[The Pomegranate 10.1 (2008) 41-69] doi: 10.1558/pome.v10i1.

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ISSN 1528-0268 (Print) ISSN 1743-1735 (Online)

Heathens Up North: Politics, Polemics, and Contemporary Norse Paganism in Norway Egil Asprem
eg-as@online.no

Abstract
The variety of religious positions commonly grouped together under the heading contemporary Paganism permit no homogenous reading of that phenomenon. As recent research on contemporary forms of Paganism has flowered in recent years, emphasis has been given to the nuances and complexities of this kind of these new religious currents. For instance it is clear that contemporary Pagan currents, such as Wicca, satr, and Roman Paganism, tend to vary significantly between themselves on matters of theology, sociological profile, and political tendencies. While varieties in the social manifestations of given groups can be partly explained by diverging religious/ideological content, it also holds true that ideological formations will be determined in part by the society in which they emerge. This means that a contemporary Pagan current such as satr is not necessarily describable as one single tendency on a global scale, but will unavoidably be shaped by local conditions. Thus varieties within currents will tend to follow national and geographical borders, being always locally situated, and adapted to local political, social, and religious conditions. This article discusses the emergence and development of contemporary Norse Paganism in Norway in light of the abovementioned framework. Special notice is given to the interplay between public discourses on issues such as Paganism, the occult, neo-Nazism, and the relationship between the church and state in Norway, and the self-fashioning of reconstructionist Norse Pagans. Through a partial comparison with the thoroughly discussed American context of contemporary Norse religion an argument is advanced that Norwegian satr came to bear certain distinct marks that are due to and only explicable by specific, local cultural conditions.

Introduction While recent decades have seen a thriving academic literature on modern Pagan groups the scope of these studies has arguably had a somewhat narrow focus. Marco Pasi has argued that the almost exclusive focus on modern Paganism in Anglo-Saxon countries has given a somewhat lim Equinox Publishing Ltd 2008, Unit 6, The Village, 101 Amies Street, London SW11 2JW.

