Varg Vikernes

One cannot talk about the black metal genre without the name of Varg Vikernes coming up. A Norwegian pioneer of black metal and dark ambient music, Varg Vikernes had a part in three of the founding acts of the black metal scene: Burzum, Mayhem, and Darkthrone. However, Varg Vikernes is not just known for his music but also for alleged church burnings, murder, and rumored Nazism. As Varg Vikernes is a fairly private person, not much is known about him; the film Until the Light Takes Us features more one-on-one interview time with Varg Vikernes than has ever been filmed before and contains his chilling retelling of the night he murdered Euronymous. Born as Kristian Larsson Vikernes, and later adopting the name Varg, he started a solo project in 1991 under the name “Burzum”. Burzum was one of the first acts signed to Deathlike Silence Productions, which was the record label of Øystein Aarseth from Mayhem. As Burzum, Varg Vikernes recorded 4 albums between 1991 and 1993, which all received great reception in the black metal community. It was also around this time that Varg Vikernes joined Mayhem as their bassist and recorded De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas, whose album cover featured the Nidaros Cathedral, which Aarseth and Vikernes had allegedly conspired to blow up.

Church arson was a popular past-time among the black metal community in the early 1990s. Varg Vikernes himself was convicted of participating in four of them, including the arson of Asane Church, Storetveit Chruch, Skjold Church, and Holmenkollen Chapel. While Vikernes does not admit guilt to these activities, he does clarify the motives for setting fire to these religious structures: “(O)n the 6th June, 793, in Lindesfarne in Britain was the site of the first known Viking raid in history, with Vikings from Hordaland, which is my county … They [the Christians] desecrated our graves, our burial mounds, so it’s revenge.” While mainstream media often attributes these activities as based in Satanism, Varg Vikernes maintains that these have no religious inspiration and are meant more as protest and activism.

If church burnings made Varg Vikernes more popular in the early 1990s black metal scene, his murder of former band-mate and friend Øystein Aarseth (aka Euronymous) of Mayhem has sealed his infamous reputation forever. It happened on August 10th, 1993, when Varg and a friend made the long trip to Aarseth’s place in Oslo. The end result was Aarseth being fatally stabbed, with twenty-three wounds, and Vikernes fleeing the scene. The motives behind the murder are unclear, but Varg Vikernes himself claims that Aarseth was conspiring to capture and torture him, therefore the murder was in self-defense. The court saw the situation differently and sentenced Varg Vikernes to 21 years in prison, though he was released in 2009 only serving 15 years.

If Ozzy Osbourne’s antics of pissing on the Alamo and biting off the head of a bat were thought to be extreme, Varg Vikernes and the Norwegian black metal scene of the 1990s made everything else look like child’s play in comparison. Varg Vikernes has attracted a lot of attention for his alleged extremist cultural views, church arson and murder. However, his adherence to Pagan beliefs and deep respect for Norway’s past helped to sculpt one of the most passionate and sincere sub-genres to metal music as it exists today. Varg Vikernes was (and is) a complicated man with a fascinating past who changed an entire genre of music forever.