Nordicism and Modernity

Gregers Einer Forssling

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9783030612108
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

This book offers a complete narrative of the development of Nordicism, from its roots in the National Romantic movement of the late eighteenth century, through to its most notorious manifestation in Nazi Germany, and finally to the fragmented forms that still remain in contemporary society. It is distinctive in treating Nordicism as a phenomenon with its own narrative, rather than as discreet episodes in works studying aspects of Eugenics, Nationalism, Nazism and the reception history of Old Norse culture. It is also distinctive in applying to this narrative a framework of analysis derived from the parallel theories of Roger Griffin and Zygmunt Bauman, to examine Nordicism as a process of myth creation protecting both the individual and society from the challenges and terror of an ever-changing and accelerating state of modernity.

© The Author(s) 2020

G. E. ForsslingNordicism and Modernityhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61210-8_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction: Nordicism, Myth and Modernity

Gregers Einer Forssling¹

(1)

Pitstone, UK

End Abstract

Nordicism is more than a historical term that should be applied to a marginal group of Northern European and American racist thinkers of the early twentieth century. It is a living, evolving, cultural phenomenon rooted in the idealisation of the ‘noble savage’ during the late Enlightenment and Romantic periods. This later developed into a powerful racial fantasy through its fusion with the emerging fields of racial science and eugenics. This work attempts to shed fresh light on the nature and evolution of Nordicism and its relationship with modernity by examining it as a societal phenomenon which, in its variant forms, came into being as a source of psychological rootedness and identity with which to counter the disembedding, disenchanting impact of an ever-changing and accelerating state of modernity. This conceptual framework initially draws on Roger Griffin’s model of modernism, as a reaction to the corrosive impact of modernisation, and later incorporates Zygmunt Bauman’s parallel theory of the existential and socio-political dilemmas posed by reality’s increasing ‘liquefaction’ under the impact of contemporary modernity. By using these perspectives to re-examine Nordicism, this work reveals its nature as a set of complex but coherent mythic strategies for establishing a sheltering home, a refuge from the relentless pace of progress. In this context, myth will be interpreted as the creation of narratives recounting the origins of a people, defining its characteristics and explaining its evolution.

The historical development and dynamics of Nordicism will be analysed through this framework of sociological theory focusing on the role played by myth-making in protecting the individual and society from the challenges of an ever-changing state of modernity. This condition is characterised by ceaseless flux and endless liminality, denying the possibility of a stable, homogeneous and unitary culture of the sort that was believed to exist in pre-modern times. This study of its development will reveal how Nordicism has evolved since its emergence in the nineteenth century and the role of the Romantic Movement in laying the foundations for this development through its idealisation of a ‘Golden Age’ of the Nordic race, a time where life’s dramas could still be lived out simply, powerfully and heroically. On the basis of this historical enquiry, this work will explore what fresh light can be thrown on Nazism’s creation of an idealised image of the Nordic as the rationale for the ‘re-Nordification’ of Germany and the purging of Europe of its Jewish communities. Through this lens, the process of myth-making will be approached as the manifestation of an innate human need to retain a sense of spirituality and social fixity to form a refuge from the disorientating effects of an ever-changing state of modernity that denies permanence or any sense of rootedness. In the words of Karl Marx, ‘all that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sombre senses, his real conditions of life’.¹ A concluding section will study the way that adapted fragments of the failed project of Nordicism, both Romantic and Nazi, are manifested in contemporary society as part of our current society’s eclectic appropriation of the historical and mythic materials of past cultures.

This study therefore combines academic strands. Firstly, it examines the history of Nordicism, which until now has been treated as a series of discreet episodes in the revival of Nordic myth with the main focus on either Romantic idealisation or Nazi revivalism. Secondly, it draws on a new interdisciplinary field of investigations into modernity that focuses on modernism as a bid to restore meaning and a sense of the sacred to modern society, not just through artistic innovation but in both socio-political and cultural initiatives of renewal. On the premise of this approach, existing studies of Nordicism in its three major manifestations (nineteenth-century Romanticism, Nazism and post-war identity politics) will be studied to create a continuous narrative of the evolution of Nordicism and its relationship with modernity.

Locating This Investigation into Nordicism Within Existing Research

This work builds primarily on two fields of research, modernity and Nordicism, and as such combines two areas of academic endeavour, which have often remained distinct within their respective disciplines of history and sociology. To develop a deeper understanding of the development and dynamics of Nordicism, I intend to draw on these complementary fields to examine its development in Northern Europe and the USA. This syncretic approach will encompass a range of primary and secondary sources examined through a theoretical framework drawn from the work of contemporary political, sociological and anthropological theorists. These academics have analysed the impact of modernity on society and the individual and propose that the ‘disenchanting’ impact on traditional culture constantly stimulates the countervailing force of myth-making to restore a sense of transcendence and rootedness to human existence.

Within the field of historical research, Nordicism has often been examined as a component of nineteenth-century new religions, racial science, eugenics, neo-paganism and Nazi occultism but less frequently as the single focus of a work concerned with it as a single entity with its own historical narrative and socio-cultural dynamics. This work draws on a number of published sources to present a chronological series of case studies that show the evolution of Nordicism from early to contemporary modernity. Notable in the limited research into the evolution of Nordicism and its relationship with modernity is the work of Christopher Hutton whose valuable insights have been cited herein. The aim of this study is to shed new light on the evolution of Nordicism by applying existing scholarship to a particular matrix of social theory and to reinterpret it as a distinct point in a cluster of reactions by the individual and society to modernity. In this way the inner cohesion and narrative continuity of Nordicism as a historical and contemporary phenomenon can be viewed from a fresh perspective.

