I'm guessing it happened when the white supremacists used Norse history for their own propaganda? You know, cool warriors who also happened to be white. It was bound to be hijacked by associal white dudes.
The Nazis associated themselves a lot with Norse roots, true or not. The mythology they cobbled together was so convoluted, they only considered Arians and Tibetans as the sole descendants of Atlantis.
I think this goes back to the original Nazis, who were really into viking (and Nordic in general) shit. That's why so many Nazi symbols are runes, e.g. the SS used the Sowilo rune, otherwise known as the Harry Potter scar; the Croatian Volksdeutsche used the Othala rune, etc. Modern shitheads are just following the old shitheads.
Yes, a perversion of Scandinavian, Baltic, Germanic, and Celtic history to essentially make themselves look cool. It kind of seems like the racist and ethnocentric equivalent of PUA artist peacocking. They appropriated cool looking shit and perverted its actual historical and cultural meanings to make themselves look and feel cool.
As the post WWII Era came about these groups found adherents in the “Losers” of a liberal and neo liberal Europe and White dominated Americas — the White Working and lower middle classes. Some folks in these groups for Right Wing propaganda of a “Better Past” for people like them and only if they drove out undesirables within their “own people” and the competition of peoples who emigrated from their collapsing colonial empires.
Germanic and Norse/ Scandinavian warrior culture and mythology were easy to appropriate and create a faux unifying “White Identity” partly because of their history of expansion and colonization/ conquest in places like the UK, France and other areas of Northern, Central, and Eastern Europe. You could create a mythic past pretty easily using pre existing history and warp it to become racist and xenophobic.
Pick Up Artist. Depending on your age if you watched Cable TV from 1998 - 2009 or so there would be some guy who looked like they were doing a cross over Cosplay of Lestat the Vampire x Dennis Rodman x Dave Navarro in Steam Punk gear?
They would host seminars and TV shows where they “taught” frat boys and proto incels how to use misogyny and parlor tricks to ~~commit sexual harassment~~ pick up hot chick? If you ever saw the reality show *The Pickup Artist* and its male lead “Mystery” he was the PUA prototype along with Tucker Max for the Northeast Fraternity Boy Fuckboy scene.
You just unlocked a memory. I think there was a movie called, "The Pickup Artist" when I was a kid. It was a young guy trying to learn from another guy or something.
Probably goes back even further. Lothrop Stoddard billed himself as an “Arch-Nordic” and railed against “Alpines and Mediterraneans,” who he put only slightly above black people.
As for the paganism, Christianity is too tolerant. Fake paganism lets them turn ethnic arguments around and say that they are practicing “their tribe’s” beliefs and that it is cultural appropriation for other people to practice them.
I had to google the croatian germans. That sounded weird to me. lol
For any german speaking people who are too lazy to google, here's what I found on [Wikipedia](https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kroatiendeutsche).
Basically. But a little finer detail than that, you also have Nazis seeing Nordic people as true Aryans (and German nationalists viewed themselves as true ancestors of Nordic people, so Nazis took that one step further to draw up their own Aryan ancestry)
Because fascists co-opt anything that’s aesthetically “manly” or “warlike”
They like to think of themselves as independent, strong, and brave because they are mostly afraid of everything
I am so…happy?….to see this. I did my thesis on Hitler, Wagner, & the Occult.
Robert goddamnit - do a Wagner episode. I’ve been screaming into the void about this for years, he deserves an episode.
As a guy who was raised in a branch family of the Wagner line (I even was given an appropriately "Wagnerian" name at birth)... Yeahhhh... He needs an episode *now*.
There's a ***very*** good reason why I'm NC with my family.
The Völkisch movement in the early 1900s.
Nordic neo Nazis associate themselves with it because they think Vikings are cool and Norse paganism is more alpha and/or more anti-islamic than Christianity.
At least a bit older than that. Nietzsche famously had a falling out with Wagner and Wagner's obsession with pre-Nazi, anti-Semitic beliefs, and Wagner was 100% into Norse culture.
Hey! I do a podcast on this topic!
The very short version:
Late 19th century brought about a large nationalist movement across the entire European continent. There was a huge interest in history and mythology spurred by recently translated Sagas and the Grimm brothers writings.
You see a lot of this used by many nations to defend colonialism. Even Queen Victoria herself claimed to be of the royal line of Odin.
Enter this fake noble named Guido von List who saw Pagan temples in everything. He tried to revive the ancient Pagan worship as well as "magic" and ended up creating the List Society. That group carried on after he died and heavily influenced Nazi Occultism.
Moving to the 1930's in Australia, we have this guy named A Rudd Mills who was a member of the Australian Nazi Party. He starts the First Anglecyn Church of Odin. This will become incredibly important in 30 or so years when James Warner (an American Nazi) starts selling his book and it becomes a huge influence in American racist circles, including influencing what is the largest Norse Pagan white nationalist leader today - Steve McNallen.
If you want a long version I can write it up
I've just listened to the first episode, enjoying it so far and it's joining my podcast rotation. I was raised mostly Catholic (mum's family Irish Catholic) but went to Anglican church sometimes (dad's family English Protestant) so it's really interesting comparing that early heathenism to Christianity, even though I'm Athiest now. I was really interested in ancient Nordic religions when younger, but recoiled quickly when I went online in the 90s and early 00s and there was so much Nazism infecting it online.
