So this is a subject I’ve wanted to really dig into for a while. I’m sure you’ve noticed that capital-v Vikings are fucking in right now. I probably waited too long, because I think if that bubble isn’t bursting right now then it’s just about to. With the release of Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla I think we can very safely say that Viking nerds are officially in the mainstream, if the award winning televisions series wasn’t already enough. How many dudes have seen with the Ragnar undercut pony tail look? How many dudes have you seen with Icelandic staves proudly displayed in ink somewhere on their body?
Yes, that’s my arm. And that’s a Vegvisir, an ancient Nordic rune of protection, that as legend has it, when worn will prevent the person wearing it from ever getting lost.
…only, that’s completely made up. The truth is this symbol was recorded in the mid 1600’s by Christian Icelandic grifters occultists. There is nothing ancient, or in fact Nordic about it. Yet, it’s everywhere, and it’s so pervasive that even I, someone who is by all accounts an absolute neckbeard for historical accuracy fell for it. I fell for it so hard I got it permanently drawn on my body. Forever. Sigh. So, what happened? Well, a lot of things. This is going to be a pretty big subject that I think I’m going to have to devote multiple posts to. 2014 me was a whole different animal than today, and no, I didn’t get that ink in prison (even though it looks like it – more on that later). I was an alcoholic, in a career that I hated. I was losing friends and alienating myself from my family, in a downward spiral, completely out of control. On top of the alcohol, I was crushing up pills in my car on my lunchbreak, unable to cope with the stresses of daily life.
It was during that time that I tried LSD for the first time. Total game changer, my alcoholism was heavily mitigated on the spot. I just didn’t feel like I needed it anymore. Over the course of a summer I tried just about every psychedelic I could get my grubby sausage fingers on. Shrooms, peyote, a gaggle of various, probably dangerous research chemicals like 2-cb, 25-i, and a dozen or so others I can’t remember the names of. Eventually, I made it to the big leagues. Sat against a wall, in a humid bedroom during a house party in the middle of nowhere, a bone thin man with a big platinum blonde mustache offered me a hit of DMT. Already rolling on a couple points of MDMA and 2 or 3 squares of acid, I thought – yeah – this is a good idea. That’s a good thing for me to do.
As the shitty EDM music blared from a tv with only one working speaker, I put the glass pipe to my lips and said goodbye. I remember filling my lungs with the strange chemical tasting smoke, leaning back, and when my head touched the wall – it happened – In a moment that was at once horrific, exciting, painful, ecstatic and suicidally depressive, I felt my entire conscious reality just melt away. I was no stranger to taking a trip at this point, but I was gone. Over the hills, and far away I flew, leaving everything, and I mean everything behind. My entire sense of self was completely disintegrated. It was like looking in a mirror and truly realizing how absolutely full of shit I am. My whole personality, as I understood it, was made up. I did and do so many dishonest things…from the clothes I choose to wear, to the way I speak, to the way I trim my beard. How I eat, the shampoos and soaps I buy – all of it a carefully crafted mirage of a human being. I bought my clothes thinking, other people will like this, I brush my teeth thinking other people will smell my breath. I understood that everything I did was a front – completely pointless outside of impressing other people that I ultimately do not care about, and who do not care about me.
Who am I? Nothing. It’s all gone. Black void, empty, silent, sleep…
I drifted away. I wasn’t hallucinating, I was just gone. There were no thoughts, no feelings, nothing. Like I was dead. I drifted in this limbo for hours and hours, somewhere in the dreamy haze my psyche was slowly rebuilding itself. CPU offline//HARDWARE MALFUNCTION////REBOOT.exe//. So I open my eyes back up. I look around and see 7 other feckless oafs like me, eyes glazed over, mouths agape. I look at my watch. It’s been roughly 10 minutes. I stand up and walk out the door. Didn’t even bother grabbing my hat, jacket or cigarettes. Just picked up my keys and drove home, terribly and completely sober. Probably more sober than I’d been in my whole life. I didn’t really think about anything until the next day. I was just blank all night. I didn’t really sleep, I just sort of laid in bed with my eyes closed, watching abstract shapes and patterns move across an empty black void. Somewhere in there…I could feel something real happening. A new reality starting to form just for me. In other words, the cycle of lies began anew.
