Is it cool to be all into Nordic myths and NOT be a Nazi?

Jon Lewis, Wagner is writing about all the nordic legends that code as "the aboriginal culture of europe" i.e. before the Judeo-Xian menace. he is down with the cause in his themes. I can't front on his music but it's fascist stuff from stem to stern imo

― a full circle lol (J0hn D.), Monday, December 14, 2009 9:22 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

This is something that I worry about. I mean, I enjoy old stories about Odin and Loki and Thor and Sif, but I also think that people from other cultures and countries should be welcomed into our countries and neighborhoods and bloodlines and everything. Is there a place for me in this world? Like, every time you see a guy with some rune tattoos though, he's gonna have a swastika or somet Aryan brotherhood bullshit too. It's some bullshit, imo.

i think it's fine to be "interested in" - as in a sense of compartive mythology etc. (mythology of all cultures fascinates me no end)

the problematic area is where you start saying that one set of mythos is inherently culturally or otherwise superior to another

(then again, this is reductive answer to 9/10 of human conflicts, isn't it? perhaps easier said than done)

That's a sensible answer.

it wld probably sound less sensible if you could see me sitting at my laptop braiding orc skulls in my beard

Yes, comparative mythology is lots of fun. In Minnesota (hugely Scandinavian) there's no liberal prohibition on Norse myths and I can't imagine any skinhead type getting anything other than schooled hard if they tried to import their racial animosity into it. Appropriate response would be to feed a hockey puck to that person.

i know only one person who's "into" norse mythology (like, knows about it and likes runes) and he is a metal head and v v nice. his interest, i'm certain, stems from the same reason he is into comic books and sci-fi movies: norse mythology RULES

Suddenly I've got that Todd Rundgren's "Song of the Viking" going thru my head (Rundgren - that's a Swedish name isn't it?)

http://www.samcci.comics.org/reviews/covers/halfsize-thor127.jpg

i was wondering the same thing -- a few days ago i saw "severed ways" and, while it certainly had its flaws, i was totally into it. then i started worrying that people would think i was a nazi (which i am totes not) if i liked this movie. seems silly, but clearly i'm not alone.

it's cool
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czuOSF_0yy4

I dunno, I guess I'm just hesitant because of the cultural weight attributed to, for example, Wagner's esteem for Norse mythology. Also, you tend to see a lot of imagery in the news media of (as stated above) racists with Viking tattoos. I might have picked a lot of this up from my parents' subscription to the SPLC Intelligence Report.

You can have esteem for it, and then you can go further and proclaim it as the one true way or whatever, and that's when it gets a little batty.

Hm never thought of it that way -- prob because I read Norse myths just like all the Classical ones, also American Indian stories about the Great Manitou and fairy tales and bible stories, and they basically all read the same.

The only person (non-ILX) I know who believes (or pretends to believe?) in Norse myth as an operative religion is Finnish. And kind of extreme herself. But great!

always loved that yngwie track tbh

Yeah, I'm so not operative any kind of religion.

You can have esteem for it, and then you can go further and proclaim it as the one true way or whatever, and that's when it gets a little batty
for me this applies to pretty much all sets of myths -- but i am not a believer of anything, really. i just like knowing the range of beliefs. (fairy tales, other stories invented by humans to explain existence, etc)

proclaim it as the one true way or whatever

Yeah I mean this is every religion ever? And I know ILX hates religion and is probably OTM in its wariness, but we don't stigmatize Christians (probably nearly enough) for sharing the beliefs of 49586356854079835 other evil leaders throughout history.

I think you can also say that you feel comfortable with or interested in these myths more than others w/o going batshit & renaming yourself Woden Hitler. So a dose of Kirby & Tolkein in childhood can make them seem more appealing than yr mediterranean alternatives; and they can make sense in landscape, especially at this time of year - that dusk-is-nigh, rain-on-the-birch-tree atmos of the Norse myths can make sense in dismal climes.
Best,
Baldr Göring

^^^

and they can make sense in landscape, especially at this time of year - that dusk-is-nigh, rain-on-the-birch-tree atmos of the Norse myths can make sense in dismal climes.