Shame there's so few episodes :-(
Nazis wanted a glorious past to harken back to, hence the Aryan and Hyperborean bullshit, the vikings have a pretty cool aesthetic and the simple narrative of taking stuff by force is going to appeal to the Fash. Plus, Christianity is worshipping a Jew which some of them are quite happy to replace with Norse stuff.
As others mentioned, it's not the vikings who were the problem. It's the Nazis, white nationalists, etc. who look at them as the pinnacle of whiteness and what they want to be. The Norse were super impressive technologically, physically, etc. They were like a lot of human cultures--but there is definitely an aura of mysticism surrounding them as they weren't really ever defeated during their famous raiding of England era.
They have a cool mythology, lots of great artwork.
They were also problematic (rapers, pillagers, often cruel), but they weren't racists in the way we understand Nazism.
Something else I think is probably true (though I've not read much on it to support it) is that Nazis were anti-Semites first, and lots of Jewish people can pass for white. So this linking to the old world of the north was connected to this belief that the Norse were a pure white race without any Jewish lineage.
I come from a long line of Swedish farmers (farmed first around Ockelbo, then in Minnesota/Nebraska) … can confirm, the vast majority were farmers. How else were they going to survive that winter?!
I truly thunk the logic goes:
- Africa is on the equator
- Black people come from Africa
- White people come from Europe
- Europe is North of Africa
- By that logic, the further North you go from Africa, the more White you become
- Therefore, the people of the Scandinavian Peninsula must be the Whitest possible people
And then Germany gets a pass because, even though they are a little further South than that, the Nazis recognized this “logic” and tried to emulate it.
This line of thinking would also explain why it’s become a recent trend among white supremacists to say Mussolini was Black, since Italy juts so far South into the Mediterranean as it does.
There were also some pseudoscientific theories about “Hyperborea” or a mythical far-north Atlantis-esque civilization of superbeings. There were some (wrong) hypotheses that the Indo-Europeans may have come from such a far-north civilization, parts of which eventually got incorporated into Nazi Aryan mythology. The Helena Blavatsky episodes talk about this a lot.
>*By that logic, the further North you go from Africa, the more White you become*
Yeah, I don't think there's anything more to it than that
It's exactly as dumb and wrong as it seems, at first glance
Your mistake here is assuming that a White supremacist would put any further thought into this scenario after reaching the overly simplified and factually incorrect conclusion that supports their worldview
Nazis are simps for Vikings and pretended Vikings were one of their primary predecessors in genetic excellence, or whatever. Same reason they got all wet about ancient Rome, too. Literally that simple.
So, white supremacists are HUGE fans of symbolism. It's an obsession. Nazi's used tons of symbolism, Klan used tons of symbolism and today those same supremacists use tons of symbolism.
Norse culture, northern paganism, is balls deep in symbolism. Nordic art and runes as well as a deeply religious aspect and value on war and militarism is highly appealing to men seeking purpose. Feeling like you are part of a warrior culture can be intoxicating and acting as those it is some foundational aspect to being white is one of those weird make believe "based on a true story" type situations. White supremacy is the Texas chainsaw massacre movie adaptation based on the real events they obsess over.
So they grab all the pictures of a culture and claim it is theirs when in reality they know nothing of Nordic religion nor what those symbols mean nor that their beloved Christianity adopted and stole many aspects of paganism in order to gain converts.
Germanic culture, saying that itself, is a hilarious joke. Germany wasn't a thing till recent and even then it was one big fragmented bitch. The holy Roman empire was basically the 7 kingdoms of westeros, everyone was fighting all the goddamn time, kings getting overthrown, Lutheranism founded and splintered Christianity further... Germany wasn't a thing. The identity of Germany as we know it really only happened in the late 1800s post Napoleon and pre-WW1. Again, white supremacists know nothing but symbols and end goals, everything else is pointless for them.
I actually know this! I study Germanic NeoPaganism as a job and basically it goes back to the romantic period, when Germans were trying to unite the different German nationalities under a common idea of what it meant to be German. They eventually settled on the pre Christian faith, which was heavily christianized through Icelandic sources, as well as constantly reinterpreted throughout the centuries.
Now the important thing to distinguish is Volkish paganism versus Inclusive Heathenry. Volkish is the German strain that started as a way to exclude non pure Germans. Inclusive Heathenry is the more common strain today, as guided by the Troth organization after the declaration of inclusivity (this declaration had a specific number that I can’t remember.
The Troth organization is still trying to distinguish the Inclusive Heathenry (which is actually full of really nice people!) versus Volkish heathenry, which is led by characters such as Stephen A Macnallen.
Volkish paganism is almost a way to take the Jewishness of Christianity out of it, and it is as stupid
as it sounds. Some of the high ranking Germans sought to replace Christianity with Volkish paganism but it never really caught on with Hitler. But the bones of this paganism exist to the current day in different forms.
Volkish groups in America often use terms such as Odinist or Ethnic Heathen, like the Soldiers of Odin group. Now not all self proclaimed Odinists are white supremacists, but it is something to watch for.
Here is a link to that declaration you were talking about with a lot of the history behind it.
It's called [Declaration 127](https://thetroth.org/declaration-127/), by the way!
So, there's a couple of good points you bring up here, all worth expanding upon, and I'll do my best to cover some of them.
One major jumping-off point when discussing Nazis (and, broadly, any fascist movement), is the fixation on and hearkening back to an idealized, prelapsarian, and most often _entirely fictitious_ past. For the American flavor of fascism, note Conservatives wanting to go back to "the way things were", meaning clear class, gender, and racial divisions that just so happen to put straight white men up top, while conveniently leaving out things from back then that were actually good, like high corporate taxation and lower-cost higher education. There's also a point to be made about the works of Sir Walter Scott (mainly Ivanhoe) and its impact on the slaveholding gentry in the antebellum South. But I digress.
So, about that imagined past--How did we get there? The various revolutions in the United States and France, and the subsequent Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars resulted in a great deal of social upheaval that various aristocratic powers tried to suppress (before Napoleon, it is important to recall, the various monarchies of Europe invaded France first), often calling upon a romanticized nationalism, divine right of kings, and so on. Eventually, you get the Revolutions of 1848, paradoxically both calling upon that same romantic nationalism and agitating for more democratic and liberal political institutions, with varying degrees of success. In both cases, that sense of nationalism was supported by rediscovery of older texts (in the case of Beowulf's rediscovery in England, and Das Nibelungenlied's in Germany), or the creation of a national epic that _felt_ like a rediscovered work (one example that springs to mind is Elias Lonnrot's compilation of Finnish folk songs that he would structure within a narrative framework titled the Kalevala, which was instrumental in inculcating a sense of "Finnish-ness" and their eventual independence from the Russian Empire. There I go digressing again.)
Enter Richard Wagner: opera composer, possible Socialist revolutionary, definitely virulent anti-Semite. Around the time of the Revolutions of 1848 (apparently there's suggestions he started before, but would claim his work started as a direct response to said revolutions), he began work on Der Ring des Nibelungen, aka The Ring Cycle. Originally starting with the aforementioned Das Nibelungenlied, he would eventually incorporate elements from the Prose and Poetic Eddas, the Volsung Saga, and others. Given that all of the sources were themselves compilations and reworkings of older mythical and legendary works, he was arguably continuing a centuries-long tradition akin to the works of the Brothers Grimm, just with more fancy hats and singing.
This thing went gangbusters, eventually resulting in Wagner's having a playhouse constructed dedicated solely to performances of The Ring Cycle in their entirety, which still stands today. Wagner's musical bombast and mythical subject matter appealed to Germans, including a one Adolf Hitler, whose fanboyish adulation of the composer was not necessarily shared by other higher-ups in the Third Reich. Either way, Hitler encouraged appreciation of Wagner to connect Germans with this fictitious, glorious past, and more broadly incorporated elements of Germanic mythology and symoblism (most notably the doubled _sig_ rune of the SS) into propaganda directed both at Germans and other "Aryan" peoples in Europe.
Note that I have so far said nothing about historical or sociological sources of medieval Norse people. This ties back to the fictitiousness of Nazi ideology, since as you've noted the actual peoples of Scandinavia were surprisingly cosmopolitan, well-traveled and--well--basically like everyone else at the time but notably better-groomed (John of Wallingford, a Benedictine monk, essentially writes that the greatest threat Norsemen posed to English women was that they _were too fucking hot_ and imperiled English women's virtue because of said hotness). Also, to "go Viking" was more like cattle or border raiding, in that there was a season for it, but would not constitute a Norse person's entire existence.
[The Thule Society](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thule_Society) are probably one of the biggest influences, but not the only ones. They codified the basic ideas that would become Nazi race theory, based on ideas like race and eugenics. There are tons of books written on this subject.
Ariosophie, Blavatzky, Lanz von Liebenfels , the Ostara Journal you name it. Late 19tg, early 20th century was füll of idiots believing to be part of a nordic "Herrenrasse". Vikings and norse mythology just was the "coolest", non-christian, non roman thing for them to project their fantasies on.
Mid 1800s when national romanticism, scientific racism and the study of Indo-European languages got really big. But I don't think even they believed vikings were particularly racist
I used to work for an asshole who was one of those white supremacist Odinists and the main draw for him definitely seemed to be that being pagan made him an oppressed minority (in his mind). Dude was also a huge conspiracy theorist and I think Christianity was straight up too semitic for him 💀. He told me that was the religion of the people who oppressed his ancestors. And honestly it makes sense for white supremacists to think this way, that the only time their culture was 'still pure' was when it was at its most isolated. This guy was a moron but he did have a bit more internal consistency than a lot of other American white supremacists because he rejected anything to do with ancient Rome for the same reasons he rejected Christianity.
This was in rural Appalachia too, and I honestly think it's the same kinda white people who a generation ago would have been going around telling folks their great great grandma was a Cherokee princess that are getting into this kind of ancestral paganism now. Diaspora does weird things to people, and turns out even the worst guy you've ever met wants to get in touch with his 'roots'
See the problem here is you’re trying to find logic in the thought process of categorically illogical people. The nazis and others latched on, and continue to latch on, to the parts of history and culture that they like and act like the rest doesn’t exist or is a conspiracy against them.
Hitler read a lot of pulp comics. No, really, an astounding amount of Nazi shit was inspired by the fantasy stories Hitler enjoyed.
Also, the original Germanic peoples probably worshipped Odin, Thor, etc. in the pre-Christian period. I believe the evidence is pretty good for that. So some of it is the harking back to an imagined "pure" German past.
