#after all—look at where we get a lot of pop culture viking imagery from: it’s Wagner

[daisyachain]

The nature of time is that (culturally) Christian Euro/Anglo colonial consumers (hereafter white ‘people’) fetishize the idea of being ‘close to nature’ or ‘primitive’ or ‘savage’ and latch on to the idea that there are groups of people in the world who are somehow bestial or who have some kind of special powers from holding animist beliefs/beliefs that acknowledge the body as opposed to the Christian belief that the body is a kind of useless appendage to a person. We see this across decades from the 19thC to today in the racist fetishization of indigenous people across the globe, particularly residents of the Americas, Australasia, and southern/eastern Africa.

White consumers use a warped conception of other cultures to live out the fantasies that the Christian soul/body stuff engenders. You keep getting told that your emotions and physical sensations are the devil’s work? You want to get in touch with those physical sensations, but you don’t want it to interfere with your worldview? Simply project them on to a convenient group of people with slightly different conventions from you. Imagine how cool it would be to be 100% physical sensation (especially those pesky violent and/or sexual urges) and no mental burden, then unleash that in a way that causes millions of deaths worldwide via the dehumanization of entire nations of people just trying to live their lives. White consumers love a Proud Warrior Race Guy.

Flash forward to the 2010s, it’s generally considered impolite to spread the same propaganda that justified the genocide and dispossession of many different groups of people. However white culture hasn’t changed that much and normal human activities still need to be explained away to maintain the veneer of white intellectualism that has been used to justify white violence for years and years. You can’t just stomp around and clap your hands and dance badly, you’ve got to project it somewhere else.

But wait! There’s a community of people considered ‘tribal’ and ‘savage’, considered violent and bestial, who were never colonized! It’s…the Norse. Fetishizing early medieval North Sea raiders can’t be cultural appropriation, see, they’re white! It’s not offensive to replace an entire culture with white (male) ideas of what’s cool if that culture is totally unassociated with colonizer stereotypes and is in fact a culture of colonizers!

And that’s my theory on why there are so many Norse-inspired folk bands/video games/tv shows/memes/literally anything in the 2010s. VSaga not counted because that manga has been running since 2003 and is actually well-researched and comes out of a culture with a similar but distinct tradition of racism. The Euro storytelling tendencies of needing some kind of violent avatar have taken on ye anciente Norseman now that people care a little bit about the gallons of blood used to sketch other ethnic stereotypes. Done and dusted. Except the other side is that the fetishization of early medieval Norse culture is literally just white supremacist 101 and a lot of artists don’t step around that nearly as carefully as they should

#it’s the old saw about rammstein being constantly talked up by American nazis because they can’t speak German and having to write a song #called ‘links 2 3 4’. asscreed/the northman/vikings tv/wardruna/god of war/whatever are fairly harmless cosplay activities #but taken together it’s like. where is the line between condescending cosplay fetishization (not great but whatever) and the sort of #idealization/valorization/historical erasure that plays into white supremacist rhetoric #after all—look at where we get a lot of pop culture viking imagery from: it’s Wagner #kelsey rambles #this is a long bad post about me having Spotify as blocked on my work computer and playing some faun and then letting the radio take away #praying and wikipedia-ing that it doesn’t take me to some dogshit nazi band along the way #which YouTube recs have done repeatedly. it’s a fucking cesspool out there in the metal/neofolk world #I also keep thinking back to Faun (neofolk forerunner) saying explicitly that they use central/south asian melodies and tonalities #the whole medieval folk aesthetic thing is a cobbled-together vibe that was created by 19thC romantics and 20thC fantasy writers #i just feel like there should be more of an…acknowledgement of artifice to ward off the nazis #I like neofolk music. I love vinland saga. I enjoy mountain scenery and stories of sea raiders. #would love to be able to enjoy it without looking over my shoulder all the time