud Mills to Christensen, inthe way which often features in American Odinism. When asked in ane-mail Tvedt replied that he did not recall ever having heard the nameRud Mills before, but thought he had encountered the name Else Chris-

tensen somewhere in connection with American Odinism.86 At any ratehe could reassure the interviewer that he had read neither of them andthat they were obviously not inuences on his own Odinist project inVigrid. Neither does Tvedt stand in a tradition or even a current ofrevived interest in the Norwegian völkisch Odinism of the 1930s and1940s, mentioned above. He does not seem to have any knowledge ofthem at all and rather tends to support Quisling, who was in fact thegreat enemy of the Ragnarok circle.87 All in all it seems that Vigrid’sOdinism has evolved quite on its own, with inuences from earlier or

84 Tvedt claims that some of these suspects would never have ended up in the trag-ic events if it had not been for the fact that the police had earlier that year pinpointedand contacted these and other members and actively attempted to get them out ofthe organisation. See Tvedt, “Holmliadrapet – offentlig programmert?” (undated,probably summer 2001) http://www.vigrid.net/artikler_holmlia.htm.85 Fangen, “Living Out Our Ethnic Instincts: Ideological Beliefs Among Right-WingActivists in Norway,”202-230 in Nation and Race: The Developing Euro-American RacistSubculture, eds. Jeffrey Kaplan & Tore Bjørgo (Boston: Northeasten University Press,

1998) 202-23086 Tore W. Tvedt, e-mail message to author, 10 June 2007.87 Tvedt nevertheless makes it clear that he does not see Quisling as a religious

http://www.vigrid.net/artikler_holmlia.htm






foreign movements being more indirect.88

The agenda of the organisation nevertheless overlaps with oth-er Odinist projects: to develop a Norse society based on Norse religion

and Norse values and culture, through a loose, decentralised network-organisation.89 The religious outlook may seem a bit naïve and quitedependent on a Christian template of religion – spouting such mottos as“Odin is great and we are His chosen people.” In addition, Tvedt doesnot have much good to say about other Norwegian Ásatrú groups suchas Bifrost. In fact, he does not even consider them to be “real” Ásatrú:

I do not know about any other Ásatrú or Odinist milieus than Vigrid herein Norway. Bifrost is supported by an anti-Nordic power elite and mayfunction as an adversary to Vigrid because they hail the new world reli-

gion HoloCa$h, keep openly aloof from Vigrid and others that see Norsereligion as springing from the Nordic people itself and their blood. Bifrostsee their “faith” as equally relevant whether you are Mestizo, Negro orMongol. That makes us laugh loudly at them.90

Harald Eilertsen was Chieftain of Bifrost from 1999-2003, during therise of Vigrid and the period when the connection between Norse Pa-ganism and neo-Nazism was very much felt in the Norwegian public.He recalls that the focus was deeply felt by the Ásatrúers in Bifrost as

well: “There was a shift in the conception of what we were doing. Ear-lier, when people heard that you were a member of Bifrost and involvedwith Ásatrú they would often be curious and ask what it was all about.Now all of a sudden people would ask if you were a Nazi.”91 But thenegative publicity from media and ofcial organs would also take oth-er forms. Later in 2001 an expert group commissioned by NorwegianMinister of Justice Hanne Harlem concluded that a legal ban on the useof “Nazi symbols” would be a valuable instrument for combating thegrowing neo-Nazi movements.92 The denition of “Nazi symbols” was,

however, quite expansive; for instance, various runes were to be foundamong the symbols initially proposed by the commission.93 A hearing

88 It has been rumoured that Tvedt had extensive contact with the National Alli-ance in the United States and considered Vigrid a Norwegian counterpart to it. Tvedtnow claims these rumours are false, that there is no such contact, and that Vigrid isentirely on its own, with no contact with either foreign or Norwegian movements.Ibid.89 E.g., Vigrid, “Aims/Contact” (http://www.vigrid.net/maalkontakt.htm); idem,

“Hierarchy or Network?” (http://www.vigrid.net/nettverksorg.htm).90 Tvedt,, email message to author, 10 June 2007. My translation.91 Eilertsen, personal interview, 2 April 2007.

http://www.vigrid.net/maalkontakt.htm


http://www.vigrid.net/nettverksorg.htm







committee was gathered to judge the proposal, and Bifrost, now in thecapacity of being the biggest ofcially acknowledged Ásatrú organisa-tion in Norway, was invited to have a word in the process. Bifrost used

this opportunity to provide documentation that many, if not most, ofthe symbols proposed to be banned actually had a long history and awide use in religious contexts without any kind of connection to neo-Nazism.94 In the end the proposal was dismissed. Bifrost perceived thisdismissal as an important moral victory.95

The event was perceived as a victory in the wider international Ása-trú community too. Eilertsen relates that when he still was Chieftainhe was contacted by Steven McNallen, head of the American ÁsatrúFolk Assembly and editor of the seminal Ásatrú journal Runestone.96

McNallen asked Eilertsen if he would write a short article about theevents in Norway for the journal, which he did. However, he was toregret this later on. When the article was published in the summer of2001 (The Runestone 32) Eilertsen was bombarded by letters and e-mails from enthusiastic American racialist Odinists signing their mes-sages with “Blood and Honor” and similar racial mottos. As a responseto this event, which Eilertsen and the other leading gures of Bifrostexperienced as problematic and troubling, he wrote McNallen insist-ing on having another article printed where he could ofcially distance

himself and Bifrost from any kind of racialist position. McNallen neverresponded, and the intended article was never published.97

These accounts are symbolic of the kind of internal struggle over po-litical issues within the Ásatrú community at large. Recalling Gardell’sclassication of Ásatru positions, McNallen is a clear representative ofthe “ethnic” position who himself has had a lot of trouble keeping ex-plicitly racist Odinists out of his circles.98 Bifrost, however, has over theyears taken a very outspoken antiracist position, explicitly distancingitself from Vigrid’s “extreme racist” position. The front page of Bifrost’s

website has the following declaration:

Åsatrufellesskapet Bifrost keeps aloof from all kinds of discriminationbased on gender, origin and sexual orientation. We wish to make use ofthe old Norse symbols and other expressions of Pagan custom, so thatthese shall no longer be associated with the abuse by Nazis and neo-Nazisthroughout history.99

94 Ibid.

95 Ibid.96 Ibid. For more on McNallen, see Gardell, Gods of the Blood.97 Eilertsen, interview, 2 April 2007.




But the organisation has also found it necessary to take further meas-ures against neo-Nazi and racialist Pagans, stressing the threat of Vigrid

explicitly. Their website has a specially designated section called “Na-zism/Racism?” where Bifrost’s own position on these issues is made asclear as one could possibly wish for. Here it is stated that

[U]nfortunately there exist groupings today, like Vigrid and others, whichgive themselves designations as “heathen,”“Ásatrú,”“Norse religion”and so on, and which use our symbols and myths.

We strongly warn those who feel dragged towards, or related to, Norsetraditions and heathen religion against contacting these groups. Their“Ásatrú” has nothing to do with heathen customs, they are rather hide-outs for rightwing politics, racism and ideologies of hatred.

If you are oriented towards Nazism or racism and think this ts wellwith Ásatrú you are NOT welcome with us in Åsatrufellesskapet Bi-frost.100

The expression in the last paragraph written in bold type could notbe much clearer. The same message can also be found in Bifrost’s noteon membership requirements. Alongside such requirements as being of

the age required by Norwegian law and other legal formalities, it statesthat to become a member you must “not have racist or Nazi attitudes orsympathies.”101 The requirement is even traceable in the bylaws of theorganisation, where it is stated as part of their codes of ethics in para-graph 2.4.1 that people “harassing others because they are of a differentfaith or origin” are considered “unworthy” and risk being thrown out ofthe organisation by a vote.102

The very outspoken antiracist position taken by Bifrost has its coun-terparts in other countries as well, also in the United States, where it

is even considered the numerically strongest position.103

In the Unit-ed States this position is especially represented by The Ring of Troth,headed by KveldulfR Gundarsson.104 I mention this parallel because

100 ”Åsatroen og nazisme/rasisme,” Bifrost, http://www.bifrost.no/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=5&Itemid=28 . My translation, emphasis kept fromthe original.101 “Medlemsskap I Åsatrufellesskapet,” Bifrost, http://www.bifrost.no/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=14&Itemid=37 . My translation.