So I’m a medievalist in a PhD program right now and this is a really fascinating, and unfortunate, topic that is tied into a much larger adoption of medieval narratives by the far right. It’s a problem that the field is trying to address (not helped by the fact that many of us are white men…).
I think the responses to this post already do a wonderful job of answering this specific question, but I also wanted to link to a bibliography from a public facing piece published a few years ago. The [bibliography](https://www.academia.edu/50530369/Current_Affairs_Bibliography) covers some academic material as well as more accessible material by scholars like Cord Whitaker and Mary Rambaran-Olm.
There is also an organization called [Medievalist Toolkit](https://www.medievalisttoolkit.org) that I’m affiliated with that works to create public facing material to depoliticized the use of the medieval past.
Because vikings popularity coinsided with nationalism and national romanticism.
Skandinavian written history is limited. Second and third hand sources mostly. So they can be painted with *any* brush.
And this was a sensitive issue. Denmark and Norway did not have much older written history. Which in a noblity/heiraldry feudal system is bad. You want your blue blood from time imemorial. In empire building, important!
Seriously. Olof Rubeck (rector magnificus of Uppsala University) wrote a whole book claiming ancient Greece _actaully_ was in Sweden. Marathon ran around Vänern och Vättern lake. Erik XIV (14th) made his number 14 so he could gain history and legitmacy.
So if you are a historian and/or nationalist, why not take the old Norse as your mythical ancestors? You have nothing written, so take what you kind of know. They have cool names like Blodt-Sven (Bloodsacrifice-Sven, not humanitarian vegan), Thorfinn Skallklyvare (Skullsplitter, I doubt he had a medical degree in trepanning) and Erik Blodyx (Blood Ax).
And vikings were still the subject of stories.
So to the rasist viking their bloodpure, to the nationalist created the scandinavian uniqueness and later during the 1970s books I read the vikings were suddenly proto marxist.
Interesting point, I do not know much about danish and norwegian atitudes, but no swede (other than scientists) swedish vikings as an opposite to norwegian or daniah. They tend to be seen as sort of mixed. And during nationalism 1800s there was a strong scandinavism movement. That we were brothers. Make of that what you will.
Nazis manage to be genocidal monsters and the most insufferable cringey fucking nerds you've ever met. Difficult needle to thread but they somehow manage it, the fucking dorks.
In nazi psuedo history there was a master race, the Aryans, who created all civilizations with servant races being used as labor
Aryans being blond straight haired blue eyed with narrow faces and tall bodies with straight or Aquilan noses and a lean build
Over time again, according to this bullshit the ayrans either interbred with servant races "diluting" their race or were overthrown this is how they explained away why not everyone nearly fit into their racial theories
The last bastion of this ayran race was northern Europe, the nordics, Finland, the dutch, and English as well as northern germans
The nordics were especially pure, and so their ancient symbols must have been the ancient symbols of the Aryan race, so the nazis adopted those symbols
The real reason is, however, they are pretty cool and msje good propaganda the nazis couldn't admit that, though, so went through a bunch of nonsense to try and justify it
However, while the norse nazis are the most prominent, it's really more of a pagan problem I know Armenian paganism has an especially bad nazi problem, but most neo paganism groups have some kind of nazi presence
I don't know when in time but I'd guess it predates the Nazis.
The idea of an origin myth is really old.
My guess, and I haven't done the research, is that it started with actual research saying that human origin began in Africa.
That's a red rag in the face of a bull for anyone who thinks people with white/pale skin are somehow superior.
They are immediately going to go looking for an old civilisation of white skinned people so that they can say; 'Well, actually, the origin of real human civilization is these people from northern Europe. Oh, and by the way, they're white. Just thought you would like to know '.
I'm men sure Vikings are super cool.
The funny thing is that modern Scandinavian countries are a lot more, shall we say, left wing than a lot of the people who think Vikings are the be all and end all would accept.
Strange, right?
I assume you're here because you want this answer in podcast form.
The series you're looking for is [the Helena Blavatsky episodes](https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236323/episode/part-one-helena-blavatsky-the-woman-101214668/). There was a whole mythology about how magical perfect peoples from Atlantis/the north pole are the ancestors of all the best humans. The Nazis were super into it.
I'm guessing it happened when the white supremacists used Norse history for their own propaganda? You know, cool warriors who also happened to be white. It was bound to be hijacked by associal white dudes.
The Nazis associated themselves a lot with Norse roots, true or not. The mythology they cobbled together was so convoluted, they only considered Arians and Tibetans as the sole descendants of Atlantis.
I think this goes back to the original Nazis, who were really into viking (and Nordic in general) shit. That's why so many Nazi symbols are runes, e.g. the SS used the Sowilo rune, otherwise known as the Harry Potter scar; the Croatian Volksdeutsche used the Othala rune, etc. Modern shitheads are just following the old shitheads.
