Ethnic identity, pagan metal, popular music studies

As the song ‘Havfruens Kvad’ by Svartsot (2010) confirms, medieval metal gave a new voice to mermaid mythology. The song has thematically little in common with the fairy tale Den lille havfrue, but does resonate with the Norse mythology about sea goddess Rán, and Ancient Greek stories about the sirens. Their songs are powerfully altered lullabies, which unmistakably include elements of black metal aesthetics and ancient tribalism. By combining aspects of history with mythology and fantasy, the bands create an imagined past upon which they wish to model their ideal future, thus forming ethnic myths, ethnics and nations, mostly online. Within the participatory convergence culture, digital storytelling becomes transmedial.

In the Christian and Victorian traditions, the little mermaid by Andersen
is pacified, she does not pose any danger. But the revived ancient mermaid mythology by Svartsot contains subversive feminist potential. The stories are then transposed into new media, disseminating the artists’ concept of an idealized Viking past, with powerful mermaids. Build on many ancient stories from a variety of traditional sources, within her transmedial narrative, the Danish mermaid became very powerful, through the remediation within the musical genre of medieval metal.

This article explores the genre of Pagan Metal, specifically located in the Basque country, in an aim to define what kind of identity it represents. It is argued that Basque Pagan Metal expresses a specific musical identity, with links to the ideology of the 1980s Basque punk movement Rock Radikal. Further, Basque Pagan Metal has diverged from this musical heritage, in that the identity it expresses is apolitical: while Rock Radikal expressed an openly political identity, that expressed in Basque Pagan Metal is explicitly culturalist, resonating more with primordial nationalism espoused by the ‘father of Basque nationalism’, Sabino Arana. A discussion of the genre within the social and cultural context of the rise of Basque nationalism in the late 19th century, the emergence of radical nationalism, and the Rock Radikal movement, is problematized through a discussion of interpretation versus intent. The group Numen is put forward as a representative case study.

Popular music, here extreme metal, can construct mythologies based on heritage narratives. Heritage has lately become a very fluid concept and " can be seen as an aggregation of myths, values and inheritances determined and defined by the needs of societies in the present "