[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 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, Ásatrú, and Ro-
man 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 ideologi-
cal formations will be determined in part by the society in which they
emerge. This means that a contemporary Pagan current such as Ásatrú
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 al-
ways locally situated, and adapted to local political, social, and religious
conditions. This article discusses the emergence and development of con-
temporary Norse Paganism in Norway in light of the abovementioned
framework. 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-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 Ásatrú came to bear certain dis-
tinct 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-

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42 The Pomegranate 10.1 (2008)

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 cul-
ture 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. Differ-
ences 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 Ásatrú in the United States do not necessar-
ily provide the full picture of Ásatrú generally. Even when much of the
ideological production of modern Ásatrú stems from an American con-
text, its export to other countries is not to be viewed as a homogenising
process, but will always involve adaptation to local cultural and politi-
cal 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 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 place
within 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, 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 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 articles
Strmiska, “Modern Paganism in World Cultures: Comparative Perspectives,”1-54;
Strmiska and Baldur Sigurvinsson, “Asatru: Nordic Paganism in Iceland and Ame-
rica,”127-180.

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 Asprem  Heathens Up North 43

line of research. Norse Pagan groups (Ásatrú 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 Ameri-
can situation—especially 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 tradi-
tions 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 Norwe-
gian context and the shared polemical discourse between Ásatrú move-
ments 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 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-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
Ásatrú 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 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, Syracuse
University Press, 1999); Jeffrey Kaplan & Leonard Weinberg, The Emergence of a Euro-
American 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), 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 Norwegian
media is available in Asbjørn Dyrendal, “Media Constructions of ’Satanism’ in Nor-
way (1988-1997)” originally published in FOAF Tale News: Newsletter of the Contem-
porary Legend of Society, 2 (1997) (Available online at http://www.skepsis.no/kon-
spirasjonstenkning/media_constructions_of_satanis.html). For a detailed article (in

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44 The Pomegranate 10.1 (2008)

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 Pa-
gan currents. Understanding the dynamics of this public discourse on
Paganism in the early nineties is crucial to understand the problematic
situation Norwegian Ásatrú groups found themselves facing, and ulti-
mately fighting.
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 Norse
Pagan, 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. Most
importantly, I will argue that the very emergence of this group forced
more mainstream Ásatrú 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 Dyren-
dal, “Fanden er løs! En utviklingshistorisk fremstilling av ’satanisme’ som moderne
ondskapsforestilling,”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 & Didrik
Søderlind, 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 heavily
criticised 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-Hege
Tveito at the University of Tromsø. 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 norrøne mytologien innenfor Vigrid, (MA
thesis, Det samfunnsvitenskapelige fakultet, University of Tromsø, 2007). In addi-
tion, at least one more MA dissertation dealing in part with Vigrid is being prepared
by Mari Kristine Brækken at the Religious Studies department, Norwegian Univer-
sity 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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EquinoxPublishing
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 Asprem  Heathens Up North 45

To my knowledge there have been no academic studies of contem-

porary 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/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 reflects
a 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 Ásatrú
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 God-
dess 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 völkisch 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 (1885–1964). Through adopting a sort of racial
mysticism fused with Rosicrucian, Masonic, and conspiracy-theorist el-
ements, 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-Christi-
anity 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
Ásatrú 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 Ásatrú and Odinist Traditions,”194.
16  Ibid. See also Gardell, Gods of the Blood, 167.

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46 The Pomegranate 10.1 (2008)

“racialise” facets of the Christian god.17 His foundation of an Anglican

Church 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 United
States in the 1960s by Danish one-time anarcho-syndicalist Else Chris-
tensen (1913–2005).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 Odin-
ist (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” geneti-
cally 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 Ásatruers.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, Ásatrú is
usually conceived of as a “more religious” and apolitical take on Norse
Paganism. It is notable that such Ásatrú 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, 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-
tru.is/). Jeffrey Kaplan (following Stephen Flowers) gives the date of the Icelandic
movement’s inception as 1973. See Kaplan, “The Reconstruction of the Ásatrú and

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 Asprem  Heathens Up North 47