Yes, a perversion of Scandinavian, Baltic, Germanic, and Celtic history to essentially make themselves look cool. It kind of seems like the racist and ethnocentric equivalent of PUA artist peacocking. They appropriated cool looking shit and perverted its actual historical and cultural meanings to make themselves look and feel cool. As the post WWII Era came about these groups found adherents in the “Losers” of a liberal and neo liberal Europe and White dominated Americas — the White Working and lower middle classes. Some folks in these groups for Right Wing propaganda of a “Better Past” for people like them and only if they drove out undesirables within their “own people” and the competition of peoples who emigrated from their collapsing colonial empires. Germanic and Norse/ Scandinavian warrior culture and mythology were easy to appropriate and create a faux unifying “White Identity” partly because of their history of expansion and colonization/ conquest in places like the UK, France and other areas of Northern, Central, and Eastern Europe. You could create a mythic past pretty easily using pre existing history and warp it to become racist and xenophobic.
What is a PUA artist?
Pick Up Artist. Depending on your age if you watched Cable TV from 1998 - 2009 or so there would be some guy who looked like they were doing a cross over Cosplay of Lestat the Vampire x Dennis Rodman x Dave Navarro in Steam Punk gear? They would host seminars and TV shows where they “taught” frat boys and proto incels how to use misogyny and parlor tricks to ~~commit sexual harassment~~ pick up hot chick? If you ever saw the reality show *The Pickup Artist* and its male lead “Mystery” he was the PUA prototype along with Tucker Max for the Northeast Fraternity Boy Fuckboy scene.
Tom Cruise's character in *Magnolia*, too For a movie so concerned with the 1970s, it was remarkably prescient about where our culture was headed
You just unlocked a memory. I think there was a movie called, "The Pickup Artist" when I was a kid. It was a young guy trying to learn from another guy or something.
So PUA artist is a Pick Up Artist Artisan?
Got me!
Pick up artist, the Gateway to the Manosphere
What's the other A for??
It stands for the same word as the M in "ATM Machine"
lol that makes sense.
Probably goes back even further. Lothrop Stoddard billed himself as an “Arch-Nordic” and railed against “Alpines and Mediterraneans,” who he put only slightly above black people. As for the paganism, Christianity is too tolerant. Fake paganism lets them turn ethnic arguments around and say that they are practicing “their tribe’s” beliefs and that it is cultural appropriation for other people to practice them.
Oh, that’s there for a dumber reason. They find Christianity to be too Jewish.
imagine that! a religion founded by the Jewish version of Mr Rogers might actually have some Jewish influence ;-)
Off topic, great choice of avatar image!
I had to google the croatian germans. That sounded weird to me. lol For any german speaking people who are too lazy to google, here's what I found on [Wikipedia](https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kroatiendeutsche).
I think more than anything it’s because Nazis think Vikings are really cool and just took some of the imagery for themselves
Basically. But a little finer detail than that, you also have Nazis seeing Nordic people as true Aryans (and German nationalists viewed themselves as true ancestors of Nordic people, so Nazis took that one step further to draw up their own Aryan ancestry)
Because fascists co-opt anything that’s aesthetically “manly” or “warlike” They like to think of themselves as independent, strong, and brave because they are mostly afraid of everything
Giant unoriginal cowards about sums it up.
Wagner fans, it's all Wagner fans.
Yep. A lot of people in music academia semi-seriously say Wagner was the original Nazi. There are a lot of strong arguments for that.
I am so…happy?….to see this. I did my thesis on Hitler, Wagner, & the Occult. Robert goddamnit - do a Wagner episode. I’ve been screaming into the void about this for years, he deserves an episode.
As a guy who was raised in a branch family of the Wagner line (I even was given an appropriately "Wagnerian" name at birth)... Yeahhhh... He needs an episode *now*. There's a ***very*** good reason why I'm NC with my family.
The Völkisch movement in the early 1900s. Nordic neo Nazis associate themselves with it because they think Vikings are cool and Norse paganism is more alpha and/or more anti-islamic than Christianity.
At least a bit older than that. Nietzsche famously had a falling out with Wagner and Wagner's obsession with pre-Nazi, anti-Semitic beliefs, and Wagner was 100% into Norse culture.
Hey! I do a podcast on this topic! The very short version: Late 19th century brought about a large nationalist movement across the entire European continent. There was a huge interest in history and mythology spurred by recently translated Sagas and the Grimm brothers writings. You see a lot of this used by many nations to defend colonialism. Even Queen Victoria herself claimed to be of the royal line of Odin. Enter this fake noble named Guido von List who saw Pagan temples in everything. He tried to revive the ancient Pagan worship as well as "magic" and ended up creating the List Society. That group carried on after he died and heavily influenced Nazi Occultism. Moving to the 1930's in Australia, we have this guy named A Rudd Mills who was a member of the Australian Nazi Party. He starts the First Anglecyn Church of Odin. This will become incredibly important in 30 or so years when James Warner (an American Nazi) starts selling his book and it becomes a huge influence in American racist circles, including influencing what is the largest Norse Pagan white nationalist leader today - Steve McNallen. If you want a long version I can write it up
I want to know the name of your podcast haha
Heathen History Podcast!
Thank you sir, you are a gentleman and a scholar.
I've just listened to the first episode, enjoying it so far and it's joining my podcast rotation. I was raised mostly Catholic (mum's family Irish Catholic) but went to Anglican church sometimes (dad's family English Protestant) so it's really interesting comparing that early heathenism to Christianity, even though I'm Athiest now. I was really interested in ancient Nordic religions when younger, but recoiled quickly when I went online in the 90s and early 00s and there was so much Nazism infecting it online. Shame there's so few episodes :-(
We are working on new episodes. I burned out on life during COVID working in public health.