102 Åsatrufellesskapet Bifrost: Lovsett, 2005. A pdf version is available from Bifrost’swebsites. See http://www.bifrost.no/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=7&Itemid=30 .

http://www.bifrost.no/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=5&Itemid=28

















the legitimating strategy taken by Bifrost and the Ring of Troth to de-fend their position against more ethnic or racist interpretations is quitesimilar. Gundarsson has defended his view with reference to historical

material about the old Norsemen and Norse mythology, pointing outfor instance that “racial purity” had no meaning to them and that inter-racial or intercultural marriages were highly respected and even prac-ticed by the gods.105 As he puts it, Odin himself was a “half-breed,” theson of the god Borr and the giantess Bestla.106 Furthermore, he has alsoheld that community was not based on bloodlines, but rather on sharedcultic activities.107 These aspects are found in Bifrost’s rhetoric againstVigrid and other racialist Pagan groups as well. It is for instance statedthat such groups “have nothing to do with heathen custom” and rather

“Ásatrú is not based on neither race nor origin, but founded in religiousacts,” and that “[h]onourable behaviour and hospitality is highly val-ued in Ásatrú.”108

While combating racialist ideologies from penetrating the ranks ofBifrost, the organisation has also involved itself actively against suchideologies in general. Eilertsen relates that from about 2003, during aperiod when the police conducted a major crackdown on Vigrid anddisabled that organisation for a long time, Bifrost was contacted by Poli-tiets Sikkerhetstjeneste (PST), the Norwegian secret police.109 Although

slightly suspicious about some of the agency’s methods, Bifrost agreedto open a channel of contact with the PST. According to Eilertsen this isa two-way-street, which means that whenever the organisation is trou-bled by neo-Nazis or feel pressure from such people or organisations,they have a channel of information with the PST that can be used. Thisloose alliance has not been entirely unproblematic, however, as from anÁsatrú ethical standpoint secretly turning somebody in does not seeman honest and valiant course of action. But from a pragmatic point ofview, the channel of contact with PST secures Bifrost’s protection, while

they both battle a common enemy: racialist or neo-Nazi Odinism.

Norwegian Ásatrú today: New Issues

For all the troubles of the past, Ásatrúers today seem to understand thatthe battle against the Satanic and Nazi stereotypes has largely been won.

105 Ibid., 163.

106 Ibid.107 Ibid.108 ”Åsatroen og nazisme/rasisme, Bifrost, ”http://www.bifrost.no/index.php?o






Accordingly, other political issues on their agenda are more pressing orrelevant. Eilertsen is quite clear in emphasising that today the main po-litical agenda for Bifrost is to support the separation of state and church

in Norway and a more liberal legislation on new religious movements,in the name of religious tolerance.110 The relation between church and state in Norway has been debated

intensely during the present decade. In 2003 the Norwegian Ministryof Culture and Church Affairs appointed a Church-State Committeeprimarily to evaluate whether the State Church system should be con-tinued, reformed, or discontinued.111 The Committee released its reportin 2005, calling for a mild reformation which would nevertheless “pre-serve the position of the Church of Norway in the country’s history

and emphasise the continuity between the present system and the newchurch system.”112 In the midst of the discussions in newspaper columnsbefore the report was published, certain Pagan organisations came to-gether and formed Religionsfrihet i Praksis113 (RiP; “Religious Freedom inPractice”). The initiative was made by Nordisk Paganistforbund114 (NordicPagan Association), and Bifrost was one of the contributing organisa-tions, together with the nature-and-goddess movement Gudinne 2000.115 The main agenda of this group was to organise different Pagan groupsin a joint attack on the State Church system and other aspects of the

Norwegian legislation and educational system that are seen as favour-ing Christianity. Their foundation is the United Nations Declaration ofCivil and Political Rights, article 18, which concerns freedom of convic-tion.116 Considering some of the hardships encountered by Bifrost in theprocess of registering as an ofcially accepted religious organisation, itshould not be surprising that they would engage in this kind of politicalagenda.