Odinic Rite in 1973, and the first American society which tried to take
Norse 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, which
would be the stem from which most later branches of American Ásatrú
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 fas-
cinated 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 Ásatrú has
some merit, they are still to be viewed as ideal types. As Mattias Gardell
has noted, there are self-designated Ásatrúers who are focused on the
race issue and Odinists who are heavily involved with general Pagan, oc-
cult, 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
Ásatrú 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 diametrically
opposite; this position defines Ásatrú/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 sto-
ries” among the main characters in the American Ásatrú 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
Ásatrú 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); 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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48 The Pomegranate 10.1 (2008)

position. This position tries, not always too successfully, to distinguish

race from ethnicity and says that Ásatrú is linked with north-European
ethnicity.29 This position could be linked with initiatives supporting oth-
er 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 in-
clined Norse Paganism as such. However, when approaching a closer
level of analysis, Gardell’s 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 völkisch 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 empha-
sis 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 Na-
zism in opposition to Vidkun Quisling’s 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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 Asprem  Heathens Up North 49

current was the writer and adventurer Per Imerslund (1912–1943),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 Trotsky’s Norwegian
home in 1936. Another active member of the circle around Ragnarok
was 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 Norway
anxious to root out everything reminiscent of National Socialism and
the 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 so
later. The first more or less organised attempt at establishing an active
Ásatrú 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 Åsatrulag (BÅL). An attempt was made
at this point to register as an official religious community, but the at-
tempts stalled for various reasons.36 Not until a decade later were the
first Ásatrú movements to gain official recognition as religious commu-
nities. The first registration was a small and rather obscure group, Odins
Ætlinger (“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 government’s official 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 on
religious grounds. They only needed a religion, and therefore registered their Ásatrú
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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50 The Pomegranate 10.1 (2008)

of Våler.39 Bifrost connected several distant local Ásatrú bodies and rep-
resented the first significant presence of organised Ásatrú 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 Ásatrúers today.
It is to be noted that the early student organisation BÅL, and thus
the first major upsurge of interest in Ásatrú, 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 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 that
his 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 can
trace in other countries; reconstructionist Ásatrú should be seen as a
part 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 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 strug-
gles are known from the US, where the prominent Ásatrú spokesperson
Edred Thorsson’s close affiliation with the Satanic organisation Temple
of Set sparked a schism within the American Ásatrú 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 Ásatrú in the
early 1990s Norway was ridden by moral panic. Over the span of some
five years, everything smelling of occultism would seem suspect, asso-
ciated with alleged Satanic ritual abuse (SRA) or church arsons. Shortly
put, the cultural atmosphere of the early 1990s in Norway did not par-
ticularly 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  Didrik Søderlind, “Politi mot æser,”4-5 in Morgenbladet Weekend, 8–11 July 1994.
40  See http://www.forn-sed.no/
41  Henriksen, e-mail, 26 March 2007.
42  Harald Eilertsen, interview, 2 April 2007.

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 Asprem  Heathens Up North 51

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

The Making of a Modern Witchcraze

Allegations and fears of subversive, secretive, and grotesquely immoral

conspiracies seem to be a recurring theme in Western history. As Nor-
man Cohn has famously shown, allegations of child sacrifice, illicit sex-
ual 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 Catilina’s political conspiracy,
the early Christians, the Christian “Gnostics,” the Cathars, the Knights
Templar, early modern magicians and witches — all these were simi-
larly 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 Follow-
ing research done by the foremost Norwegian specialist on the subject,
Asbjørn 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, 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, “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 En-
cyclopedic 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. Søderlind, “Social Democratic
Satanism? Some examples of Satanism in Scandinavia,”in Embracing Satan, ed. J. Aa.
Petersen (London: Ashgate, forthcoming 2008).

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52 The Pomegranate 10.1 (2008)

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 Levi’s famous “Baphomet” portrait, an altar, knives, skulls and
various “occult paraphernalia.” Worries were also expressed about the
fact that Anton Szandor LaVey’s Satanic Bible was available in certain
bookstores in Oslo.48 These early “worrying reports” were taken seri-
ously 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 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 spanned
roughly from 1990 to 1992. It differed from the previous one both be-
cause it introduced a new and more serious element to the mythology of
Satanism 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 report
about SRA claims in England. Through an interview with the English
psychiatrist Victor Harris, Harrison disclosed that leads on an elite Sa-
tanic 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
girl’s 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” (Vårt Land 19 June 1991)51

47  Dyrendal, “Media Constructions”.

48  Ibid.
49  Ibid.
50  Ibid.; Dyrendal, “Fanden er løs!”
51  Dyrendal, “Media Constructions”.

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 Asprem  Heathens Up North 53

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 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 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 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 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 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 move-
ment 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 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 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 kin-
dergarten. 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 Brøgger and Christian Wiik, Hekseprosess: Bjugn-saken
i et juridisk og kulturhistorisk perspektiv.

