In Honor of the Forefathers (original) (raw)

Routledge eBooks, 2022

Abstract

Following on from current debates about historical reenactment linked to right-wing extremism, the German reenactment group Ulfhednar is analyzed as an example of how strongly archaeologically inspired historical reenactment can be interwoven with branches of the subcultural fields of black/pagan metal and neopaganism showing politically extreme right-wing thought patterns. Asking how these respective fields may influence each other, the chapter shows how history reenactment of, e.g., the Germanic or Viking period can be based on accurate reconstructions/replicas of genuine archaeological finds while likewise perpetuating narratives of 19th/early 20th-century neopagan romanticism and völkisch ideas. Clearly detached from current academic discourse about the complexity of ancient societies an ancestral understanding of Germanic and Aryan ethnicity is revived that had provided the alleged historical essence for racist ideologies and politics in the early 20th century. Connecting historical reenactment with the historicizing (sub)cultures of modern ethnic paganism and the black/pagan metal music scene can powerfully link performative and sensually experienceable ways of history appropriations with extremist political agendas. Since open-air museums and similar forms of archaeological heritage maintenance frequently serve as scenery for reenactment performances they might add officially warranted credibility to such politically distorted conceptions of the past raising the question if reenactment practices could even function as an enforcement of politically constructed narratives of the past.

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