Hey, hey, Vicky the Viking!
At the Midgardsblot Festival in Borre, Norway, white people rediscover their supposed Viking roots while dancing around the fire
Every year in late summer, hordes meet new heathens at the Midgardsblot Festival in Borre, Norway. The area was a center of power in Viking times. During the four festival days in mid-August, much of it looks as if time has stood still since then. Within walking distance of historic burial mounds, people in linen robes and fur cloaks gather, their beards braided, their drinking horns filled with mead. As every year, the first highlight is a sacrificial ritual with animal blood at the opening. It comes from sheep from the region. The men and women proudly wear it as a mark on their cheeks and foreheads. Neo-paganism is currently experiencing a renaissance in Europe and the USA. The reason for this is above all the success of so-called "ritual folk" bands such as Heilung and Wardruna, who put on neo-shamanic spectacles on the stage and have catapulted the genre out of its vague niche between medieval markets and "Lord of the Rings". They wear antlers and historical costumes, blow towering bronze trumpets, thresh drums made of animal skins and thrust spears into the air filled with strobe lights.
On average, between 2,500 and 5,000 people flock to the concerts of these bands, who want to be understood as "rituals". In Germany and Austria, both groups even climbed into the top ten of the album charts with their dark drum music. Almost ignored by the mass media, several other "ritual folk" bands have formed in their wake, for example Vevaki and Sowulo, who also revive the Viking and Iron Age in spectacular costumes at the Midgardsblot. The popularity of the genre is no coincidence: in times when minorities are claiming their pre-colonial identities, ritual folk offers white Westerners an opportunity to proudly point to ancient roots in identity politics debates.
Many of the visitors to the Midgardsblot have travelled all the way from the USA. As if to continue a long-lost tradition, some bury Thor's hammer amulets and Rune pendant in the "sacred earth" of their ancestors. When the festival is over, the employees of the adjacent museum will search the grounds as they do every year and collect the artifacts purchased on Amazon, Etsy or the Viking online shop "Grimfrost".
“The neo-pagan identity is not a rediscovery, but largely a construct”
"There is an exoticization of one's own past. However, the neo-pagan identity is not a rediscovery, but largely a construct," says Jane Skjoldli, who researches the neo-pagan phenomenon in the Cultural Studies department at the University of Stavanger. Scandinavian roots, which are often proven in forums with DNA tests from providers such as Ancestry, are seen by many as proof of "Viking blood". "Especially in the USA, such questions of DNA tend to quickly be linked to racial ideas," says Fredrik Gregorius, an expert in Old Norse religion at the University of Linköping. Together with Skjoldli, he is working on a research collaboration to shed light on how Old Norse rites are experiencing a renaissance in places such as the Midgardsblot. Overall, both perceive the pagan scene as cosmopolitan, in contrast to earlier waves of New Age paganism, i.e. heathenism. "But it cannot be ruled out that old models of ethnicity and the national soul are being pushed in parallel." Mythical ancestors also play an important role in nationalist and right-wing extremist circles. The Third Reich based its worldview on distorted traditions of a North Germanic warrior race. Even before the seizure of power, ariosophical groups such as the "Thule Society" had fantasized about a prehistoric superman who had been softened by Christianity but was looking forward to his revival in a new ideology of blood and soil. Runes and rune-like symbols are today a link to a somehow nobler past not only among neo-pagans but also among neo-Nazis. During the Nazi era The SS victory rune had even made it onto the keyboards of German typewriters.
Today, "ritual folk" bands often distance themselves from right-wing ideologies either explicitly or by describing themselves as apolitical. Heilung and Wardruna, the two best-known bands, even present themselves as ecological, feminist, and anti-racist. "Don't forget that we are all brothers," is the first line of an incantation that Heilung recites hand in hand before each of their performances. Their concert at Midgardsblot in 2022 is considered legendary by many fans. In forums and under YouTube videos, there are countless comments describing the live rituals of the two groups as a spiritual experience. And that is also what the artists intended. Wardruna also played at the festival last year. A dream line-up whose return many long for. Their idea is that, inspired by their music, people will find their way back to animism, according to one theory the "primal religion."
