I 40 Perspectives from Germany The members of Manowar themselves adapted these roles as virile warriors in strong forms of self-portrayal, which place themselves somewhere between the Siegfried of Wagnerian opera and the imagery of Conan the Barbarian in visual terms based on their chosen outfits and weapons. One of the fundamental constants is a hypertrophic ideal of masculinity that is modelled on the archaic images of heroes and warriors in films and fantasy novels and that makes repeated reference to “northern” stereotypes that have become style-defining and ever-present. An increased focus on Norse themes can be found in Manowar’s 2007 concept album Gods of War9 and its collaboration with fantasy author Wolfgang Hohlbein. Despite this “advanced” collaboration and the constant reference to themes and motifs from Norse mythology, however, Manowar’s approach can in fact be considered as a kind of “carnivalisation” and “spectacularisation”. The naïve staging of – or as – Vikings for mainly entertainment purposes, the retelling of stories of gods and heroes, and the unintentional use of related cultural icons do not go any further. This “carnivalisation” is not intended to pass judgment on the aesthetic value and the seriousness of what is presented; I am using the term merely to describe a mode of presentation that chooses its specific referentialisation and costuming as one of other possible purposes for the show and the amusement, without interfering with further interests – philosophical claims, historical connections or identity-forming functions. What one sees is the major part; no cultural tradition is generated, and no political claims are made. Towards the end of the 1980s, the Swedish band Bathory attempted a more serious approach. The album Blood Fire Death10 (1988) can be seen as the founding document of Viking metal, a subgenre whose thematic focus is exclusively on Vikings and Norse myths. After three style-defining albums with mostly Satanic content, the leader of the band, Thomas “Quorthon” Forsberg, attempted a reorientation with reference to Norse mythology. This mission was expressed in a sophisticated concept that was something of a novelty at the time. For the album’s cover, he used the painting Åsgårdsreien (“The Wild Hunt of Odin”, 1872) by the Norwegian artist Peter Nicolai Arbo, a well-known example of Norwegian national Romanticism (fig. 1). Besides the cover, some of the song titles also make reference to mythology: the album opens with an instrumental, Oden’s Ride Over Northland, and ends with the title track, which describes an epic battle and invokes imagery from the doomsday vision of Ragnarök from the Edda. It concludes by evoking a state where the “souls of the ancients” reign. Using polyphonic vocals, acoustic guitars and the sounds of neighing horses and thunderstorms, Blood Fire Death not only introduced new stylistic elements into (black) metal but also served to create a unique atmosphere that was the first of its kind and that set traditional metal apart. These efforts to find other suitable moods and atmospheres and their integration into a kind of Gesamtkunstwerk were stepped up further in the follow-up albums Hammerheart11 (1990) and Twilight of the Gods12 (1991), which explored Norse themes from every angle. However, the first band to actually describe their music as Viking metal was Norway’s Enslaved, who made their debut in 1994 with the album Vikingligr Veldi.13 For the first time, Enslaved presented a concept that combined all the various aspects – the cover, the song titles, the lyrics in Icelandic and the portrayal of the musicians as Vikings in allegedly historical costumes. Their music and appearance are clearly serious; there are no recognisable carnivalesque moments in their concept. Enslaved thus defined a whole style and brought numerous bands in their wake (Einherjer, Amon Amarth, Thyrfing and many others) who helped Fig. 1 Album Cover of Bathory, using the picture Åsgårdsreien by Norwegian painter Peter Nicolai Arbo. Bathory: Blood Fire Death. Under One Flag, 1988.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTMyNjA1