Abstract
This paper will be exploring how a specific category of popular music known as Viking Metal thematically reconstructs heritage and what meanings we can decode from images generally dealing with an idealized past more than often symbolically equated with Norse myth and antiquity. On the whole we are investigating how song texts and furthermore visual elements contribute to the formation of a cultural identity and memory which not only expresses attachment for a particular time and space, but also serves as a leisure experience with the cultural proposal of an alternate selfhood residing in the reproduction of a mystical heroic populace. The study case is that of a few contemporary Swedish Viking Metal bands and particularly their appropriations of Norse mythology.
Highlights
First of all, a few considerations about this category are needed
Heavy metal has already had a long history of transgression, extreme metal stretches it either sonically through a more aggressive and harsh instrumentation, higher level of distortion, guttural vocals, fast tempo or conceptually through stage appearance, occult imagery, comprehensive preoccupation with the dark side of life or, as in Pagan metal, with narratives of ancestry
Our discussion will center on two theoretical aspects: the building of a cultural identity as a collective self-description [3] and its function as a leisure life-world where one may experience in a liminoid situation the separation from mundanity and integration into a spectacular community [4]
Summary
A few considerations about this category are needed. Viking metal, as well as the broader Pagan metal do not entail accurate musical characteristics, they are rather defined thematically and conceptually due to their extensive resort to pre-Christian history. Heavy metal has already had a long history of transgression, extreme metal stretches it either sonically through a more aggressive and harsh instrumentation, higher level of distortion, guttural vocals, fast tempo or conceptually through stage appearance, occult imagery, comprehensive preoccupation with the dark side of life or, as in Pagan metal, with narratives of ancestry. It evolved mainly out of Black Metal which upon abandoning Satanic and nihilistic themes and replaced them with sentimentalized visions of the past, some of the cultural codes were preserved: Black metal artists rejoice in war imagery, fantastic stories and landscapes and above all anti-Christian. Bathory marked the shift towards Nordic mythology and heathen legacy in his Asatru trilogy (Blood Fire Death 1988, Hammerheart 1990, Twilight of the Gods 1991)
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