Boy, I felt like I new man when the sun came up and I crawled out of the covers. But what kind of man am I? What do I feel? What do I like? I’m free of all the pretention of my previous existence. I understood deeply that everything I had ever done in my life had led to this moment, and I was glad that happened. I wasn’t really depressed anymore, at least, not for the time being. I didn’t feel like I was being shafted by the universe, like my life was unfair. I felt like unfair wasn’t even a real concept. I understood that there is only the way things are, and the way things aren’t. I began searching for identity, for something to really grab on to. I’d been drifting my whole life, moving from subculture to subculture and never really getting anywhere. My mother was for lack of a better word, distant. My father even more so, having never actually met him at all. So I didn’t really have a family based identity to fall back on. I’ve had friends sure, I’ve had exceedingly excellent friends that I will never be able to express how thankful I am of them – however…I never really felt entirely like one of them. So who am I?
I started researching genealogy and discovering my ‘roots’. I knew my grandfather’s father was an Irish immigrant, so I always kind of felt a little Irish. I also knew my grandmother’s family was vaguely “Norwegian” at some point or another, probably hundreds of years ago. So I looked into that. I learned about Norse ethnic groups, and the Irish, the Welsh, even going farther into groups like Picts, Saxons, Anglos etc. I started to feel more and more connected with the aesthetics, stories and mythology of 9th century northern Europe. Having always been a big fan of mythology a lot of this came naturally. I remember, in a pivotal moment while reading the Havamal on my phone while I should have been working seeing the words “You are your deeds” – modern Norse pagans believe that who you are is determined principally by your physical actions. It’s beautifully simple – If you play video games all day, you’re a gamer. If you tell lies, you’re a liar. If you do good things you’re good, and if you do bad things you’re bad. Pretty hard to argue with that. So I read more, and more. I joined Facebook groups for Norse pagans – called Heathens – and learned about the different groups within the culture. I knew that there were some, often calling themselves Odinists or Folkish pagans, who believed in the supremacy of the Nordic race. They view Christianity as a Jewish trick – a two thousand year old ruse to fool white people into worshipping a Jew. They tend to create heavily insular (and ethnically homogenous) groups, sometimes going as far as building entire communes where they live according to what they believe to be Viking age cultural values.
The real trick with these fuckin’ guys is that what they think are traditional Nordic values are…really just right wing modern conservative values. The way they worship the Nordic pantheon is even reminiscent of Christianity (or at least mono-theism) by focusing mainly on Odin – sometimes including Thor as the son or companion god to Odin – to the near exclusion of others. The women in these groups will usually say something about Freya or whatever, but don’t ask them to go deeper. They live what is essentially puritan lives, raising traditional families with the woman being subservient to the man. Anyone who is a student of Norse history will already see the holes in this particular façade.
The other kind were more like me – they follow what they call Asatru, and are doing their best to recreate the spirituality and cultural values of the ancient Norse while striving to maintain an open and welcoming community to everyone. They understand that none of us are actually Vikings. Hell, even if we lived in the so-called “Viking Age”, we still probably wouldn’t have had the career of Viking. It’s not like literally every person who lived in 9th century Scandinavia was going on raids and exploring strange lands. Most people were simple peasantry governed by feudal lords, not unlike basically anywhere else in the time period. Sure, sure – women were considered heads of household from a managerial point of view (even if they technically had less legal rights than men) and of course there are pieces of things unique to Nordic culture, but I feel like the image a lot of people have in their heads about ancient Scandinavia is something like a mish-mash between Conan the Barbarian, 300, and the shitty Beowulf movie with Angelina Jolie. It wasn’t really that bad-ass, is what I’m getting at. Most people’s lives would consist of raising a family and tending to their needs, along with the typical agrarian village life. The Asatraurs really get this aspect, and they are often firmly against the other, more goose-steppy side of it all.