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ited understanding of the varieties of contemporary Pagan religion.1 It is for instance clear that the revival of Roman Paganism in Italy yields a different result than the revival of Celtic Wicca or Norse Paganism in the English-speaking world. The emphasis in the systems that are to be revived are different; Pagan religions most popular in Anglo-Saxon culture generally favour close interaction with nature and green values, while the revival of the glory of Rome, with its city-based temples and civil religion, favours urban and centralistic religious concepts and has indeed made possible the concept of a Pagan imperialism.2 I believe the point can be expanded further. While it is clear that what contemporary Pagans seek to revive will influence the outcome, one should also expect results to vary according to where it is done. Differences in the political and cultural climate of nations favour differences in religious ecologies. What this means is that studies of the dynamics of, for instance, revivalist satr in the United States do not necessarily provide the full picture of satr generally. Even when much of the ideological production of modern satr stems from an American context, its export to other countries is not to be viewed as a homogenising process, but will always involve adaptation to local cultural and political circumstances.3 For this reason comparative studies of branches of reconstructed Paganism that are supposedly the same but situated in different habitats could provide an interesting line of research, which promises to reveal nuances and varieties that are contingent on the particular cultural and political contexts of the movements.4 Analysing certain aspects of the modern (re-)emergence and development of Norse Paganism in Norway, with a distinct view on its place within a broader public discourse on Paganism, can contribute to this
1 Marco Pasi, Western Esotericism and Neo-Paganism in Contemporary Italy: Roman Traditionalism. paper presented at the conference The Development of Paganism: History, Influences and Contexts, 1880-2002 in Milton Keynes, England, 12 January 2002. 2 Imperialismo Pagano was the title of an article published by Arturo Reghini in 1914, 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 an instance of glocalisation rather than globalisation, by which the local is an aspect of the global. Cf., Roland Robertson, Globalisation or Glocalisation?,in Globalization. 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 articles Strmiska, Modern Paganism in World Cultures: Comparative Perspectives,1-54; Strmiska and Baldur Sigurvinsson, Asatru: Nordic Paganism in Iceland and America,127-180.
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line of research. Norse Pagan groups (satr and Odinism) and their relationship to political ideologies is one of the themes that have been subject to a growing academic literature, at least since the second half of the 1990s.5 However, these studies have mostly focused on the American situationespecially on the political aspects pertaining to racialist ideologies and white-supremacist movements; in the American context this connection seems to have been prevalent all along. The Nordic or Scandinavian contexts, which are the historical homeland of the traditions that contemporary Norse Paganism seeks to revive, have remained largely unexplored, however.6 Necessarily, so too have the political and cultural dynamics and complexities of Scandinavian movements, which arguably differ from the American situation. By focusing on the Norwegian context and the shared polemical discourse between satr movements and the public at large I will aim to show how these movements and their political outlooks can come to bear the unmistaken mark of the specific culture within which they are formed. Seeing that the public discourse on Paganism is of great importance in this respect, it is necessary to place the development of Norwegian satr within the context of the Satanism scare and media-driven moral panic7 that hit the Norwegian public in the early 1990s. In this period a common view spread to the effect that a cluster of Satanism, occultism, secret societies, ritual abuse, Norse religion and neo-Nazism was on the rise somewhere in the shadows, acting in concert to threaten established society.8 This subversive alliance was seen as manifesting in
5 The most relevant studies would include Jeffrey Kaplan, The Reconstruction of the satr and Odinist Traditions,in Magical Religion and Modern Witchcraft, ed. James R. Lewis, 193-236 (Albany, State University of New York Press, 1996); Jeffrey Kaplan & Tore Bjrgo 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, Syracuse University Press, 1999); Jeffrey Kaplan & Leonard Weinberg, The Emergence of a EuroAmerican Radical Right (New Brunswick, Rutgers University Press, 1998); Nicholas Goodrick-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: The Pagan Revival and White Separatism (Durham, Duke University Press, 2003). 6 A few exceptions include Michael Strmiska, Asatru in Iceland: The Rebirth of Nordic Paganism?,Nova Religio 4:1 (2000), 10632; Strmiska and Baldur Sigurvinsson, 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 Norwegian media is available in Asbjrn Dyrendal, Media Constructions of Satanism in Norway (1988-1997) originally published in FOAF Tale News: Newsletter of the Contemporary Legend of Society, 2 (1997) (Available online at http://www.skepsis.no/konspirasjonstenkning/media_constructions_of_satanis.html). For a detailed article (in
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the violent outbreaks of the Norwegian black metal music scene, with the infamous church arsons and Satanic murders (which of course were not qualitatively different from other murders) as central points of reference.9 The first part of my approach will consist in presenting some of the myths and realities of this moral panic, with its consequences for the public conceptualisation of religious communities in occult and Pagan currents. Understanding the dynamics of this public discourse on Paganism in the early nineties is crucial to understand the problematic situation Norwegian satr groups found themselves facing, and ultimately fighting. A second aspect I will examine is the polemics within Norse Paganism concerning political questions, especially racialism and right-wing politics. One of the most frequently discussed neo-Nazi and also Norse Pagan, organisations in Norway in recent years is Vigrid,10 an organisation which blends a racist, anti-Semitic, conspiracy theorist and millenarian neo-Nazi political agenda with an Odinist religious outlook. Most importantly, I will argue that the very emergence of this group forced more mainstream satr communities like Bifrost11 and Foreningen Forn Sed12 into adopting an explicitly anti-racist position. In addition I believe it interesting to see how these latter groups actively engage in other political polemics as well, which are specific to the Norwegian context, especially concerning religious liberty and the separation of the Norwegian church and state.
Norwegian) on the Satanism scare in general and its import to Norway, see Dyrendal, Fanden er ls! En utviklingshistorisk fremstilling av satanisme som moderne ondskapsforestilling,Marburg Journal of Religion, 5, no. 1 (2000). http://web.unimarburg.de/religionswissenschaft/journal/mjr/dyrendal.html. 9 A standard documentary history is available in Michael Moynihan & Didrik Sderlind, Lords of Chaos: The Bloody Rise of the Satanic Metal Underground (Los Angeles: Feral House, 1998). It should be kept in mind that this book has been heavily criticised for contributing to the mythologisation of the movement rather than clarifying the dynamics actually involved in the scene. 10 The Vigrid website is http://www.vigrid.net/. The only available study focusing particularly on Vigrid is a recently submitted MA dissertation by Lill-Hege Tveito at the University of Troms. It is valuable because Tveito gained access to the internal workings of Vigrid, having conducted interviews with the leading figures, as well as witnessed initiation rituals; but less useful than it could have been due to at times rather severe methodological problems. See nevertheless Tveito, Kampen for den Nordiske rases overlevelse: Bruken av den norrne mytologien innenfor Vigrid, (MA thesis, Det samfunnsvitenskapelige fakultet, University of Troms, 2007). In addition, at least one more MA dissertation dealing in part with Vigrid is being prepared by Mari Kristine Brkken at the Religious Studies department, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim. 11 Brifrost web site, http://www.bifrost.no/ 12 Foreningen Forn Sed web site, http://www.forn-sed.no/
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To my knowledge there have been no academic studies of contemporary Norse Paganism in Norway; hence the present attempt must be seen as tentative rather than definite, probably far from the last word on the issue. Racial Politics and the Odinism/satr Distinction: Some Theoretical Issues A distinction has commonly been made between two types of contemporary Norse Paganism: Odinism and satr.13 This distinction reflects a combination of historical, theological, and sociological or socio-political issues. Odinism is perceived as the more politicised movement, closely connected with racialism and right-wing politics, while satr is to a greater extent a subset of the religious Pagan revival and thus closer to other forms of Anglo-Saxon Paganism, such as Wicca and Goddess movements, and often contains withint itself a bigger variety of political sympathies. In line with this distinction it has been common to delineate different historical roots of the movements. Odinism is often traced back to the German vlkisch and Ariosophic religious upsurge, especially in the forms it took during the politically chaotic period of the Weimar Republic,14 during which time cultic activities with sacrifices to Wotan started to spring up among the disillusioned and displaced ranks of the German youth movements.15 These new religious and occult trends soon gained the attention of people outside of Germany as well. One important figure was the Australian lawyer and Nazi sympathiser Alexander Rud Mills (18851964). Through adopting a sort of racial mysticism fused with Rosicrucian, Masonic, and conspiracy-theorist elements, he attempted to reconstruct a lost pre-Christian, Anglo-Saxon golden age. Most notable in this respect was his influential book The Odinist Religion: Overcoming Jewish Christianity, published in 1930.16 Rud Mills Odinism was a distinctively Manichean system; it was based on the cosmic battle between Anglo-Saxon Aryanism and Judeo-Christianity with its related powers. However, the religious overtones invoked through the names of Norse gods such as Odin, Thor and Loki could arguably be seen as mere literary devices, serving to Paganise and
13 For a typical treatment of this distinction, see Kaplan, The Reconstruction the satr and Odinist Traditions. 14 The authoritative discussion of the development of Wotanist and Ariosophist movements in Germany is Goodrick-Clarke, The Occult Roots of Nazism: Secret Arian Cults and Their Influence on Nazi Ideology (London: I. B. Tauris & Co Ltd, 1985). 15 Kaplan, The Reconstruction the satr and Odinist Traditions,194. 16 Ibid. See also Gardell, Gods of the Blood, 167.
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racialise facets of the Christian god.17 His foundation of an Anglican Church of Odin clearly suggests this tendency; Rud Mills Odinist religion 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 United States in the 1960s by Danish one-time anarcho-syndicalist Else Christensen (19132005).18 Christensen, whom Mattias Gardell labelled the grandmother of racial Paganism, founded the Odinist Fellowship in Florida in 1969, the first organised Norse Pagan group to appear in the United States.19 Through the publication of her journal The Odinist (founded 1971) she was instrumental in disseminating new ideas on Odinism and Norse Paganism generally that would become influential for later movements as well. Apart from underscoring the connections with 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 influential outside circles commonly denoted Odinist.20 These include especially her Jungian interpretation of the Norse gods as being archetypes genetically engraved in the Nordic peoples and her political ideas on tribal socialism.21 In the end, Jeffrey Kaplan has argued that a knowledge of Mills and the Odinist tradition springing from him is one of the clearest points to distinguish Odinists from satruers.22 While political agendas connected to right-wing and racist ideologies seem to be more crucial than the explicitly religious aspects in this kind of Odinism, satr is usually conceived of as a more religious and apolitical take on Norse Paganism. It is notable that such satr organisations started to appear in many countries about the same time, from the early and mid 1970s. Organisations popped up in different places, such as Great Britain, Iceland, and the United States, seemingly without any formal contact.23 The Icelandic satrarfelagi was established by Sveinbjrn Beinteinson as early as 1972,24 the British Committee for the Restoration of the
17 Kaplan, The Reconstruction the satr and Odinist Traditions,194. 18 Ibid., 195. 19 Gardell, Gods of the Blood, 165-6. 20 Ibid., 166; Kaplan, The Reconstruction the satr and Odinist Traditions,195-6. 21 Gardell, Gods of the Blood, 166. 22 Kaplan, The Reconstruction the satr and Odinist Traditions,195. 23 Ibid., 199-200. 24 This date is in accord with the organisations own website (http://www.asatru.is/). Jeffrey Kaplan (following Stephen Flowers) gives the date of the Icelandic movements inception as 1973. See Kaplan, The Reconstruction of the satr and
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Odinic Rite in 1973, and the first American society which tried to take Norse Paganism in a different direction than Odinism, Steven McNallens Viking Brotherhood, also saw its formative years in this period. The Brotherhood would later turn into the satr Free Assembly, which would be the stem from which most later branches of American satr would spring. One possible reason why all these movements appeared about the same time can be the connection they have with the general upsurge of new religious Paganism, especially from the 1960s onwards, which already would be present in the Western world at large by the 1970s. A general interest in Paganism would bring certain people fascinated by the Eddas and Norse mythology to attempt a revival of this pre-Christian religion in a similar fashion as had recently been done with Celtic Wicca.25 While this general differentiation between Odinism and satr has some merit, they are still to be viewed as ideal types. As Mattias Gardell has noted, there are self-designated satrers who are focused on the race issue and Odinists who are heavily involved with general Pagan, occult, and religious practices26. As a substitute for this distinction, Gardell has proposed to treat Norse Paganism as a continuum, with three chief different positions on the race issue. The antiracist position holds that satr is a universal religion open for anybody and rather actively combats racism.27 This position is believed to be the numerically strongest even in the United States. The radical racist position is diametrically opposite; this position defines satr/Odinism as an expression of the Aryan 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 stories among the main characters in the American satr community. This shows that there would have been a relatively big movement of unorganised and unconnected people fascinated by Norse mythology encountered in storybooks already from the 1950s. As Kaplan notes, it would only be a matter of time before organizations would be formed to link these scattered believers. Kaplan, The Reconstruction the satr and Odinist Traditions,197-99. For the emergence of Wicca and other Pagan 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); Chas S. Clifton, Her Hidden Children: The Rise of Wicca and Paganism in America (Lanham, Maryland: AltaMira Press, 2006). 26 Gardell, Gods of the Blood, 152. 27 Ibid., 153. 28 Ibid.
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position. This position tries, not always too successfully, to distinguish race from ethnicity and says that satr is linked with north-European ethnicity.29 This position could be linked with initiatives supporting other minority or endangered ethnicities right to practice their own ethnic religion, 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 historical sense, and it is also helpful in drawing up a broad distinction between Norse influences in white-supremacist movements and religiously inclined Norse Paganism as such. However, when approaching a closer level of analysis, Gardells threefold typology is indispensable to make sense 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 vlkisch fascination with pre-Christian myth and religion did make its presence felt in Norway in the 1930s.30This fascination especially manifested in the milieu surrounding the Tidsskriftet Ragnarok, a journal established in 1934 and edited by Hans S. Jacobsen. The members of the so-called Ragnarok circle can be seen as a counterpart to some of the Pagan currents in Germany; especially there was much contact with the Deutsche Glaubensbewegung of Jacob Wilhelm Hauer.31.The articles of the journal presented what can be seen as an alternative position within Norwegian National Socialism: a National Socialism with an emphasis on socialism, it has been argued, but also with an emphasis on the Norse Pagan heritage and pan-Germanism.32 During the war years the most notable figures of this current represented a form of Pagan Nazism in opposition to Vidkun Quislings government, which they saw as a weak, bourgeois movement, but also against the increasingly more imperialistic tendency of the Third Reich itself.33 Besides Jacobsen, one of the most notable figures 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. 32 Ibid., 111ff. 33 Ibid., 111, 155ff.
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current was the writer and adventurer Per Imerslund (19121943),34 who among other endeavours fought with the Falangists in the Spanish Civil War, on the Eastern Front against the Soviets during World War II, and was personally responsible for the break-in at Leo Trotskys Norwegian home in 1936. Another active member of the circle around Ragnarok was the composer Geirr Tveitt (19081981), who dedicated his musical work to revive Norse myth and culture.35This Norse Pagan trend, however, do not seem to have left any successors in a post-war Norway anxious to root out everything reminiscent of National Socialism and the years of occupation. Contemporary Norwegian satr The organised Norwegian satr movement started relatively late compared to most of its international counterparts. Although such movements popped up at various locations in the West from the early 1970s, there was no Norwegian counterpart to speak of until a decade or so later. The first more or less organised attempt at establishing an active satr movement in Norway took place in the mid 1980s. A student association devoted to Norse religion had evolved at the University in Oslo under the name Blindern satrulag (BL). An attempt was made at this point to register as an official religious community, but the attempts stalled for various reasons.36 Not until a decade later were the first satr movements to gain official recognition as religious communities. The first registration was a small and rather obscure group, Odins tlinger (Kindred of Odin), in 1994, a group which seems to have been organised by a couple of friends and never expanded in scope from that.37 Of a much wider and more important impact however was the governments official recognition of the satr umbrella organisation Bifrost on February 28, 1996.38 Together with the BL movement, the initiative of this registration was taken by a local group of enthusiastic young but serious satrers, 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 on religious grounds. They only needed a religion, and therefore registered their satr group for this purpose. Harald Eilertsen, e-mail, 19 June 2007. 38 Bifrost, Bifrosts historie http://bifrost.no/index.php?option=content&task=v iew&id=213&Itemid=95 .
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of Vler.39 Bifrost connected several distant local satr bodies and represented the first significant presence of organised satr in Norway. After a schism in 1998 the other big organisation in Norway, Foreningen Forn Sed, emerged as an officially recognised religious movement based on Norwegian folklore.40 These two umbrella organisations hold the majority of Norwegian satrers today. It is to be noted that the early student organisation BL, and thus the first major upsurge of interest in satr, grew out of a subculture with general interests in Paganism and the occult. For instance, the first Chieftain of Bifrost, May-Britt Henriksen, tells how she got involved in the satr scene through an interest in Thelema, ritual magic, shamanism, and rune magic.41 Another former Chieftain, Harald Eilertsen, relates how he had always been fascinated by the Norse myths, but that his fascinations were also much broader, covering various occult currents, including LaVeyian Satanism.42 This eclecticism makes the Norwegian satr movement quite conform to the development we can trace in other countries; reconstructionist satr should be seen as a part of wider contemporary Pagan currents. At the same time the connection with occultism has not been without 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 satr was over the sometimes unclear boundaries between Bifrost and other organisations and currents, especially the O.T.O. and even Wicca. For the rebels in Forn Sed the heterogeneous attitude of some central members in Bifrost was seen as problematic. Similar struggles are known from the US, where the prominent satr spokesperson Edred Thorssons close affiliation with the Satanic organisation Temple of Set sparked a schism within the American satr movement. But the connection with the occult may also have lead to some of the stigmas the early movement received in the Norwegian public. Throughout the important formative years of Norwegian satr in the early 1990s Norway was ridden by moral panic. Over the span of some five years, everything smelling of occultism would seem suspect, associated with alleged Satanic ritual abuse (SRA) or church arsons. Shortly put, the cultural atmosphere of the early 1990s in Norway did not particularly favour heterodox new religions. For the purpose of this article it is necessary to understand the development and seriousness of the public discourse on occultism and Paganism in Norway during this
39 40 41 42 Didrik Sderlind, Politi mot ser,4-5 in Morgenbladet Weekend, 811 July 1994. See http://www.forn-sed.no/ Henriksen, e-mail, 26 March 2007. Harald Eilertsen, interview, 2 April 2007.

