Hordaland enters the account as more than a county name: it is a point where regional identity, historical memory, and the geography of the Norwegian church arsons meet. Varg Vikernes called it his county and connected it to a Viking raid on Lindisfarne in 793; the book also places Skjold Church, one of the churches for whose burning he said he was convicted, in southern Hordaland.

Region and Historical Memory

In an interview, Vikernes drew attention to the date associated with the Fantoft Stave Church fire: June 6. He argued that discussion had fixated on the date’s association with Satanism and overlooked that Vikings from Hordaland had raided Lindisfarne on June 6, 793. He presented this historical connection as a neglected alternative frame for understanding the date, explicitly grounding the claim in his identification with the county. The account records his interpretation; it does not establish that the raid’s anniversary motivated the fire.

Churches and Local Geography

Hordaland is also part of the geographical sequence Vikernes described when discussing the church fires. He distinguished the fire at a church in Stavanger, which he said was carried out by another group, from the incidents he associated with a single person. Asked which burnings had led to his convictions, he named Holmenkollen, Skjold Church in southern Hordaland, and Åsane Church, as well as an unsuccessful attempt. His account therefore links the county to one of the convictions while distinguishing that case from the separate Stavanger incident.

The interview further locates the consequences of the Åsane Church fire in Bergen: while imprisoned there, Vikernes said, he was placed in isolation for a year, and an under-warden told him that he passed the church’s ruins on his daily drive to work. The detail connects the damaged local building to the continuing personal and institutional aftermath of the fires.

Narrative Significance

Hordaland serves two different purposes in Vikernes’s account. The reference to Lindisfarne places the contemporary conflict within a claimed regional inheritance, while Skjold Church situates the arson convictions in the same county he invoked as his own. That combination makes the region a setting for both historical self-understanding and criminal consequence. The book’s framing preserves the distinction between Vikernes’s interpretation of the county’s past and the specific church-burning convictions he recounted.