110 Ibid. Again this is seems similar to the situation in Finland observed by Hjelm.Cf. Hjelm, ”United in Diversity, Divided from Within”.111 Norwegian Ministry of Culture and Church Affairs, “On the relationship be-tween the Norwegian State and the Norwegian Church,” 29 november 2006, http://www.regjeringen.no/en/dep/kkd/Whats-new/nyheter/2006/On-the-relation-ship-between-the-Norwegian-State-and-the-Church-of-Norway.html?id=435167 .112 Ibid.113 Therese Krzywinski (the initial founder of RiP), e-mail message to the author, 13

June 2007, http://www.religionsfrihet.no/ 114 Nordisk Paganistforbund, http://Paganistforbundet.org/

115 Gudinne 2000, http://www.gudinne2000.com/. This is the Norwegian branchof the international Goddess 2000 Project, associated with the American Pagan artistAbby Willowroot. http://www.goddess2000.org/.

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Concluding remarks

In conclusion, it is useful to point out some important ways in whichNorwegian Ásatrú scene seems to diverge from the more thoroughlystudied American one. First of all, American Ásatrú more or less grewout of Odinist currents already present when Steven McNallen activelybroke out of the Odinist framework and tried to distance his religious or-ganisation from the white-supremacist movements in the early 1970s.117 In Norway there was no presence of white-supremacist Odinism in thetradition of Rud Mills or Else Christensen. When people started organis-

ing Ásatrú in the 1980s, it was completely disconnected from this sortof racialist Odinism; rather, it grew largely as a part of general interestsin occult and contemporary Pagan currents. Thus the need to deneoneself against a more racialist interpretation of one’s beliefs did not somuch present itself at this point. Except some internal struggles con-nected with the schism in 1998, a really outspoken focus on racialistinterpretations did not happen before the emergence of a vast mediafocus on the Odinist racialism of Vigrid at the turn of the millennium. Atthis point, Ásatrúers felt the need to actively take measures to distance

themselves from it.118 Instead, other problems seemed to present them-selves, due in part to the Satanism panic which started developing inthe same period as organised Ásatrú emerged. As the story of the blot inVåler in 1994 shows, it seems that the public image of Ásatrú in Norwayin this phase associated it more with a localised Norwegian conceptionof “black metal Satanism” and crimes associated with that scene. Thereactions from the Ministry of Justice to the appearance of “magic” andthe alleged “threat of Satanic rituals” in Ásatrú does also more than in-dicate this point.

The sociological prole of the movement that has developed in Nor-way is different from the stereotype generalised from the Americansituation in other ways as well. For instance, one of the most strikingaspects of the American Ásatrú scene is that it is predominantly male,which has even led to a trend where male Ásatrúers hook up with (fe -male-dominated) Wiccan covens simply for nding spouses.119 It would

117 Kaplan, “The Reconstruction the Ásatrú and Odinist Traditions,”200.

118 It is interesting to note as well that in Katrine Fangen’s charting of the Norwe-gian right-wing activist milieus of the mid-1990s, she does not mention Odinism asa position one would nd. Fangen, “Living Out Our Ethnic Instincts: Ideological




seem that women have played a far more important role in the revivalof Ásatru in Norway. Instrumental in organising what became the um-brella organisation Bifrost was the Våler-based group Draupnir, which

consisted mostly of teenage girls at the time, and was headed by thethen young women Katrine Aastorp and Rønnaug Pettersen. Also, thevery rst Chieftain of Bifrost was a woman connected with the BÅLmovement in Oslo, May-Britt Henriksen. It could even seem like therehas been a tradition of interpreting Ásatrú as a more or less feministalternative to Christian religion. In an interview in 1994, Aastorp andPettersen stated that

Ásatrú is a religion where woman stands much stronger than in Christian-ity. Man and woman are different, and there is women’s work and men’swork, but one is not more worth than the other. This is particularly strongin the religion; the most concrete example is probably that there are priestsof both sexes. 120

Lastly we have seen how the most important political issue for Nor-wegian Ásatrú in later years has been the struggle for religious libertyand the ght against legislature peculiar to Norway itself. This specicpolitical interest must be seen in the context of both the contested Nor-wegian policy on state and church and the specic threats encountered

by Ásatrú groups as Bifrost from both government ofcials and fromlaw enforcement agencies throughout the 1990s.

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