Viking metal

• 1. A New Mythology

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  Viking metal's defining image appears on the cover of Blood Fire Death, Bathory's 1988 album. The Norse god Odin charges through a stormy sky in a painting by nineteenth-century Norwegian artist Peter Nicolai Arbo. Bathory, a Swedish band, did not set out to create a subgenre. Yet Blood Fire Death and its 1990 follow-up Hammerheart gave heavy metal a new mythology to inhabit. Norse gods, longships, and a pre-Christian faith that explicitly opposed Christianity found a home in metal music.

  This is Viking metal. It places Norse mythology, Norse paganism, and the Viking Age at the center of its lyrics, artwork, and performance. Most bands that play it originate from the Nordic countries. Nearly all claim, directly or indirectly, to descend from Vikings. The music they make is hard to pin down as a single sound. Scholars describe it as a cross-genre term, defined more by lyrical focus and visual imagery than by any particular guitar technique.

  The questions Viking metal raises are stranger than they first appear. How did a music genre become entangled with real church burnings in Norway? How did it spread to bands in Brazil, Lithuania, and the Baltic states? And what does it mean to build a musical identity from a culture whose last king died in 1066, with the Norman conquest of England?

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• 2. More Theme Than Sound

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  Ashby and Schofield describe Viking metal's genre limits as "constantly shifting, as trends and fads emerge and fade." From its black metal origins, the style has spread to cover a range running from extreme metal to what some critics have called classic rock. Christopher McIntosh writes that Viking metal, Viking rock, pagan metal, folk metal, and neofolk might all belong under a broader term he calls "neo-Nordic." Imke von Helden is more direct. Viking metal is one of the few metal styles defined by song content and visual elements rather than by sonic qualities.

  The term Viking metal has sometimes served as a nickname for the 1990s Norwegian black metal scene. That scene was described as "noisy, chaotic, and often augmented by sorrowful keyboard melodies." For vocals, the genre draws on both clean singing and the harsh screams and growls of black metal. Keyboards appear frequently, often at what one writer describes as "a swift, galloping pace."

  Starting with Blood Fire Death, Bathory wove ballads based on Germanic and Norse folklore into its records. The band added shanty-like melodies, choral intros, acoustic instruments, Jew's harps, fifes, and bourdon sounds. Natural found sounds such as ocean waves, thunder, and wild animals appeared in a style comparable to musique concrète. Instruments sometimes created onomatopoeic effects: drums mimicking thunder, or the beat of a sledgehammer.

  Mulvany traces a strong influence to sea shanties and media images of pirates and Vikings. He identifies two recurring melody types. The first is stepwise, often in minor key, and sung in unison. The second uses an arching ascent-and-descent structure evoking rolling waves on the open sea. Both echo the structures of shanties like "Drunken Sailor" and of Mario Nascimbene's "Viking" song, written for the 1958 film The Vikings. Keith Fay of the folk metal band Cruachan put the challenge bluntly. He told British magazine Terrorizer that there is "no real defined Viking music." He added that Nordic bands use "sea shanty type tunes to match their music." Fay acknowledged, however, that the criticism "is not true for all of them."

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• 3. Bathory's Blueprint

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  Two songs on Blood Fire Death stand as the earliest recognized Viking metal recordings: "A Fine Day to Die" and the title track. Critic Vlad Nichols wrote that those Viking-themed sections came closer to "an intuited essence of a Viking feel in music than any before." Nichols also noted the album still owed more to Wagnerian imagination than to actual Nordic music.

  Bathory followed with Hammerheart, a concept album entirely devoted to Vikings. It is widely considered the genre's landmark release. Its cover reproduces The Funeral of a Viking, a painting by British artist Sir Frank Dicksee. In the liner notes to a later release, Blood on Ice, Quorthon explained that his move toward Viking themes was a deliberate departure from Satanism. Blood on Ice itself had been recorded between 1988 and 1989 but was not released until 1996. Bathory added Twilight of the Gods in 1991, a title borrowed from the Wagner opera of the same name.

  Mulvany observes that Bathory's output in this period set a Viking-themed trend in motion that was "initially slow, even confusing, in formation." The Austrian black metal band Abigor illustrated that confusion. Abigor incorporated Viking themes in "Unleashed Axe-Age," the opening track from its 1994 album Nachthymnen, while saying the song "should not be seen as a part of the upcoming Viking trend." The trend was already surrounding them.

  Scholars identify a völkisch thread in Quorthon's artistic choices: an emphasis on returning to pre-Christian Europe and framing Christianity as destructive. Those choices inspired a generation of Nordic musicians. Among some members of the Norwegian black metal scene, that inspiration hardened into explicit violence during the early 1990s.

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• 4. Norway's Dark Chapter

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  Enslaved, formed in Norway in 1991, has been cited as the first truly Viking metal band after Bathory. The 1993 EP Hordanes Land is named by many as the first true Viking metal release. Enslaved's stated goal was to retell Norway's legends and traditions of old. The band rejected attacking Christianity "by means of its own creation: Satan." The 1994 debut album Vikingligr Veldi borrowed many melodies from ethnic Scandinavian folk music. Its second 1994 album, Frost, was the first Enslaved explicitly described as Viking metal. Bassist and vocalist Grutle Kjellson, according to the magazine Decibel, "knew it was time to reclaim the gods and goddesses of his ancestors."

