| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"Sound of Trumpet" |
| Date: |
28 Jan 2007 07:55:38 PM |
| Object: |
From Progressive Europe: Norwegian Satan's Cheerleaders |
Satan's Cheerleaders
by Darcey Steinke
Norway's Neo-Vikings are on a quest to end Christ's reign on Earth.
Along the way, they're burning medieval churches, slaughtering their
rivals, and playing Black Metal 'til the dark gods return. Darcey
Steinke goes to hell and back.
The sky is blanketed by swollen, gray clouds. Under this leaden bell
jar, an hour outside Oslo in the Norwegian Countryside, lie the
remains of Holen Church - just the pink granite foundation and several
piles of charred pine. Among the fire's ruin, burnt pages from hymnals
fly around, chaotic as brown moths. Blacksmith-forged nails lie
mingled with the femurs and tiabiae of ministers buried a hundred
years ago beneath the church's floorboards. Burned to the ground last
May, Holen is the most recent catastrophe in Norway's ongoing national
disaster: twenty-two churches, some dating to medieval times,
destroyed by arson over the last four years.
A little white-haired man kneels at his wife's gravestone, one of the
many that surround the site where the church once stood. He is weeding
the daisies and begonias as he prepares to leave behind some cut roses
in a mayonnaise jar. When I ask who did this, he shakes his head and
speaks in heavily accented English. "The Satanists," he says wearily.
To the unsuspecting visitor, Norway is a fairy-tale land of wooden
gingerbread houses, lace curtains flapping out of windows, blue glass
bottles on the sills. Fir trees line the fjords, and just about
everyone is blonde, high cheekboned, and cruelly beautiful. Oslo,
Norway's capital is overrun with pastel apartment buildings, and gift
shops selling troll dolls, replica Viking pendants, and Norwegian
reindeer sweaters.
In a stone building downtown, a lone, neatly dressed junkie out front
leans into a nod, the only clue that one of hell's many chambers looms
six flights above. The band Mayhem used to practice here, in a room
framed by a puke-stained carpet below and swastika flags tacked up
overhead. Viking swords and Inverted Crosses hang from the walls
Hellhammer, the only surviving member of Mayhem, Norway's first Black
Metal Band, pushes videos of Nosferatu and The Satanic Rites Of
Dracula out of the way so he can sink down into a black vinyl couch.
Norwegian Black Metal was born in the late '80's, the product of a
unholy union between death-metal churn and Viking bloodlust. It melts
speed metal's thrashing guitars with an ambient subtext that shows up
in everything from darkly symphonic synth to medieval lute solos. The
vocalists tend to sound like the poor little possessed girl in The
Exorcist, screeching and gurgling lyrics about evil powers, Satan, the
nighttime woods, trolls, and Norse Gods. Back then, the members of
Mayhem lived together in the Devil's House - black, with two lofty
towers - in a tiny town called Krakstad. "People there were very
superstitious," Hellhammer recalls, smiling. "When we went into a
shop, all the old ladies would run out. In Sunday School they told the
children that our house belonged to the devil."
Mayhem didn't do much to dispel that notion. On stage, the lead
singer, Dead, wore clothes that he'd buried in the ground until they
were rotten and filled with bugs. He was a tall, extremely skinny
young man with skin so white it was nearly blue. Even during
Rehearsals, Dead wore his "Corpse Paint" - white and black makeup
inspired by the plague. When he was performing, Dead inhaled from a
plastic bag holding a decayed raven. "He needed to get the stench of
death before every song," Hellhammer explains.
Dead, appropriately enough, was the first to die. In 1991 he committed
suicide with a shotgun blast to the head. "It didn't really surprise
me," says Hellhammer. "He was a strange guy, always talking about
Carpathian castles and the Pophyrians and how this life is only a
dream." His suicide note read, simply, "Excuse all the blood."