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Allegations and fears of subversive, secretive, and grotesquely immoral conspiracies seem to be a recurring theme in Western history. As Norman Cohn has famously shown, allegations of child sacrifice, illicit sexual practices and abuse, cannibalism, and demonic worship have been raised against marginalised or adversary political and religious groups since antiquity up to the modern period.43 Catilinas political conspiracy, the early Christians, the Christian Gnostics, the Cathars, the Knights Templar, early modern magicians and witches all these were similarly characterized, without there being a shred of evidence for their reality. In the 1980s and 1990s the very same themes resurfaced in the late modern West, this time attributed to the resurgence of Satanism and the occult in general. Now as before, the moral panic resulted in stigmatisation and false accusations. As so many other post-war cultural products, the popular mythology and 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, flourished in the 1980s, with a history going back to the anti-cult movements responding to what was portrayed as sinister new religious movements in the 1970s.45 Following research done by the foremost Norwegian specialist on the subject, Asbjrn Dyrendal, the media construction of the corresponding moral panic in Norway can roughly be divided into three stages.46 The first reports started to surface between 1988 and 1990. Following newspaper reports from June 1988 about youngsters who claimed Satanic beliefs threatening and physically assaulting townspeople, stealing from

43 Norman Cohn, Europes 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. Victor, Satanic Panic (Chicago: Open Court, 1993). 45 Dyrendal, Media Constructions; idem, Fanden er ls!. 46 For the development of ideas on satanism in Norway, see Dyrendal, Media Constructions of Satanism in Norway (1988-1997); and also Dyrendal and Amina Lap, Satanism as a News Item in Norway and Denmark. A Brief history,in Encyclopedic Sourcebook of Satanism, eds. Jesper Aagaard Petersen & J. Lewis (Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 2008). More on the locally adapted version of moderen religious Satanism in Norway can be found in Dyrendal and D. Sderlind, Social Democratic Satanism? Some examples of Satanism in Scandinavia,in Embracing Satan, ed. J. Aa. Petersen (London: Ashgate, forthcoming 2008).
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churches, and worshipping Satan,, a series of articles dealing with the threat of the occult appeared.47 Among the issues dealt with were the unveiling of a Satanic chapel in the small city of Halden, with Eliphas Levis famous Baphomet portrait, an altar, knives, skulls and various occult paraphernalia. Worries were also expressed about the fact that Anton Szandor LaVeys Satanic Bible was available in certain bookstores in Oslo.48 These early worrying reports were taken seriously mostly by certain Christian communities, while the general public more commonly received them as curiosities. The picture became more serious from the summer of 1990 onward, when the SRA mythos appeared for the first time to the general Norwegian audience. At this time, the Satanism scare started making headlines in the biggest Norwegian newspapers, as well as in television broadcasts. This second stage of the media construction of Satanism spanned roughly from 1990 to 1992. It differed from the previous one both because it introduced a new and more serious element to the mythology of Satanism and because the myths were given higher importance in serious, mainstream media. It kicked off in August 1990 with the publication by freelance journalist Fred Harrison of a somewhat longer report about SRA claims in England. Through an interview with the English psychiatrist Victor Harris, Harrison disclosed that leads on an elite Satanic conspiracy were now pointing towards Norway.49 The panic took off as these leads were backed up by the reports of the Norwegian police lieutenant Willy Kobbhaug of the Oslo police.50In an interview published 11 June 1991, Kobbhaug revealed that he had been in contact with a young girl in her twenties, who was gradually remembering SRAs through her therapy. Apparently, the evidence posed by this girls accounts revealed the existence of at least two operative Satanic sects in Oslo alone. As Dyrendal notes:
The story exploded into the media the following days, with headlines 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 June 1991) Satanism is hatred towards life (Vrt Land 19 June 1991)51

47 48 49 50 51

Dyrendal, Media Constructions. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid.; Dyrendal, Fanden er ls! Dyrendal, Media Constructions.

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At this point the notion of a subversive Satanic underground, committed to practices of ritual abuse largely sustained by the evidence provided by experts coming from certain psychotherapeutic strands emphasising the (now largely contested or outright dismissed) concepts of dissociation, multiple personalities and recovered memories52 was assimilated into a wider fear of the occult and secret societies. In fact, Lieutenant Kobbhaug gave a historical background of this gloomy conspiracy, tracing it back to The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, through the Ordo Templi Orientis and the Church of Satan. This mythos, lacking any shred of historical accuracy, was further cultivated and disseminated through the media. Consequently, the O.T.O., which was the only one of these organisations actually present in Norway at the time, would falsely be linked to several Satanic sex crimes in the time to come.53 From mid 1992 onwards a third stage of the construction of media Satanism can be distinguished, with the rise of the Norwegian black metal music scene.54 While the ritual abuse furor reached its climax in this year as well with the infamous Bjugn kindergarten trial,55 the SRA Satanism mythology was still to be superseded by a uniquely Norwegian image of Satanism. The rise of a black metal scene some times styling itself Satanic, tied up with restless young musicians adopting a peculiar dress code (making them less than secretive, to be sure) and acting out an aggression cautiously portrayed by the media, took the Satanism popular mythology in quite a different direction. Interestingly though, it has been argued that one of the very reasons that this movement emerged at this particular time may be due to the previous media focus on the allegedly elite bourgeois Satanism threat. Satanism had been portrayed as the ultimate conception of evil in contemporary Nor52 Dyrendal, Psychology and the Satanic Ritual Abuse Controversy. A Brief Research 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 & Sderlind, Lords of Chaos. 55 The Bjugn trial is widely considered the worst scandal in the Norwegian judicial system. Thirty people, including the local police chief, were prosecuted for sexual abuse of thirty-six named children and an unknown number of others in the kindergarten. Although the Satanic element was lacking in this case, there are other significant structural similarities. The evidence rested significantly 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 of the role of certain medical and psychological experts in Norwegian courts. A critical perspective is available in Jan Brgger and Christian Wiik, Hekseprosess: Bjugn-saken i et juridisk og kulturhistorisk perspektiv.
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wegian society, and the rebellious youths simply drew on the constructed image and forged it in their own image to construct the new black metal Satanism.56 Thus the media itself may have played a significant role in the making of the Norwegian black metal Satanism fringe.57 The aggression associated with this Satanic fringe consisted of arsons (more than forty churches were set ablaze over a three-year period), attacks on young evangelists, one rape, and two murders.58 One of these murders, where Varg (Kristian) Vikernes, otherwise known as Count Grisnakh or simply the Count, killed his friend and companion ystein Aarseth, known as Euronimous, the lead guitarist of the seminal black metal band Mayhem, was a publicity breakthrough for Norwegian black metal Satanism. Perhaps ironically the Count subsequently became something of a media pet and, accepting numerous interview requests, he exploited the opportunity to explain and disseminate his beliefs. The importance of this is the attention given to a certain political and religious amalgam by Vikernes and others of the black metal fringe:
Some times they would claim to be Nazis, some times Satanists, some times Odinists, and at other points they would refuse any label other than evil, spouting statements such as: Were not Nazis. The Nazis only hated the Jews, we hate everyone. Or, Were not racists, we want all people to suffer. Or, If our music causes people to commit suicide, thats good. It weeds out the weak.59

