The recent flood of articles, chapters and books dedicated to post-medieval reception, use and appropriation of the Vikings shows no signs of abating any time soon. Quite rightly so, for their re-use and reproduction across high and low culture makes them a particularly instructive illustration of the continuing power of medievalism. Amidst the plethora, what marks out this volume edited by Nicolas Meylan and Luke Rösli are its clear conception and purpose. This is a book very specifically about myths--the Norse myths--and the way that they are used to endorse and reinforce the ideological and political positions of particular portions of society. As the editors explore in their introduction, Norse myth has maintained both popularity and power into the modern world but perhaps its most significant role has been to naturalise and universalise the interests of certain groups; they are “a narrative means of maintaining or else modifying the contours of society” (12). This book sets itself the task of recognising and repoliticising these attempts to use myth to make particular ideologies seem natural, eternal or more than human.
To do this, a conspicuously international team of contributors has been assembled from Germany, France, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, Australia, and the US. Scholars at all stages of their careers are represented among the chapter authors, although it is particularly pleasing to see a good showing of younger writers. Chronologically, chapters span the period from the saga age itself to the present, although the principal focus is on the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Geographically, the emphasis is mostly on Germany, Scandinavia and North America, a minor but welcome redress to the very extensive coverage of the British Isles in the existing English-language Viking medievalism scholarship. Across this canvas, a number of themes recur, above all the intertwining of Scandinavian myth and romantic German nationalism from the early nineteenth century onwards, which continues to power and inspire the use of pre-Christian Norse religious imagery to the present. From around 1870, this crystallised into völkisch thought, an implicitly racist characterisation of “Germanic” people (broadly defined, and including Scandinavians) as demarcated and united throughout history by common blood, ties to their ancestral homelands, and a specifically German ideology that manifested itself, amongst other ways, in religion, both Protestantism and paganism. Völkisch ideas constituted much of the ideological underpinning of National Socialism, although, as is explored in this volume, the conflicting and varied völkischdiscourse entertained some ideas which the Nazis would reject. After the Second World War, völkisch ideals were widely rejected, but in the twenty-first century they have re-emerged as a mainstay of the ideological apparatus of the resurgent far-right across the world.
The book is divided into three sections. The first, “Medieval uses” consists of just one chapter, by Richard Cole on “Æsirism: the impossibility of ideological neutrality in Snorra Edda.” Far from being politically innocent texts that need to be “misappropriated” or “abused” for politically poisonous purposes, Cole’s point is that the society of the Æsir that emerges from Snorri’s works is emphatically hierarchical, sexist and dismissive of outsiders. Although preaching a sort of equality or anarchy for its own members in a way that had clear appeal for the Iceland of Snorri’s day, the simultaneously violent, exclusive and exploitative attitude of the Æsir to the giants contains most of the intellectual ingredients for colonialism, although Cole emphasises that it should not therefore be seen as a lineal ancestor to such bodies of modern thought.
The second part, “Scholarly uses,” contains four chapters that explore various aspects of scholarly approaches to Norse myth from the nineteenth century to the present. The first three chapters of the section stand together particularly well, examining the exploitation of Scandinavian religious motifs in the development of nationalist and völkisch ideas in Germany from Napoleon’s dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806 through to the Nazis. Margot Damiens’ chapter focuses on the German Romantic period in the early nineteenth century, the moment at which Old Norse mythology started to be brought forward by nationalists as a nativist “German” counterpart to the Greek and Roman pantheons. The scholars (Jakob Grimm prominent amongst them) who were leading this charge were forced to confront the question of whether paganism or Protestantism was the more truly Germanic belief system. Through highly selective readings of the Old Norse texts, Grimm was able to reconcile polytheistic paganism and post-Reformation Protestantism as two manifestations of the same “Germanic” spirit while castigating Catholicism as an unwelcome and alien intrusion.
