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© & ® Varg Vikernes. Do not reproduce, respect the copyrights.
A Burzum Story: Part II - Euronymous
It has been kind of interesting to see how some people have felt a need to make up stories regarding the why I ended up killing Euronymous. It is sad to see that people make up stories just because the truth is uncomfortable to them.
In 1991 most of the metal musicians in Norway believed Euronymous was a so-called cool guy, but in mid or late 1992 most of us realized that he was not. When DSP (Deathlike Silence Productions), his label, released the Burzum debut album, in March 1992, he had to take up a loan to be able to pay for it. He couldn't afford it himself, and he loaned the money from me. When he sold all the Burzum albums he paid his private bills rather than print more records - or pay me back the money he owned me (and I never saw any royalties either, for that sake). So when he was sold out he had no money to print more records. This is probably the reason why some people think I killed him for money, but certainly I wouldn't have gotten my money back by killing him. Breaking his legs would probably have worked, but not killing him. I can always get more money if I want to and I never invest any more than I can afford to loose, anyhow. I have a very relaxed relationship to money, so this rumour is just silly, and it was only talk about 36.000 NOK anyhow (about 5100 USD, about and average month's pay in Norway).
I took the consequence of his incompetence and stupidity and started up my own label, called Burznazg (in Tolkien's Black Speech that is "Dark Ring"), that was later (in late 1992) changed to Cymophane (Greek: "Wave to appear", the name of a gem that is shaped like an eye), and decided to do everything myself. I didn't need him. All he did was to sit on his fat arse in his shop and drink Coca Cola and eat kebab anyway. His shop was going down the drain, and it was only a matter of time before he (and thus DSP) was bankrupt.
We hadn't given up on him just yet though, not completely, and as a final attempt to get his shop going we agreed that I should do an interview for a newspaper to give metal-music some attention. He was out of Burzum albums, but he had other albums for sale in his shop. When I did the anonymous interview in January 1993 I exaggerated a lot and when the journalist left we - a girl and I - had a good laugh, because he didn't seem to understand that I was pulling his leg. He took everything dead serious. Unfortunately he went to the police the next day (the 19th) and had me arrested, and (the 20th) his newspaper printed his version of what I had said while I was in a holding cell unable to tell anybody that it was just a load of crap I had said to create some interest in a music genre - to help Euronymous get some customers for a change.
The interesting thing is that when I was arrested Euronymous closed down the shop instead of taking advantage of the situation, because his parents thought the attention was too uncomfortable! So the "evil" Black Metal hero did what his mother and father told him to! Pretty pathetic, alright, but by doing so he also made all my efforts more or less pointless. I spent six weeks in custody because of that, and all he did was to close down the shop! The customers came in droves, but to a closed shop! How stupid is that?!
When I got out from prison I was pretty disillusioned by all that had happened in the media, and the police had made such a mess for me when they had their raid in my apartment that it was hard to run Cymophane like I had planned to. At the same time DSP had (possibly because of the media stunt) gotten a distribution deal with a company in Oslo, and could start printing and selling DSP records again.
Euronymous had made a complete fool of himself by closing down the shop, and most of us agreed that he was a damn wimp and an idiot. I was angry at him for not taking advantage of the situation, which was why I had done that silly interview in the first place, and I didn't want anything more to do with him. There was no point in dealing with him. Instead I got a deal with a distribution company in Oslo for Cymophane, and continued on my own.
As far as I was concerned he didn't exist anymore. When he phoned me to ask me if they, the guys in Mayhem, could stay at my place when they were in Grieghallen sound studios to finish the Mayhem album, I said no. Nobody else in Bergen wanted to give them a place to stay either, and they had to rent a room at a motel. Nobody had anything against Hellhammer, the only other Mayhem member at the time, but we just didn't want anything to do with Euronymous. I have always had a good relationship to Hellhammer, and he wasn't very impressed with Euronymous either, so to speak. In 1992, when we recorded "De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas", he even made jokes that we should kill him!
For some months this dislike for Euronymous spread in the metal scene, as more and more people understood what a moron he was, and he blamed me for all of this, and started to hate me. He believed it was my fault people lost their respect for him. In a sense he was right, as I certainly didn't keep my opinions a secret, but I think he brought that upon himself. He was simply disclosed by the way he reacted to the heat. He had made a fool of himself. Further, when the media wrote all that crap about me it made him feel less important. Suddenly he was no longer the "main character" in the hardcore metal scene. As he saw it, that too was all my fault. This is probably the reason people claim the killing was a result of a power struggle between two leading figures in the scene, but the truth is that this was only important to him. I couldn't care less about this. I didn't even socialize with that many metal people, and when I went out I preferred to go to house parties and to an underground techno club in Bergen, called "Føniks" (Phoenix), while most of the metal guys went to some rock'n'roll place. In fact I went to the techno club to get away from all the new metal people, because I didn't like the attention from them. I preferred the attention of nice girls, so to speak.
Later Mayhem got a new guitarist, Snorre W. Ruch of Thorns, from Trondheim, and when he moved to Bergen I let him sleep on a guest bed, in the living room of my apartment, until he got his own apartment. At this point Euronymous had begun to plot against my life. He wanted to kill me. In his view I was the problem, so by killing me he believed he problem would go away.
His problem was that he included a few of the metal people in his plot to kill me, and they told me. He had told them because he trusted them, but obviously they had warmer feelings for me than for him, so to speak. At one point he phoned Snorre, who lived in my apartment, and Snorre let me listen to what Euronymous had to say. He told Snorre that "Varg must disappear for good" and similar, confirming the plans others had told me about earlier.
A lot people has claimed that I overreacted, because Euronymous was such a wimp anyhow, and he didn't have the guts to even try to kill me. Sure, he was a wimp, but this time he didn't tell everybody about his plans, like he usually did. I took this serious because he only told a very few people he trusted, his closest friends - or those he believed were his closest friends anyhow. Also, in August 1993 he was about to go to prison for four months, after being convicted for injuring two people with a broken bottle, because they had "looked at his girlfriend" at a bus-stop. He was not a very sympathetic guy, and when he felt that he had his back against the wall he was capable of executing his plans. If scared enough even the biggest cowards become dangerous.
The same day he told Snorre about his intentions to kill me (and thus indirectly told me, as I was listening to their conversation), I received a letter from him, where he pretended to be so very positive and where he was very friendly and wanted to meet me to discuss a contract that I had not yet signed. This was the only excuse he had to contact me, and it seemed like he was trying to set me up. According to his "friends" the plan was to meet me, knock me out with a stun-gun, tie me up and put me in the trunk of a car. He would then drive into the countryside, tie me to a tree and torture me to death while videotaping everything.
My reaction to this was naturally anger. What the Hell did he think he was? The same day I decided to drive to Oslo, hand him the signed contract and tell him to "f*** off", basically, and by doing so take away all the excuses he had to contact me ever again. I have to admit that I didn't rule out beating him up too, though. Just before I left Snorre told me he wanted to come along, because he had some new guitar riffs to show him. I intended to continue to Sarpsborg with a load of Burzum T-shirts (to Metallion of "Slayer" magazine as far as I remember), and just leave Snorre in Oslo with Euronymous. The odd (and disloyal) Snorre didn't seem to have any problems being a friend of both of us, by the way, like a normal person (with a backbone) would.
We left Bergen around 21:00 and we arrived in Oslo around 03:00 - 04:00 (I no longer remember exactly; it happened more than eleven years ago). We had taken turns driving, and when we arrived I was sleeping in the back seat. Because of that I had taken my belt off, and when we stopped I handed it to him and asked him to put it a safe place. I had a knife in the belt, and driving around with a knife lying in the backseat is not very safe.
We went to the front door of the building block and I called his doorbell. He was sleeping. You might think that visiting people in the middle of the night was a bit strange, but it was perfectly normal to us. A lot of people in the metal scene were "nocturnal creatures", so to speak. He asked who it was, and I said my name. "I am sleeping. Can't You come back later?" he said. "I got the contract. Let me in", I said and he buzzed me inn. His flat was on the fifth (or fourth?) floor and I began climbing the stairs. Snorre wanted to have a cigarette, and smoking was banned in Euronymous' apartment (and in my car), so he waited downstairs to have a smoke.