As Dyrendal has noted, the views expounded by Vikernes in particular became quite influential. Many people followed the Count in dropping the label Satanism for that of Odinism, and were later to shave their heads and join the growing National Socialist currents60. Through his many interviews in the 1990s Vikernes became a worldwide icon of both the real and imagined overlaps between black metal, Satanism, Odinism and National Socialism61. For the purposes of this essay, it is per56 Dyrendal, Media Constructions. 57 According to Tore Bjrgo a similar phenomenon seems to apply to the rise of Scandinavian neo-Nazi groups in the same period. In his doctoral dissertation he argued both that the media focus functioned as a motive and reward-system and provided an anticipation of more effect which actually provoked neo-Nazi activist groups to emerge as a kind of self-fulfilling prophecies. Bjrgo, Racist and Right Wing Violence 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. 60 Ibid. 61 Jeffrey Kaplan, Religiosity and the Radical Right, 111-113.
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haps the imaginary links and overlaps, i.e., those monumental generalisations existing only in the popular demonology, which are of greatest importance. It is these that have posed a very serious threat to harmless religious subcultures which in reality lacked any connection to either Satanic 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 satr generally had a background from various other occult and Pagan currents, including Thelema and LaVeyian Satanism, the image created through the Satanism scare, serving as the backdrop to the development of satr, did obviously have an impact on the process. This is especially the case for the third stage of the construction of media Satanism, concerned with the links with church arsons and the black metal scene. But it also holds true for the period following from the mid-nineties, with the rise of a Pagan, Odinist Nazism. One particularly illustrating instance happened in the summer of 1994. At midsummer the group Draupnir, which was to be very influential in the satr community later on, organised a blot62 in Vler, a rural, agricultural area in the Norwegian province of Telemark, close to 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 older than 20.64 The blot organised in 1994 can be seen as an important formative event in the history of Norwegian satr; it has even been pointed out that it was the first public blot on Norwegian soil in a thousand years.65 Several persons connected with the BL movement in Oslo were invited to participate in this midsummer blot, the intention being to gather as much of the existing community as possible. There were to be problems, however. Of the thirty to forty persons invited, only thirteen made it there66. Among those who never made it were two of the most prominent members of BL, Egil H. Stenseth and May-Britt

62 A Norse religious ritual, traditionally involving some kind of sacrifice to one or more 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 as Chieftain of Bifrost, over the years 19992003. 64 Ibid.; Didrik Sderlind, Politi mot ser,4. 65 Didrik Sderlind, Politi mot ser,4. My translation. 66 Ibid.
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Henriksen67. The reason for this unexpected low turnout was that the Norwegian National Criminal Investigation Service (Kripos) had intervened by contacting the local police force. They were warned that certain persons must be cut off and preferably the whole event stopped. Kripos feared that a group of Oslo-based Satanists would show up, and the blot end with the destruction of the nineteenth-century church in Vler.68 Apart from stopping the participation of these two central people, the outcome was that several of the young members of Draupnir were called in for a day-long interrogation by the local police. The blot itself was in danger because of these actions, but the members of the group were finally released and the meeting could take place more or less as planned. By the satrers who were permitted to participate it was even deemed a very successful 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 difficulties in the process of registering as an officially accepted religious organisation. A few interesting remarks should be made from the point of view of Bifrosts encounter with the bureaucracy in the registration process. The problems encountered can to a certain extent be seen as a continuation of the stereotypes forged during the Satanism scare, but this time empowered by serving partially as the basis of the Ministry of Justices decision-making. According to Norwegian legislation, a religious community can apply for official recognition, and, should it succeed, be granted some of the same rights and benefits as the Norwegian State Church, including public funding in accordance with the size of the community.69 However, in order to be accepted, the legislation gives certain conditions, including that the religious community must submit an official creed and that its content must not be in conflict with public morals.70 Obviously, the call for a creed is already contrary to a religion which considers itself fundamentally non-dogmatic, as satr and other contemporary Pagan groups commonly do. Bifrost itself certainly felt this demand problematic.71
67 68 69 70 71 Eilertsen, e-mail message to author, 3 June 2007. Ibid. See the legislation in Lov om trudomssamfunn og ymist anna,especially 19. Ibid., 13-14. Eilertsen, interview, 2 April 2007. At this point one could compare with the situa-