The next chapter, by Lea Baumgarten, moves the focus forward to the twentieth century and a close examination of the life and thought of Friedrich von der Leyen, professor of German, Old Norse, and folklore at the universities of Munich and Cologne. Removed from his chair by the Nazis in 1937 after expressing scepticism towards the notion of direct continuity between Germanic antiquity and the present, he maintained a high scholarly reputation after the Second World War and was able to resume his career. Baumgarten, though, demonstrates the profoundly nationalist, anti-Semitic and völkisch themes running through his work: his intention was to identify what was truly “German” in literature in order to instil a new national self-confidence. Stopping short of claiming outright German superiority and the right to rule others, his work is nevertheless indicative of the range and variety of nationalist purposes (some of them mutually contradictory) that völkischthinking might serve.
Completing the trio of chapters on German scholarly usage of Northern themes is Courtney Marie Burrell’s contribution addressing the work of Otto Höfler, the Austrian folklorist, Germanist, and Scandinavianist whose work idealizing the German race was one of the most important scholarly underpinnings of National Socialist ideology. Burrell concentrates in particular on Höfler’s research on germanische Männerbünde, Germanic sacred men’s bands, supposedly united by ecstatic religious experiences. According to Höfler, Männerbünde not only lay at the heart of primitive Germanic culture but survived throughout the Middle Ages, ensuring the direct continuity of Germanic culture even to modern times. Linking evidence from Tacitus, legends of the Wild Hunt, and stories of Odin and the einherjar, Höfler’s ideas lie squarely in the tradition of völkisch thought and Nazi orthodoxy. Although for obvious reasons his work is perceived as tainted and discredited, Burrell urges that it be the focus for further research both to understand its influence on contemporary nationalisms and--with due caution--for its own scholarly value.
The final chapter in the second section, by Margaret Clunies Ross, strikes a very different note from its predecessors and is concerned with method, namely the usage of textual evidence of pre-Christian Scandinavian belief in interpreting archaeological material. Archaeology has generated vast amounts of “new” data in recent years and has often looked to other disciplines to provide analytical frameworks within which to interpret them. Clunies Ross notes the successful usage made of performance theory in understanding high-status mortuary assemblages, but problems arise, she suggests, when insufficient understanding of the complete corpus of mythological literature is present and passages are cherry-picked in support of particular hypotheses.
The volume’s final section is on Old Norse myths in popular culture, and comprises six chapters which range across contemporary heathen religion, gaming, film, television and online culture. Horst Junginger’s introductory chapter first tackles the purpose and value of myths in general and völkisch mythologising in particular. It then develops into a focused--and fascinating--discussion of the ambiguity, variability and contrarian nature of völkisch thought both before and after the Nazi period. Nordic revivalism since the Second World War has had to tread carefully around questions of race, but aspects of völkisch thought that were not favoured by the National Socialist regime have proved easier to rekindle: Junginger illustrates with examples drawn from runic occultism and, of all things, runic yoga.
Fredrik Gregorius’s chapter, which follows, moves the focus to Sweden to explore competing left-wing and right-wing adherents of reconstituted Nordic heathenism. While modern revivals of Norse religion have been most eye-catchingly associated with far-right ideology, Gregorius draws attention to a strong feminist, green and ecological discourse within Swedish heathendom that eschews nationalism, militarism and hegemonic masculinity and looks instead to pre-Christian faith for a much closer relationship with nature. On the other hand, a new right-wing heathen organisation, Nordiska Asa-Samfundet, has in recent years ridden the anti-immigration tide in Sweden (that has also powered the expansion of the far-right Sweden Democrats political party) to become the largest single pagan organisation. Norse mythology can be mustered in support of deeply opposed ideologies, although, as Gregorius observes, heathenism is the religious choice of only a tiny minority in Sweden and is politically largely powerless.