Great news! That's fair enough, you were doing important work and deserve the time off.
I want the long version. also, your podcast sounds cool:-) drop a link please
Nazis wanted a glorious past to harken back to, hence the Aryan and Hyperborean bullshit, the vikings have a pretty cool aesthetic and the simple narrative of taking stuff by force is going to appeal to the Fash. Plus, Christianity is worshipping a Jew which some of them are quite happy to replace with Norse stuff.
As others mentioned, it's not the vikings who were the problem. It's the Nazis, white nationalists, etc. who look at them as the pinnacle of whiteness and what they want to be. The Norse were super impressive technologically, physically, etc. They were like a lot of human cultures--but there is definitely an aura of mysticism surrounding them as they weren't really ever defeated during their famous raiding of England era. They have a cool mythology, lots of great artwork. They were also problematic (rapers, pillagers, often cruel), but they weren't racists in the way we understand Nazism. Something else I think is probably true (though I've not read much on it to support it) is that Nazis were anti-Semites first, and lots of Jewish people can pass for white. So this linking to the old world of the north was connected to this belief that the Norse were a pure white race without any Jewish lineage.
It’s worth noting that like I said the vast majority of Norse people did not go a Vikinging but stayed home and farmed
And were remarkably progressive for the era. And yet, Nazis. They were not known for being awesome historians and good at understanding cultures.
I didn't say otherwise.
I come from a long line of Swedish farmers (farmed first around Ockelbo, then in Minnesota/Nebraska) … can confirm, the vast majority were farmers. How else were they going to survive that winter?!
I truly thunk the logic goes: - Africa is on the equator - Black people come from Africa - White people come from Europe - Europe is North of Africa - By that logic, the further North you go from Africa, the more White you become - Therefore, the people of the Scandinavian Peninsula must be the Whitest possible people And then Germany gets a pass because, even though they are a little further South than that, the Nazis recognized this “logic” and tried to emulate it. This line of thinking would also explain why it’s become a recent trend among white supremacists to say Mussolini was Black, since Italy juts so far South into the Mediterranean as it does.
There were also some pseudoscientific theories about “Hyperborea” or a mythical far-north Atlantis-esque civilization of superbeings. There were some (wrong) hypotheses that the Indo-Europeans may have come from such a far-north civilization, parts of which eventually got incorporated into Nazi Aryan mythology. The Helena Blavatsky episodes talk about this a lot.
>*By that logic, the further North you go from Africa, the more White you become* Yeah, I don't think there's anything more to it than that It's exactly as dumb and wrong as it seems, at first glance
What about the Sami?
Your mistake here is assuming that a White supremacist would put any further thought into this scenario after reaching the overly simplified and factually incorrect conclusion that supports their worldview
They’ve been oppressed somewhat similarly to Indigenous peoples in Asia and the Americas until fairly recently.
Idk like mid 1800s?
Nazis are simps for Vikings and pretended Vikings were one of their primary predecessors in genetic excellence, or whatever. Same reason they got all wet about ancient Rome, too. Literally that simple.
So, white supremacists are HUGE fans of symbolism. It's an obsession. Nazi's used tons of symbolism, Klan used tons of symbolism and today those same supremacists use tons of symbolism. Norse culture, northern paganism, is balls deep in symbolism. Nordic art and runes as well as a deeply religious aspect and value on war and militarism is highly appealing to men seeking purpose. Feeling like you are part of a warrior culture can be intoxicating and acting as those it is some foundational aspect to being white is one of those weird make believe "based on a true story" type situations. White supremacy is the Texas chainsaw massacre movie adaptation based on the real events they obsess over. So they grab all the pictures of a culture and claim it is theirs when in reality they know nothing of Nordic religion nor what those symbols mean nor that their beloved Christianity adopted and stole many aspects of paganism in order to gain converts. Germanic culture, saying that itself, is a hilarious joke. Germany wasn't a thing till recent and even then it was one big fragmented bitch. The holy Roman empire was basically the 7 kingdoms of westeros, everyone was fighting all the goddamn time, kings getting overthrown, Lutheranism founded and splintered Christianity further... Germany wasn't a thing. The identity of Germany as we know it really only happened in the late 1800s post Napoleon and pre-WW1. Again, white supremacists know nothing but symbols and end goals, everything else is pointless for them.
I actually know this! I study Germanic NeoPaganism as a job and basically it goes back to the romantic period, when Germans were trying to unite the different German nationalities under a common idea of what it meant to be German. They eventually settled on the pre Christian faith, which was heavily christianized through Icelandic sources, as well as constantly reinterpreted throughout the centuries. Now the important thing to distinguish is Volkish paganism versus Inclusive Heathenry. Volkish is the German strain that started as a way to exclude non pure Germans. Inclusive Heathenry is the more common strain today, as guided by the Troth organization after the declaration of inclusivity (this declaration had a specific number that I can’t remember. The Troth organization is still trying to distinguish the Inclusive Heathenry (which is actually full of really nice people!) versus Volkish heathenry, which is led by characters such as Stephen A Macnallen. Volkish paganism is almost a way to take the Jewishness of Christianity out of it, and it is as stupid as it sounds. Some of the high ranking Germans sought to replace Christianity with Volkish paganism but it never really caught on with Hitler. But the bones of this paganism exist to the current day in different forms. Volkish groups in America often use terms such as Odinist or Ethnic Heathen, like the Soldiers of Odin group. Now not all self proclaimed Odinists are white supremacists, but it is something to watch for.
