page_title: Viking metal
section_title: Enslaved
hierarchical_section_title: Viking metal / History / Enslaved
caption_attribution_description: English: Enslaved playing on the "Barge to Hell" metal cruise in 2012
context_page_description: Viking metal is a style of heavy metal music characterized by a lyrical and thematic focus on Norse mythology, Norse paganism, and the Viking Age. Viking metal is quite diverse as a musical style, to the point where some consider it more a cross-genre term than a genre, but it is typically seen as black metal with influences from Nordic folk music. Common traits include a slow-paced and heavy riffing style, anthemic choruses, use of both sung and harsh vocals, a reliance on folk instrumentation, and often the use of keyboards for atmospheric effect.
  Viking metal emerged from black metal during the late 1980s and early 1990s, sharing with black metal an opposition to Christianity, but rejecting Satanism and occult themes in favor of the Vikings and paganism. It is similar, in lyrics, sound, and thematic imagery, to pagan metal, but pagan metal has a broader mythological focus and uses folk instrumentation more extensively. Most Viking metal bands originate from the Nordic countries, and nearly all bands claim that their members descend, directly or indirectly, from Vikings.
context_section_description: Enslaved, formed in Norway in 1991, has also been cited as the first truly Viking metal band, with the 1993 EP by the band, Hordanes Land, named as the first true Viking metal release. A review of Eld (1997) noted that "Among the countless bands who were inspired by Bathory's seminal Viking metal, arguably none were as true to its gospel as Norway's Enslaved, whose utmost commitment even extended to donning vintage Norse armor and outfits on-stage". The band's 1994 debut album Vikingligr Veldi  had "many melodies being borrowed from ethnic Scandinavian folk music to lend additional authenticity to the vicious, fast-paced black metal". Inspired by Bathory, Enslaved set out to "create Viking metal devoted to retelling Norway's legends and traditions of old – not attacking Christianity by means of its own creation: Satan." Its second album Frost, also released in 1994, served as "an important release for the extreme music subgenre of Viking metal". Though the previous recordings by Enslaved all featured the same thematic material, Frost was the first album that Enslaved described as Viking metal. This album also defined the band's lyrical approach. Decibel explains that on Frost, bassist and vocalist Grutle Kjellson "knew it was time to reclaim the gods and goddesses of his ancestors, especially if it meant his version of things would inevitably clash with the Christianized fairytales so often associated with Nordic myth."
caption: Ivar Bjørnson of Enslaved at Barge to Hell, December 2012
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