Having said that, I feel it is safe to say that a lot of people really getting into this kind of thing are, like I was, searching for some kind of deeper identity. We as human beings are drawn to symbols, so when we decide we’re going to be Norse Pagans, we want a symbol! But not just one symbol, lots of symbols, so you can pick your favorite! Everyone knows Mjolnir, the enchanted hammer of Thor, but some of us want more. So we find more. Usually online and from less than reputable sources. If you were to type into google, “Viking symbols” or, “Viking runes”, you’re going to see three specific images over and over. Namely, the Vegvisir, the Helm of Awe, and the Valknut. These are extremely popular and it’s not hard to see why. They look freaking awesome! I mean just look at this thing
That’s fucking sick, right? It’s on an Amon Amarth album cover and as any self-respecting Heathen knows, Amon Amarth fucking rules. The Valknut, we are told, was a symbol for those devoted to Odin, and it’s a very serious commitment. Sometimes it’s said that only the famed Berserker was allowed to wield the mighty symbol. So that’s got to be legit! Well, not really. Sure, it was on the Nene River Ring so it certainly existed during the correct time period, but was it Odin’s symbol, and does it mean anything particularly special? Honestly, probably not. We don’t know that much about it, but we do know the Germanic people found importance in the number 3 and multiples of 3. We can look at the triskelion, a symbol connected to Celtic culture but found all throughout Europe, including Germania at large. It, like the valknut, is connected to the number 3 and is found on all kinds of stones, jewelry, weapons and embroidery. They are both symbols used by people of all walks of life, and both seem to represent the same idea: The Realm of the gods, the realm of mortals, and the realm of the dead. The truth is, there is no historical evidence to believe this symbol was set aside for berserkers, or that it held any kind of special significance outside of any of the other spiritual symbols of the time.
So why the confusion? Well, simply put, eventually it’s going to come down to at some point someone just making some shit up and putting it out on the web. Someone who probably wanted to feel like a big strong Viking warrior. And you are, buddy! You’re so big and strong and your mother and I are very proud of you. The Norse Paganism community is very unsurprisingly filled with a very particular kind of dude. You know this dude, too. He wears Gruntstyle T-shirts. He has a beard, which is 90% of his personality. He purchases items with the word “tactical” in the name even though he has never been in a fight. He orders the hottest wings on the menu and then makes sure to comment how he “can barely taste them” even though his eyes are blood red and he’s sweating through his backwards ball-cap. He has either a tiny car that sounds like a huge truck, or a huge truck that sounds like a decommissioned coal train.
So that guy couldn’t afford an HBO subscription for Game of Thrones, so he watched History Channel’s Vikings instead. He watched the scene where the Norsemen first arrive in England and raid the church, and the Vikings were really big tough guys and the clergy were very small and weak. This gave him a big ole rager, and since all the characters are white, and he’s white…they must be his ancestors. So there you go! Viking blood runs through my veins! Look at my blue eyes and quiver, you cuck. He googles “viking tattoos” and ten minutes later he’s calling his local artist to set up an appointment. Couple days later he’s in a few Facebook groups and badabing badaboom you got your modern “Vikings”. D…deus vult, or something. M…moan…lobby? 100% chance this dude has a Punisher sticker somewhere on his vehicle and/or YETI cup.
So how did I get sucked in? I was never really that guy, though I did get a little high and mighty with my beard genetics. Mostly I just wanted to belong, and if you’re a big white guy with a beard, they’ll definitely accept you in any of these circles. I’m going to go much farther into detail in the next part of this (what I’m legally allowed to call an) article. I’m going to discuss groupthink, indoctrination, and the way algorithms sometimes work against us. Thanks for reading, I don’t know why you did that.
Love you
Barbarian Perspective 