Hellhammer and Euronymous, Mayhem's Guitarist, found Dead dead - legs
akimbo, his brain tissue and blood splattered on the walls and sheets.
Euronymous didn't seem to mind the mess at all. In fact, says
Hellhammer, "he took pieces of the brain and made a stew. He put in
ham, frozen vegetables, and paprika. He'd always said he wanted to eat
flesh, so he figured this was an easy way."
Hellhammer is dressed in the official Black Metal uniform: boots,
jeans, a leather jacket; all black. A Thor's hammer pendant and a
pentagram dangle around his neck, but he's more the playful puck than
the dark master. He reassures me that he didn't eat any of the wicked
stew - "I would have puked." A heartbeat later, he sheepishly admits
that he did make a necklace for himself out of skull fragments he
found between Dead's bloody sheets.
Black Metal wasn't always so Black. In the early '80s, British bands
like Venom considered themselves a musical component of the horror
entertainment industry, and they played out their role as Satan's
cheerleader's with an appropriate sense of camp. But something
happened when Black Metal crossed the North Sea. For Norwegian Black
Metal bands, it's more than just a stage act: they are committed
Satanists fighting to get Christianity out of Norway, and bring back
Ancient Pagan ways. They advocate the revival of ancient Viking
practices, for instance, and engaging in blood feuds and revenge
killings. Other bands quickly joined Mayhem on the Black Metal scene,
including Darkthrone, Immortal, Enslaved, Burzum and Emperor. Each has
put out several records on small labels like Head Not Found and
Euronymous' own Deathlike Silence.
Euronymous was the fat spider in the Black Metal web, more interested
in being evil than depressed like Dead. He told Hellhammer he had no
feelings; pain, he said, was the same as pleasure for him. In corpse
paint, Euronymous resembled a demonic mesh of Divine and Bela Lugosi -
stout, with long black hair, a pointy devil's beard, and a mustache
waxed so the tips curled around like a pig's tail. His interest
chemicals led him to build an elaborate laboratory in the basement of
the black house, filled with beakers and glass distilling tubes,
Bunsen burners and vaporous acids. He usually went around in a black
cape, but in the lab he wore a white scientists's coat, with gold
buttons and a high collar. He spent hours down there laughing
maniacally and mixing illegal chemicals together. An explosion once
caused one of his potions to spill onto his hand. "It flamed up like a
torch," Hellhammer remembers. "Even underwater it just kept burning."
In the early '90s, Euronymous also owned Hell, a record store in Oslo
that served as the Batcave for the Black Metal movement. Members of
the self-proclaimed Inner Circle crashed on mattresses in the
basement, moist and dark like a dungeon. Parties at Hell were
legendary: huge, chaotic, candle lit affairs, where devotees wore
corpse paint, black capes, and replicas of Viking gear. Many cut
themselves with knives and broken bottles; particularly inspired
groups would go out to desecrate graveyards, knock down stones, and
spray paint pentagrams and the number 666. Hellhammer remembers people
shooting guns into the side walls; one guy hammered a nail into his
own skull. Euronymous would beat himself with a bullwhip, causing
blood to soak through his shirt in crimson stripes.
From his base at Hell, Euronymous became a leader of the scene. He
often expressed hope that Black Metal would incite young people to
violence; conceiving methods of torture, he held lengthy lectures on
how the pain would scare the victims. "It was an exciting period,"
says Samoth, the guitarist for Emperor. "We all hung out and talked
about our hatred for Christianity and how to get the Viking religion
back." All of the Inner Circle despised Christianity's glorification
of weakness, it's sympathy for the sick and needy. So the Circle
devised the idea of setting fire to the pride and glory of Norway -
it's beloved wooden churches. That would remind the people of Norway
that they were all still the children of Odin.
Fantoft Church was built by Nordic wood craftsmen in the early
medieval era. On it's elaborately carved columns, the scaly tails of
dragons interlocked with snakes and flesh vines. It stood strong from
the 12th Century until it burned to the ground on June 6, 1992.