Euronymous was waiting for me in entrance, looking very nervous, and I handed him the contract. I may add that of course he was nervous. The guy he planned to murder showed up at his doorstep in the middle of the night. I then asked him what the "f***" he was up to, and when I took a step forwards he panicked. He freaked out and attacked me with a kick in the chest. I simply threw him to the door, and was a bit stunned. I wasn't stunned by his kick, but by the fact he had attacked me. I didn't expect that. Not in his apartment and not like that. He had just started to train "kick boxing" and like all beginners thought he had become "Bruce Lee" overnight, but still.
After a few seconds he jumped from the floor and dashed for the kitchen. I knew he had a knife lying on the kitchen table, and I figured that "if he's going to have a knife, I'm going to have a knife too". My belt knife was in the car, because it was in the belt I had left there, but I had a pocket knife, or rather a boot knife (with an 8 cm long blade) in my pocket. I jumped out in front of him and managed to stop him before he got his hands on the kitchen knife. At this point he had showed his intentions, so when he ran for the bedroom I figured he was going for another weapon. He had some weeks earlier told some people that he would soon get the shotgun back from the police (used by "Dead" when he shot himself), so I figured that was what he was going for, or he was going for his stun-gun. (Although he actually didn't have a stun-gun or the shotgun in his apartment, I didn't know that.) I gave chase, stabbed him and was a bit surprised when he ran out of the apartment instead. It made no sense to flee and it made me angry to know that he had started the fight, but the moment it didn't go his way he decided to flee instead, instead of fighting like a man. Such is always something I have disliked strongly.
(Some people have claimed I slew a helpless and unarmed man, but first of all he tried to get a knife before I did, and certainly he could have armed himself if he had chosen to stay and fight instead of running away like a coward. There was a number of other things in his apartment he could have used to defend himself with, when he failed to get hold of his kitchen knife.)
Outside we met Snorre, who had finished his cigarette. All the doors looked the same, and Snorre was a pretty absent-minded fellow, so he had ended up in the attic, one floor up, by mistake. Confused he had gone back down and used his lighter flame to light up the door sign, trying to read it and figure out if this was the right apartment. As he was trying to read the door sign Euronymous came running out in his underwear, bleeding and screaming like a madman. Snorre was so surprised and terrified he looked like a ghost, and it looked as if his eyeballs were about to fall out of his head. According to Snorre he was so surprised and shocked he had a black-out and didn't remember anything until I later asked him if he was okay.
Euronymous ran down a flight of stairs and stopped to call the neighbour's door bell. He quickly realized that I had come after him, so he continued to flee down the stairs, knocking on the walls, trying to call the door-bells of the neighbours as he ran past them, and screaming for help. I stabbed him (three or four times) in his left shoulder as he ran - that was the only part I could hit while we were running anyhow. He then stumbled and broke a lamp on the wall, probably with his head or arm, and fell into the glass fragments - in his underwear. I ran past him and waited. Snorre was still upstairs, and I had no idea how he would react to all of this. Perhaps it was a set-up and he was in on it? Perhaps he too would attack me? I didn't know. When Snorre came running he looked very scared and I just let him ran straight past me. I realized he was not a part of this, so I asked him if he was okay (because he certainly didn't look okay). By then Euronymous was back on his feet. He looked resigned and said: "It's enough", but then he tried to kick me again, and I finished him off by thrusting the knife through his skull, through his forehead, and he died instantaneously. The eyes turned around in his head and a moan could be heard as he emptied his lungs when he died. He fell down to a sitting position, but the knife was stuck in his head, so I held him up, as I held onto the knife. When I jerked the knife from his skull he fell forward, and rolled down a flight of stairs like a sack of potatoes - making enough noise to wake up the whole neighbourhood (it was a noisy, metal staircase).
This might sound like an odd way to kill him, but my knife was very small and it was only pointed. The blade was not sharp. It was so blunt I wouldn't have been able to cut a tomato in two with it without crushing it instead. The only way to kill him quickly with that knife would be to pierce his heart or skull. In fact I would have been able to kill him much easier and quicker had I not had a knife at all, and instead had just beat him to death. The only reason I had pulled a knife was because he was trying to, and I figured it would be fair that I had a knife too, although the knife I had wasn't much.
He had showed his intention to kill me, and even though he was no longer a direct threat to me, there and then, I did not feel any bad for killing him. His cowardice had made me angry and I saw no reason to let him live, not when he had showed his intent to kill me. Had I let him live I would only let him have another attempt at my life, later on.
Killing a person with a 8 cm ling blunt knife is a bloody affair, but although the blood had splashed all over the walls inside the staircase, as we ran downwards, I had no blood in my face, only on my upper body. Anyhow, Snorre had the car keys so I ran out to stop him from driving away, leaving me behind in Oslo, soaked in blood. I took the car keys from him, opened the door, gave him back the car keys and told him to drive. I jumped into my sleeping bag, that I had in the trunk of the car, before I got into the car myself, to make sure I didn't leave any blood traces in the car. At that point I figured it was best to try and get away. What I didn't know, was that Snorre was still in shock, so he just drove around in Oslo for 20 minutes, and eventually I had to take over. On our way to Oslo Snorre saw a police control on the highway to Bergen just outside Oslo, so we had to take another way. We drove north towards Trondheim and then took off westwards after a while. I stopped by a lake and took off all my clothes. I tied rocks into the clothes and swam out on the lake to let them sink where the water was deep. Luckily I still had the T-shirts I intended to sell in Sarpsborg (like I said, to Metallion, as far as I remember), and Jørn of Hades had forgotten a sweatshirt in the backseat of my car (ironically a Kreator shirt, with the text "Pleasure To Kill"), so I had a clean sweatshirt too (well, not "clean", but at least it wasn't soaked in blood). Finally, I had a very, very dirty pair of trousers that had been lying in the floor in the back of the car for ages, so I had an almost complete set of clothes. Driving "commando" and without socks was no problem.
(Snorre later showed the police where I had gotten rid of the clothes, but all they could find was a T-shirt, with the picture of a Viking and the text: "Norway: The Land Of The Vikings", that had no traces of blood. Everything else was gone, and even scuba divers couldn't find anything. They had no proof whatsoever that the T-shirt had belonged to me [and who on Earth would ever expect me to wear a T-shirt with such a motive?
]. The other clothes had probably sunken into the deep mud at the bottom of the lake, as intended.)
A friend of ours was still in my apartment. When I decided to go to Oslo we had been watching videos and eating pizza, and when we left he was allowed to stay there to finish the films and eat up. At this point I wanted him to leave the apartment, in case the police already knew what had happened. We stopped in Hønefoss in a phone booth, just to tell the guy in my apartment to go home. The first booth we saw was surrounded by teenagers, and we didn't want anybody to see us in Eastern Norway at the time, so we kept going until we found another phone booth. I was driving so Snorre went out to make the call, and then a police car came driving down the road. Apparently the teenagers had smashed the phone booth, before they moved on to smash the next one, and somebody had called the police. When the policeman arrived and saw us he believed we were the people he was looking for. (Is that a good example of "Murphy's Law" or what?). The phone was broken, and Snorre returned to the car. I drove off, with the police car about a hundred yards behind us, and I figured that if he stopped us and even just wrote down our names, it would be impossible to get an alibi. So I drove faster and faster, with the police car following in the same speed, and when I came to the train station in Hønefoss I turned right and drove like a complete maniac (with howling tires, spinning wheels, slipping rear wheels in the turns and everything else you might expect from a B-movie "get-away"). I was driving a VW Golf, and we were driving so fast that before we knew it we were on the "high way" to Bergen again - and we had lost the police. He had probably not even bothered to give chase (or, less likely, he had failed to keep up with us), as later inquiries (by the police) showed that he had not even reported this incident to his superiors.
At this point I figured they might already be looking for us, and in case they were, I suggested to Snorre that I dropped him off by a train station, in a place called Gol, on the way to Bergen. If the police stopped me I would be alone, and he would not get in trouble. He declined the offer, and we drove back to Bergen without any incidents. The first thing I did was to visit a printing shop to get an alibi, and then I drove to the guy that had stayed in my apartment, to tell him that we needed to talk and make up an alibi. Snorre had already told him that "something happened" in Oslo in the phone, when we stopped by a phone booth outside Voss, some time after Hønefoss. We came up with a story and everything was fine.
