Vargsmål

Vargsmål is Varg Vikernes’s prison-written treatise on Norse mythology, cosmology, politics, and his own actions. Composed in haste after authorities removed the computer on which much of it had been drafted, the book is unfinished and deliberately difficult to navigate. Its title invokes an Old Norse tradition of counsel and self-recounting, while its contents join mythological interpretation to racial, anti-Christian, and nationalist claims. Published in 1997, it presented Vikernes’s ideas to readers beyond the underground circles that had first circulated his essays.

Composition in Prison

During the first year of his incarceration, Vikernes began setting down his views on the Norse gods and tribal practices, seeking to apply them to the modern world as archetypal values and behaviors that could be reawakened. The project was also a defense of his conduct. In the text, he described the killing of Øystein Aarseth as self-defense and argued that the burning and vandalism of close to fifty churches in Norway were justified as a way of rescuing Norwegians from what he characterized as Judeo-Christian slumber.

At first, prison authorities allowed Vikernes a computer, which he used for correspondence and for preliminary versions of the work. Some essays reached correspondents and appeared in underground publications around Europe; many dealt with esoteric aspects of Nordic mythology and cosmology. After authorities confiscated the computer, Vikernes arranged for it to be sent out of the prison, explaining that the book remained on its hard drive. He said he had written one part in 1994 and a second in early 1995, and that the impending loss of the computer forced him to finish quickly. The circumstances shaped the book’s compressed and uneven form.

Title and Mythic Lineage

Vikernes titled the work Vargsmål, a name that can be rendered as the speech or song of Varg. The title alludes to poems in the Elder Edda, especially Hávamál, or the Words of the High One. That poem presents Odin addressing his people with counsel on conduct and noble aspirations, while also recounting his own deeds and sacrifices. By naming his treatise in this tradition, Vikernes positioned himself as a modern figure entitled to speak in a comparable mythic register, linking personal testimony to the authority of ancient saga and poetic lore.

That ambition is inseparable from the book’s account of leadership. In a passage about the chieftain, Vikernes presents authority not as privilege but as the surrender of private hopes and pleasures for the tribe. He describes a wish for a quiet life with a woman, set against what he calls a duty to sacrifice personal wishes for his people. The chieftain, in this formulation, bears a burden and an unhappy fate; Vikernes even acknowledges that readers may regard this self-presentation as heroic. The passage therefore makes the author’s imagined public role part of the work’s subject, not merely a frame for its mythology or politics.

Form and Contents

Vikernes himself warned that the book was concentrated and difficult for uninitiated readers, since it assumes familiarity with different mythologies. He had intended to include a bibliography, but said the computer’s confiscation prevented him from doing so. He also described the ending as abrupt and the contents as jumping between subjects, like separate articles written on different days. Although he characterized the work as chronologically written, its interrupted composition left it without the continuous organization he had intended.

The resulting text brings together mythological and cosmological commentary, political argument, and notes about Aarseth’s killing. Vikernes described it as controversial and said it contained material that should not be publicized, including statements he regarded as potentially illegal: defamation, severe racism, and incitement to criminal activity. Its racial and anti-Christian rhetoric sits alongside his effort to present heathen ideas as a framework for contemporary life. The book consequently offers no clean separation between doctrine and autobiography: its account of the past, its political claims, and its portrayal of Vikernes’s own role are interwoven.

Publication and Political Presentation

The book’s eventual appearance came years after its prison composition. Publishers showed interest in releasing it, apparently attracted by the attention Vikernes’s notoriety could generate, but most seem to have withdrawn after reading the manuscript. Vikernes himself said that nobody wanted to publish it. In 1997, not long after the alleged Einsatzgruppe breakout scheme failed in the spring, Vargsmål was finally published; the book’s release was described as a substantial propaganda victory for him.

The 156-page paperback appears to have been printed in Italy, though who organized its production is unclear. Its cover redesigns the Norwegian flag as a nationalist sunwheel cross. Vikernes added a foreword urging readers to contact the Nazi organization Zorn 88 for further Norwegian literature, and dedicated the work to Vidkun Quisling, praising his struggle for his people and fatherland and wishing him a place near Odin in Valhalla. These additions made the publication more than the delayed release of a prison manuscript: its cover, foreword, and dedication placed the book within an explicit nationalist political setting.