Götiska Förbundet, Viking Club and Thule-Gesellschaft: How could three early Viking societies develop so differently?

In 19th and early 20th century Europe, interest in the Viking Age resulted in the foundation of countless Viking clubs and societies (Wawn 2002: 5-9). However, although they were interested in the same field - at least on the surface - these societies developed very differently. In the following, the foundation and development of three such societies shall be compared: The Swedish Götiska Förbundet, the British Viking Club and the German Thule-Gesellschaft. The reason for picking these three is that they illustrate the very different aspects of how the Vikings were used in Europe during this period.

Götiska Förbundet in Sweden

First, let me talk about Götiska Förbundet in Sweden. Scandinavia was the first region where people became interested in the ancient North. In 1809, Sweden lost a large proportion of its empire and had to find a new identity as a national, Swedish kingdom. In 1811, former students of the university at Uppsala founded Götiska Förbundet in order to explore the Swedish past and “give the Swedish people a sense of unity, a people with a common history, a relevant present, and a possible future” (Molin 2003: 269). Already in its first year of existence, the society started publishing its journal Iduna, which contained scientific articles on historic monuments as well as nationalistic poems (Molin 2003: 274).

However, the society was not only interested in monument research. It also studied Swedish folk tradition in order to create a romanticised all-Swedish version of the past. Already in 1811, co-founder Erik Gustaf Geijer wrote: Andrea Blendl, CNS, UHI Paper for St Magnus Conference, Kirkwall, 2016

“I allmänhet talat, så borde väl skaldestycken, ingivna av kärlek till fornåldern,lämpligen finna rum i en skrift, vars föremål för det första är att väcka en sådan kärlek.”

In English: “Generally speaking, songs filled with love for the past should well find room in a publication whose primary goal is to awaken such a love.” (Landquist 1923: 145)

Consequently, for the Götiska Förbundet, the promotion of Swedish folk music became equally important than their historic research. Nordic music and sagas were supposed to convey character traits which the Nordic race, including the exclusively male society’s members, had carried since the Viking age: Good health, intelligence and natural strength (Geisler 2007: 26-8).

In addition, the society tried to replace the Greek gods, which had become popular in arts during the époque of Classicism, with their Northern counterparts. This led, for example, to a competition in 1817 for depictions of the Norse gods in visual arts. The works that were submitted to Götiska Förbundet had striking similarities in style and fashion with their Greek antetypes but were nevertheless perceived as proper Nordic artworks (Kuhn 2000: 211-213). This shows that, despite their official focus on

research and ancient monuments, the founders of Götiska Förbundet were trying to establish an idealised Nordic past, not a true representation of the Viking age. The work of Götiska Förbundet during the first half of the 19th century in Sweden was so influential that the entire époque is now called Göticism. However, when interest in the Viking age dwindled in the 1840s and additionally, founding member Jacob Adlerbeth died in 1844, the society was officially dissolved and its library handed over to the Swedish national archive Riksarkivet. Nevertheless, a romanticised view of the Andrea Blendl, CNS, UHI Paper for St Magnus Conference, Kirkwall, 2016

Viking past remained popular throughout Sweden (Eriksson 2009: 11-12, Rydh 2015).

The Viking Club in Britain

While interest in Sweden already dwindled, the Viking age became a popular subject of research in Britain (Wawn 1993: 213-214, Wawn 2002: 5-9). In the course of the 19th century, many men from the Northern Isles had moved to London and in order to preserve their heritage founded the Orkney and Shetland Society. In 1892, members of this society decided that “a branch of the society be formed of a social and literary character” (Townsend 1993: 180). About forty members thus founded what they

simply called Viking Club and met monthly, primarily to discuss Orkney and Shetland literature (Townsend 1993: 180-182). However, there was a political motivation behind this club, too: Its co-founder and first secretary, Alfred Johnston, also actively campaigned for devolution for Orkney and Shetland, though without success. He even drafted a constitution for the Northern Isles’ independence, drawing back on Norse institutions like the Althing, and when he could not get support for his ideas, he used the terms to rename the board positions in the Viking Club (Townsend 1993:

181-183). This shows that even though in its official aims the Viking Club was a literary society, the motives for its foundation were somewhat political, too. In 1894, the club gave itself a new constitution which contained many Old Norse terms and positioned it primarily as a literary study club – however, it received considerable ridicule in the press for using Viking names. Nevertheless, the Viking Club continued its work, introducing an annual dinner and regularly publishing the Saga-Book, which contained papers on Norse literature and saga translations

(Townsend 1993: 189-191). Andrea Blendl, CNS, UHI Paper for St Magnus Conference, Kirkwall, 2016

As soon as the sagas had been translated into English, they started being interpreted in light of Darwin’s new theories: The Vikings were an equally strong and intelligent people as the current British people, who were now also seen as descendants of Norse settlers, and therefore deserving of victory and a colonial empire (Wawn 1993: 224-226). In a way, the Viking Club’s work opened up the use of Viking literature to defend and justify British imperialism.

Quickly, the society opened up for anybody studying Norse literature and, despite some financial troubles later on, it still exists today as Viking Society for Northern Research (Townsend 1993: 184, 191-208)

. The German Thule-Gesellschaft

In Germany, the purpose of the most famous Viking-themed society could not have been more contrasting. During the 19th century, in Germany, too, people had become interested in everything Viking as part of a larger rise in popularity of Germanic myths (Schulz 2009: 8-11). Scholars like Gustaf Kossina and Karl Müllenhoff proposed that looking at Viking mythology was the key to learning about true German-ness. In strong opposition to the ex oriente-view of some of their contemporaries, these scholars promoted a heroic German past and even composed a Germanenbibel,

which contained parts of the Eddas, to provide a mythological background for their ideology (Mees 2006: 184-188, Puschner 2001: 92-93). In light of this tendency, the Thule-Gesellschaft was founded by Rudolf von Sebottendorf in Munich in August 1918. Sebottendorf was mainly interested in Germanic mysticism and picked the society’s name to allude to the mythic Ultima Thule (Gilbhard 2015: 2). The original foundation was supposed to provide a mythological Germanic framework for nationalist policies as a Studiengruppe für Germanisches Altertum (Study Group Andrea Blendl, CNS, UHI Paper for St Magnus Conference, Kirkwall, 2016

for Germanic Antiquity) and grew fast to 1500 members. Its appeal was that for the first time it connected pre-First World War völkisch tradition with occult, pagan and racist ideas (Wosnitzka 2015). However, after the First World War ended in November 1918 with Germany’s defeat the Thule-Gesellschaft quickly became an entirely political organisation, involved in the counter-revolution in the short-lived Bavarian Räterepublik and later in the Weimar Republic. The right-wing publication Völkischer Beobachter, which was owned by the society, claimed a Jüdische

Weltverschwörung (Worldwide Jewish Conspiracy) was ongoing and Jews were the Todfeind des Deutschen Volkes (the mortal enemy of the German people). Consequently, members of the Thule-Gesellschaft participated in the attempt to murder the socialist Bavarian president Kurt Eisner in 1919. In that year, a splinter group of the society was founded for violent action and called Kampfbund Thule, which already by its name put a focus on the violent struggle. Less than one year after the society’s foundation, Jewish members were excluded from participation. However, a suggested membership of later Nazi greats like Hitler could never be confirmed (Pomplun 2012: 597-599).

After the Räterepublik had been destroyed in late 1919, the primary reason for the Thule-Gesellschaft did not exist anymore and membership quickly dwindled. Nevertheless, until its official disbandment in 1932, its ideology influenced many other groups, for example the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei which was to become the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (Pomplun 2012: 597-599). Generally, it must be stated that compared to other Viking societies of its time, the Thule-Gesellschaft was never focused on research but merely looked at the Viking Age to provide a mythological backdrop for a racist ideology and thus laid the ground for what was to become the ideology of National Socialism in Germany. It is striking Andrea Blendl, CNS, UHI Paper for St Magnus Conference, Kirkwall, 2016

that most members of the Thule society were academics, aristocrats and businessmen (Pomplun 2012: 596). Possibly, many of them first joined the society out of true interest for Germanic antiquity and were then caught and seduced by the racist propaganda the society wove into its publications.