By then I could finally go home to get some sleep. After about 20 minutes of sleep the door-bell rang and a journalist wanted to talk to me about the death of Euronymous, that was known by then (around 11:00), and I told him that I was too tired to talk to him about it. I had after all not slept for quite some time (although I didn't tell him that...). The next day we could read on the front page that "The Count is in sorrow! He was so sad by the news of the death of his best friend that he didn't even manage to talk to us about it." Rather amusing, don't You think? It just shows how untrustworthy the stories in the media are!
Some have for some weird reason claimed that I killed Euronymous because of a girl, and I can therefore add that my girlfriend at the time (and from April 1993 to sometime in 1998) didn't even know who he was. She had never even heard of him until I killed him (and I may add that she wasn't even a metalhead, but an "ordinary" girl who listened to pop music). So obviously she had nothing to do with any of this and I surely did not kill him because of a girl. To my knowledge Euronymous didn't have a girlfriend, so it cannot be his girlfriend the people spreading this silly rumour were talking about either.
Even the people who criticize me for killing a fellow Norwegian are wrong. Euronymous was actually Lappish, as can be clearly seen from the pictures of him. His Lappish (Mongolian) facial features are very visible, his hair was typical Lappish (thin and straight) and his stature was revealing too (like most Laps he was very short).
The problem was that Snorre was still in shock. I have to admit that none of this effected me in any way. It was no big deal anyhow; a convinced criminal with plans to kill me was dead. So what? I do not see any reason to pity a person who plans to torture me to death while videotaping it for his own entertainment.
The police wanted to talk to me - as they understood from day one that I had done it - and asked me to come to Oslo for an interview. I agreed and talked to them, presented the alibi that we had created after the killing, and they let me go. They then moved the investigation to my home town, for obvious reasons, and began interviewing everybody else too. They had no evidence against me whatsoever, so they had to make somebody talk to get me. They quickly understood that Snorre was the weak link in the chain, so to speak. He was a nervous wreck, and they gave him a hard time. They phoned him in the night when I wasn't there, asking questions, the same questions over and over again, and eventually, after nine days, he broke down. According to the police report he was so emotionally broken down that they had to wait several hours before they were able to get some sort of statement from him. Apparently it had been quite a traumatic experience to him. He told them I had killed Euronymous and where I was. At the time I was at a night club, and when I got out (around 02:00 - 03:00 I think, on Friday 19th on August 1993) they arrested me.
They asked for my name and I refused to even tell them that. They undressed me, threw me in a holding cell, kept the light on 24/7 and didn't even hand me a blanket or a madras to lie on. I had expected that, so it was no big deal and I could just smile at their pathetic attempts to break me down mentally, but the "alibi" in my apartment got the same treatment, was told he was charged with murder and - being completely unprepared for this - he was so freaked out he confessed to everything immediately. Something had happened in Oslo, he told them, and I had ended up killing Euronymous. He told them the same as Snorre had told them.
They still had no hard evidence against me, though. The only really usable thing they had was the confession from Snorre, but even he hadn't seen me stabbing Euronymous. His testimony proved that he had been in Oslo, but the only thing that linked me to the crime was his testimony. They even had him on video tape, from a gas station surveillance camera in Hønefoss that night, when he was refueling the car on the way to Oslo. I on the other hand was nowhere to be seen. He was alone in the car. If they hadn't done something about this, they would have been forced to convict him for the murder, and I would go free. He was going down!
So what do You think happened? They suddenly claimed - two months after the killing and two months after I had been suspected of killing him (and they already had my fingerprints, from the January 1993 arrest) - they had found my fingerprints in blood on the crime scene. I was wearing gloves when I killed him, so I knew that was a load of crap, but nobody else knew, and Snorre erroneously believed that I had told him that I didn't wear gloves when I killed him. Then suddenly Snorre and the other guy changed their story, and they claimed we had planned the whole thing in advance. The guy in the apartment was told that I had done it, but if he didn't cooperate with them Snorre would be convicted instead. "Do You want Snorre to go to jail for something Varg has done?" Everything was done just to get me, and to get Snorre off the hook, but in this process they came up with a story that was far worse than the truth. They claimed Snorre had planned his alibi by giving his ATM card (credit card) to the other guy, who would use it in the middle of the night in Bergen, and thus leave electronic evidence suggesting he was in Bergen and not in Oslo at the time. The only problem was that he never gave him any ATM card, so the other guy obviously never left any electronic fingerprints in Bergen, so what was the point in even claiming this? They claimed we had rented video films we had seen before, so that if anybody asked us about them we could still tell what they were about. They also claimed that the guy in my apartment had stayed there to make noises and make the neighbours believe I was home. He had further even left the apartment wearing my jacket, to make people he met in the street believe he was me, and to use Snorre's bankcard to leave electronic evidence. He never had Snorre's ATM card, though, and nobody ever said they had seen him posing as me, so... Snorre had accompanied me to trick Euronymous to let us into the apartment, they claimed, although I was the one who called the doorbell and talked to him. Finally, they claimed I had handed Snorre a knife in the car, so that he was armed too, in cases I needed his help. That of course was the knife and belt I had told him to put in the gloves department, because I didn't want a knife lying about in the back of the car. Naturally I didn't put on the belt because walking around in Oslo with a large knife in the belt is not legal and would get me arrested had I been seen by the police. They twisted everything into the unrecognizable and made it look as if I had planned to kill him.
I don't know if this is embarrassing or just stupid, but the guy in the apartment actually used to claim he was me, when he was out. He actually used "Hi, I'm the Count" as a pick-up line when hitting on girls (?!). I know this because some girls came up to me and told me about it. So if he indeed wore my jacket and walked around in Bergen trying to make people think he was me, it doesn't necessarily mean he tried to give me an alibi. It is rather a testimony to how incredibly pathetic he was - and just how low some human beings can sink to get laid. I may add that I don't think this pick-up line was particularly effective, not least considering that it was very easy for the girls to know that he wasn't "the Count". Bergen is a very small town of only 130.000 (or 250.000 if you include the whole municipality) people and pretty much everybody there and at that time knew how I looked, so what on Earth was he thinking about?! He wasn't even from Bergen (but from Lillehammer in Eastern Norway), and everybody could hear that the moment he opened his mouth.
I am actually a bit embarrassed by the fact that I socialized with these people, with both this guy and Snorre - and for some time with Euronymous too. There is a saying: "Show me Your friends, and I can tell You who You are." If that is the case I most certainly and obviously was a complete idiot...
But in my defense, I must stress that I had other and good friends too. (Phew!)
They never managed to explain why on Earth Snorre would want Euronymous dead though. He just joined Mayhem as a guitarist, the dream of many heavy metal guitarists, I am sure, and was a childhood friend of Euronymous, so it doesn't make sense at all. Further, they claimed I had planned to "cut his throat" (probably because that made me sound very cruel), but if that was the case, why on Earth would I bring a blunt knife that was only pointy? I could just as well have tried to cut his throat with a spoon. That doesn't make any sense either - and we further know perfectly well that I didn't cut his throat.
They and the police were so eager in making up things to get me convicted that in the end Snorre too was convicted, for assisting me in planning a murder and for aiding me psychologically. (Yeah, "sure".) The other guy though, who claimed he actively participated in planning the "murder" and getting me an alibi, spent a total of one single night in a holding cell. He was never charged, something that is kind of odd. If the police had seriously believed in this mad theory he presented he would surely have been convicted too, but they knew it was a load of crap made up to get me, so they let him go. And I may add that we don't have a reward-system for informers in Norway, like they have in the USA and possibly in other countries too. There is no way you can bargain a way out of prison if you have committed a crime in Norway. The fact is that they simply didn't want to convict him for something he had not done. He was lying, and they knew it. They had told him to come up with these lies!
Snorre's own (Freemason) defense lawyer even witnessing against his own client, in his eagerness to "get" me, and when Snorre was convicted even the jury looked sad ("I am sorry, but we have to convict You too"), and I don't think anybody had expected that. It was an unexpected turn of events of all of us.