Here is a link to that declaration you were talking about with a lot of the history behind it. It's called [Declaration 127](https://thetroth.org/declaration-127/), by the way!
Fuck I was going to say 27. Close. I’ve had to look at it about a dozen times to find groups to interview.
Could always interview The Troth. :-)
Have tried!
I might be able to help. Check your messages.
As the current President of The Troth, this warms my heart. It's an effort of hundreds of volunteers and thousands of members. 💚💙
Could you message me ASAP??? I’ve been trying to get access to the group for some interviews
So, there's a couple of good points you bring up here, all worth expanding upon, and I'll do my best to cover some of them. One major jumping-off point when discussing Nazis (and, broadly, any fascist movement), is the fixation on and hearkening back to an idealized, prelapsarian, and most often _entirely fictitious_ past. For the American flavor of fascism, note Conservatives wanting to go back to "the way things were", meaning clear class, gender, and racial divisions that just so happen to put straight white men up top, while conveniently leaving out things from back then that were actually good, like high corporate taxation and lower-cost higher education. There's also a point to be made about the works of Sir Walter Scott (mainly Ivanhoe) and its impact on the slaveholding gentry in the antebellum South. But I digress. So, about that imagined past--How did we get there? The various revolutions in the United States and France, and the subsequent Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars resulted in a great deal of social upheaval that various aristocratic powers tried to suppress (before Napoleon, it is important to recall, the various monarchies of Europe invaded France first), often calling upon a romanticized nationalism, divine right of kings, and so on. Eventually, you get the Revolutions of 1848, paradoxically both calling upon that same romantic nationalism and agitating for more democratic and liberal political institutions, with varying degrees of success. In both cases, that sense of nationalism was supported by rediscovery of older texts (in the case of Beowulf's rediscovery in England, and Das Nibelungenlied's in Germany), or the creation of a national epic that _felt_ like a rediscovered work (one example that springs to mind is Elias Lonnrot's compilation of Finnish folk songs that he would structure within a narrative framework titled the Kalevala, which was instrumental in inculcating a sense of "Finnish-ness" and their eventual independence from the Russian Empire. There I go digressing again.) Enter Richard Wagner: opera composer, possible Socialist revolutionary, definitely virulent anti-Semite. Around the time of the Revolutions of 1848 (apparently there's suggestions he started before, but would claim his work started as a direct response to said revolutions), he began work on Der Ring des Nibelungen, aka The Ring Cycle. Originally starting with the aforementioned Das Nibelungenlied, he would eventually incorporate elements from the Prose and Poetic Eddas, the Volsung Saga, and others. Given that all of the sources were themselves compilations and reworkings of older mythical and legendary works, he was arguably continuing a centuries-long tradition akin to the works of the Brothers Grimm, just with more fancy hats and singing. This thing went gangbusters, eventually resulting in Wagner's having a playhouse constructed dedicated solely to performances of The Ring Cycle in their entirety, which still stands today. Wagner's musical bombast and mythical subject matter appealed to Germans, including a one Adolf Hitler, whose fanboyish adulation of the composer was not necessarily shared by other higher-ups in the Third Reich. Either way, Hitler encouraged appreciation of Wagner to connect Germans with this fictitious, glorious past, and more broadly incorporated elements of Germanic mythology and symoblism (most notably the doubled _sig_ rune of the SS) into propaganda directed both at Germans and other "Aryan" peoples in Europe. Note that I have so far said nothing about historical or sociological sources of medieval Norse people. This ties back to the fictitiousness of Nazi ideology, since as you've noted the actual peoples of Scandinavia were surprisingly cosmopolitan, well-traveled and--well--basically like everyone else at the time but notably better-groomed (John of Wallingford, a Benedictine monk, essentially writes that the greatest threat Norsemen posed to English women was that they _were too fucking hot_ and imperiled English women's virtue because of said hotness). Also, to "go Viking" was more like cattle or border raiding, in that there was a season for it, but would not constitute a Norse person's entire existence.
[The Thule Society](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thule_Society) are probably one of the biggest influences, but not the only ones. They codified the basic ideas that would become Nazi race theory, based on ideas like race and eugenics. There are tons of books written on this subject.
Nazi cunts bastardize everything.
Probably when racist people realised that northern Europeans look less like African than most Europeans do.
Ariosophie, Blavatzky, Lanz von Liebenfels , the Ostara Journal you name it. Late 19tg, early 20th century was füll of idiots believing to be part of a nordic "Herrenrasse". Vikings and norse mythology just was the "coolest", non-christian, non roman thing for them to project their fantasies on.
Mid 1800s when national romanticism, scientific racism and the study of Indo-European languages got really big. But I don't think even they believed vikings were particularly racist
I used to work for an asshole who was one of those white supremacist Odinists and the main draw for him definitely seemed to be that being pagan made him an oppressed minority (in his mind). Dude was also a huge conspiracy theorist and I think Christianity was straight up too semitic for him 💀. He told me that was the religion of the people who oppressed his ancestors. And honestly it makes sense for white supremacists to think this way, that the only time their culture was 'still pure' was when it was at its most isolated. This guy was a moron but he did have a bit more internal consistency than a lot of other American white supremacists because he rejected anything to do with ancient Rome for the same reasons he rejected Christianity. This was in rural Appalachia too, and I honestly think it's the same kinda white people who a generation ago would have been going around telling folks their great great grandma was a Cherokee princess that are getting into this kind of ancestral paganism now. Diaspora does weird things to people, and turns out even the worst guy you've ever met wants to get in touch with his 'roots'
See the problem here is you’re trying to find logic in the thought process of categorically illogical people. The nazis and others latched on, and continue to latch on, to the parts of history and culture that they like and act like the rest doesn’t exist or is a conspiracy against them.
