Hans S. Jacobsen

Hans S. Jacobsen was an early activist in Nasjonal Samling whose pagan, anti-Christian politics placed him at odds with Vidkun Quisling’s direction for the party. The book recovers him as a largely forgotten advocate of pre-Christian Nordic tradition and identifies his ideas as a more fitting historical parallel for Varg Vikernes than Quisling’s own political record.

Political Position and Departure

Jacobsen resigned from Nasjonal Samling because he disagreed with Quisling’s course. He urged a more uncompromising political outlook and objected to the party’s official support for Christianity’s basic values. Where Quisling deferred to Christian forces, Jacobsen favored the pagan element of German National Socialism: he opposed Christianity on the grounds of its Jewish origins and emphasized the folk traditions of pre-Christian Northern Europe.

He interpreted Norway’s conversion to Christianity as an alien imposition on the people’s life. In particular, he rejected the party’s use of the cross of St. Olav as its symbol, regarding it as non-Nordic. His position made the conflict with Quisling more than a disagreement over political tactics: it concerned which religious inheritance should define the nation.

Ragnarok and the Political Use of the Past

Jacobsen sought to introduce his ideas into Nasjonal Samling through a journal he published, Ragnarok. Named for the Nordic myth of apocalypse and rebirth, the journal gave his political project a language drawn from the pre-Christian past. Its title joined national renewal to mythic destruction, reflecting the tradition Jacobsen wanted the party to embrace.

The book places this effort within a wider pattern in which Nordic religious imagery could be made to carry modern political meanings. It does not establish that Jacobsen’s ideas directly shaped later Black Metal; rather, his advocacy shows that the effort to fuse pagan tradition with nationalist politics had precedents outside that scene.

Later Reputation and Vikernes

Jacobsen is described as long forgotten in Norway, known mainly to readers of detailed biographies of Quisling. Quisling, by contrast, remains a potent presence in the country’s public memory. That imbalance helps explain why Jacobsen’s political ideas receive renewed attention here: he offers a more direct example of the anti-Christian and pagan current that Vikernes claimed as part of his own outlook.

Vikernes was aware of similarities between himself and Quisling, including their extreme visions of a Norway exclusively for Norwegians, and he publicly invoked a relationship to Quisling in both thought and ancestry. The book nevertheless identifies Jacobsen as the more fitting role model for Vikernes’s pagan politics. Jacobsen’s significance in the account is therefore twofold: he represents a neglected strand of nationalist history, and his recovery complicates the lineage through which Vikernes presented his beliefs.