Oh, this for sure. This mmay have brought the whole line of thought on, tbh.

true, laurel

the thing for me is, as a former tolkien freak, that i was actually very interested in his sort of "rediscovery of the original english myths before roman and then judeo-christian imagery overran everything" - my interest wasn't racist so much as just interest in all things occult, hidden, lost. growing up in a spooky rural landscape with all kinds of signs everywhere about what-was-there-before and wanting to know what these things were about

there's a whole aspect to, say, modern interpretations of arthurian myth cycle which revolve around "oh noes romans and christians are subverting our original welsh legends" which got buried under ideas of "oh noes evil saxons destroyed roman culture which we normans must replace" during its medieval resurgance

i think you can be interested in pagan legendry and mythology in a "what did centralisation and the feudal system replace" as well

however, as i grew up, and in my early teens started noticing "hey how come all the bad guys are all 'degenerate' races with dark skin that come from the south/east" i noticed the whole racist subtext to tolkien which made me v v sad, almost as if i'd been lied to. but that still doesn't stop my kind of "what if...?" interest

x-posts

there's a whole aspect to, say, modern interpretations of arthurian myth cycle which revolve around "oh noes romans and christians are subverting our original welsh legends" which got buried under ideas of "oh noes evil saxons destroyed roman culture which we normans must replace" during its medieval resurgance

Hahaha it didn't get nearly buried ENOUGH; it survived to be made into a completely terrible proto-Christian Stephen Lawhead trilogy. Which I read. Along with every other possible interpretation of Arthurian anything, even into college where I took a special concentrated class on Arthurian lit.

Lest you think I'm exaggerating, the story starts in Welsh Britain and also concurrently in Atlantis.

Welsh Britain, which was overrun by those English/Germans

no, i mean it was buried in the contemporary (ha! - i.e. 1000 years later norman accounts - i'm thinking of mallory etc.) accounts. obv lots of people have rediscovered it - thinking mostly of the mists of avalon and crystal caves serieses

if only i'd been able to study special concentrated classes on arthurian lit i might have stayed in lol college

I'd say if you're not a Nazi then yes it's cool. If you are a Nazi then being into Nordic myths is probably the least of your concerns.

i'm talking about mythological representations mr. d, not attempting an alternate history of wales

there's a similarly troubling vein in american fixation on celtic lore and heritage. as a kid i was super into scottish history and robert the bruce and all that, and so i thought it would be cool about 10 years ago to go to something called the highland games in north carolina. and it was kinda cool, lots of music and celtic face painting and bonfires and drinking songs and so forth. but on arriving it was very hard to overlook the of white-power tattoos and t-shirts that were scattered widely through the crowd. gathering of the clans felt a little like gathering of the klan.

Compare Confederate flag with Scottish flag. Ku Klux Klan was set up by "Scots" anyway?

you get any group of 5000 white people gathering on a hillside in new england celebrating being white theyre' gonna be some bad apples i guess

Tips, I've heard that about games in certain places (the Pac NW also) but have not seen it myself so far, and no one I personally know has commented on same, although probably those people wouldn't notice WP tattoos, etc unless there were actual signs being paraded.

I think this is veering into the territory of that DFW essay about the state fair and the square-dance performance. Fine line, obv. Personally I think there's a lot more room to celebrate being Scottish or Finnish or etc than to glorify being "white" in particular, even if the "whiteness" is a product of 6 pioneer generations in Illinois.

Sorry, being "white in general". Kind of veered off in the middle there what with the x-posting.

Hahaha it didn't get nearly buried ENOUGH; it survived to be made into a completely terrible proto-Christian Stephen Lawhead trilogy. Which I read. Along with every other possible interpretation of Arthurian anything, even into college where I took a special concentrated class on Arthurian lit.

― WHY DON'T YOU JUST LICK THE BUS DIRECTLY (Laurel), Tuesday, December 15, 2009 2:58 PM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark

haha yes! I read those. Was sort of confused by the Atlantis part, especially because Atlantis = Minoan Crete = about 2000 years earlier than Arthur.

I'm concerned about the thread question a little myself - I spent a couple years doing Norse archaeology, and got into the pagan/folk metal scene as a result, and sometimes I worry about navigating "hey, this is fun, I like this music, and the sagas are fucking AWESOME" without giving any support or encouragement to "this is the superior culture and justifies my racism," or even "neo-paganism will replace stupid Christianity" aspects of it. The problem is that it's not always obvious from displays of swastikas what people's motives are. And of course when bands are singing in Norwegian I have no idea.

The problem is that it's not always obvious from displays of swastikas what people's motives are.

Wha'?

'i'm just really into right angles, y'know?'

I mean, if there were always displays of swastikas it would be obvious, but sometimes people are more subtle about it than that.