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54 The Pomegranate 10.1 (2008)

wegian society, and the rebellious youths simply drew on the construct-
ed 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 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 One
of 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 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 numer-
ous interview requests, he exploited the opportunity to explain and dis-
seminate 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: “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 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, 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 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. Bjørgo, 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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 Asprem  Heathens Up North 55

haps the imaginary links and overlaps, i.e., those monumental generali-
sations 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 Ásatrú generally had

a 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, 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 influ-
ential in the Ásatrú community later on, organised a blot62 in Våler, 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 forma-
tive event in the history of Norwegian Ásatrú; 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 BÅL 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 BÅL, 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 1999–2003.
64  Ibid.; Didrik Søderlind, “Politi mot æser,”4.
65  Didrik Søderlind, “Politi mot æser,”4. My translation.
66  Ibid.

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56 The Pomegranate 10.1 (2008)

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 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 Våler.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 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 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 dif-

ficulties in the process of registering as an officially accepted religious
organisation. A few interesting remarks should be made from the point
of view of Bifrost’s 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
Justice’s decision-making.
According to Norwegian legislation, a religious community can ap-
ply 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, includ-
ing 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 Ásatrú and other contemporary Pagan
groups 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.
70  Ibid., §§ 13-14.
71  Eilertsen, interview, 2 April 2007. At this point one could compare with the situa-

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 Asprem  Heathens Up North 57

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 Ásatrú group in north-
ern Norway (not officially connected with Bifrost) applied for regis-
tration under the name Det Norske Åsatrusamfunn (The Norwegian
Ásatrú Society). Their application was first accepted by the municipal
authorities who handle such cases. However, shortly after, the Minis-
try 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 ministry’s
decision 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 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 Åsatrusamfun-
net’s creed is magic. Magic is a general denotation for words
and acts of a ritual character which aim at an immediate (super-
natural) influence on natural phenomena, animals or humans,
their possessions or life conditions. Black magic happens in the
hidden and with destructive intentions. In the Ministry’s opin-
ion it is in conflict with right and morality to have black magic
as a part of one’s creed.73

The reference to the extinction of “authentic” Norse heathendom

(whatever that might be) and the strikingly naïve 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 Ham-
mer (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 Min-
istry’s decision and argumentation in this case is cited in Arne Fliflet, Melding for året
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 året 1998 fra Sivilombudsmannen, 53. My translation.

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58 The Pomegranate 10.1 (2008)

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 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 firm grip on the
Norwegian Ministry of Justice in 1996. Åsatruselskapet 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 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 filed 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 that
the very title “Ásatrú” could be perceived as “defamatory” by “some
people.”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 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 reason-
ably 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 office’s area of responsibility: http://www.sivilombudsmannen.
no/eng/statisk/som.html.
76  Fliflet, Melding for året 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 introduc-
tory book on the subject, now used in undergraduate level at most religious studies
departments in Norway: Gro Steinsland, Norrøn Religion: Myter, riter, samfunn (Oslo:
Pax forlag A/S, 2005). Curiously, her scholarship has been an important source of
inspiration to many reconstructionist Ásatrúers, despite the controversy mentioned
above.
79  Fliflet, Melding for året 1998, 55, 57. Also Fiflet’s letter to the Ministry of Church,
Education and Research, “ dated 14 December 1988.

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 Asprem  Heathens Up North 59

would be hurt by contemporary Ásatrú should not be allowed to serve

as the only reason for not accepting it as a religion.80 The Ombudsman’s
report therefore advised changing the decision. This suggestion was
later followed, and the movement is today known as Åsatrufellesskapet
Bifrost. However, as we will see later, these unpleasant experiences with
bureaucratic authorities made Ásatrúers disenchanted with Norway’s
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 contem-
porary Pagans with an inclination towards National Socialism. From
behind prison walls he launched and organised his own Odinist organi-
sation, 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, 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 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 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://
www.burzum.org/eng/library/a_burzum_story01.shtml.)
83  Dyrendal, email message to author, 10 February 2008.

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60 The Pomegranate 10.1 (2008)

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. Vigrid’s 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-Na-
zi 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 fea-
ture of the Norwegian right-wing milieu. It is interesting to note that
in Katrine Fangen’s charting out of the Norwegian right-wing activist
milieus of the mid-1990s, she does not mention Odinism or Pagan flirta-
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, 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 Chris-
tensen 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 völkisch 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 Vigrid’s
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 trag-
ic 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 Bjørgo (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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 Asprem  Heathens Up North 61

