”INN I DE DYPE SKOGERS FAVN” Inre och yttre rum i norsk black metal

Abstract

Emerging in Norway during the early 1990s, black metal is a music oriented youth subculture with a dramatic contemporary history which has occasionally been subject to intense media attention. Insofar the academic world has shown interest for this subculture, it has very rarely paid attention to its literary content, despite the fact that the song lyrics occupy a central position for musicians and listeners alike. This is a major blind spot in the understanding of a cultural expression which is internationally recognized for its significant regional value. The aim of this thesis is to illustrate the relationship between nature as space and the subject, which characterizes the literary expression of early Norwegian black metal, with the assumption that this genre stems from a Gothic literary tradition. Adapting the analytical method of comparative close reading, this study takes its theoretical starting-point in a combination of Gothic literary theory and the theory of space in narratives. A recurring feature in these lyrics, all written in Norwegian, is the combination of depictions of the exploration of the subject’s psyche and depictions of the Scandinavian natural landscape, in a merging of inner and outer reality. This forms a darkly atmospheric circle of motifs that characterize the aesthetics of early Norwegian black metal. Analyzed as a corpus of literary texts, these lyrics shed light on common conceptions among black metal artists, which enhances the understanding of a lyrical genre that is arguably the most internationally wide-spread literature in Norwegian.