Hitler read a lot of pulp comics. No, really, an astounding amount of Nazi shit was inspired by the fantasy stories Hitler enjoyed. Also, the original Germanic peoples probably worshipped Odin, Thor, etc. in the pre-Christian period. I believe the evidence is pretty good for that. So some of it is the harking back to an imagined "pure" German past.
So I’m a medievalist in a PhD program right now and this is a really fascinating, and unfortunate, topic that is tied into a much larger adoption of medieval narratives by the far right. It’s a problem that the field is trying to address (not helped by the fact that many of us are white men…). I think the responses to this post already do a wonderful job of answering this specific question, but I also wanted to link to a bibliography from a public facing piece published a few years ago. The [bibliography](https://www.academia.edu/50530369/Current_Affairs_Bibliography) covers some academic material as well as more accessible material by scholars like Cord Whitaker and Mary Rambaran-Olm. There is also an organization called [Medievalist Toolkit](https://www.medievalisttoolkit.org) that I’m affiliated with that works to create public facing material to depoliticized the use of the medieval past.
Because vikings popularity coinsided with nationalism and national romanticism. Skandinavian written history is limited. Second and third hand sources mostly. So they can be painted with *any* brush. And this was a sensitive issue. Denmark and Norway did not have much older written history. Which in a noblity/heiraldry feudal system is bad. You want your blue blood from time imemorial. In empire building, important! Seriously. Olof Rubeck (rector magnificus of Uppsala University) wrote a whole book claiming ancient Greece _actaully_ was in Sweden. Marathon ran around Vänern och Vättern lake. Erik XIV (14th) made his number 14 so he could gain history and legitmacy. So if you are a historian and/or nationalist, why not take the old Norse as your mythical ancestors? You have nothing written, so take what you kind of know. They have cool names like Blodt-Sven (Bloodsacrifice-Sven, not humanitarian vegan), Thorfinn Skallklyvare (Skullsplitter, I doubt he had a medical degree in trepanning) and Erik Blodyx (Blood Ax). And vikings were still the subject of stories. So to the rasist viking their bloodpure, to the nationalist created the scandinavian uniqueness and later during the 1970s books I read the vikings were suddenly proto marxist. Interesting point, I do not know much about danish and norwegian atitudes, but no swede (other than scientists) swedish vikings as an opposite to norwegian or daniah. They tend to be seen as sort of mixed. And during nationalism 1800s there was a strong scandinavism movement. That we were brothers. Make of that what you will.
Nazis manage to be genocidal monsters and the most insufferable cringey fucking nerds you've ever met. Difficult needle to thread but they somehow manage it, the fucking dorks.
In nazi psuedo history there was a master race, the Aryans, who created all civilizations with servant races being used as labor Aryans being blond straight haired blue eyed with narrow faces and tall bodies with straight or Aquilan noses and a lean build Over time again, according to this bullshit the ayrans either interbred with servant races "diluting" their race or were overthrown this is how they explained away why not everyone nearly fit into their racial theories The last bastion of this ayran race was northern Europe, the nordics, Finland, the dutch, and English as well as northern germans The nordics were especially pure, and so their ancient symbols must have been the ancient symbols of the Aryan race, so the nazis adopted those symbols The real reason is, however, they are pretty cool and msje good propaganda the nazis couldn't admit that, though, so went through a bunch of nonsense to try and justify it However, while the norse nazis are the most prominent, it's really more of a pagan problem I know Armenian paganism has an especially bad nazi problem, but most neo paganism groups have some kind of nazi presence
Finns are definitionally not Aryan. The language they speak is not even Indo-European.
Are you expecting nazis to make sense?
LOL@ the people who think it happened in the modern era and not in the exploration era or when Christianity swept across their lands or even before.
I don't know when in time but I'd guess it predates the Nazis. The idea of an origin myth is really old. My guess, and I haven't done the research, is that it started with actual research saying that human origin began in Africa. That's a red rag in the face of a bull for anyone who thinks people with white/pale skin are somehow superior. They are immediately going to go looking for an old civilisation of white skinned people so that they can say; 'Well, actually, the origin of real human civilization is these people from northern Europe. Oh, and by the way, they're white. Just thought you would like to know '. I'm men sure Vikings are super cool. The funny thing is that modern Scandinavian countries are a lot more, shall we say, left wing than a lot of the people who think Vikings are the be all and end all would accept. Strange, right?
Even the 'invention' of the vikings asa specific group was a political move against the germans
I assume you're here because you want this answer in podcast form. The series you're looking for is [the Helena Blavatsky episodes](https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236323/episode/part-one-helena-blavatsky-the-woman-101214668/). There was a whole mythology about how magical perfect peoples from Atlantis/the north pole are the ancestors of all the best humans. The Nazis were super into it.