I've heard that about games in certain places (the Pac NW also) but have not seen it myself so far

yeah this felt like a specifically scots-irish southern appalachian thing. it was just a set of signifiers that hadn't really occurred to me. i wasn't even really tuned in to the celtic cross as a white-power symbol because, you know, i just haven't spent much time with white-power freaks.

and it wasn't like the whole festival felt like a race rally. there was just enough of it around to make me uncomfortable.

there was just enough of it around to make me uncomfortable.
this is kind of how i feel about the whole norse/celtic enthusiasm thing, really. i'm 100% sure i am not into white power, but if there are people who do believe that at an event that i am attending, it makes me feel v v uncomfortable about being there.

more white power to yer arm

Ha, last week, my boss, who's American and a sorta New Age hippy type, was going on about how Paganism and Pagans should be treated be the same respect as other religions, and I'm like, "Errrrrrrrrr, what do you mean by Paganism? You mean cuddly Celtic paganism and druids and all that or does Norse stuff count as well? And what about Greek and Roman paganism?". And she got all red faced and flustered.

I know pagans who think about as well of my religion as I think of theirs, and can be pretty snide about it, but I at least try not to roll my eyes at statements like "I'm thinking of maybe Norse gods, they're pretty cool, but mainly I just respect nature." It just seems like believing in Norse gods is basically a fashion statement.

It just seems like believing in Norse gods is basically a fashion statement.

It just seems like believing in Norse gods is basically a fashion statement.

When did Doom Metal/Black Metal and the like become "hip" and why?

haha, i am just reading that thread.

and i think religion's usually a bit more than a fashion statement - the veneration for nature part has some deeper significance, i think, it's just the selection of gods based on being "cool" that's weird to me. btw i am not parodying, i am quoting.

There's lots of cool gods out there

(i'm sorry, apparently i'm still annoyed with particular people not associated with ilx over particular conversations in which i really tried not to be an asshole about not understanding or agreeing with their beliefs and it did not occur to them to do the same. and that is making me act like one now. "my religious beliefs are valid and yours are not" is exactly the kind of conversation i try NOT to engage in, ever.)

i feel like ppl who claim to be any religion have wildly differing degrees of sincerity and reasons for doing so--believing in norse gods may be as cool in one circle as claiming to be christian in another.

i was actually very interested in his sort of "rediscovery of the original english myths before roman and then judeo-christian imagery overran everything"

I'm avidly interested in this right now, and like Amanda, I'm pretty 100% sure I'm not a white power advocate, but I often wonder if there's some subconscious racism reflected in the fact that my primary, almost exclusive, area of historical interest is the History of White People in Britain.

Well, mine too pretty much. But that's sort of where "we" "come from", at least in my case actually geneologically.

Good grief, of course it's fine to be into Norse/northern euro myths and legends, as gbx so succinctly put it BCUZ THEY'RE AWESOME. They can even be your 'favorite' myth-school and it doesn't make you a racist. The slippery slope only starts when as stated above you start thinking it's the only true strain of myth borne of the uncorrupted people etc etc.

C'mon they're such great stories and in what other set of myths do you get that sense of FATALISM, like even for the gods life's a bitch until you die.

I think J0hn is not OTM in his response to me quoted at beginning of thread-- I would submit that when Wagner somposed the Ring the 'coded' norse myth/racist xenophobia thing had not yet been encoded, nor did he encode it at that time. By the turn of the century the encoding had sure happened though.

Whoa, this thread exploded. Read this book last year and I highly recommend it:

http://www.heatherpringle.com/books/master.html

All kinds of bizarre WTF moments inside.

hahaha! i wonder what would be a good t-shirt relating to proto-indie-europeans.

xpost about Aryan/Indie European invasion stuff...

Hi Maria, tbh it's not my academic area, but I think people do still talk about Indo-European languages as though the term means something, though teh Nazis tend to forget that Slavs, southern Europeans, and people from the Celtic fringe speak I-E languages too.

Indo-European does mean something, when it comes to language

southern Europeans

Nazis were sort of into the Romans a bit too though? I mean, the ancient ones, of course.

This is a clusterfuck.

" good t-shirt relating to proto-indie-europeans."