In court I told them that Snorre had nothing to do with any of this and that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, but the next day Snorre was witnessing and claimed that I was wrong. I had planned everything, and he knew it because he was a part of it. His whole defense plan was to make sure I couldn't blame him, but I actually had never even thought about that (and it took me quite some time to even understand that this was his worry). Had he told the truth he would have been released from prison, but instead he stuck to his lie - because his defense lawyer bullied him into sticking to it - and he got 8 years for doing absolutely nothing.
The media claimed the killing was a result of a "power-struggle" in a "Satanic movement", and that I had killed him to take his place as a leader (?). Now, that doesn't make sense. I mean, is that how it works? You kill somebody to take their place? If You want to be appointed director of a firm You don't achieve that by killing the current director. What kind of world do these journalists live in? Are they living in animal pack or what? It just doesn't make sense at all. Yet, that was their theory, their only theory. The "Alpha male" journalist (Michael Grundt Spang) writing for Norway's biggest newspaper, even spent time writing about my hair and generally how I looked. According to him I "threw" my "mouse-brown pigtails" around "like a girl", and I didn't have an "evil glow" surrounding me at all, as could be expected from an "evil Satanist" like me, and so forth. He was obviously very disappointed by the fact that I didn't look "evil". It never seemed to occur to him that I might not look like an "evil Satanist", simply because I wasn't an "evil Satanist"... Snorre was described as just "a smaller, thinner and paler version of the Count". The journalist surely didn't intend for it to be funny, but it certainly was, because it was just so incredibly foolish.
The other guys in the scene were naturally furious at me, as they eventually began to believe in the newspaper-theory about a power-struggle, so they too - with a few exceptions (like Fenris and the guys in Mayhem) - did everything to nail me, and in the process they snitched on each other too, and finally, because of them, the police solved almost all the crimes committed by black metallers in Norway from 1991 to 1993. I have spoken to some of them later on, and they told me that if they had known the truth they would never have attacked me (and in the process each other) like they did. They were manipulated by the media, and of course by the police. They were lied to just like everybody else, and unfortunately they weren't able to see through the lies.
When I was convicted I got 21 years, the maximum penalty in Norway, and the judge claimed I had "an incomprehensible motive" for killing him. It is really that hard to understand that I killed him when I knew he had plans to torture me to death and then attacked me in the apartment? What part of this is it the judge didn't understand? Initially it was self-defense, but when he started to flee I was no longer in a life-threatening situation, so at that point it was no longer self-defense, but voluntary manslaughter, and as I saw it a pre-emptive strike, to prevent him from getting a second chance to kill me. That should have given me only 8-10 years! Instead I got 21 years, and Snorre got 8 years for doing absolutely nothing!
They also tried to present the killing as so very brutal, and claimed he had died because both his lungs had been punctured. They further claimed I had stabbed him 23 times. First of all I knew very well that he had died when I stabbed him in the head. Secondly he had fallen into a pile of glass fragments in his underwear. Naturally this gave him a lot of cuts - even under one of this heels as he got back up in his feet after falling. They knew this too, but instead claimed I had stabbed him 23 times, just to make people think I was so very cruel, bestial and brutal. In court they showed pictures from the autopsy to a terrified jury. The pictures showed Euronymous naked in a table, with all his hair shaved off and his eyes still open, and all the cuts numbered with a pen in his skin. I know it was humiliating for him to get killed, but when they showed pictures from the autopsy in court that was surely much worse. Killing scumbags is one thing, but I would never humiliate anybody like that.
Oh, and of course the judge included in the sentence that: "Varg Vikernes believes in Satan", although I had repeatedly told in court that I didn't believe in neither "Satan" not "God". They ignored the truth, and made up their own reality, for political reasons.
Mentioning the jury, I had the "privilege" of having the only Christian "healer" in Norway in my jury. He apparently had even been on TV, claiming to "pull the evil from the body with the help of Jesus", and thus "heal" people. Now, is that a coincidence? Is it a coincidence that the only Christian "healer" in Norway (at the time, anyhow) ends up in my jury? He was listed as a "secretary", and I only got to know that he was a Christian "healer" much later, in 1995, when a journalist told me about it - and he also told that at least two other jurors were Freemasons. The rest of them were all pensioners, with the exception of one or two women. My "peers" all of them, no doubt... Snorre's defense attorney too was a Freemason, as I have already mentioned, one of the court psychiatrists was a Freemason and a Jewish Auschwitz "survivor" (one of a total of three in Norway, at the time) and the other psychiatrist a left-wing extremist, my defense lawyer was 100% incapable of paid employment (because of a heart condition) and according to the journalist I talked to at least one of the three judges were Freemasons too.
The church burnings were hardly mentioned in the court. They presented one witness in each case who claimed I had burned this or that church, and that was it. "Guilty". Just like that. This process was repeated four times, and I was found guilty of kindling four churches, three of them having burned to the ground. There was not a single piece of physical evidence in any of these cases. I was convicted solely because of the testimony of one single person in each case. All of these witnesses were friends of Euronymous!
Even my incompetent lawyer didn't bother talking about the church fires, as it was "not important" he claimed. "You don't get much for that anyhow", he figured. Interestingly no fingerprints or any other technical evidence were presented in court either. When I was arrested I had some 3.000 rounds of ammo (mostly .22LR, 38 Special, 7,52N, 7.92 mm and 12Gauge) in my apartment, but most of it wasn't even included in the list of confiscated objects. The policemen simply took what they wanted. To them it was "free ammo". They even stole my SS steel helmet, although I can only guess why.
Finally I was convicted of stealing and storing some 150 kg of explosives (mostly dynamite and some glynite) and three bags of electronic detonators, and for breaking into some cabins in the mountains - where I had, according to them, stolen a Norwegian flag (?!) and a book, while looking for guns. I was never convicted for grave desecration, as many seems to believe, or for kindling the Fantoft Stave Church. They had no dumb metal head who could lie and tell them that he had joined me in burning that church, like in the other cases, so they had absolutely no evidence against me in that context whatsoever, and I even had an alibi, as a girl from Oslo had spent the night with me. (Yet my "defense" lawyer didn't even bother to ask her to testify in my defense!) The charge was all based in hearsay. Still, when the jury didn't find me guilty of burning down the Fantoft Stave Church the main judge was so angry she claimed that it was "obvious" that I had done that too, but it wouldn't really matter, as I would get maximum penalty anyway - and amazingly she said that before the three judges and jury members had even begun discussing the penalty, so obviously they had decided on forehand that I should get 21 years no matter what. They wanted to use me as an example, to show the youth in Norway that you don't mess with "the Mother-Pig".
The killing of Euronymous was a blessing to them. Finally they had an excuse to get rid of me (or so they believed anyhow: people tend to think of even a year in prison as "the end" of everything). I don't think it would have happened if the media had not written so many lies about me, because that was what made Euronymous want to get rid of me in the first place: I got so much attention that he became envious. Then the justice system gave me 21 years because the media had given me so much attention that I had become more important and influential than I was originally, and because they were just so incredibly provoked by the church burnings that they lost their minds completely.
In short I was attacked by a convicted criminal, I defended myself and got 21 years for that. As if that isn't enough, they changed the rules after I was convicted, meaning I officially have to serve 2 more years than I was initially sentenced to. 21 years meant that I would be released after 12 years, but a few years ago (in 2000 or 2001) they changed the rules, so according to them I have to serve 14 years instead now, because the new law is made retroactive! It is illegal to make laws retroactive like that, according to the Norwegian constitution and international law, but who cares? In 1945, when the war was over, we didn't even have death penalty in war-time in Norway, so the same justice system we have today made a new law, made it retroactive, and executed dozens of people anyhow (in peace-time!). I am neither a "poor" Afro-Asian immigrant nor a left-wing extremist, or a Christian weakling begging for mercy, so there is no way the media will ever give me any support. I am simply too much a persona non grata in Norway, a country many Western Europeans know as "the last Soviet state". I can still apply for a release after only 12 years, but given my experience with the justice system in Norway, I am not very optimistic about it. There is a difference between Þórr and Loki, as we say in Scandinavia.
I am angry because all of this, but I know that I will come out on top in the end, and I guess that is what really matters. I don't even hate them, I just pity them. Above all I am just thankful that I am not like them. I'll regain my freedom one day, but they will probably never become any better. It's like the fat versus the ugly: the fat can always lose weight, but the ugly will always be ugly.
Thank You for the attention.
In 1991 most of the metal musicians in Norway believed Euronymous was a so-called cool guy, but in mid or late 1992 most of us realized that he was not. When DSP (Deathlike Silence Productions), his label, released the Burzum debut album, in March 1992, he had to take up a loan to be able to pay for it. He couldn't afford it himself, and he loaned the money from me. When he sold all the Burzum albums he paid his private bills rather than print more records - or pay me back the money he owned me (and I never saw any royalties either, for that sake). So when he was sold out he had no money to print more records. This is probably the reason why some people think I killed him for money, but certainly I wouldn't have gotten my money back by killing him. Breaking his legs would probably have worked, but not killing him. I can always get more money if I want to and I never invest any more than I can afford to loose, anyhow. I have a very relaxed relationship to money, so this rumour is just silly, and it was only talk about 36.000 NOK anyhow (about 5100 USD, about and average month's pay in Norway).
I took the consequence of his incompetence and stupidity and started up my own label, called Burznazg (in Tolkien's Black Speech that is "Dark Ring"), that was later (in late 1992) changed to Cymophane (Greek: "Wave to appear", the name of a gem that is shaped like an eye), and decided to do everything myself. I didn't need him. All he did was to sit on his fat arse in his shop and drink Coca Cola and eat kebab anyway. His shop was going down the drain, and it was only a matter of time before he (and thus DSP) was bankrupt.
We hadn't given up on him just yet though, not completely, and as a final attempt to get his shop going we agreed that I should do an interview for a newspaper to give metal-music some attention. He was out of Burzum albums, but he had other albums for sale in his shop. When I did the anonymous interview in January 1993 I exaggerated a lot and when the journalist left we - a girl and I - had a good laugh, because he didn't seem to understand that I was pulling his leg. He took everything dead serious. Unfortunately he went to the police the next day (the 19th) and had me arrested, and (the 20th) his newspaper printed his version of what I had said while I was in a holding cell unable to tell anybody that it was just a load of crap I had said to create some interest in a music genre - to help Euronymous get some customers for a change.
The interesting thing is that when I was arrested Euronymous closed down the shop instead of taking advantage of the situation, because his parents thought the attention was too uncomfortable! So the "evil" Black Metal hero did what his mother and father told him to! Pretty pathetic, alright, but by doing so he also made all my efforts more or less pointless. I spent six weeks in custody because of that, and all he did was to close down the shop! The customers came in droves, but to a closed shop! How stupid is that?!
When I got out from prison I was pretty disillusioned by all that had happened in the media, and the police had made such a mess for me when they had their raid in my apartment that it was hard to run Cymophane like I had planned to. At the same time DSP had (possibly because of the media stunt) gotten a distribution deal with a company in Oslo, and could start printing and selling DSP records again.
Euronymous had made a complete fool of himself by closing down the shop, and most of us agreed that he was a damn wimp and an idiot. I was angry at him for not taking advantage of the situation, which was why I had done that silly interview in the first place, and I didn't want anything more to do with him. There was no point in dealing with him. Instead I got a deal with a distribution company in Oslo for Cymophane, and continued on my own.
As far as I was concerned he didn't exist anymore. When he phoned me to ask me if they, the guys in Mayhem, could stay at my place when they were in Grieghallen sound studios to finish the Mayhem album, I said no. Nobody else in Bergen wanted to give them a place to stay either, and they had to rent a room at a motel. Nobody had anything against Hellhammer, the only other Mayhem member at the time, but we just didn't want anything to do with Euronymous. I have always had a good relationship to Hellhammer, and he wasn't very impressed with Euronymous either, so to speak. In 1992, when we recorded "De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas", he even made jokes that we should kill him!
For some months this dislike for Euronymous spread in the metal scene, as more and more people understood what a moron he was, and he blamed me for all of this, and started to hate me. He believed it was my fault people lost their respect for him. In a sense he was right, as I certainly didn't keep my opinions a secret, but I think he brought that upon himself. He was simply disclosed by the way he reacted to the heat. He had made a fool of himself. Further, when the media wrote all that crap about me it made him feel less important. Suddenly he was no longer the "main character" in the hardcore metal scene. As he saw it, that too was all my fault. This is probably the reason people claim the killing was a result of a power struggle between two leading figures in the scene, but the truth is that this was only important to him. I couldn't care less about this. I didn't even socialize with that many metal people, and when I went out I preferred to go to house parties and to an underground techno club in Bergen, called "Føniks" (Phoenix), while most of the metal guys went to some rock'n'roll place. In fact I went to the techno club to get away from all the new metal people, because I didn't like the attention from them. I preferred the attention of nice girls, so to speak.
Later Mayhem got a new guitarist, Snorre W. Ruch of Thorns, from Trondheim, and when he moved to Bergen I let him sleep on a guest bed, in the living room of my apartment, until he got his own apartment. At this point Euronymous had begun to plot against my life. He wanted to kill me. In his view I was the problem, so by killing me he believed he problem would go away.
His problem was that he included a few of the metal people in his plot to kill me, and they told me. He had told them because he trusted them, but obviously they had warmer feelings for me than for him, so to speak. At one point he phoned Snorre, who lived in my apartment, and Snorre let me listen to what Euronymous had to say. He told Snorre that "Varg must disappear for good" and similar, confirming the plans others had told me about earlier.
A lot people has claimed that I overreacted, because Euronymous was such a wimp anyhow, and he didn't have the guts to even try to kill me. Sure, he was a wimp, but this time he didn't tell everybody about his plans, like he usually did. I took this serious because he only told a very few people he trusted, his closest friends - or those he believed were his closest friends anyhow. Also, in August 1993 he was about to go to prison for four months, after being convicted for injuring two people with a broken bottle, because they had "looked at his girlfriend" at a bus-stop. He was not a very sympathetic guy, and when he felt that he had his back against the wall he was capable of executing his plans. If scared enough even the biggest cowards become dangerous.
The same day he told Snorre about his intentions to kill me (and thus indirectly told me, as I was listening to their conversation), I received a letter from him, where he pretended to be so very positive and where he was very friendly and wanted to meet me to discuss a contract that I had not yet signed. This was the only excuse he had to contact me, and it seemed like he was trying to set me up. According to his "friends" the plan was to meet me, knock me out with a stun-gun, tie me up and put me in the trunk of a car. He would then drive into the countryside, tie me to a tree and torture me to death while videotaping everything.
My reaction to this was naturally anger. What the Hell did he think he was? The same day I decided to drive to Oslo, hand him the signed contract and tell him to "f*** off", basically, and by doing so take away all the excuses he had to contact me ever again. I have to admit that I didn't rule out beating him up too, though. Just before I left Snorre told me he wanted to come along, because he had some new guitar riffs to show him. I intended to continue to Sarpsborg with a load of Burzum T-shirts (to Metallion of "Slayer" magazine as far as I remember), and just leave Snorre in Oslo with Euronymous. The odd (and disloyal) Snorre didn't seem to have any problems being a friend of both of us, by the way, like a normal person (with a backbone) would.
We left Bergen around 21:00 and we arrived in Oslo around 03:00 - 04:00 (I no longer remember exactly; it happened more than eleven years ago). We had taken turns driving, and when we arrived I was sleeping in the back seat. Because of that I had taken my belt off, and when we stopped I handed it to him and asked him to put it a safe place. I had a knife in the belt, and driving around with a knife lying in the backseat is not very safe.
We went to the front door of the building block and I called his doorbell. He was sleeping. You might think that visiting people in the middle of the night was a bit strange, but it was perfectly normal to us. A lot of people in the metal scene were "nocturnal creatures", so to speak. He asked who it was, and I said my name. "I am sleeping. Can't You come back later?" he said. "I got the contract. Let me in", I said and he buzzed me inn. His flat was on the fifth (or fourth?) floor and I began climbing the stairs. Snorre wanted to have a cigarette, and smoking was banned in Euronymous' apartment (and in my car), so he waited downstairs to have a smoke.
Euronymous was waiting for me in entrance, looking very nervous, and I handed him the contract. I may add that of course he was nervous. The guy he planned to murder showed up at his doorstep in the middle of the night. I then asked him what the "f***" he was up to, and when I took a step forwards he panicked. He freaked out and attacked me with a kick in the chest. I simply threw him to the door, and was a bit stunned. I wasn't stunned by his kick, but by the fact he had attacked me. I didn't expect that. Not in his apartment and not like that. He had just started to train "kick boxing" and like all beginners thought he had become "Bruce Lee" overnight, but still.
After a few seconds he jumped from the floor and dashed for the kitchen. I knew he had a knife lying on the kitchen table, and I figured that "if he's going to have a knife, I'm going to have a knife too". My belt knife was in the car, because it was in the belt I had left there, but I had a pocket knife, or rather a boot knife (with an 8 cm long blade) in my pocket. I jumped out in front of him and managed to stop him before he got his hands on the kitchen knife. At this point he had showed his intentions, so when he ran for the bedroom I figured he was going for another weapon. He had some weeks earlier told some people that he would soon get the shotgun back from the police (used by "Dead" when he shot himself), so I figured that was what he was going for, or he was going for his stun-gun. (Although he actually didn't have a stun-gun or the shotgun in his apartment, I didn't know that.) I gave chase, stabbed him and was a bit surprised when he ran out of the apartment instead. It made no sense to flee and it made me angry to know that he had started the fight, but the moment it didn't go his way he decided to flee instead, instead of fighting like a man. Such is always something I have disliked strongly.
(Some people have claimed I slew a helpless and unarmed man, but first of all he tried to get a knife before I did, and certainly he could have armed himself if he had chosen to stay and fight instead of running away like a coward. There was a number of other things in his apartment he could have used to defend himself with, when he failed to get hold of his kitchen knife.)
Outside we met Snorre, who had finished his cigarette. All the doors looked the same, and Snorre was a pretty absent-minded fellow, so he had ended up in the attic, one floor up, by mistake. Confused he had gone back down and used his lighter flame to light up the door sign, trying to read it and figure out if this was the right apartment. As he was trying to read the door sign Euronymous came running out in his underwear, bleeding and screaming like a madman. Snorre was so surprised and terrified he looked like a ghost, and it looked as if his eyeballs were about to fall out of his head. According to Snorre he was so surprised and shocked he had a black-out and didn't remember anything until I later asked him if he was okay.
Euronymous ran down a flight of stairs and stopped to call the neighbour's door bell. He quickly realized that I had come after him, so he continued to flee down the stairs, knocking on the walls, trying to call the door-bells of the neighbours as he ran past them, and screaming for help. I stabbed him (three or four times) in his left shoulder as he ran - that was the only part I could hit while we were running anyhow. He then stumbled and broke a lamp on the wall, probably with his head or arm, and fell into the glass fragments - in his underwear. I ran past him and waited. Snorre was still upstairs, and I had no idea how he would react to all of this. Perhaps it was a set-up and he was in on it? Perhaps he too would attack me? I didn't know. When Snorre came running he looked very scared and I just let him ran straight past me. I realized he was not a part of this, so I asked him if he was okay (because he certainly didn't look okay). By then Euronymous was back on his feet. He looked resigned and said: "It's enough", but then he tried to kick me again, and I finished him off by thrusting the knife through his skull, through his forehead, and he died instantaneously. The eyes turned around in his head and a moan could be heard as he emptied his lungs when he died. He fell down to a sitting position, but the knife was stuck in his head, so I held him up, as I held onto the knife. When I jerked the knife from his skull he fell forward, and rolled down a flight of stairs like a sack of potatoes - making enough noise to wake up the whole neighbourhood (it was a noisy, metal staircase).
This might sound like an odd way to kill him, but my knife was very small and it was only pointed. The blade was not sharp. It was so blunt I wouldn't have been able to cut a tomato in two with it without crushing it instead. The only way to kill him quickly with that knife would be to pierce his heart or skull. In fact I would have been able to kill him much easier and quicker had I not had a knife at all, and instead had just beat him to death. The only reason I had pulled a knife was because he was trying to, and I figured it would be fair that I had a knife too, although the knife I had wasn't much.
He had showed his intention to kill me, and even though he was no longer a direct threat to me, there and then, I did not feel any bad for killing him. His cowardice had made me angry and I saw no reason to let him live, not when he had showed his intent to kill me. Had I let him live I would only let him have another attempt at my life, later on.
Killing a person with a 8 cm ling blunt knife is a bloody affair, but although the blood had splashed all over the walls inside the staircase, as we ran downwards, I had no blood in my face, only on my upper body. Anyhow, Snorre had the car keys so I ran out to stop him from driving away, leaving me behind in Oslo, soaked in blood. I took the car keys from him, opened the door, gave him back the car keys and told him to drive. I jumped into my sleeping bag, that I had in the trunk of the car, before I got into the car myself, to make sure I didn't leave any blood traces in the car. At that point I figured it was best to try and get away. What I didn't know, was that Snorre was still in shock, so he just drove around in Oslo for 20 minutes, and eventually I had to take over. On our way to Oslo Snorre saw a police control on the highway to Bergen just outside Oslo, so we had to take another way. We drove north towards Trondheim and then took off westwards after a while. I stopped by a lake and took off all my clothes. I tied rocks into the clothes and swam out on the lake to let them sink where the water was deep. Luckily I still had the T-shirts I intended to sell in Sarpsborg (like I said, to Metallion, as far as I remember), and Jørn of Hades had forgotten a sweatshirt in the backseat of my car (ironically a Kreator shirt, with the text "Pleasure To Kill"), so I had a clean sweatshirt too (well, not "clean", but at least it wasn't soaked in blood). Finally, I had a very, very dirty pair of trousers that had been lying in the floor in the back of the car for ages, so I had an almost complete set of clothes. Driving "commando" and without socks was no problem.
(Snorre later showed the police where I had gotten rid of the clothes, but all they could find was a T-shirt, with the picture of a Viking and the text: "Norway: The Land Of The Vikings", that had no traces of blood. Everything else was gone, and even scuba divers couldn't find anything. They had no proof whatsoever that the T-shirt had belonged to me [and who on Earth would ever expect me to wear a T-shirt with such a motive?
]. The other clothes had probably sunken into the deep mud at the bottom of the lake, as intended.)
A friend of ours was still in my apartment. When I decided to go to Oslo we had been watching videos and eating pizza, and when we left he was allowed to stay there to finish the films and eat up. At this point I wanted him to leave the apartment, in case the police already knew what had happened. We stopped in Hønefoss in a phone booth, just to tell the guy in my apartment to go home. The first booth we saw was surrounded by teenagers, and we didn't want anybody to see us in Eastern Norway at the time, so we kept going until we found another phone booth. I was driving so Snorre went out to make the call, and then a police car came driving down the road. Apparently the teenagers had smashed the phone booth, before they moved on to smash the next one, and somebody had called the police. When the policeman arrived and saw us he believed we were the people he was looking for. (Is that a good example of "Murphy's Law" or what?). The phone was broken, and Snorre returned to the car. I drove off, with the police car about a hundred yards behind us, and I figured that if he stopped us and even just wrote down our names, it would be impossible to get an alibi. So I drove faster and faster, with the police car following in the same speed, and when I came to the train station in Hønefoss I turned right and drove like a complete maniac (with howling tires, spinning wheels, slipping rear wheels in the turns and everything else you might expect from a B-movie "get-away"). I was driving a VW Golf, and we were driving so fast that before we knew it we were on the "high way" to Bergen again - and we had lost the police. He had probably not even bothered to give chase (or, less likely, he had failed to keep up with us), as later inquiries (by the police) showed that he had not even reported this incident to his superiors.
At this point I figured they might already be looking for us, and in case they were, I suggested to Snorre that I dropped him off by a train station, in a place called Gol, on the way to Bergen. If the police stopped me I would be alone, and he would not get in trouble. He declined the offer, and we drove back to Bergen without any incidents. The first thing I did was to visit a printing shop to get an alibi, and then I drove to the guy that had stayed in my apartment, to tell him that we needed to talk and make up an alibi. Snorre had already told him that "something happened" in Oslo in the phone, when we stopped by a phone booth outside Voss, some time after Hønefoss. We came up with a story and everything was fine.