“We don’t want to steal the fire from the indigenous people. We are just borrowing a flame to rekindle our own”
According to this, every living being, as well as every inanimate object, has a soul. Healing also refers to the theories of the US anthropologist Michael Harner, who wrote that all cultures in the world have the same spiritual core, which can be awakened through shamanic practices such as drum music. The neo-pagans also seek to join forces with indigenous cultures, where they see the ideals of life in harmony with nature still being realized. But instead of conducting field research among indigenous peoples, as the neo-shamans did in the 60s and 70s, the European spiritual healers, i.e. neo-pagan shamans, say: We don't have to look far away. There are local traditions that we can rely on. When the opportunity arises, healing takes place with members of indigenous communities, as happened, for example, with Aborigines in Sydney. But above all, this is an expression of mutual appreciation - "cultural appreciation" instead of "cultural appropriation," says Kai Uwe Faust, the conceptual mastermind and founding member of Heilung. "We don't want to steal the fire from the indigenous people. We are just borrowing a flame to rekindle our own fire."
Several indigenous artists were booked for this year’s Midgardsblot Festival, including the Samy-Singer Mari Boine and the American Jon Krieger, who combines extreme black metal with Native American legends under the name Blackbraid. The headliner Blackbraid screams with his legs apart on the Folkvangr stage with smeared war paint on his face. It looks as if he has just staggered to the microphone from a bloody battlefield. Between his band's guitar attacks, he earns applause with a meditative solo on the traditional wooden flute.
Krieger was a regular visitor to the Midgardsblot even before his career. He appreciates the festival's inclusivity. As an adopted child of white parents, he wants to be at home in both worlds. In interviews with media such as the "Times Union," he explained that Native Americans and European neo-pagans are equally victims. "The pagan religions in Scandinavia were once suppressed by Christians, people were raped and murdered. Most American indigenous people I know would say that they experienced the same treatment from white Christians." Religious expert Gregorius knows: "Pagans in Europe and the USA, who see themselves as the equivalent of an indigenous culture, like to hear it when indigenous or black people say: We have a common enemy." The colonial crimes would thus weigh less heavily on their shoulders, even if the homelands of the predominantly white pagans would still benefit from the colonial legacy. "This simplistic view also ignores the fact that indigenous cultures have been decimated into minorities almost everywhere in the world and, unlike Western neo-pagans, still experience very real oppression and structural discrimination based on their ethnic affiliation today."
In Europe in particular, indigenous people are still romanticized, explains Kim TallBear, Professor of Native Studies at the University of Alberta. It is often overlooked that they are complex, living communities "and not just bones in the ground." The scientist specializes in questions of DNA and the concept of indigeneity, which she says is increasingly being eroded. TallBear is not surprised that neo-pagans suddenly believe they are closely related to indigenous cultures, especially in view of the widespread phenomenon of so-called "pretendants" in North America - people who pretend to have indigenous roots and then speak for the indigenous population. "Such people see that indigenous peoples are now receiving more recognition and rights and that they are making moral demands. They want a piece of that." Racists? Not here!
How superficial the empathy for indigenous realities is is also shown at Midgardsblot. On the last day of the festival, Jon Krieger, alias Blackbraid, posted on Instagram that his band had been racially insulted by security guards and some festival visitors. The discussion that then flared up on the community's social media channels revolved almost exclusively around the fact that Krieger and his bandmates were drunk and had disregarded the strict Norwegian alcohol laws. Some accused him of playing the "race card". But Norway is not America. Skin color does not matter as long as you follow the rules. "The visitors to Midgardsblot like to explain that sexism, racism and homophobia are hardly widespread in the scene. These people felt betrayed in a way when Blackbraid did not quite agree with this narrative," summarizes Gregorius. Here, too, a fundamental problem of pagan fraternization with indigenous communities becomes apparent. Anyone who has never been the target of racist attacks themselves is quicker to come to the conclusion that it's not that bad. That doesn't make these people racists. But it does make them bad siblings.