Another fire claimed Holmenkollen Chapel, the church King Harald V and
the royal family attended. Others soon followed. In September, Samoth
proudly "joined history by burning down a church." His Black Metal
colleague Count Grisnackh, who had already participated in the fires
at Holmenkollen and Fantoft, went with him to incinerate Skjold Church
in Rogaland. Samoth describes the experience as being almost holy.
"There was a small door under the altar where we poured several
gallons of gasoline, threw a match, and then ran back to the car." The
pair drove all night to get back to Oslo and Hell. "There was a
strange feeling in the car," Samoth tells me in his soft voice, his
long, dark hair almost obscuring his features. "It was stormy,
thundering and raining. We were on a narrow country road with no light
except our high beams."
Count Grishnackh, the sole member of the band Burzum, has blue eyes
that burn as fiercely as heat lighting; a hairline scar runs down the
side of his mouth. Dressed as a Viking dandy in boots, cloaks, and
Nordic breastplates and pendants, he's cold and intense, his emotions
and actions based more on ideology than anything inside his heart.
Grishnackh believes the Inner Circle has every right to use flames and
machine guns to accomplish its ends - after all, didn't Norway's
Christian forefathers destroy pagan idols and chop off the heads of
heathens?
Pouring gasoline along the walls of Fantoft's tarred wood, the Count
flicked several matches into the golden puddles. As he walked away, he
turned, and the sight of the flames licking up toward the tower to the
cross made the hair stand up on the back of his neck. He shivered.
After the Count was questioned by police - and appeared in every
Norwegian newspaper in full Viking regalia - Euronymous predicted that
Grishnackh would soon do something even grander to get his face in the
papers. He didn't realize he was forecasting his own death. Less than
two months later, Euronymous' body was found in his apartment.
Grishnackh was charged with his murder.
The Count's presence at his trial was just as outrageous as the
testimony: he wore his hair in pigtails, and laughed continuously
throughout the proceedings. But the facts of the case are undeniably
chilling. On August 10, 1993, the Count and Snorre, the leader of the
band Blackthorn, drove six hours across Norway, from Bergen to Oslo.
The Count carried a copy of a record contact, intended to be the
pretext for his visit to Euronymous' apartment.
Possible ways to kill Euronymous had been thoroughly discussed. The
Count wanted to fell Euronymous with an ax, but then decided it would
look stupid to lug an ax around a neighborhood full of apartment
buildings. Another plan was to get Euronymous to demonstrate something
on his computer, then stab him in the neck while he was sitting with
his back turned. The Count ended up carrying a primitive arsenal -
three knives strapped to his body; an ax, a bayonet, and a baseball
bat were stashed in the trunk of his car.
Euronymous answered the door wearing only his underwear; according to
the Count, he looked weak and tired. The two began to argue, and
Euronymous turned and walked toward the kitchen. The Count drew his
knife and followed. Snorre was waiting on the stairs when he heard
Euronymous scream for help. The door flew open and Euronymous ran at
him, blood streaming in rivulets down his face and shoulders. An
autopsy found he had suffered twenty-three stab wounds - two to the
head, five to the neck, and sixteen to the back.
On the ride back to Bergen, Grishnackh and Snorre stopped at a lake.
The Count took off his clothes and washed blood out of his hair and
off his hands and face. He cleaned his knife and tied his bloody
clothes around a rock, and let them sink into the water. But he was
still exhausted and worried. He'd left the contract in the apartment,
signed with that day's date, and he had forgot to wear his gloves. He
didn't even know if Euronymous was alive or dead.
The next day, Grishnackh was strangely emboldened. In an almost
unimaginable act of hubris, he strutted into the Voices of Wonder
Records office in Oslo, dressed like a Viking warrior, with breast-
and arm-plates and spiked leather gloves, and showed off his knife.
