Performing Paganism 111 I “Północny Wilk” and the Nationalist Association Zadruga, continue the tradition of a more pronounced combination of religious and political engagement.14 Back in the early 20th century, the fascination with Slavic folk culture and antiquity also captured the imagination of poets and artists, as shown in particular in the works of Zofia Stryjeńska, Stanisław Jakubowski and especially Stanisław Szukalski. The latter founded the artists’ collective Szczep Rogate Serce („The Tribe of the Horned Hearts“) with its periodical Krak (fig. 3), which was another important group, and Szukalski’s works are still popular amongst present-day adherents of the Polish Native Faith.15 His rich artistic oeuvre as well as his historical theories and his journalistic and political activism make him, with Stachniuk, another significant point of reference. Though spending most of his life in the USA, where his family had emigrated in his early youth, he studied and worked in Poland on numerous occasions, frequently depicting historical and mythological themes and figures, so his art appears as a “knot of currents where history, mythology, literature, political thought, art and sculpting and patriotism meet with a finally looming vision of national revival”.16 It is therefore not surprising that it features in many releases in the scene described here, including the covers of self-published political magazines or black metal albums and even on tattoos. Only a few of the pre-war Slavophile- and Pagan- minded groups outlasted the Polish People’s Republic, because, unlike in a few other socialist countries to some extent, these currents were suppressed, and some of their representatives, including Stachniuk himself, were prosecuted or even imprisoned.17 Although the Polish government’s history policy in the 1950s and 1960s did focus on the Middle Ages, it was only the period of the first emergence of the Polish state under the Piast dynasty, rather than the pre-Christian Middle Ages, that received major attention.18 Nevertheless, the seeds of a fascination with Pagan mediaeval history, and the Vikings in particular, were sown amongst many young Fig. 2 Polish Pagan Folk band Percival performing at the Festival of Slavs and Vikings in Wolin, Poland, 2018.
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