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 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 Ásatrú groups such
as 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 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 reli-
gion 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 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 involved
with 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 the
negative publicity from media and official organs would also take oth-
er 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 Alli-
ance 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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62 The Pomegranate 10.1 (2008)

committee was gathered to judge the proposal, and Bifrost, now in the
capacity of being the biggest officially 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, 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 neo-
Nazism.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 Ása-
trú community too. Eilertsen relates that when he still was Chieftain
he was contacted by Steven McNallen, head of the American Ásatrú
Folk Assembly and editor of the seminal Ásatrú 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 e-
mails from enthusiastic American racialist Odinists signing their mes-
sages 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 insist-
ing 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 po-
litical issues within the Ásatrú community at large. Recalling Gardell’s
classification of Ásatru positions, McNallen is a clear representative of
the “ethnic” position who himself has had a lot of trouble keeping ex-
plicitly racist Odinists out of his circles.98 Bifrost, however, has over the
years taken a very outspoken antiracist position, explicitly distancing
itself 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 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  Ibid.
95  Ibid.
96  Ibid. For more on McNallen, see Gardell, Gods of the Blood.
97  Eilertsen, interview, 2 April 2007.
98  Gardell, Gods of the Blood, 260-1, 271.
99  Bifrost,http://www.bifrost.no/. My translation.

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 Asprem  Heathens Up North 63

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 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,”“Ásatrú,”“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
“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 fits well
with Ásatrú you are NOT welcome with us in Åsatrufellesskapet Bi-
frost.100

The expression in the last paragraph written in bold type could not
be much clearer. The same message can also be found in Bifrost’s 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 para-
graph 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 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 from
the original.
101  “Medlemsskap I Åsatrufellesskapet,” Bifrost, http://www.bifrost.no/index.p
hp?option=content&task=view&id=14&Itemid=37 . My translation.
102  Åsatrufellesskapet Bifrost: Lovsett, 2005. A pdf version is available from Bifrost’s
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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64 The Pomegranate 10.1 (2008)

the legitimating strategy taken by Bifrost and the Ring of Troth to de-
fend 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 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,” 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 Bifrost’s 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
“Ásatrú is not based on neither race nor origin, but founded in religious
acts,” and that “[h]onourable behaviour and hospitality is highly val-
ued in Ásatrú.”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 Poli-
tiets Sikkerhetstjeneste (PST), the Norwegian secret police.109 Although
slightly suspicious about some of the agency’s 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 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. This
loose alliance has not been entirely unproblematic, however, as from an
Ásatrú 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 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 that
the 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
ption=content&task=view&id=5&Itemid=28 . My translations.
109  Eilertsen, interview, April 2 2007.

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 Asprem  Heathens Up North 65

Accordingly, other political issues on their agenda are more pressing or

relevant. 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 Ministry
of Culture and Church Affairs appointed a Church-State Committee
primarily to evaluate whether the State Church system should be con-
tinued, reformed, or discontinued.111 The Committee released its report
in 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 new
church system.”112 In the midst of the discussions in newspaper columns
before the report was published, certain Pagan organisations came to-
gether 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 organisa-
tions, 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 favour-
ing Christianity. Their foundation is the United Nations Declaration of
Civil and Political Rights, article 18, which concerns freedom of convic-
tion.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 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 branch
of the international Goddess 2000 Project, associated with the American Pagan artist
Abby Willowroot. http://www.goddess2000.org/.
116  See RiP’s statement: http://www.religionsfrihet.no/index.php?option=com_c
ontent&task=view&id=41&Itemid=41 (accessed

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66 The Pomegranate 10.1 (2008)

Concluding remarks

In conclusion, it is useful to point out some important ways in which

Norwegian Ásatrú scene seems to diverge from the more thoroughly
studied American one. First of all, American Ásatrú 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 or-
ganisation 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 organis-
ing Ásatrú 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 one’s beliefs did not so
much present itself at this point. Except some internal struggles con-
nected 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, 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 in
the same period as organised Ásatrú emerged. As the story of the blot in
Våler in 1994 shows, it seems that the public image of Ásatrú 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 Ásatrú does also more than in-
dicate this point.
The sociological profile of the movement that has developed in Nor-
way 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 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 finding 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 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 Ásatrú and Odinist Traditions,” 199.

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 Asprem  Heathens Up North 67

seem that women have played a far more important role in the revival
of 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 the
then young women Katrine Aastorp and Rønnaug Pettersen. Also, the
very first Chieftain of Bifrost was a woman connected with the BÅL
movement in Oslo, May-Britt Henriksen. It could even seem like there
has been a tradition of interpreting Ásatrú as a more or less feminist
alternative to Christian religion. In an interview in 1994, Aastorp and
Pettersen 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’s
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 Nor-
wegian Ásatrú 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 Nor-
wegian policy on state and church and the specific threats encountered
by Ásatrú groups as Bifrost from both government officials and from
law enforcement agencies throughout the 1990s.

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