Iraq, particularly Baghdad, occupies a distinct place in Varg Vikernes’s childhood recollections: it was both the site of a year of ordinary schooling and the setting for experiences he associated with fairness, danger, and ancient myth. His family went there for his father’s work, and the account of that year combines concrete daily constraints with impressions that later helped shape how Vikernes’s mother understood his strong sense of justice.

A Year in Baghdad

Vikernes recalled spending a year in Baghdad after his father brought the family to Iraq for work. His father was helping develop a computer program intended to control the Iraqi economy. The stay was temporary, but it placed the children in a setting far from their familiar school and routine.

The family’s options for schooling were shaped by circumstance. The English school could not take them because it was full, so Vikernes attended a regular Iraqi elementary school. He knew some basic English. His mother wanted the children to have something to do rather than remain at home bored, although they could not go out much because of the danger posed by rabid dogs.

School and a Sense of Fairness

Vikernes’s mother remembered the school year as an early encounter with unequal treatment. Other children in his class were slapped by their teachers, while he was not. When children waited to see a doctor, he was placed ahead of them even when others had been waiting longer. He objected to being given priority and could not understand why his family should go first.

Her recollection connects those experiences with a strongly developed sense of justice. When he saw other students treated unfairly, he would intervene and try to put matters right. The account does not present Iraq as the sole source of his later outlook; it identifies the unequal treatment he witnessed there as one possible beginning of his dislike toward other peoples, and as a source of conflicts that followed him into school and family life.

Places Remembered

Vikernes recalled visiting the ruins of Babylon and other mythological sites. In describing the visit, he said that Babylon no longer existed because Saddam Hussein had torn the whole place down. That claim belongs to his account of the trip; the recollection’s emphasis is on encountering a place associated with ancient history and myth while living in Baghdad.

The memories of the year are sharply contrasted: visits to monumental ruins and mythological sites on one side, the everyday limits imposed by dangerous dogs and school arrangements on the other. Together with his mother’s account of his objections to unfairness, these details make Iraq more than a geographical marker in his childhood chronology. It appears as a formative setting remembered through encounters with both distant history and immediate social rules.