By then I could finally go home to get some sleep. After about 20 minutes of sleep the door-bell rang and a journalist wanted to talk to me about the death of Euronymous, that was known by then (around 11:00), and I told him that I was too tired to talk to him about it. I had after all not slept for quite some time (although I didn't tell him that...). The next day we could read on the front page that "The Count is in sorrow! He was so sad by the news of the death of his best friend that he didn't even manage to talk to us about it." Rather amusing, don't You think? It just shows how untrustworthy the stories in the media are!
Some have for some weird reason claimed that I killed Euronymous because of a girl, and I can therefore add that my girlfriend at the time (and from April 1993 to sometime in 1998) didn't even know who he was. She had never even heard of him until I killed him (and I may add that she wasn't even a metalhead, but an "ordinary" girl who listened to pop music). So obviously she had nothing to do with any of this and I surely did not kill him because of a girl. To my knowledge Euronymous didn't have a girlfriend, so it cannot be his girlfriend the people spreading this silly rumour were talking about either.
Even the people who criticize me for killing a fellow Norwegian are wrong. Euronymous was actually Lappish, as can be clearly seen from the pictures of him. His Lappish (Mongolian) facial features are very visible, his hair was typical Lappish (thin and straight) and his stature was revealing too (like most Laps he was very short).
The problem was that Snorre was still in shock. I have to admit that none of this effected me in any way. It was no big deal anyhow; a convinced criminal with plans to kill me was dead. So what? I do not see any reason to pity a person who plans to torture me to death while videotaping it for his own entertainment.
The police wanted to talk to me - as they understood from day one that I had done it - and asked me to come to Oslo for an interview. I agreed and talked to them, presented the alibi that we had created after the killing, and they let me go. They then moved the investigation to my home town, for obvious reasons, and began interviewing everybody else too. They had no evidence against me whatsoever, so they had to make somebody talk to get me. They quickly understood that Snorre was the weak link in the chain, so to speak. He was a nervous wreck, and they gave him a hard time. They phoned him in the night when I wasn't there, asking questions, the same questions over and over again, and eventually, after nine days, he broke down. According to the police report he was so emotionally broken down that they had to wait several hours before they were able to get some sort of statement from him. Apparently it had been quite a traumatic experience to him. He told them I had killed Euronymous and where I was. At the time I was at a night club, and when I got out (around 02:00 - 03:00 I think, on Friday 19th on August 1993) they arrested me.
They asked for my name and I refused to even tell them that. They undressed me, threw me in a holding cell, kept the light on 24/7 and didn't even hand me a blanket or a madras to lie on. I had expected that, so it was no big deal and I could just smile at their pathetic attempts to break me down mentally, but the "alibi" in my apartment got the same treatment, was told he was charged with murder and - being completely unprepared for this - he was so freaked out he confessed to everything immediately. Something had happened in Oslo, he told them, and I had ended up killing Euronymous. He told them the same as Snorre had told them.
They still had no hard evidence against me, though. The only really usable thing they had was the confession from Snorre, but even he hadn't seen me stabbing Euronymous. His testimony proved that he had been in Oslo, but the only thing that linked me to the crime was his testimony. They even had him on video tape, from a gas station surveillance camera in Hønefoss that night, when he was refueling the car on the way to Oslo. I on the other hand was nowhere to be seen. He was alone in the car. If they hadn't done something about this, they would have been forced to convict him for the murder, and I would go free. He was going down!
So what do You think happened? They suddenly claimed - two months after the killing and two months after I had been suspected of killing him (and they already had my fingerprints, from the January 1993 arrest) - they had found my fingerprints in blood on the crime scene. I was wearing gloves when I killed him, so I knew that was a load of crap, but nobody else knew, and Snorre erroneously believed that I had told him that I didn't wear gloves when I killed him. Then suddenly Snorre and the other guy changed their story, and they claimed we had planned the whole thing in advance. The guy in the apartment was told that I had done it, but if he didn't cooperate with them Snorre would be convicted instead. "Do You want Snorre to go to jail for something Varg has done?" Everything was done just to get me, and to get Snorre off the hook, but in this process they came up with a story that was far worse than the truth. They claimed Snorre had planned his alibi by giving his ATM card (credit card) to the other guy, who would use it in the middle of the night in Bergen, and thus leave electronic evidence suggesting he was in Bergen and not in Oslo at the time. The only problem was that he never gave him any ATM card, so the other guy obviously never left any electronic fingerprints in Bergen, so what was the point in even claiming this? They claimed we had rented video films we had seen before, so that if anybody asked us about them we could still tell what they were about. They also claimed that the guy in my apartment had stayed there to make noises and make the neighbours believe I was home. He had further even left the apartment wearing my jacket, to make people he met in the street believe he was me, and to use Snorre's bankcard to leave electronic evidence. He never had Snorre's ATM card, though, and nobody ever said they had seen him posing as me, so... Snorre had accompanied me to trick Euronymous to let us into the apartment, they claimed, although I was the one who called the doorbell and talked to him. Finally, they claimed I had handed Snorre a knife in the car, so that he was armed too, in cases I needed his help. That of course was the knife and belt I had told him to put in the gloves department, because I didn't want a knife lying about in the back of the car. Naturally I didn't put on the belt because walking around in Oslo with a large knife in the belt is not legal and would get me arrested had I been seen by the police. They twisted everything into the unrecognizable and made it look as if I had planned to kill him.
I don't know if this is embarrassing or just stupid, but the guy in the apartment actually used to claim he was me, when he was out. He actually used "Hi, I'm the Count" as a pick-up line when hitting on girls (?!). I know this because some girls came up to me and told me about it. So if he indeed wore my jacket and walked around in Bergen trying to make people think he was me, it doesn't necessarily mean he tried to give me an alibi. It is rather a testimony to how incredibly pathetic he was - and just how low some human beings can sink to get laid. I may add that I don't think this pick-up line was particularly effective, not least considering that it was very easy for the girls to know that he wasn't "the Count". Bergen is a very small town of only 130.000 (or 250.000 if you include the whole municipality) people and pretty much everybody there and at that time knew how I looked, so what on Earth was he thinking about?! He wasn't even from Bergen (but from Lillehammer in Eastern Norway), and everybody could hear that the moment he opened his mouth.
I am actually a bit embarrassed by the fact that I socialized with these people, with both this guy and Snorre - and for some time with Euronymous too. There is a saying: "Show me Your friends, and I can tell You who You are." If that is the case I most certainly and obviously was a complete idiot...
But in my defense, I must stress that I had other and good friends too. (Phew!)
They never managed to explain why on Earth Snorre would want Euronymous dead though. He just joined Mayhem as a guitarist, the dream of many heavy metal guitarists, I am sure, and was a childhood friend of Euronymous, so it doesn't make sense at all. Further, they claimed I had planned to "cut his throat" (probably because that made me sound very cruel), but if that was the case, why on Earth would I bring a blunt knife that was only pointy? I could just as well have tried to cut his throat with a spoon. That doesn't make any sense either - and we further know perfectly well that I didn't cut his throat.
They and the police were so eager in making up things to get me convicted that in the end Snorre too was convicted, for assisting me in planning a murder and for aiding me psychologically. (Yeah, "sure".) The other guy though, who claimed he actively participated in planning the "murder" and getting me an alibi, spent a total of one single night in a holding cell. He was never charged, something that is kind of odd. If the police had seriously believed in this mad theory he presented he would surely have been convicted too, but they knew it was a load of crap made up to get me, so they let him go. And I may add that we don't have a reward-system for informers in Norway, like they have in the USA and possibly in other countries too. There is no way you can bargain a way out of prison if you have committed a crime in Norway. The fact is that they simply didn't want to convict him for something he had not done. He was lying, and they knew it. They had told him to come up with these lies!
Snorre's own (Freemason) defense lawyer even witnessing against his own client, in his eagerness to "get" me, and when Snorre was convicted even the jury looked sad ("I am sorry, but we have to convict You too"), and I don't think anybody had expected that. It was an unexpected turn of events of all of us.
In court I told them that Snorre had nothing to do with any of this and that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, but the next day Snorre was witnessing and claimed that I was wrong. I had planned everything, and he knew it because he was a part of it. His whole defense plan was to make sure I couldn't blame him, but I actually had never even thought about that (and it took me quite some time to even understand that this was his worry). Had he told the truth he would have been released from prison, but instead he stuck to his lie - because his defense lawyer bullied him into sticking to it - and he got 8 years for doing absolutely nothing.
