Tore Hund spears Olaf at the battle of Stiklestad, Peter Nicolai Arbo, 1859. Wikicommons. Some rights reserved.A mere week after Norway commemorated the six years that have passed since the worst terrorist attacks in modern Norwegian history, perpetrated by the white right-wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik, residents and tourists in the sleepy southern Norwegian city of Kristiansand (population 61,000) were shocked to find a group of 60-70 neo-Nazis occupying the main shopping street of the city for an entire day earlier this summer.
The neo-Nazis, all but two white males, were marching under the slogan ‘Crush The Gay Lobby’ and handing out leaflets ascribing the power of said ‘gay lobby’ to the work of ‘Jewish Cultural Marxists.’ In the aftermath, they celebrated their taking over the central shopping street in Kristiansand as a significant victory, and declared that they had managed to turn Kristiansand into a ‘National Socialist Zone.’ And it was some kind of achievement, for Norway has not seen so many marching Nazis in the streets since the Nazi German Occupation of Norway during World War II (1940-45).
The day was Saturday July 29, known as Olsok in Norway. It is ascribed particular importance by the Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish and Danish neo-Nazis who had gathered in Markeveien in Kristiansand that morning due to the fact that in Norwegian mythology, the famous battle at Stiklestad in mid-Norway, in which the Viking king believed to have turned Norway into a Christian domain, Olav II Haraldsson (993-1030) or Olav The Sacred, was killed, battling his heathen enemies on this day in 1030 A. C. This is an act of cultural and historical appropriation similar to that which the disturbed Anders Behring Breivik undertook in declaring himself a conservative Christian ‘Knight Templar.’ It is by no means without precedent in Nazi circles in Norway: the Norwegian Nazi collaborationist regime under Prime Minister Vidkun Quisling during World War II emphasized and instrumentalized Norse and Norwegian mythology, and appropriated Stiklestad and Olav The Sacred in their propaganda.
