Fin de siècle

Fin de siècle, as used in this account, names the Norwegian milieu of the 1890s in which a small, marginal current of Satanism was associated with Dagny Juel and the circle around Edvard Munch. Its significance lies in the contrast it establishes: this earlier, refined fringe tradition is not presented as the same phenomenon as the literal, confrontational Satanism later associated with Norwegian Black Metal.

The Norwegian Setting

The account places a Satanic tradition in Norway in the 1890s, linking it to Stanisław Przybyszewski, Dagny Juel, and a circle around the painter Edvard Munch and the writer August Strindberg. It also allows for small groups in western Scandinavia that practiced forms of Satanism, while noting Denmark as a specific example. This is a limited historical claim: the text describes scattered activity, not a broad or established movement.

A Fringe and Refined Tradition

The practices attributed to the circle included Black Masses, described as sexually oriented, but the account places them at the fringe of the period’s cultural life. It distinguishes the participants rather than treating the circle as a unified group: Munch is not considered genuinely involved, while Juel is identified as a participant and as a remarkable woman in the Norwegian milieu. In the Symbolist context, this Satanism is characterized as civilized and refined—a marked contrast with images of Satanism as indiscriminate violence or mass practice.

Contrast with Norwegian Black Metal

The 1890s milieu appears in a discussion of Satanism that later turns to Norwegian Black Metal, but the account does not establish a direct line of descent between them. Early Black Metal Satanism is described instead as an inversion of doctrinal Christianity: its adherents treated Satan as real and understood the world as a struggle between good and evil. Decades later, the scene’s identity was expressed through music and outlook together, with no fixed rule book and with its ideological boundaries changing over time. The historical comparison therefore separates two settings and forms of expression rather than making the earlier circle a precursor by default.

Historical and Cultural Significance

The term gives the account a way to place Satanism within a longer Norwegian cultural history without collapsing distinct periods into one tradition. The 1890s example is small-scale and associated with a Symbolist milieu; the later Black Metal scene developed its own beliefs, styles, and social boundaries. That distinction matters because the mere recurrence of Satanic themes does not establish shared organization, practice, or continuity.