Political Appropriation
Historical Background: Pan-Germanism and the 19th Century
The Romantic nationalist interest in Old Norse and Germanic culture was from the outset bound up with ideas of ethnic and cultural community. German Romantics such as Friedrich Schlegel and the Brothers Grimm contributed to constructing the idea of an original Germanic people with a shared mythological tradition. This idea had a scholarly and a political layer that were difficult to keep separate: the successes of comparative philology lent legitimacy to nationalism, and nationalism funded and encouraged philology.
In the latter half of the 19th century, Pan-Germanism developed into a political movement that regarded the purity of Old Norse and Germanic culture as an ideal to be restored. The term "Aryan", originally a linguistic designation for the Indo-European language family, was reinterpreted as a racial category and linked to notions of Nordic supremacy. Houston Stewart Chamberlain and Gobineau were influential in shaping this pseudo-scientific racial ideology, and Wagner, who corresponded with Gobineau, moved in these circles without distancing himself from them.
The Thule Society, founded in Munich in 1918, was one of the organising centres of this völkisch movement. The society took its name from the mythological northern continent Thule and used runes and Nordic symbols as identity markers. From the Thule Society's circles emerged the organisation that would eventually be reconstituted as the National Socialist German Workers' Party. The symbiotic relationship between Pan-Germanic mysticism and political extremism was shaped decades before the Nazi party came to power.
The Nazi Period
National Socialism's relationship to Old Norse mythology was neither uniform nor consistent, but its symbolic and ideological appropriation of Nordic cultural heritage was thoroughgoing. Heinrich Himmler was instrumental in institutionalising this interest and in 1935 founded the Ahnenerbe, a research institute whose purpose was to "scientifically" demonstrate the superiority and historical priority of the Nordic-Aryan race. The Ahnenerbe funded expeditions, archaeological excavations, and philological projects, drawing a number of genuine scholars into an ideologically driven agenda.
The symbolism of the SS uniform drew explicitly from the runic alphabet. The Death's Head division used the toteningsrune, the "life and death rune", and the SS designation itself consisted of two Sig-runes in the form of lightning bolts. These symbolic choices were deliberate and thought through by Himmler and the SS ideologist Karl Maria Wiligut, whose Nordic-mystical fantasies had limited grounding in actual Old Norse scholarship but considerable political reach. The swastika cross, which Himmler and Hitler adopted as Nazism's central symbol, is not primarily Nordic in origin but was linked in the völkisch tradition to an imagined Aryan primal symbol.
Serious Old Norse scholars during the same period held varying positions. Some actively collaborated with the National Socialist project; others attempted to maintain scholarly distance. The Norwegian philologist and resistance figure Anders Hovden illustrates the other extreme: deep familiarity with Norwegian cultural tradition and active opposition to the occupier. The post-war critical revision of these collaborations has continued since the 1940s and persists in academic literature.
Contemporary Issues and Reclamation
The post-war period has seen continued use of Nordic runic symbols and mythological motifs within far-right environments in Europe and North America. Life runes, the Odal rune, and the Tiwaz rune appear in tattooing and identity contexts among groups with white power ideology. This use is well documented by organisations such as the Anti-Defamation League and European security bodies. It creates an immediate and difficult context for anyone bearing these symbols in other settings.
The scholarly community has responded with a clear distinction between historical analysis and ideological instrumentalisation. The Society for the Study of the Indigenous Religions of Europe and individual researchers such as Mattias Gardell, Kathleen Blee, and Stefanie von Schnurbein have studied and documented how far-right movements appropriate Old Norse material. This research serves a dual purpose: to understand the movements and to provide analytical tools for countering their use of history.
Modern Scandinavians and heathen practitioners navigate this legacy in varying ways. Icelandic Ásatrúarfélagið, The Troth, and Forn Sed Sverige have all issued explicit statements that Old Norse religion and culture do not belong to any ethnic group, and have actively distanced themselves from racist instrumentalisation of symbols and myths. Certain symbols, such as the Valknut and Mjölnir, are the subject of ongoing discussion about how they can be worn and displayed without inadvertently signalling affiliation with far-right movements. These conversations take place openly within heathen communities and attest to a living and critical relationship with the tradition's dual history.