Norwegian Black Metal and Viking Metal

In this chapter, I undertake a critical analysis of how whiteness has been represented and performed within Norwegian black and Viking metal scenes, mapping how this is embedded within the wider national imperative of maintaining ‘Norwegianness’, and the tensions this entails. This chapter examines how dominant images of Norwegian black metal are maintained through textual representations; and furthermore, how the texts of metal sustain and reproduce cultural images of Norway and the North which are also rooted in older ethnonationalist constructions of Nordic purity. Metal sustains images of Norway and Norwegianness which are also suspended in the national imaginary. The ‘Nordic imaginary’ which flourishes within the products and practices of scenes themselves is also sustained and reproduced through the body of academic and popular work which has accompanied the development of black and Viking metal.