Meanwhile, the police rounded up and questioned more than a hundred
Black Metallers. The scene that had always been so secretive was
suddenly riddled with stool pigeons. People ratted out one another;
some even called anonymously to tell what they knew. Police heard
about the Inner Circle feud and soon discovered that the bloody
fingerprints smearing the contract belonged to the Count.
Everyone in the Black Metal scene tells the same story: that they were
baptized but never attended church, that their parents didn't believe
in God. Required religion classes in school were "boring" and "bogus."
Teachers made you memorize prayers no one believed. This attitude is
nothing new; Norway's relationship with Christianity has always been
ambivalent. In 995 a.d., Olaf I Tryggvason brought Christianity, along
with plundered gold and silver, to Norway's shores. On gaining power
he ruthlessly enforced the new faith onto the Norwegian people by
burning down pagan temples and offering subjects a choice between
baptism and death.
The Lutheran reformation in 1537, while not as bloody, was equally
chaotic. Lutheran ministers sent up from Germany didn't speak the
Norse language, and many were disreputable characters prone to some
disputes over tithes, embezzlement, even rape. Yet Lutheranism is a
somber religion known for its pietistic followers and plain altars.
Its main doctrines hold that it is one's relationship to God, rather
than tithes or good works that will secure a passport into heaven.
This leaves Lutherans in an existential spot, standing alone without
the comfort of saints or incense before a stern Germanic God. In
Norway, the Lutheran church is a part of the state - the government
holds the purse strings and appoints bishops, and King Harald is its
official head. Still, only three percent attend church on Sundays or
consider themselves active participants.
"The Satanists are right to target the hypocrisy of Norway's spiritual
life," says Trond Viggo Torgerson, Norway's commissioner for
children's rights. "It's a very discouraging time in our country.
Everyday life is dull and consumer orientated. Most people would
rather have a McDonald's in their community than a church." Torgersen
hopes the fires will serve as a wake-up call, a plea from young people
for more spiritual passion. But when I speak to Bishop Andreas
Aarflot, and ask if the fires might be directed at the state church's
bureaucratic temperament and lack of vitality, he responds with blunt
anger. "These fires have not really affected the religious community.
We do not consider them a challenge of any kind."
At the seminary in Majorstua, Professor Tormod Engelsviken shakes his
head "There is something so medieval about all this - pagans versus
Christians, both sides so literal in their interpretations." He
believes that Norwegians want religion, but that there exists a
spiritual void. "These Viking ideas of blood revenge, of maintaining
honor, of meaningless violence..." The professor sits back, in front
his shelves of theology books. "You must remember that the Vikings
were quite taken with Christianity. Those violent men were transformed
by the message of the New Testament - the idea of humility, of
forgiveness, of the overwhelming power of love."
While out tea steeps, Nebelhexa and I carry out mugs to her back
porch. We sit near a big basket of drying mint leaves, not far from a
rabbit pen and some chickens. Arcane, her black greyhound, settles
regally beside her. Nebelhexa tells me that she has been involved with
Crowleyan magic, chaos magic, even Anton LaVey's Church Of Satan. "The
services are like Christian services but backwards. Nude women are
used as altars, and they have orgies and stomp on blessed communion
wafers. It's silly, really." she adds, tucking a long red hair behind
her triply pierced earlobe. She eventually left the church, fed up
with its members' materialism. "All of them kept urging me to work for
a big corporation, to become a yuppie."
She met Samoth, her husband, while Emperor was opening for Cradle Of
Filth during a European tour. A friend asked her to dress up like a
dominatrix in black leather corset and boots. "I'd come on stage and
whip the lead singer," Nebelhexa laughs. "It was loads of fun." Their
romance quickly flowered. At midnight on the winter solstice last
year, Nebelhexa, in a long, red-velvet dress, and Samoth, in his
Viking fur coat and Thor's Hammer pendant, hiked up a snowy mountain
near his parents' house. Finding a spot surrounded by trees, Samoth
used his ritual heathen knife to cut Nebelhexa's palm, and then she
his. "We held them together and our mingled blood dripped on the white
snow." They made promises to the mighty sky father and all the tree
spirits, then exchanged rings that were engraved with the Norwegian
words for Thor Helps.