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But the fact that the content of this creed is also to be subjected to evaluation against the standard of public morals, however defined, has also been a source of conflict. In 1996 a small satr group in northern Norway (not officially connected with Bifrost) applied for registration under the name Det Norske satrusamfunn (The Norwegian satr Society). Their application was first accepted by the municipal authorities who handle such cases. However, shortly after, the Ministry of Justice intervened and decided on the contrary that the society was against public morals. A series of interesting arguments were deployed against the society being officially recognised. The ministrys decision rested primarily on expert comments from two historians of religion associated with the Centre for Viking and Medieval Studies at the University of Oslo.72 Curiously, the text of the decision does not appear to contain much academic subtlety, stating for instance that First we find reason to point out that the pre-Christian religion of the Viking Age has long since left our civilised world. The societal and cultural context which Norse heathendom was an expression of is today extinct. A central point in satrusamfunnets creed is magic. Magic is a general denotation for words and acts of a ritual character which aim at an immediate (supernatural) influence on natural phenomena, animals or humans, their possessions or life conditions. Black magic happens in the hidden and with destructive intentions. In the Ministrys opinion it is in conflict with right and morality to have black magic as a part of ones creed.73 The reference to the extinction of authentic Norse heathendom (whatever that might be) and the strikingly nave definition of magic is rather remarkable. That a religious society is deemed as immoral on the basis of magic, portrayed as an antisocial and subversive practice, is also very curious, as one would almost start to wonder whether the Ministry
tion of Wiccans in Finland as described by Titus Hjelm, United in Diversity, Divided from Within: The Dynamics of Legitimation in Contemporary Witchcraft, Polemical Encounters: Esoteric Discourse and its Others, eds. Kocku von Stuckrad and Olav Hammer (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 291-309. 72 Centre for Viking and Medieval Studies, Norwegian Research Database, http://dbh.nsd.uib.no/nfi/english/institution/?key=7387&language=en The Ministrys decision and argumentation in this case is cited in Arne Fliflet, Melding for ret 1998 fra Sivilombudsmannen,(1999), 51-6. Fliflet was parliamentary Ombudsman during the period. See note 80 below. His report is publicised online at http://www. sivilombudsmannen.no/files/1998.pdf. 73 Cited in Fliflet, Melding for ret 1998 fra Sivilombudsmannen, 53. My translation.
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of Justice itself believed in the efficacy of black magic, and turned down the application from the fear of crimen magiae. Indeed, the very same statement goes on to warn against the possibility that the societys 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 firm grip on the Norwegian Ministry of Justice in 1996. satruselskapet did, however, file a complaint to the parliamentary Ombudsman, an official organ that evaluates complaints concerning injustice or maladministration on the part of public administration.75.The complaint was found relevant by the Ombudsman, which strongly advised the decision to be examined again and also suggested that the bureaucratic procedures for such cases should be re-evaluated.76 Similar problems with the same ministry were faced by Bifrost. Bifrost succeeded in registering with the municipal authorities, but shortly after filed a request to change its name to satrufellesskapet Bifrost (The satr Fellowship Bifrost), which they felt was more precise. However, the Ministry of Justice rejected their request on the grounds that the very title satr could be perceived as defamatory by some people.77 The ministrys report explicitly stated that the expert comment of Professor Gro Steinsland78 at the Centre for Viking and Medieval Studies was heavily weighed, especially her apparent commentary that modern satr would represent a historical falsification, which among other things would have negative consequences for all serious activities concerning the Viking Age.79 It would seem that the Ministry of Justice in this case lent themselves to the worries of one academician specialising in pre-Christian religion, concerned that her field of study would be somehow devalued by the presence of an inauthentic copy of her field of study. As the parliamentary Ombudsman quite reasonably concluded, the anxieties of one academic milieu that their agenda
74 Ibid. 75 The word Ombudsmann is untranslatable, but see the official website for a description of the offices area of responsibility: http://www.sivilombudsmannen. no/eng/statisk/som.html. 76 Fliflet, Melding for ret 1998, 56. 77 Ibid. 78 Steinsland is widely considered one of the top experts on pre-Christian religion and society in Scandinavia. She recently published the most authoritative introductory book on the subject, now used in undergraduate level at most religious studies departments in Norway: Gro Steinsland, Norrn Religion: Myter, riter, samfunn (Oslo: Pax forlag A/S, 2005). Curiously, her scholarship has been an important source of inspiration to many reconstructionist satrers, despite the controversy mentioned above. 79 Fliflet, Melding for ret 1998, 55, 57. Also Fiflets letter to the Ministry of Church, Education and Research, dated 14 December 1988.
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would be hurt by contemporary satr should not be allowed to serve as the only reason for not accepting it as a religion.80 The Ombudsmans report therefore advised changing the decision. This suggestion was later followed, and the movement is today known as satrufellesskapet Bifrost. However, as we will see later, these unpleasant experiences with bureaucratic authorities made satrers disenchanted with Norways claims 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 in 1993, the venerated black metal musician Varg Vikernes became an idol for skinheads with an inclination towards Paganism and for contemporary Pagans with an inclination towards National Socialism. From behind prison walls he launched and organised his own Odinist organisation, Norsk Hedensk Front (Norwegian Heathen Front), which at one point through its web pages called for euthanasia of homosexuals and the physically impaired.81 According to Vikernes himself, he had already held both Norse Pagan and National Socialist beliefs for many years, with only a short period of 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 explicit National Socialist and Norse Pagan beliefs in the interviews from prison persuaded many Satanist adherents to follow in his footsteps, shaving their heads and now hailing Odin and Hitler instead of Satan. Although Vikernes represents an extreme, debates on the relation between racialism and satr seems to have been present in the Norwegian satr community generally at this early stage. The accusation of an unclear position on this issue in Bifrost featured again as one of the legitimating arguments from what became Foreningen Forn Sed during the schism in 1998.83 As we will see later, a very outspoken position was subsequently taken by Bifrost. The connections between Norse Paganism and National Socialism were to get more serious attention a few years later. On 27 January 2001 Benjamin 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 nazigruppe in Monitor antifascistisk tidsskrift (undated). http://www.magasinet-monitor.net/artikler/hedensk.htm#kom1 . 82 Vikernes, Part I The Origin and Meaning in A Burzum Story, 2004 http:// www.burzum.org/eng/library/a_burzum_story01.shtml.) 83 Dyrendal, email message to author, 10 February 2008.
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racially motivated assault. The aftermath of the murder, which was to be 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 known as Vigrid, headed by the already known neo-Nazi Holocaust revisionist Tore Wilhelm Tvedt, started to catch attention. Vigrids dubious claim to fame was that some of the involved suspects had been members of the organisation.84 The organisation was unique on the Norwegian neo-Nazi scene in that it did (and does) promote a variety of Odinist religious frameworks in which it interprets its racist and especially anti-Semitic ideology. While this had been a quite common mix in other countries since the 1960s, especially in the United States, it has not been a feature of the Norwegian right-wing milieu. It is interesting to note that in Katrine Fangens charting out of the Norwegian right-wing activist milieus of the mid-1990s, she does not mention Odinism or Pagan flirtations as a position one would typically encounter.85 It would seem that Vigrid does not directly relate to other historical Odinist movements and writers, from Rud Mills to Christensen, in the way which often features in American Odinism. When asked in an e-mail Tvedt replied that he did not recall ever having heard the name Rud Mills before, but thought he had encountered the name Else Christensen somewhere in connection with American Odinism.86 At any rate he could reassure the interviewer that he had read neither of them and that they were obviously not influences on his own Odinist project in Vigrid. Neither does Tvedt stand in a tradition or even a current of revived interest in the Norwegian vlkisch Odinism of the 1930s and 1940s, mentioned above. He does not seem to have any knowledge of them at all and rather tends to support Quisling, who was in fact the great enemy of the Ragnarok circle.87 All in all it seems that Vigrids Odinism has evolved quite on its own, with influences from earlier or

84 Tvedt claims that some of these suspects would never have ended up in the tragic events if it had not been for the fact that the police had earlier that year pinpointed and contacted these and other members and actively attempted to get them out of the 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-Wing Activists in Norway,202-230 in Nation and Race: The Developing Euro-American Racist Subculture, eds. Jeffrey Kaplan & Tore Bjrgo (Boston: Northeasten University Press, 1998) 202-230 86 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 brother since he was a Christian, but rather as a fellow patriot who fought for the long-time interests of our folk. Ibid.
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foreign movements being more indirect.88 The agenda of the organisation nevertheless overlaps with other Odinist projects: to develop a Norse society based on Norse religion and Norse values and culture, through a loose, decentralised networkorganisation.89 The religious outlook may seem a bit nave and quite dependent on a Christian template of religion spouting such mottos as Odin is great and we are His chosen people. In addition, Tvedt does not have much good to say about other Norwegian satr groups such as Bifrost. In fact, he does not even consider them to be real satr:
I do not know about any other satr or Odinist milieus than Vigrid here in Norway. Bifrost is supported by an anti-Nordic power elite and may function as an adversary to Vigrid because they hail the new world religion HoloCa$h, keep openly aloof from Vigrid and others that see Norse religion as springing from the Nordic people itself and their blood. Bifrost see their faith as equally relevant whether you are Mestizo, Negro or Mongol. That makes us laugh loudly at them.90

Harald Eilertsen was Chieftain of Bifrost from 1999-2003, during the rise of Vigrid and the period when the connection between Norse Paganism and neo-Nazism was very much felt in the Norwegian public. He recalls that the focus was deeply felt by the satrers in Bifrost as well: There was a shift in the conception of what we were doing. Earlier, when people heard that you were a member of Bifrost and involved with satr 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 the negative publicity from media and official organs would also take other forms. Later in 2001 an expert group commissioned by Norwegian Minister of Justice Hanne Harlem concluded that a legal ban on the use of Nazi symbols would be a valuable instrument for combating the growing neo-Nazi movements.92 The definition of Nazi symbols was, however, quite expansive; for instance, various runes were to be found among the symbols initially proposed by the commission.93 A hearing