How could Viking societies develop so differently?

This short summary of the three Viking societies shows just how differently they developed: National romanticism and folk songs in Sweden, scientific interest in saga literature in Britain and esotericism paired with violent racism in Germany. So how could Viking societies in 19th and early 20th century Europe develop so differently? Generally, this overview illustrates how the Viking societies of 19th and early 20th century Europe mirror wider political developments. They all have in common that people started looking into the past in order to discover an identity for themselves. It certainly is not a coincidence that the long 19th century saw both the creation of nation states and rising interest in the past in the Scandinavian and German-speaking countries (Brown 2002). However, the ideologies that the perceived past was used to support were very different.

In many cases, a lack of scientific knowledge about the Viking Age provided the option to interpret things in support of any given ideology. This becomes particularly obvious when looking at the interpretation of runes. One of the more curious effects was the invention of so-called Runenhäuser (Rune houses) Guido von List, one of the primary ideological idea-givers for the Thule-Gesellschaft, created a theory that the timbers in half-timber houses were meant to be runes and thus had a meaning to those inaugurated in secret Germanic knowledge (Puschner 2004: 110-111). This example clearly shows that, as long as there is not one generally accepted Andrea Blendl, CNS, UHI Paper for St Magnus Conference, Kirkwall, 2016

interpretation, facts can be used to “prove” obscure ideas as well, supporting any ideology – which might have made the Vikings such a popular theme for political activists.

What is particularly interesting about the three societies is that they delved into very different fields and disciplines of studying the past. From the beginning, Götiska Förbundet was focused on folk traditions (Geisler 2007), while the Viking Club was primarily into literary study (Wawn 1993) and the Thule-Gesellschaft dealt with the occult (Wosnitzka 2015). It is possible that due to the fact that each group only looked at limited aspects of the Viking Age they were led into their very different directions.

It is striking that in each of the three examples interest in the Nordic past arose when the region was in a state of political turmoil and had to negotiate for a new national identity. In Sweden, the empire had been lost once and for all and the Göticism movement certainly was a reaction to people’s desire for a past to be proud of (Kuhn 2000), while in Britain, some decades later, the glorious Victorian age and the Industrial Revolution had caused huge social and economic changes and brought young men from the Northern Isles to London. As Andrew Wawn puts it:

“‘Dominion of a great part of the earth’, ‘customs and vocables’ dying out, triumphalism and dissolution, in the 1890s the pursuit of Old Norse in England was ever driven by pride in the one and fear of the other” (Wawn 1993: 230). Therefore, the foundation of the Viking Club might also be attributed to a necessity to establish a claim on the Nordic past for the British Isles as well as providing an identity for young men who had been uprooted by moving to London due to the social changes in Britain. In Germany, Viking interest reached its first climax somewhat Andrea Blendl, CNS, UHI Paper for St Magnus Conference, Kirkwall, 2016

later, after the loss of the First World War and most of the Reich’s territory, with bleak prospects for the young republic’s future due to the treaty of Versailles. The German people felt threatened to their core – and their reaction was to invent a past full of brave warriors and esoteric secrets, which on the one hand provided them with a claim for supremacy over other “races” ignoring the lost war but on the other hand also gave hope for a better future because on the long run, the strong Germanic blood would prevail (Mees 2006).

Thus, it is certainly not a coincidence that the three societies were founded when and where they were and then developed in such different ways. A particular combination of regional circumstances and political events caused them - despite their superficially common roots as societies interested in the Viking past – to become so different to each other. Generally, it can be said that to some extent, all three societies had political goals. Even the Viking Club considered itself “patriotic” (Townsend 1993: 184). Yet, the Viking Club was still the least nationalist or radical among the three societies – and it is the only one which still exists today. Andrea Blendl, CNS, UHI Paper for St Magnus Conference, Kirkwall, 2016

Bibliography:

Brown, C. (2002), ‘State and nation in nineteenth century international political theory’, in T. Nardin and N. Rengger (eds.), International relations in political thought: Texts from the ancient Greeks to the First World War (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge). pp. 457-469.

Eriksson, E. (2009), Bland gudar och krigare: Asatro, ideologi och mansidealet i nationalromantikens konst (Institutionen för humaniora och samhällsvetenskap, Högskolan i Gävle). [online: https://www.divaportal.org/smash/get/diva2:223446/FULLTEXT02.pdf, accessed: 15th October 2015].

Geisler, U. (2007), ‘Herders „Volksgeist“ och Götiska Förbundet‘, in G. Andersson and U. Geisler (eds.), Myt och Propaganda: Musiken i nazismens tjänst i Sverige och Tyskland (Forum för Levande Historia, Lund). pp. 25-46.

Gilbhard, H. (2015), ‘Thule-Gesellschaft, 1918-1933‘, in Historisches Lexikon Bayerns. [online: http://www.historisches-lexikonbayerns.de/artikel/artikel_44318, accessed: 28th May 2015].

Kuhn, H. (2000). ‘Greek Gods in Northern Costumes: Visual Representations of Norse Mythology in 19th Century Scandinavia’, in G. Barnes and M. Clunies Ross (eds.) Old Norse Myths, Literature and Society: Proceedings of the 11th International Saga Conference, University of Sydney, 2-7 July, 2000 (Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Sidney, Sidney). pp. 209-219.

Landquist, J. (1923). Erik Gustaf Geijer. Samlade Skrifter: Ny utökad upplaga I tidsföljd. Del 1, 1803-1817 (Norstedt, Stockholm)

Mees, B. (2006), ‘Germanische Sturmflut: From the Old Norse Twilight to the Fascist New Dawn’, Studia Neophilologica (78:2). pp. 184-198.

Molin, T. (2003). Den rätta tidens mått: Göthiska förbundet, fornforskningen och den Andrea Blendl, CNS, UHI Paper for St Magnus Conference, Kirkwall, 2016

antikvariska landskapet (Institutionen för historiska studier, Umeå Universitet, Umeå).

Pomplun, J.-P. (2012), ‘Thule-Gesellschaft‘, in W. Benz (ed.), Handbuch des Antisemitismus, Band 5: Organisationen, Institutionen, Bewegungen (De Gruyter, Berlin). pp. 596-599.

Puschner, U. (2001), ‘Die Germanenideologie im Kontext der völkischen Weltanschauung‘, Göttinger Forum für Altertumswissenschaft (4). pp. 85-97.

Puschner, U. (2004), ‘Germanenideologie und völkische Weltanschauung‘, in H. Beck et al. (eds.), Zur Geschichte der Gleichung „germanisch-deutsch“: Sprache und Namen, Geschichte und Institutionen (De Gruyter, Berlin). pp. 103-130.

Rydh, H. (2015), ‘Jacob Adlerbeth‘, in Svenskt biografiskt lexikon. [online: http://sok.riksarkivet.se/sbl/artikel/5545, accessed: 15th October 2015].

Schulz, K. (2009), ‘ „Sang an Aegir“ – Nordische Mythen um 1900: Eine Einleitung‘, in K. Schulz and F. Heesch (eds.), Edda-Rezeption/Band 1: „Sang an Aegir“. (Universitätsverlag Winter, Heidelberg). pp. 7-12.

Townsend, J.A.B. (1993). ‘The Viking Society: A Centenary History‘, Saga-Book of the Viking Society (XXIII, 1990-1993). pp. 180-212.

Wawn, A. (2002). The Vikings and the Victorians: Inventing the Old North in 19th Century Britain (D.S.Brewer, Cambridge).

Wawn, A. (1993). ‘The Spirit of 1892: Sagas, Saga-Steads and Victorian Philology’, Saga-Book of the Viking Society (XXIII, 1990-1993). pp. 213-252.

Wosnitzka, D. (2015), ‘Die Thule-Gesellschaft‘, in Deutsches Historisches Museum Berlin. [online: http://www.dhm.de/lemo/kapitel/weimarerrepublik/antisemitismus/thule-gesellschaft.html, accessed: 12th October 2015].