Nebelhexa prefer her own magic to any organized religion. She creates
potions using herbs, bones, feathers, and sexual fluids, casting
spells to protect her loved ones, and defending herself from enemies.
Recently she's been collecting roots and weaving them together in an
effort to hold together her relationship with her husband, who's
serving a two-year sentence for arson. "Magic is closer to the body -
you create your own harmony. It's not like Christianity, where you beg
to some god."
When I bring up the church fires and Samoth's involvement in them, she
appears embarrassed. She's anxious to impress on me that her husband
was strongly influenced by Count Grishnackh. "The Count is a good
talker. He would tell Samoth that by burning down churches they'd
drive the Christians back to the Middle East and become kings."
Another of Grishnackh's plans, she says, was to rape (King Harald's
Sister) Princess Astrid, get her pregnant, and take over the throne.
Nebelhexa shakes her head. "It's a very naive way of thinking but you
have to excuse it, because Samoth was just seventeen. What can you
expect from boys that don't like their society?" Arcane rises up to
growl at a squirrel that's leapt on the porch. Nebelhexa tells me how
all her friends think she's crazy to get involved with a Satanist who
burned down a church. "But they don't know him. They can't understand
that my husband is an honorable Viking man."
I'd been warned by Faust that his prison was high-security, one of the
strictest in Norway, but the flowers and expansive green lawns
surrounding the building make it look more like a mental hospital.
Like everything in Norway, the prison is clean and pretty. A cheerful
female guard walks me through a metal detector; she asks me nicely if
I'll leave my bag in a locker near a glass case displaying ceramic
masks made by inmates, features twisted in combinations of anger and
despair.
Faust bursts through the visiting-room door with the intensity of a
fly finally let out of it's glass cage, wearing camouflage, gray and
white, to blend with wintertime woods. Even with his broad shoulders,
Faust has the same childhood grasp on reality I noticed in Hellhammer,
but he's less good natured, more like the cruel little boys in Lord Of
The Flies.
Rocking his chair back against the cement wall, he tells how he's
always been fascinated with murder, collecting books, magazines, and T-
shirts relating to serial killers. When Faust moved from his small
village to work at Hell, his interest in violence intensified. He
began to crease an entire moral universe based on the precepts of
Black Metal. "I started thinking about macro- and micro-cosmoses and
comparing human life to dust on a far-off planet in a far-off galaxy
in the middle of nowhere. I made human life valueless."
In August 1992, while Faust was checking out the newly completed
Olympic Park at Lillehammer, a man approached him and suggested they
go together in the woods. "I hadn't been drinking or anything. I just
very calmly decided to end this man's life. Maybe my subconscious was
telling me that because he is gay I had that right." Faust agreed and
followed him into the deep forest. As the man came forward to embrace
him, Faust sunk a knife into his gut and yanked up. " He was screaming
'No!' but I just went berserk stabbing him over and over. Once he was
down and the light had gone down out of his eyes, I kicked him to make
sure he was dead. Then I walked home with a completely empty head,
like a zombie."
Two days after the murder, Count Grishnackh, Euronymous, and Faust
drove up to Holmenkollen Chapel, near the Olympic ski jump. It was to
be a symbolic act of catharsis for Faust. At first they placed a
homemade bomb onto the altar, but when that refused to detonate, they
piled hymnals and Bibles onto the altar, poured gasoline over them,
and lit a match. "We rode up the mountain to watch it burn. It was
very beautiful and exciting - when we got back to the record store we
could hardly sleep."
