Abstract
From 1935 to 1945, Ragnarok was the most radical national socialist publication in Norway. The Ragnarok Circle regarded themselves as representatives of a genuine National Socialism, deeply rooted in Norwegian soil and intrinsically connected to specific virtues inherent in the ancient Norse race. This combination of Germanic racialism, neo-paganism, and the cult of the ‘Norwegian tribe’, led them to criticize not only all half-hearted imitators of National Socialism within Quisling’s Nasjonal Samling, but also Hitler’s Germany when its politics were deemed to be in violation of National Socialist principles. In Germany they sought ideological allies within the Deutsche Glaubensbewegung before the war, and the ss during the war. But their peculiar version of National Socialism eventually led to open conflict with Nazi Germany, first during the Finnish Winter War and then in 1943, when several members of the Ragnarok Circle planned active resistance to Quisling and the German occupation regime.
Highlights
The symbol of the Norwegian fascist party Nasjonal Samling [ns; National Unity], founded in 1933 under the leadership of Vidkun Quisling, was the socalled Olavs-cross, representing the warrior-king Saint Olav, who unified and christianized Norway
The cottage used to belong to Hans Solgaard Jacobsen, the editor of the journal Ragnarok
The rulers of the New Germany were from time to time subjected to harsh criticism, if their politics were deemed to be in violation of National Socialist principles
Summary
The journal Ragnarok was established as a direct result of tensions that had existed within Quisling’s party, Nasjonal Samling, ever since its establishment in 1933. Instead, the avant-garde of a National Socialist revolution, where racial thinking would constitute the guiding line for the reordering of society?1 Members of this radical wing were recruited mainly from former activists of the small Norwegian National Socialist Workers’ Party, founded in 1932, who had joined Nasjonal Samling in 1933.2 These where supplemented by older and more established men, who had their formative political impulses as students in Germany in the late 1920s. The Ragnarok Circle may be called radical National Socialists, insofar as they wanted a fundamental and far-reaching change in the social, political, cultural, and religious makeup of society. The task is, through cultural and political action, to reawaken the Germanic racial consciousness in the Norwegian people, and, by doing so unleash the dormant forces of the racial soul This would eventually bring about a radical transformation of society. Since racial purity is defined, not so much by strict biological criteria, as by rather fuzzy cultural and ‘spiritual’ concepts, this notion is obviously quite flexible and proved elastic enough to be reshaped to fit changing political circumstances
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