In order to establish a theoretical matrix of analysis for the evolution of Nordicism as an aspect of modernity, this work will initially apply the theories of modernism and revitalisation movements of Roger Griffin. It will later dovetail this analysis with the theories of ‘liquid modernity’ and ‘Retropia’ proposed by Zygmunt Bauman, to examine how fragments of Nordicism can still be identified in our fast-paced contemporary society. Their work on the relationship between the individual, society and the endlessly shifting dialectic between the culture-fragmenting impact of modernity and the culture-recreating force of modernism forms a matrix of social theory for the analysis of the dynamics of Nordicism as more than a historical strand of marginal political, religious and scientific thought. Instead, it emerges as a social phenomenon which is present even in today’s modern, increasingly secularised society and represents a significant strand of the constant struggle of human beings to re-imbue human life with some significance and sense of rootedness.

This work will also study the development of our reception of Old Norse culture and its transformation during the twentieth century. It draws, in part, on the research of academics such as Martin Arnold, Andrew Wawn, Margaret Clunies Ross, Lars Lönnroth, Heather O’Donoghue and Else Roesdahl who have made a significant contribution to our evolving reception and interpretations of Old Norse culture. Our perception and understanding of Old Norse culture is, however, still a work in progress as enhanced scientific techniques, applied to the field of archaeology, continue to provide us with fresh insights into this period, which have hitherto remained misunderstood or romanticised. This has led to a flourishing revision of this period, through interdisciplinary research in fields such as literature, history, anthropology, linguistics and archaeology, to create an increasingly realistic picture of daily life and consequently our overall understanding of Old Norse culture. These developments are vital to our understanding of the origins of the emergence of Nordicism during the nineteenth century. Much of the perceived image of the Nordic people at the time was based on semi-fictionalised and biased accounts, written with an authority that transformed it, in many cases, into historical fact. This lack of factual knowledge and empirical evidence allowed myth and history to be merged, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, to create an idealised image of the Nordic race which Nordicists appropriated as worthy of protection and regeneration.

This proposed contribution to our understanding of Nordicism is therefore based on an interdisciplinary approach drawing on the complementary fields of history, literature, art, anthropology and sociology. It can be situated in the cluster of research which has surfaced in recent years into the development of various social, political and religious movements, which have emerged since the nineteenth century, in the form of revitalisation movements, seeking to re-establish a sense of rootedness and meaning in an ever-changing setting of modernity.

Recasting Nordicism

Before examining the historical development and dynamics of Nordicism as a socio-cultural phenomenon in its own right, this work will establish a working definition that distinguishes it from the various movements which have influenced our current perception of the term and which will be examined in more detail in later chapters. Since the late nineteenth century, movements such as National Romanticism, Aryanism, nationalism and Nazism have all interacted at various levels with Nordicism. Through this association, certain ‘conceptual baggage’ has accumulated which can often confuse any definition seeking to express the core of the movement. Scholarship by academics such as Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke and Christopher M. Hutton has done much to disentangle and differentiate the concepts of Pan-Germanism, Aryanism and Nordicism during the Third Reich, but in Hutton’s own words, ‘a considerable communication gap exists between specialist studies on Nazi Germany and the wider academic public’.²

The problematic nature of analysing any form of historical ideology is that we are often faced with what could be termed a ‘composite definition’. This is formed by the actions and theories of notable personalities associated with a belief system and the reactions of the movement to a range of various historical events and influences. Ideologies therefore take on what could be termed an ‘existential nature’ defining themselves and being defined by observers and commentators, according to the various forms they have taken and the ideas, events and actions with which they have become associated. The result is a ‘composite definition’, a multi-layered ideological construct whose identity has developed and evolved over time and which, in many cases, is still in the process of being revised and defined.

A related factor, which further complicates any fixed definition of an ideological movement, is the fusion of both convergent and divergent shades of opinion within a movement at any given moment, even within totalitarian regimes such as Nazism. These elements create an ideological concept that is at the same time homogenous and heterogeneous, composed of a cluster of individual but generally compatible ‘world-views’, bound together by a core ideal and messianic leader. A key question raised by this issue of convergence and divergence within a movement is the extent to which any individual or group must conform to some or all of the definitional criteria of an ideology to qualify for inclusion in a movement. This is a problematic factor in any form of classification and has a significant bearing on any definition of Nordicism as an independent phenomenon and any subsequent identification of those considered Nordicists.

As a starting point in developing a working definition of Nordicism, it is useful to consider some established definitions of the terms ‘Nordicism’ and ‘Nordicists’. The Oxford English Dictionary sums up Nordicism as a historical term used to describe ‘the doctrine of or belief in the cultural and racial supremacy of the Nordic people’ and a Nordicist as ‘a person who believes in the supremacy of the Nordic people’.³ Another description, proposed by A. James Gregor in the Phylon journal in 1960, also focused on biological and cultural supremacy but included an important element of the deterioration of the Nordic people, a pessimism that inspired the emergence of a range of modernist revitalisation movements:

Nordicism involves the belief that men of the “...