  Helheim emerged before bands such as Einherjer and Thyrfing, when even Enslaved was in its infancy. Helheim was among the first to add unconventional instruments such as horns and violins. Robert Müller of Metal Hammer Germany argues that Viking metal never fully solidified as a genre. He attributes this partly to Helheim's 1995 debut album Jormundgand. The album included a track called "Galder" that audiences found incompatible with metal. Those listeners moved toward pagan metal instead.

  The one-man project Burzum, created by Varg Vikernes, pushed the scene in a darker direction. Trafford and Pluskowski suggest that Vikernes' original inspiration was J. R. R. Tolkien rather than the Viking Age itself. He took the name "Count Grishnackh" from an orc in The Lord of the Rings. He named Burzum after a Tolkienian word for "darkness." Only later, they argue, did Vikernes "cloak his actions in an Oðinic garb."

  The burning of Fantoft Stave Church on the 6th of June 1992 became the most notorious act in the Norwegian black metal scene. The twelfth-century church in Bergen was destroyed. Vikernes connected the date to the first recorded Viking raid, which he claimed occurred on the 6th of June 793. Others attributed the burning to Satanism, since the date pointed to three sixes. While in prison, Vikernes wrote and published the book Vargsmål. Trafford and Pluskowski describe it as echoing the Hávamál, though with "an eye on Mein Kampf." The musicians Samoth, Faust, and Jørn Inge Tunsberg were also involved in church arsons. By the late 1990s, many Oslo musicians were dead or imprisoned. As that chapter closed, a quieter form of the genre remained: one centered on pre-Christian mythology rather than on violence or Satanism.

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• 5. Faith and Identity

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  Despite a full Norse pantheon, Viking metal bands typically center their lyrics on Odin and Thor. Alcohol, particularly mead, is a recurring lyrical theme. Lyrics appear not only in English but in Norwegian, Old Norse, Swedish, Danish, Icelandic, Faroese, and Finnish. Other languages, including Old English, German, Gothic, and even Gaulish, appear in some songs. Heavy metal fans around the world have learned Norwegian or Finnish partly to understand the lyrics of their favorite bands.

  Many Viking metal artists identify with Heathenry, a modern Pagan religion. They view Christianity as a foreign influence forcibly imposed on Scandinavian cultures and thus something to be undone. The genre's opposition to Christianity shares ground with black metal. But where black metal used Satanism as its counter-faith, Viking metal turned to the Norse pantheon.

  David Keevill argues that this anti-Christian stance is historically off-target. The Viking Age was, in his words, "a chequered backdrop of a multitude of belief systems and disparate political mechanisms." Conversions to Christianity were often driven by monarchs such as Harald Klak and Harald Bluetooth or by missions such as those of Ansgar. Norse religion and Christianity intermingled throughout the era. Keevill cites the raid on Lindisfarne that Enslaved chose to celebrate in the song "793 (Slaget Om Lindisfarne)." He argues that raid was opportunistic, not a concerted attack on Christian power. Not every Viking metal band holds anti-Christian beliefs. Slechtvalk, Drottnar, Vardøger, and Holy Blood all play within the genre while subscribing to Christian faith.

  The scholar Catherine Hoad identifies the Viking image as inherently tied to hypermasculinity, making Viking metal inherently patriarchal. Some bands, including Kivimetsän Druidi, Storm, and Irminsul, have included female members, and female fans make up a substantial part of the audience. But women are rarely present in the genre's production. Irina-Maria Manea connects three elements to a unified ideological framework. These include the preference for native languages in lyrics and the warrior costuming common in live performance. A third element is the framing of ethnicity as unchanged since "time immemorial."

  The multi-national group Heilung draws its lyrics directly from Viking Age and Germanic Iron Age texts, treating historical authenticity as the genre's central obligation. That obligation would prove just as pressing for the many bands forming beyond Scandinavia's borders.

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• 6. A Global Sound

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  The German project Falkenbach, formed in 1989, is primarily the work of front-man Vratyas Vakyas. It performs a blend of black metal and folk music, with lyrics drawing on Western and Northern European mythologies. Falkenbach was among the earliest Viking metal acts to prove the style could take root outside Scandinavia.

  Viking metal spread across Northern Europe: to the Netherlands, Austria, and Switzerland. Heidevolk's former vocalist Joris Boghtdrincker said the band never tried to "play the Viking card or the Pan-Germanic card." Heidevolk chose instead to write about local Dutch history. The Swiss band Eluveitie was labeled "Celtic Viking metal," a term its vocalist Chrigel Glanzmann called "really really ridiculous."

  The Baltic states developed their own strand. Viking metal influenced the rise of a style known as "Baltic war metal." The Lithuanian band Obtest is credited with launching it. Obtest released the 1997 album Tūkstantmetis and founded the war metal scene. One scholar notes a particular irony: Viking metal exalts Scandinavia as the home of Europe's last pagans. Yet Lithuania did not officially convert to Christianity until 1387, making it the true last pagan nation in Europe.

  Weinstein writes that Viking metal has "travelled further than any Viking ship." Self-defined Viking metal bands can be found in the United States, Brazil, and Uruguay. The genre has also shaped the Russian Rodnoverie movement, partly through the texts of Varg Vikernes, many of which have been translated into Russian. The Latvian project Skyforger composes its lyrics in Latvian, carrying the local-identity impulse across the Baltic. Baldrs Drauma, a West Frisian band, put a simple purpose to their music. In the digital age, they said, people are searching for their identity. They asked: "what better way to research that than with the awesome tunes that we provide?" That question, first posed in Scandinavia, is now asked by bands on every continent.

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