After his crime spree, Faust checked the papers every day, but after a
few weeks there was nothing more about the murder. "As time passed,"
he says, "I almost forgot I was a killer." It wasn't until Euronymous'
murder that Faust was figured and picked up. He was tried and
convicted of manslaughter, and is now serving a 14 year sentence. He
might regret getting caught, be he shows little remorse for the
murder. One should live by the sword, he decrees; society must return
to a natural order of survival by strength. He sees himself as not a
criminal but as a revolutionary in exile. Faust's favorite writer,
Bret Easton Ellis, exemplifies for him the truth about human beings'
natural animosity to one another. "In American Psycho he gets it down
perfectly," Faust tells me enthusiastically. "One minute you're
looking at a man's clothes and the next you're sticking a knife in his
eye."
Where Faust turned his Black Metal murder fantasy into evil reality,
Ihsahn, the lead singer for Emperor - and its only member not in jail
- understands the power of metaphor. In his tailored black pants and
silk shirt, his dyed hair in a braid down his back, he's an Armani
vampire. The dark prince wears eyeliner and a touch of white powder;
the faint purple circles under his eyes give me a feeling that he
tends to wander in the woods long after dark.
When I ask why he didn't go with Samoth and Grishnackh the night they
burned down Skjold church, he explains that he wasn't home when they
looked for him but that he definitely would have joined in.
Christianity, he believes, is for people who live in the desert and
wear sandals. "It wastes love," he says. "In Norway, like in the U.S.,
if you're weak everybody supports you. There are special centers,
twelve-step programs. Everything is for the weak. Everything caters to
people who are failures. There is too much pity."
Runhold, Ihsahn's girlfriend and co founder of the Black Metal fanzine
Descent, agrees. "None of the Gods in Norse mythology are weak like
Jesus is weak," she tells me. Runhild is studying biotechnology; notes
from her morning class are written on her hand. She's wearing a long,
black-silk dress and a necklace made from raven's feet, a "love
present" from an old boyfriend. She has always had a fascination with
death. At thirteen she wrote a school newspaper on burial rituals, and
as a kid slept with her hands folded over her chest. Her obsession
with death, she feels, comes from being fearless. "Most pop music
plays on weakness, but Black Metal people don't believe in sacrificing
yourself for others the way Jesus did. They are strong enough to live
by the sword."
Ihsahn believes the vampire to be the perfect symbol of the Satanic.
"Dracula feeds on others but feels passion for just a few," he
explains. He also sees similarities between the vampire and the
Viking. "The Viking went out and took what he needed, violently and
with much bloodshed; he fed on others just like a vampire." As I prod
Ihsahn about Black Metal's fascist tendencies, about the Holocaust,
about how weakness is an innate quality in even the strongest human,
the vampire grows testy. "Look," he says, sounding much like Lestat,
wearied by weaker creatures who lack bloodthirst and courage. "You'll
never understand me because you sit in the audience at a horror movie.
I'm up on the screen."
In Norwegian folklore, tongues of flame flicker up from the footprints
of Viking kings. Giant brown bears make their winter lairs on church
altars. Flies crawl out of the mouths of every dreamer, and fairies
give babies honey cakes. Like naughty children, Black Metal's true
believers blur the line between fantasy and reality, the seen and
unseen, play-evil and real evil. And in this superficially Christian
country, where ruddy-faced blond kids glide down slopes of perfect
snow against hand-painted skis, is it any wonder Black Metal would
explode? It exposes the dark side, the deep melancholy and endless
winter nights, of the Norwegian soul.
Black Metal continues to stun idyllic Norway with heathen ideology and
terrorist acts. Last spring, Bishop Aarflot recommended that every
church in Norway post guards at its gates on June 6 at 6 a.m.,
explaining that "666 is the most important number for Satanists" and
that "all churches would be vulnerable at this time." Churches
continue to be targets for arsonists, but no one I talk to is exactly
sure who is now setting the fires. "It's thirteen- and fourteen-year-
old Black Metal kids who live out in the middle of nowhere," Faust
tells me. "I'm glad they're keeping it up. It means the torch has been
passed, that the fire still burns."
