RUNTUNA, Sweden — The cries of “Hell!” “Hell!” ringing out across a snow-clad landscape attracted a curious crowd of weekend tobogganers. At the foot of an ancient Viking burial mound, one of the prime sledding spots near the Swedish village of Runtuna, a circular gathering of pagan worshipers was completing a sacrificial ceremony.
The religious service involved a wooden hammer held aloft, various invocations to Norse deities and ceremonial drinking from two large black horns, one brimming with beer, the other with nonalcoholic mead. Two women led the service, which honored female Norse gods and spirits.
Several worshipers explained later that no one was referring to eternal damnation while shouting “Hell!” The group are not Satanists. Their chants, they said, were a salutation in the Old Norse language, a commonplace greeting in Sweden and other Nordic countries during the era of the Vikings, whose cultural and political peak was about a thousand years ago.
“Hell” also has echoes of the German word “Heil!” and its haunting associations with Nazi salutes.
This linguistic link forces these pagan worshipers, whose beliefs do have a strongly nationalist tilt, to disavow any connection with neo-Nazi factions.Amid a boom in Viking-related TV shows and films — and a corresponding surge in Viking-inspired tourism and advertising campaigns — there is increasing political tension and social unease over the use of various runes, gods and rituals from the Viking era.
Viking symbols are often used in mainstream branding initiatives for everything from barber shops to chocolate bars to Norway’s downhill ski team. One longstanding pagan group, Forn Sed, has encouraged the use of Viking symbols like a wooden Thor’s hammer as an icon for gay pride.
But some use of the symbols reflects an extremist side of the Viking cultural renaissance taking hold across the Nordic region and beyond.
Avowed neo-Nazi groups like the small but violent Nordic Resistance Movement say they draw inspiration from the Viking era and have adopted elements of the region’s Viking past. The group’s symbol is a Viking rune on a green background.
Vikings “symbolize everything about Northern Europeans,” said Haakon Forwald, a spokesman for the Norwegian chapter of the group. “We are adventurous, we take risks and settle where no man would dare to settle.”
This association has put on edge everyone from tour operators who sell Viking-themed tours to the archaeologists, runologists and historians who study the Viking era, concerned that the adoption of Viking symbols by fringe groups could toxify the meaning of a brand, a museum exhibition or an act of worship.
