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Satanism in Norway
Chapter 60
Satanism in Norway
Satanism in Norway
Asbjørn Dyrendal
The history of Satanism in Norway is, like everywhere else, primarily a history
of fantasies about the Other. This history cannot, as Titus Hjelm explains (this
volume), be left out of the picture in a presentation of Satanism. In Norway, as
elsewhere, there has been important interaction between the publicly shared
myth of Satanism as otherness, and the actual practice of Satanism. If one
leaves early modern fantasies of witchcraft out of the picture, the recent history of “Satanism” belongs primarily to the world of media-enhanced rumors.
Only during the first decade of the twenty-first century do we find organised,
“religious” Satanism as a proven fact in Norway. Before this, there may have
been scattered individual Satanists, or even small, but unknown groups, but
the main arena for Satanism was in Evangelical lore about “the occult”. At different points in time, media took up these rumors, and during the early 1990s,
they were fed by the pioneering bands of Norwegian, “satanic” Black Metal.
The 1970s and 1980s
Modern rumors about Satanism seem first to have reached Norwegian media
during the middle of the 1970s. Evangelical summer camps a few years previously were reported to have spread an American lore about Satanism that was
derived from apocalyptic, charismatic literature (cf. Dyrendal & Lap 2002).
Pentecostal publishers Filadelfiaforlaget in Norway also translated and issued
British “ex-Satanist” Doreen Irvine’s From Witchcraft to Christ in 1974, mainstream Christian publisher Luther forlag published a Norwegian book on the
dangers of Satanism in 1976 (Hagen 1976), and another Pentecostal publisher
(Logos) published a translation of Nicky Cruz’ Satan on the Loose in 1978.
Throughout this literature, we find a clear pattern of adopting topics from
American sources, which is made all the more clear by the only Norwegian
book, Kaare Hagen’s Den religiøse Satan (The Religious Satan), which is also
concerned with American examples. This set a pattern which was repeated
throughout the 1980s and 1990s, with translations of popular American books
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assimilating local concerns and lore about Satanism to current American
trends.
From early on, these books used the Church of Satan as one of the examples
of American Satanism, as the evidence of organised Satanism lending credibility to darker rumours. Thus knowledge about the recent organisational exploits
of Satanism was mediated and disseminated, but there are few signs that any
organised Satanism reached Norway at this time. There are hints in a few newspapers, a couple of letters and a phone call allegedly placed by anonymous
self-declared Satanists who took issue with scaremongering stories about
Satanism, but there is no further confirmation of the existence of any activities. Further hints were dropped during the late 1980s, when a later prominent
claims-maker during the Norwegian Satanism scare alleged that there were
clandestine, organised Satanists in Bergen who were engaged in criminal activities. No one has confirmed these reports, and the claims have been declared
highly unlikely or dismissed as fantasies by both researchers and the occult
community (Dyrendal 2006). The oldest of my informants became a member
of the Church of Satan in 1984, and at the time knew of no other Norwegian
Satanist. There may have been a few other individuals like him, although none
is known to me.
There is little evidence of any public interest in Satanism during the first
half of the 1980s, neither from mainstream nor Evangelical media. During the
last two years of the decade and the first two years of the 1990s, this slowly
changed. The claims of the American Satanism scare were reported both sceptically and credulously in media, gradually turning into a media scare during
the period 1991–1993. Mainstream media concentrated on allegations about
organised ritual abuse, while Evangelical media translated several American
books blending Satanism, teenage rebellion, and popular culture (foremost
Heavy Metal music and horror film). This package seemed to fit with the first
phase of overt Satanism in Norway, that of Black Metal and church arson, and
thus had some success.
Black Metal and Satanism
During the late 1980s and first years of the 1990s, the Norwegian extreme metal
scene turned from Death Metal to a homegrown version of Black Metal.
Turning away from the casual dress style of Death Metal, they invented a more
explicit, uniformed style going with a demand for ideological and musical
purity. The central figure, Øystein Aarseth (aka “Euronymous”), wanted Satan
to have the place in Black Metal that Jesus had in gospel music (Søderlind &