Count Grishnackh, Norway's most notorious criminal, is now a media
celebrity with a cult following - he receives more than a hundred fan
letters a week. In a recent interview from his cell in Ila prison
outside Oslo, the Count said he no longer wanted to be associated with
Black Metal. He's now strictly a neo-Nazi, an ideology he hopes to
promote through an organization called the Norwegian Heathen Front. A
photograph from his prison reveals that his dyed black hair has grown
back to its organic Scandinavian blond, but the hypnotic blue eyes
haven't changed. Son of Odin, pagan prince of the far North, the Count
bides his time reading books on Nordic history and the occult. He
plans to use the postal system and computer lines to influence young
people before they're brainwashed by Christian society. With his
guidance, he predicts, the heathened youth will bring about the new
pagan era by any means necessary - Helter Skelter, Viking style.
.
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| User: "Spartakus" |
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| Title: Re: From Progressive Europe: Norwegian Satan's Cheerleaders |
28 Jan 2007 08:55:18 PM |
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"Sound of Trumpet" <sound_of_trum...@myway.com> wrote:
Satan's Cheerleaders
by Darcey Steinke
The article gives the impression that it is describing current events,=20
but the fact of the matter is, it was written 11 years ago. Here is=20
the link that SoT forgot to provide:
http://www.fatalexception.org/spin_article/index.html
One of the subjects of the article, "Count Grishnackh", whose real=20
name is Varg Vikernes, was convicted of murder and several other=20
felonies in 1993. He killed his bandmate =D8ystein Aarseth, also known=20
as "Euronymous". His request for parole in June 2006 was turned down.
I remember that that there was a rash of church fires in Norway in the=20
early 1990s, including a handful of medieval "stave" churches. The=20
loss of these amazing structures was heartbreaking. It appears that=20
the culprits are dead or in jail. Contrary to the impression that SoT=20
wants to make, Norway is *not* being overrun by neo-Viking Satanists.
.
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| User: "Stein R" |
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| Title: Re: From Progressive Europe: Norwegian Satan's Cheerleaders |
28 Jan 2007 11:37:06 PM |
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"Spartakus" <spartakus@my-deja.com> wrote in
news:1170039318.044890.86490@a34g2000cwb.googlegroups.com:
"Sound of Trumpet" <sound_of_trum...@myway.com> wrote:
Satan's Cheerleaders
by Darcey Steinke
The article gives the impression that it is describing current events,
but the fact of the matter is, it was written 11 years ago. Here is
the link that SoT forgot to provide:
http://www.fatalexception.org/spin_article/index.html
One of the subjects of the article, "Count Grishnackh", whose real
name is Varg Vikernes, was convicted of murder and several other
felonies in 1993. He killed his bandmate Øystein Aarseth, also known
as "Euronymous". His request for parole in June 2006 was turned down.
I remember that that there was a rash of church fires in Norway in the
early 1990s, including a handful of medieval "stave" churches. The
loss of these amazing structures was heartbreaking. It appears that
the culprits are dead or in jail. Contrary to the impression that SoT
wants to make, Norway is *not* being overrun by neo-Viking Satanists.
Correct. There was a handful of nitwits who committed arson in the
early/mid 90s. From 1992 until 1996, to be precise.
In 1992 there was a spate of 11 fires in Norwegian churches, most of
them cases of arson or attempted arson. In seven cases the churches
burned down. Varg Vikersnes was linked to five of these cases, another
person to three cases. The last three cases split as one case of arson
by two 14-15 year old "copycats", one case of arson by unknown persons,
one case of unknown cause of fire.
In 1993 there were 2 cases of arson and 3 cases of attempted arson.
None of these churches burned down.
In 1994 there were 7 cases of arson, attempted arson or suspected arson
against Norwegian churches, in which three churches were burned down.
