Vikernes and Satanism

Varg Vikernes’s relationship with Satanism is marked by a change of religious vocabulary, not a simple departure from its adversarial force. He later downplayed his former interest in Satanism by presenting Odin as an adversary of the Christian God, while his claims that crimes were committed to show Odin to the public brought his heathen worldview into direct conflict with the intentions of modern Ásatrú adherents.

Satanism and the Black Metal Framework

The account places Vikernes’s earlier Satanism within a wider Black Metal culture in which the Devil, destruction, and opposition to Christianity supplied more than a decorative image. It argues that the genre’s beginnings lay in the diabolical, and that its history helps explain why anti-Christian destruction became associated with it. Satanism, in this framing, is not merely a label Vikernes could leave behind; its antagonistic structure persists even as the religious figures invoked by musicians change.

The scene itself contained sharply different understandings of Satanism. One was a crude version built around caricatures of Devil worship, black magic, and occultism, associated with bands such as Venom and Bathory and still present among less sophisticated groups and fans. Media hysteria about Satanic cults and ritual sacrifices, which appeared in Norwegian headlines during Black Metal’s early years, may have helped foster and inadvertently encourage that outlook. The book distinguishes this version from more considered Satanic doctrines, but presents both as part of the scene’s changing religious vocabulary.

Recasting Odin as an Adversary

Vikernes later recast his earlier interest by claiming that Odin himself could be considered Satanic because he stood as the adversary of the Christian God. His argument draws on a historical reversal: Christian missionaries and leaders demonized the old heathen gods of the North after conversion. The account supports that point with the renunciation oath enforced under Boniface among Saxons and Thuringians, which required those addressed to renounce the Devil’s works and words alongside Thor, Odin, Saxnôt, and their monstrous companions. In this history, the old gods had already been placed on the Christian side of the demonic boundary that Vikernes later invoked.

That reframing does not make his position equivalent to a conventional revival of Norse religion. Vikernes asserted that church burnings, grave desecrations, and other crimes were carried out to show Odin to the people. His formulation turned criminal destruction into a claimed religious demonstration, joining his heathen presentation to the anti-Christian extremity associated with his former Satanism.

Conflict with Heathen Revival

The book emphasizes that Ásatrú has no central authority empowered to decide who belongs to it, or to prevent Vikernes from explaining his own worldview. That lack of a governing body, however, does not make his interpretation representative of the religion. His extreme, violent reading of indigenous Norse religion is described as problematic to neo-heathen groups, much as his earlier combination of church-burning imagery and Satanism had troubled organizations such as the Church of Satan. Contemporary revivalists of Northern Europe’s old religion had not intended to revive uncontrolled barbarism and lawlessness.

The comparison exposes a recurring tension in Vikernes’s religious self-presentation: he could draw on an established tradition’s symbols without speaking for the groups seeking to revive it. The shift from Satanic language to heathen language changed the declared pantheon, but did not resolve the conflict between his claims and the aims of those traditions’ other adherents.

A Scene Between Devil and Old Gods

Across Black Metal, the turn toward heathen themes was visible in bands moving away from explicit references to the Devil and toward vaguer allusions to the old gods. The account notes Thor’s Hammer amulets in Scandinavian bands’ promotional photographs and describes groups including Burzum, Enslaved, and Einherjar as overtly focused on Norse religious themes. These developments indicate that the turn was broader than Vikernes alone, though the evidence does not suggest that most bands had been directed toward it by outside heathen organizations.

The change of emphasis did not erase the scene’s Satanic inheritance. The book describes musicians first pledging allegiance to figures Christianity had cast as demonic and later recasting those figures as heathen forces; it nevertheless sees Black Metal’s culture as remaining rooted in concepts of the Devil and Satanism. Vikernes’s own repositioning therefore belongs to a larger, unresolved movement: Satanic antagonism could be carried forward under the names of the old gods, while the religious meaning and legitimacy of that continuity remained contested.