Vigilante or Viking? Contesting the mediated constructions of Soldiers of Odin Norge

Abstract

In 2015, Europe experienced the worst refugee crisis since the Second World War. Along with terrorist attacks in Europe over the last decade, the refugee crisis has fueled a rise in the popularity of both far-right political parties and extremist groups—such as Finland’s Soldiers of Odin ( S.O.O.). The group debuted in late 2015, but quickly spread throughout Scandinavia. The popularity of S.O.O. coincided with a resurgent interest in Viking culture, and new country groups have been reported worldwide. This article explores the contested identity of the Norwegian chapter, Soldiers of Odin Norge ( S.O.O.N.), in national news (Norge) and networked spaces (social media). The mediated discourse was analyzed using ethnographic content analysis, with an appreciation for the intertextuality of the ambiguous political rhetoric. We found social media to be an important site for contesting the dominant narrative of ‘vigilante’ identified in the news articles. Drawing from cultural criminology, we further explored the contrast between mediated images, where Viking culture became the symbolic identifier for S.O.O.N., and the collective construction of meaning in the discourse. Finally, we argue that because the group’s identity was forged from, and exists because of, media-related communications, S.O.O.N. could be characterized as a ‘media-based collectivity’ (Couldry and Hepp, 2017).