In 1995 there were six cases of arson/attempted arson, four of which
causes churches to burn down, and two which caused minor damage.
In 1996 there were three fires. One church burned down, in a case of
suspected arson. Two other cases of arson only does minor damage.
One of the churches which suffered attempted arson in 1996 had had also
suffered attempted arson 1993 and 1994, indicating that the same person
probably was behind all three cases.
In total, over the years 1992-1996 we lost 15 churches, one of which
was a stave church (Fantoft Stave Church in Bergen - arson, Varg
Vikersnes) and one of which was Holmenkollen ski chappel in Oslo (arson
Varg Vikersnes).
Vikersnes is currently serving a sentence of 21 years in prison.
Stein R
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| User: "Don Martin" |
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| Title: Re: From Progressive Europe: Norwegian Satan's Cheerleaders |
29 Jan 2007 08:33:37 PM |
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On Sun, 28 Jan 2007 23:37:06 -0600, Stein R <steinjr@nospam.com>
wrote:
<snip>
Correct. There was a handful of nitwits who committed arson in the
early/mid 90s. From 1992 until 1996, to be precise.
In 1992 there was a spate of 11 fires in Norwegian churches, most of
them cases of arson or attempted arson. In seven cases the churches
burned down. Varg Vikersnes was linked to five of these cases, another
person to three cases. The last three cases split as one case of arson
by two 14-15 year old "copycats", one case of arson by unknown persons,
one case of unknown cause of fire.
In 1993 there were 2 cases of arson and 3 cases of attempted arson.
None of these churches burned down.
In 1994 there were 7 cases of arson, attempted arson or suspected arson
against Norwegian churches, in which three churches were burned down.
In 1995 there were six cases of arson/attempted arson, four of which
causes churches to burn down, and two which caused minor damage.
In 1996 there were three fires. One church burned down, in a case of
suspected arson. Two other cases of arson only does minor damage.
One of the churches which suffered attempted arson in 1996 had had also
suffered attempted arson 1993 and 1994, indicating that the same person
probably was behind all three cases.
In total, over the years 1992-1996 we lost 15 churches, one of which
was a stave church (Fantoft Stave Church in Bergen - arson, Varg
Vikersnes) and one of which was Holmenkollen ski chappel in Oslo (arson
Varg Vikersnes).
Vikersnes is currently serving a sentence of 21 years in prison.
I may be a Wicked Old Atheist, but I mourn the loss of beautiful
buildings crafted by hand. Perhaps Varg could be sent on a sabbatical
to one of our prisons for Bubba to play with.
Through a jaundiced eye darkly--rheum with a view.
The Squeeky Wheel
http://home.comcast.net/~drdonmartin/
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| User: "Lucifer" |
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| Title: Re: From Progressive Europe: Norwegian Satan's Cheerleaders |
29 Jan 2007 11:30:49 AM |
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On Jan 29, 2:55 am, "Spartakus" <sparta...@my-deja.com> wrote:
"Sound of Trumpet" <sound_of_trum...@myway.com> wrote:
Satan's Cheerleaders
by Darcey SteinkeThe article gives the impression that it is describing=
current events,
but the fact of the matter is, it was written 11 years ago. Here is
the link that SoT forgot to provide:
http://www.fatalexception.org/spin_article/index.html
One of the subjects of the article, "Count Grishnackh", whose real
name is Varg Vikernes, was convicted of murder and several other
felonies in 1993. He killed his bandmate =D8ystein Aarseth, also known
as "Euronymous". His request for parole in June 2006 was turned down.
It also appears to have been a homophobic murder, you know, the kinda=20
thing SoT seems to want everyone to commit...
--
Lucifer the Unsubtle, EAC Librarian of Dark Tomes of Excessive Evil=20
and General Purpose Igor
The Anti-Theist, BAAWA Lowly Evilmeister and tamer of the Demon Duck=20
of Doom
Convicted by Earthquack
"Don't worry, I won't bite.......hard"
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