By contrast, the next two chapters in the section set their sights upon what are probably the most popular and influential cultural media by which Norse mythology is now consumed: games and televisual culture. Laurent di Filippo explores the tropes of the north that are a staple of the fantasy worlds built by computer games. While the game Age of Conan is taken as an example, certain stereotypes of Northern lands and their peoples--harsh, cold, challenging environments that breed simple, tough, barbarous men in tune with their environment--are repeated frequently across many computer games and the fantasy literature that preceded them and which they used as their reference points. In Age of Conan these operate alongside other fantasised and simplified stereotypes of the South, East and West that refer to eye-catching and well-known periods--to ancient Egypt or Graeco-Roman antiquity--"in order to give each part of the world a feel of stereotypical greatness and heroism” (179). Thus stereotypes drawn from Romantic and völkischideology are reproduced in the immersive fantasy worlds of video games: how these stereotypes are received by players, however, requires, careful and sensitive understanding, as di Filippo explains with reference to games theory.
The chapter by Barbora Davidek turns to televisual and cinematographic representations of Vikings, comparing the representations of gender in the Irish/Canadian television series Vikings (2013-20) and the Kremlin-funded Russian film Viking (2016). Although both productions claim to represent early medieval society accurately, by analysing the respective roles given to women, the depiction of sexual violence, and the attitude displayed to paganism in the tv series and the film, Davidek observes consistent and distinct attitudes towards masculinity and femininity in each: the western television series seems to provide a greater range of roles to its women and to treat pagans considerably more sympathetically than the Russian film, which seems to be following a conservative state- and church-approved line on gender roles and the centrality of Christianity to Russian identity. For all the apparently progressive attitudes of the television series, however, it is clear that traditional (hyper-)masculine warrior figures remain the heroes: even the strongest female fighters cannot beat them in battle.
The last two essays in the collection cross the Atlantic to examine the political capital made with Nordic myth in the United States. Commencing with the profusion of symbols displayed at the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville in 2017, Verena Höfig notes the particular popularity of Norse and “Germanic” imagery and asks why it has such a hold on the American far-right. Her analysis of “Northern tradition” heathenry in the US reveals some interesting similarities with the situation Fredrik Gregorius describes in Sweden earlier in this section. Again the ideology of Norse myth is contested: Davidek notes an actively anti-racist “universalist” camp on the left, and an ethnically exclusivist and völkisch contingent on the right, with out-and-out white supremacists and avowed racists in its more radical wing. Looking in more detail at the right-wing heathens, Davidek explores the “Wolves of Vinland,” a small group based in rural Virginia. Though they portray themselves as a religious group, Davidek sees in them more of a focus for the identity politics of “young, white, male Americans who feel disillusioned by modern society and threatened by capitalism, feminism and cultural diversity” (226).
The final chapter, Merrill Kaplan’s “The state of Vinland,” was--for this reader, at least--a genuinely startling exposé of the place that narratives about Vinland and the Norse “discovery” of North America continue to hold in the imagination of the extreme right in the US. Kaplan charts the emergence and semantic development of a green, white and black “Vinland flag” invented in 1996 as an ironic joke by the rock band Type O Negative but appropriated by white supremacists in the early 2000s and now a regular feature of extreme right and white supremacist online iconography. It is used in support of the idea of Vinland as a separatist Nordic ethno-state within North America, a supposed refuge for a beleaguered people at risk of slow genocide, just as white supremacists like to portray their supposed plight in multi-cultural society. Kaplan concludes the chapter with a well-written, impassioned and timely plea to academics to make themselves aware of these narratives; she points to how diversification of the curriculum and embracing a wider range of sources to contextualise and understand Vinland beliefs can help to combat them, for “if we let our classes be fun for white nationalists, we will have white nationalists in our classes, and then we will have fewer of everybody else. And that is what they want: fewer of everybody else” (246).
All-in-all this is an enjoyably coherent and focused collection, despite its considerable temporal range and geographical scope. The whole is decidedly greater than the sum of its parts: though every chapter stands alone, the reader will learn far more by making time to read the whole book and appreciating the themes that constantly appear and meld and re-emerge as myth is commandeered to bolster and justify political ideologies in bewilderingly different contexts. Without a doubt, the editors and chapter authors had made a significant contribution both to Viking medievalism and to understanding of how myths work: it is greatly to be hoped that their challenge to de-naturalise and re-politicise the beliefs that myths bolster is taken up both in academia and the wider world.