This is Varg Vikernes
NRK (Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation) (16.07.2013)
Roy Hilmar Svendsen and Jonas Sætre

He killed his bandmate with 23 stab wounds and was convicted of three church fires. In 2003, he ran away from prison and robbed a car. In addition, he is a critically acclaimed metal musician. Now French police believe that Varg Vikernes planned a massacre.

The 40-year-old from Bergen, often referred to as "The Count", has become the symbol of the shadow side of Norwegian Black Metal, which made big headlines in the early 1990s.

Vikernes was for a time bassist in the now renowned and respected band Mayhem, while also recording music alone and releasing it under the name Burzum.

10 August 1993, he stabbed Mayhem guitarist Øystein "Euronymous" Aarseth to death with 23 stab wounds in an apartment in Oslo. He claimed, and still claims, that he acted in self-defense. Neither the police nor the court believed him. Instead, it was assumed that the murder occurred as a result of a power struggle between the two in the Norwegian Black Metal community.

Vikernes was arrested in Bergen a little over a week after the murder. Police found a large quantity of explosives in his home.

Bergen inhabitant was also charged with a number of the church fires that ravaged Norway in the early 1990s. During the subsequent trial, he was convicted of being behind three of these, including the burning of Åsane Church in Bergen. He was sentenced in Gulating Court of Appeal to the most severe punishment of the law, 21 years in prison.

Vikernes himself has explained that he planned to escape from prison already in the late 1990s.

"I made plans to run away from prison in 1999 to join the Serbian forces and to fight against the despicable NATO criminals and their Albanian-Turkish Muslim thugs, but my plans were ruined by the fact that the prison system suddenly and without any warnings sent me to another prison a few days earlier than planned".

During his leave from prison in October 2003, Vikernes ran away and threatened to take a car from a family in Numedal. The family perceived that he threatened them with a gun, but in court Vikernes explained that it was a flashlight in a case.

Less than a day later, his car was forcibly stopped by police in Oslo. The Bergen inhabitant then had, among other things, an AG-3 with 700 ammunition in the car.

Kongsberg District Court sentenced him to prison for one year and two months for the robbery of the car.

In 2009, the Bergen inhabitant was released from prison, after serving 16 years. The 40-year-old has since kept a low profile and been most visible as a musician and blogger.

Through the artist name Burzum, he has released four albums in four years, while communicating with his fans and expressing his opinions in several blogs. Much of this content is dominated by racial hatred directed at Jews and Muslims.

French media today claim that Vikernes was planning a massacre inspired by Anders Behring Breivik and his manifesto.

It would be remarkable, in that case, considering a blog post dated December 13 last year, where Vikernes takes strong distance from Breivik's actions and encourages the terrorist convicted Oslo man to commit suicide.

"You have killed more Norwegians than the entire Muslim population in Norway has done the last 40 years, and you claim to be a Norwegian nationalist and patriot fighting (alongside your Jewish masters) against Islam, to protect us against their crimes!?", Vikernes writes.

After his release in 2009, Vikernes moved with his family to a farm in Bø in Telemark, a property he bought in 2006 and sold again in 2010. Since then, Vikernes has lived in Bergen for periods, before the family moved to France. The Bergen inhabitant should now also have changed their name.

Mayhem vocalist Attila Chisar described Vikernes in 2010 as "a kind and polite man". In an interview with Burzum fans on his own website, Vikernes stated about himself last year:

In the same interview, he also recommended that fans read Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf" (My Struggle). When a fan asked how Vikernes sees the future of the European continent, the answer was:

"Civil war, race war and a return to extreme nationalism (the only solution). We are entering another Ice Age as well, and if nothing else that might stop immigration from Africa and Asia..."

In February 1993, Vikernes claimed that the many church fires he had taken credit for were just a PR stunt for a record release.

Authors: Hilmar Svendsen and Jonas Sætre (© 2013 NRK (Norsk Rikskringkasting AS), Norway)

In other languages: Norsk