88 It has been rumoured that Tvedt had extensive contact with the National Alliance in the United States and considered Vigrid a Norwegian counterpart to it. Tvedt now claims these rumours are false, that there is no such contact, and that Vigrid is entirely 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. 92 See for instance Vil ha forbud mot nazi-symboler, Dagbladet, 9 March 2001. 93 Eilertsen, personal interview, 2 April 2007.
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committee was gathered to judge the proposal, and Bifrost, now in the capacity of being the biggest officially acknowledged satr organisation in Norway, was invited to have a word in the process. Bifrost used this opportunity to provide documentation that many, if not most, of the symbols proposed to be banned actually had a long history and a wide use in religious contexts without any kind of connection to neoNazism.94 In the end the proposal was dismissed. Bifrost perceived this dismissal as an important moral victory.95 The event was perceived as a victory in the wider international satr community too. Eilertsen relates that when he still was Chieftain he was contacted by Steven McNallen, head of the American satr Folk Assembly and editor of the seminal satr journal Runestone.96 McNallen asked Eilertsen if he would write a short article about the events in Norway for the journal, which he did. However, he was to regret this later on. When the article was published in the summer of 2001 (The Runestone 32) Eilertsen was bombarded by letters and emails from enthusiastic American racialist Odinists signing their messages with Blood and Honor and similar racial mottos. As a response to this event, which Eilertsen and the other leading figures of Bifrost experienced as problematic and troubling, he wrote McNallen insisting on having another article printed where he could officially distance himself and Bifrost from any kind of racialist position. McNallen never responded, and the intended article was never published.97 These accounts are symbolic of the kind of internal struggle over political issues within the satr community at large. Recalling Gardells classification of satru positions, McNallen is a clear representative of the ethnic position who himself has had a lot of trouble keeping explicitly racist Odinists out of his circles.98 Bifrost, however, has over the years taken a very outspoken antiracist position, explicitly distancing itself from Vigrids extreme racist position. The front page of Bifrosts website has the following declaration:
satrufellesskapet Bifrost keeps aloof from all kinds of discrimination based on gender, origin and sexual orientation. We wish to make use of the old Norse symbols and other expressions of Pagan custom, so that these shall no longer be associated with the abuse by Nazis and neo-Nazis throughout history.99 94 95 96 97 98 99 Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. For more on McNallen, see Gardell, Gods of the Blood. Eilertsen, interview, 2 April 2007. Gardell, Gods of the Blood, 260-1, 271. Bifrost,http://www.bifrost.no/. My translation.

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But the organisation has also found it necessary to take further measures against neo-Nazi and racialist Pagans, stressing the threat of Vigrid explicitly. Their website has a specially designated section called Nazism/Racism? where Bifrosts own position on these issues is made as clear as one could possibly wish for. Here it is stated that
[U]nfortunately there exist groupings today, like Vigrid and others, which give themselves designations as heathen,satr,Norse religion and so on, and which use our symbols and myths. We strongly warn those who feel dragged towards, or related to, Norse traditions and heathen religion against contacting these groups. Their satr has nothing to do with heathen customs, they are rather hideouts for rightwing politics, racism and ideologies of hatred. If you are oriented towards Nazism or racism and think this fits well with satr you are NOT welcome with us in satrufellesskapet Bifrost.100

The expression in the last paragraph written in bold type could not be much clearer. The same message can also be found in Bifrosts note on membership requirements. Alongside such requirements as being of the age required by Norwegian law and other legal formalities, it states that to become a member you must not have racist or Nazi attitudes or sympathies.101 The requirement is even traceable in the bylaws of the organisation, where it is stated as part of their codes of ethics in paragraph 2.4.1 that people harassing others because they are of a different faith or origin are considered unworthy and risk being thrown out of the organisation by a vote.102 The very outspoken antiracist position taken by Bifrost has its counterparts in other countries as well, also in the United States, where it is even considered the numerically strongest position.103 In the United States this position is especially represented by The Ring of Troth, headed by KveldulfR Gundarsson.104 I mention this parallel because
100 satroen og nazisme/rasisme, Bifrost, http://www.bifrost.no/index.php? option=content&task=view&id=5&Itemid=28 . My translation, emphasis kept from the original. 101 Medlemsskap I satrufellesskapet, Bifrost, http://www.bifrost.no/index.p hp?option=content&task=view&id=14&Itemid=37 . My translation. 102 satrufellesskapet Bifrost: Lovsett, 2005. A pdf version is available from Bifrosts websites. See http://www.bifrost.no/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=7 &Itemid=30 . 103 Gardell, Gods of the Blood, 153. 104 Ibid., 162-4.
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the legitimating strategy taken by Bifrost and the Ring of Troth to defend their position against more ethnic or racist interpretations is quite similar. Gundarsson has defended his view with reference to historical material about the old Norsemen and Norse mythology, pointing out for instance that racial purity had no meaning to them and that interracial or intercultural marriages were highly respected and even practiced by the gods.105 As he puts it, Odin himself was a half-breed, the son of the god Borr and the giantess Bestla.106 Furthermore, he has also held that community was not based on bloodlines, but rather on shared cultic activities.107 These aspects are found in Bifrosts rhetoric against Vigrid and other racialist Pagan groups as well. It is for instance stated that such groups have nothing to do with heathen custom and rather satr is not based on neither race nor origin, but founded in religious acts, and that [h]onourable behaviour and hospitality is highly valued in satr.108 While combating racialist ideologies from penetrating the ranks of Bifrost, the organisation has also involved itself actively against such ideologies in general. Eilertsen relates that from about 2003, during a period when the police conducted a major crackdown on Vigrid and disabled that organisation for a long time, Bifrost was contacted by Politiets Sikkerhetstjeneste (PST), the Norwegian secret police.109 Although slightly suspicious about some of the agencys methods, Bifrost agreed to open a channel of contact with the PST. According to Eilertsen this is a two-way-street, which means that whenever the organisation is troubled by neo-Nazis or feel pressure from such people or organisations, they have a channel of information with the PST that can be used. This loose alliance has not been entirely unproblematic, however, as from an satr ethical standpoint secretly turning somebody in does not seem an honest and valiant course of action. But from a pragmatic point of view, the channel of contact with PST secures Bifrosts protection, while they both battle a common enemy: racialist or neo-Nazi Odinism. Norwegian satr today: New Issues For all the troubles of the past, satrers today seem to understand that the battle against the Satanic and Nazi stereotypes has largely been won.
105 Ibid., 163. 106 Ibid. 107 Ibid. 108 satroen og nazisme/rasisme, Bifrost, http://www.bifrost.no/index.php?o ption=content&task=view&id=5&Itemid=28 . My translations. 109 Eilertsen, interview, April 2 2007.
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Accordingly, other political issues on their agenda are more pressing or relevant. Eilertsen is quite clear in emphasising that today the main political 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 Ministry of Culture and Church Affairs appointed a Church-State Committee primarily to evaluate whether the State Church system should be continued, reformed, or discontinued.111 The Committee released its report in 2005, calling for a mild reformation which would nevertheless preserve the position of the Church of Norway in the countrys history and emphasise the continuity between the present system and the new church system.112 In the midst of the discussions in newspaper columns before the report was published, certain Pagan organisations came together and formed Religionsfrihet i Praksis113 (RiP; Religious Freedom in Practice). The initiative was made by Nordisk Paganistforbund114 (Nordic Pagan Association), and Bifrost was one of the contributing organisations, together with the nature-and-goddess movement Gudinne 2000.115 The main agenda of this group was to organise different Pagan groups in a joint attack on the State Church system and other aspects of the Norwegian legislation and educational system that are seen as favouring Christianity. Their foundation is the United Nations Declaration of Civil and Political Rights, article 18, which concerns freedom of conviction.116 Considering some of the hardships encountered by Bifrost in the process of registering as an officially accepted religious organisation, it should not be surprising that they would engage in this kind of political agenda.