The media claimed the killing was a result of a "power-struggle" in a "Satanic movement", and that I had killed him to take his place as a leader (?). Now, that doesn't make sense. I mean, is that how it works? You kill somebody to take their place? If You want to be appointed director of a firm You don't achieve that by killing the current director. What kind of world do these journalists live in? Are they living in animal pack or what? It just doesn't make sense at all. Yet, that was their theory, their only theory. The "Alpha male" journalist (Michael Grundt Spang) writing for Norway's biggest newspaper, even spent time writing about my hair and generally how I looked. According to him I "threw" my "mouse-brown pigtails" around "like a girl", and I didn't have an "evil glow" surrounding me at all, as could be expected from an "evil Satanist" like me, and so forth. He was obviously very disappointed by the fact that I didn't look "evil". It never seemed to occur to him that I might not look like an "evil Satanist", simply because I wasn't an "evil Satanist"... Snorre was described as just "a smaller, thinner and paler version of the Count". The journalist surely didn't intend for it to be funny, but it certainly was, because it was just so incredibly foolish.
The other guys in the scene were naturally furious at me, as they eventually began to believe in the newspaper-theory about a power-struggle, so they too - with a few exceptions (like Fenris and the guys in Mayhem) - did everything to nail me, and in the process they snitched on each other too, and finally, because of them, the police solved almost all the crimes committed by black metallers in Norway from 1991 to 1993. I have spoken to some of them later on, and they told me that if they had known the truth they would never have attacked me (and in the process each other) like they did. They were manipulated by the media, and of course by the police. They were lied to just like everybody else, and unfortunately they weren't able to see through the lies.
When I was convicted I got 21 years, the maximum penalty in Norway, and the judge claimed I had "an incomprehensible motive" for killing him. It is really that hard to understand that I killed him when I knew he had plans to torture me to death and then attacked me in the apartment? What part of this is it the judge didn't understand? Initially it was self-defense, but when he started to flee I was no longer in a life-threatening situation, so at that point it was no longer self-defense, but voluntary manslaughter, and as I saw it a pre-emptive strike, to prevent him from getting a second chance to kill me. That should have given me only 8-10 years! Instead I got 21 years, and Snorre got 8 years for doing absolutely nothing!
They also tried to present the killing as so very brutal, and claimed he had died because both his lungs had been punctured. They further claimed I had stabbed him 23 times. First of all I knew very well that he had died when I stabbed him in the head. Secondly he had fallen into a pile of glass fragments in his underwear. Naturally this gave him a lot of cuts - even under one of this heels as he got back up in his feet after falling. They knew this too, but instead claimed I had stabbed him 23 times, just to make people think I was so very cruel, bestial and brutal. In court they showed pictures from the autopsy to a terrified jury. The pictures showed Euronymous naked in a table, with all his hair shaved off and his eyes still open, and all the cuts numbered with a pen in his skin. I know it was humiliating for him to get killed, but when they showed pictures from the autopsy in court that was surely much worse. Killing scumbags is one thing, but I would never humiliate anybody like that.
Oh, and of course the judge included in the sentence that: "Varg Vikernes believes in Satan", although I had repeatedly told in court that I didn't believe in neither "Satan" not "God". They ignored the truth, and made up their own reality, for political reasons.
Mentioning the jury, I had the "privilege" of having the only Christian "healer" in Norway in my jury. He apparently had even been on TV, claiming to "pull the evil from the body with the help of Jesus", and thus "heal" people. Now, is that a coincidence? Is it a coincidence that the only Christian "healer" in Norway (at the time, anyhow) ends up in my jury? He was listed as a "secretary", and I only got to know that he was a Christian "healer" much later, in 1995, when a journalist told me about it - and he also told that at least two other jurors were Freemasons. The rest of them were all pensioners, with the exception of one or two women. My "peers" all of them, no doubt... Snorre's defense attorney too was a Freemason, as I have already mentioned, one of the court psychiatrists was a Freemason and a Jewish Auschwitz "survivor" (one of a total of three in Norway, at the time) and the other psychiatrist a left-wing extremist, my defense lawyer was 100% incapable of paid employment (because of a heart condition) and according to the journalist I talked to at least one of the three judges were Freemasons too.
The church burnings were hardly mentioned in the court. They presented one witness in each case who claimed I had burned this or that church, and that was it. "Guilty". Just like that. This process was repeated four times, and I was found guilty of kindling four churches, three of them having burned to the ground. There was not a single piece of physical evidence in any of these cases. I was convicted solely because of the testimony of one single person in each case. All of these witnesses were friends of Euronymous!
Even my incompetent lawyer didn't bother talking about the church fires, as it was "not important" he claimed. "You don't get much for that anyhow", he figured. Interestingly no fingerprints or any other technical evidence were presented in court either. When I was arrested I had some 3.000 rounds of ammo (mostly .22LR, 38 Special, 7,52N, 7.92 mm and 12Gauge) in my apartment, but most of it wasn't even included in the list of confiscated objects. The policemen simply took what they wanted. To them it was "free ammo". They even stole my SS steel helmet, although I can only guess why.
Finally I was convicted of stealing and storing some 150 kg of explosives (mostly dynamite and some glynite) and three bags of electronic detonators, and for breaking into some cabins in the mountains - where I had, according to them, stolen a Norwegian flag (?!) and a book, while looking for guns. I was never convicted for grave desecration, as many seems to believe, or for kindling the Fantoft Stave Church. They had no dumb metal head who could lie and tell them that he had joined me in burning that church, like in the other cases, so they had absolutely no evidence against me in that context whatsoever, and I even had an alibi, as a girl from Oslo had spent the night with me. (Yet my "defense" lawyer didn't even bother to ask her to testify in my defense!) The charge was all based in hearsay. Still, when the jury didn't find me guilty of burning down the Fantoft Stave Church the main judge was so angry she claimed that it was "obvious" that I had done that too, but it wouldn't really matter, as I would get maximum penalty anyway - and amazingly she said that before the three judges and jury members had even begun discussing the penalty, so obviously they had decided on forehand that I should get 21 years no matter what. They wanted to use me as an example, to show the youth in Norway that you don't mess with "the Mother-Pig".
The killing of Euronymous was a blessing to them. Finally they had an excuse to get rid of me (or so they believed anyhow: people tend to think of even a year in prison as "the end" of everything). I don't think it would have happened if the media had not written so many lies about me, because that was what made Euronymous want to get rid of me in the first place: I got so much attention that he became envious. Then the justice system gave me 21 years because the media had given me so much attention that I had become more important and influential than I was originally, and because they were just so incredibly provoked by the church burnings that they lost their minds completely.
In short I was attacked by a convicted criminal, I defended myself and got 21 years for that. As if that isn't enough, they changed the rules after I was convicted, meaning I officially have to serve 2 more years than I was initially sentenced to. 21 years meant that I would be released after 12 years, but a few years ago (in 2000 or 2001) they changed the rules, so according to them I have to serve 14 years instead now, because the new law is made retroactive! It is illegal to make laws retroactive like that, according to the Norwegian constitution and international law, but who cares? In 1945, when the war was over, we didn't even have death penalty in war-time in Norway, so the same justice system we have today made a new law, made it retroactive, and executed dozens of people anyhow (in peace-time!). I am neither a "poor" Afro-Asian immigrant nor a left-wing extremist, or a Christian weakling begging for mercy, so there is no way the media will ever give me any support. I am simply too much a persona non grata in Norway, a country many Western Europeans know as "the last Soviet state". I can still apply for a release after only 12 years, but given my experience with the justice system in Norway, I am not very optimistic about it. There is a difference between Þórr and Loki, as we say in Scandinavia.
I am angry because all of this, but I know that I will come out on top in the end, and I guess that is what really matters. I don't even hate them, I just pity them. Above all I am just thankful that I am not like them. I'll regain my freedom one day, but they will probably never become any better. It's like the fat versus the ugly: the fat can always lose weight, but the ugly will always be ugly.
Thank You for the attention.
Varg "the Villain" Vikernes
December 2004
In other languages: Italiano
Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges (Cornelius Tacitus)
(The more corrupt state, the more laws)
Hodie mihi, cras tibi
(Me today, You tomorrow)