In front show guide for actual IPA pronunciation of !!!, then
draw arrow on the back pointing to butt with sign "Great BOWEL Shift"

sorry.

xpost - that's true, indo-european is a language family, what i mean though is the idea that they all came from one "people" who spoke "proto-indo-european" (which is more useful theoretically than historically). my impression is that finding the homeland of the proto-indo-europeans/aryans was kind of a big thing in archaeology/comparative linguistics/folklore studies for a while until people realized that cultural change is not necessarily the result of migration or diffusion or some other massive population change and it just got way too complicated.

er sorry, i mean "migration or invasion," not "migration or diffusion"

Yes. And way too complicated for the Nazis to bother about (xp)

BEHOLD THE PROTONG!

http://www.amazon.com/Behold-Protong-Stanislav-Szukalski/dp/0867195193

Hmm, I always thought Aryans were North Indian (and a bit paler) and darker Dravidians were from the South/Sri Lanka.

actual IPA pronunciation of !!!

Proto-Indie Europeans spoke Click?

!!!Kung people

They spoke Chick-chick-chick.

<southern Europeans>

Nazis were sort of into the Romans a bit too though? I mean, the ancient ones, of course.

oh yeah, I was thinking more of the SPERMFRONT people sometimes seem to have a bit of a thing about Mexicans. Or maybe I am imagining that.

ɛkskləˈmeɪʃən pɔɪnt ɛkskləˈmeɪʃən pɔɪnt ɛkskləˈmeɪʃən pɔɪnt

This has got to be one of the most female-dominated threads in ILX history that is not explicitly about women or women's issues or James Franco.

wimmin be comin' from the land of the ice and snow

we have other interests, it's true! i for one am pretty interested in nazis and stuff

and not james franco ; )

especially us bearded ladies

Norse legends and sagas are full of v v strong women iirc.

I don't even know who James Franco is.

Was he a Nazi or a Norse god?

he was a Nazi God

(from Norway)

Also a co-star of "Milk"

pls. tell me abt that book harbl! once you read it, i mean.

― call all destroyer, Tuesday, December 15, 2009 2:45 PM (1 week ago)

i'm about 30% done and it's pretty good. there is obviously way too much to say so he seems to be going too fast through a lot of it but the book is like 600 pages as it is.

TS: James Franco vs. Jess Franco vs. dictator Franco

icelandic sagas are full of very strong, sometimes even scary women for sure. i had a great conversation with an icelandic woman about our favorites, mine is hallgerd's from njal's saga (who has a grudge against her husband for years and waits until he needs her hair for a bowstring to fight off attackers and tells him, "i don't care if you die quickly our slowly") and hers is gudrun from the laxardal saga (who told her son, after her four husbands had all been killed, that "the one i loved the best was the one i treated the worst").

sorry for the typos! i am very excited about these stories obviously.

http://image2.onlineauction.com/auctions//39586/pzdv-1019975-1.jpg

lol @ peppermint schnapps EVER being primal

This is begging for a ZS-style Palin.gif.

"Authentic. German."

Is the symbol on this understood to be some kind of nazi or white supremacist symbol?

https://scontent-lga3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.6435-9/p720x720/189955632_10225968328701233_3687902963050939148_n.jpg?_nc_cat=104&ccb=1-4&_nc_sid=3b2858&_nc_ohc=6vPo74gnlGIAX81lVVQ&_nc_ht=scontent-lga3-1.xx&oh=8fa3405cb20d52c7ae524f0a5ce0e667&oe=6138ADB6

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

lol

what is that anyway, a banjo?

would excelsior that but it's a faff, wp evan

man alive, it can be.

Has anyone else noticed the shape of the CPAC stage is the Odal Rune/SS insignia? pic.twitter.com/TCns4B1tq8

— The Daily Beans Podcast (@dailybeanspod) February 26, 2021

https://www.adl.org/education/references/hate-symbols/othala-rune

btw, as the op of this thread, I never got deeply into Norse mythology beyond the one book I was reading at the time that I got 2/3 of the way through.

btw, as the op of this thread, I never got deeply into Norse mythology beyond the one book I was reading at the time that I got 2/3 of the way through.

The Will will never Triumph with that attitude.

it's some kind of washburn banjo-guitar. It's been for sale for a while on facebook marketplace, and it's come down a ton in price, and I keep eyeing it but I'd really rather not risk any mistaken impression. IDK how widely that symbol is recognized - the first time I had ever heard of it was actually the CPAC thing and I wasn't 100% sure it was the same symbol but it seems related at least.

The cutaways look either missing or damaged.. is it supposed to look like that?

And the Runic alphabet (futhark) is not inherently racist or anything.. still used in magical practice and soothsaying

nordick banjo-guitar should be called a lute-fisk

Nice!

lmao why did i write "nordick"

neitherpenis