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 between the Norwegian State and the Norwegian Church, 29 november 2006, http:// www.regjeringen.no/en/dep/kkd/Whats-new/nyheter/2006/On-the-relationship-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 branch of the international Goddess 2000 Project, associated with the American Pagan artist Abby Willowroot. http://www.goddess2000.org/. 116 See RiPs statement: http://www.religionsfrihet.no/index.php?option=com_c ontent&task=view&id=41&Itemid=41 (accessed
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Concluding remarks In conclusion, it is useful to point out some important ways in which Norwegian satr scene seems to diverge from the more thoroughly studied American one. First of all, American satr more or less grew out of Odinist currents already present when Steven McNallen actively broke out of the Odinist framework and tried to distance his religious organisation from the white-supremacist movements in the early 1970s.117 In Norway there was no presence of white-supremacist Odinism in the tradition of Rud Mills or Else Christensen. When people started organising satr in the 1980s, it was completely disconnected from this sort of racialist Odinism; rather, it grew largely as a part of general interests in occult and contemporary Pagan currents. Thus the need to define oneself against a more racialist interpretation of ones beliefs did not so much present itself at this point. Except some internal struggles connected with the schism in 1998, a really outspoken focus on racialist interpretations did not happen before the emergence of a vast media focus on the Odinist racialism of Vigrid at the turn of the millennium. At this point, satrers felt the need to actively take measures to distance themselves from it.118 Instead, other problems seemed to present themselves, due in part to the Satanism panic which started developing in the same period as organised satr emerged. As the story of the blot in Vler in 1994 shows, it seems that the public image of satr in Norway in this phase associated it more with a localised Norwegian conception of black metal Satanism and crimes associated with that scene. The reactions from the Ministry of Justice to the appearance of magic and the alleged threat of Satanic rituals in satr does also more than indicate this point. The sociological profile of the movement that has developed in Norway is different from the stereotype generalised from the American situation in other ways as well. For instance, one of the most striking aspects of the American satr scene is that it is predominantly male, which has even led to a trend where male satrers hook up with (female-dominated) Wiccan covens simply for finding spouses.119 It would
117 Kaplan, The Reconstruction the satr and Odinist Traditions,200. 118 It is interesting to note as well that in Katrine Fangens charting of the Norwegian right-wing activist milieus of the mid-1990s, she does not mention Odinism as a position one would find. Fangen, Living Out Our Ethnic Instincts: Ideological Beliefs Among Right-Wing Activists in Norway,202-230 in Nation and Race. 119 Kaplan, The Reconstruction the satr and Odinist Traditions, 199.
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seem that women have played a far more important role in the revival of satru in Norway. Instrumental in organising what became the umbrella organisation Bifrost was the Vler-based group Draupnir, which consisted mostly of teenage girls at the time, and was headed by the then young women Katrine Aastorp and Rnnaug Pettersen. Also, the very first Chieftain of Bifrost was a woman connected with the BL movement in Oslo, May-Britt Henriksen. It could even seem like there has been a tradition of interpreting satr as a more or less feminist alternative to Christian religion. In an interview in 1994, Aastorp and Pettersen stated that
satr is a religion where woman stands much stronger than in Christianity. Man and woman are different, and there is womens work and mens work, but one is not more worth than the other. This is particularly strong in the religion; the most concrete example is probably that there are priests of both sexes. 120

Lastly we have seen how the most important political issue for Norwegian satr in later years has been the struggle for religious liberty and the fight against legislature peculiar to Norway itself. This specific political interest must be seen in the context of both the contested Norwegian policy on state and church and the specific threats encountered by satr groups as Bifrost from both government officials and from law enforcement agencies throughout the 1990s. Bibliography
Adler, Margot. Drawing Down the Moon:Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers, and other Pagans in America Today. New York: Penguin, 2006 [1979]. Bjrgo, Tore. Racist and Right Wing Violence in Scandinavia: Patterns, Perpetrators, and Responses. Oslo: Tano-Aschehoug, 1997. Brgger, Jan & Christian Wiik. Hekseprosess: Bjugn-saken i et juridisk og kulturhistorisk perspektiv. Trondheim: Communicatio, 2003. Clifton, Chas S. Her Hidden Children: The Rise of Wicca and Paganism in America. Lanham, Maryland: AltaMira Press, 2006. Cohen, Stanley. Folk Devils and Moral Panics. London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1972. Cohn, Norman. Europes Inner Demons: The Demonization of Christians in Medieval Christendom. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973. Dyrendal, Asbjrn. Media Constructions of Satanism in Norway (1988-1997) 120 Quoted in Sderlind, Politi mot ser,5.
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originally published in FOAF Tale News: Newsletter of the Contemporary Legend of Society, 2(1997). http://www.skepsis.no/konspirasjonstenkning/media_constructions_of_satanis.html.

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Kaplan, Jeffrey & Tore Bjrgo, eds. Nation and Race: The Developing Euro-American Racist Subculture. Northeasten University Press, 1998 . Radical Religions in America: Millenarian Movements from the Far Right to the Children of Noah. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1999. Kaplan & Leonard Weinberg. The Emergence of a Euro-American Radical Right. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1998. La Fontaine, Jean S. Speak of the Devil. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Lewis, James R.,ed. Magical Religion and Modern Witchcraft. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996. Moynihan, Michael & Didrik Sderlind. Lords of Chaos: The Bloody Rise of the Satanic Metal Underground. Los Angeles: Feral House, 1998. Norwegian Ministry of Culture and Church Affairs. On the relationship between the Norwegian State and the Norwegian Church. 29.11.2006. http://www. regjeringen.no/en/dep/kkd/Whats-new/nyheter/2006/On-the-relationshipbetween-the-Norwegian-State-and-the-Church-of-Norway.html?id=435167 (accessed 6 June 2006). Pasi, Marco. Western Esotericism and Neo-Paganism in Contemporary Italy: Roman Traditionalism. Paper presented at the conference The Development of Paganism: History, Influences and Contexts, 1880-2002. Milton Keynes, England, 12 January, 2002. Robertson, Roland. Globalisation or Glocalisation?. In Globalization. Critical Concepts in Sociology, Volume III, edited by Robertson & Kathleen E. White, 31-51. London: Routledge, 2003 [1994]. Steinsland, Gro. Norrn Religion: Myter, riter, samfunn. Oslo: Pax forlag A/S, 2005. Strmiska, Michael. Asatru in Iceland: The Rebirth of Nordic Paganism? Nova Religio 4:1 (2000), 10632. , ed., Modern Paganism in World Cultures: Comparative Perspectives. Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio, 2005. Strmiska, Michael and Baldur A. Sigurvinsson. Asatru: Nordic Paganism in Iceland and America. In Modern Paganism in World Cultures: Comparative Perspectives. Edited by Michael Strmiska, 127-180. Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio, 2005 Sderlind, Didrik. Politi mot ser. In Morgenbladet Weekend, 811 July, 1994, 4-5. Tveito, Lill-Hege. Kampen for den Nordiske rases overlevelse: Bruken av den norrne mytologien innenfor Vigrid. MA thesis, Det samfunnsvitenskapelige fakultet, University of Troms, 2007.

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