The international symposium on “Nordic Ideology between Religion and Scholarship” emphasizes the religious and scientific context in which the idea of the North evolved into a mainstay of extreme nationalism not only in National Socialist Germany but in a number of pro German movements in Scandinavia as well. Starting from the initial observation that the imagination of the North could prosper equally on Pagan and on Christian premises, the apparent indetermination of the Nordic idea in religious regard calls for clarification. The revival of Nordic and Old Norse myths was not restricted to an anti-Christian heathendom where it served as spiritual fundament of a new Pagan religion. Also within the realm of Christianity, especially among Lutheran Protestantism and voelkish German Christians, the idea of a Nordic heritage found a firm rooting. Essential characteristics of both a Nordic Christianity and a Nordic Paganism included the deeply ingrained antagonism against Judaism and Bolshevism. To a lesser extent the British Empire functioned as political antipode helping to consolidate the idea of a Nordic alliance especially in the course of World War I and II.

In addition to the religious dimension of the Nordic ideology, the conference aims at a new scientific occupation with the North that increased considerably in the first half of the 20th century. Only from a narrow-minded religious or anti-religious point of view the amalgamation of science and religion seems to be inappropriate or even mutual exclusive. On the contrary, the correlation between scientific and religious constituents is an indispensable prerequisite for any successful religion in modern times. Therefore disciplines like archeology, Germanic and Nordic studies, ethnography, folklore studies, history and prehistory as well as religious studies played an important role in the shaping of a Nordic worldview. In search for the inner bond of the assumed fellowship of all Nordic men and peoples, a science-based religious perception turned out to be the crux of the matter. Questions of a biological lineage were closely intertwined with questions of a spiritual kinship. But since the natural and biological sciences totally failed to produce any substantial evidence of a Nordic race or of Nordic physical traits, other factors had to constitute the community of the North and to establish a discernible border line between Nordic and un-Nordic. On these grounds a combination of religious and scientific features formed the ideological core of a commonly shared Nordic identity with the ultimate goal to justify theories of a Nordic supremacy and to rationalize a quasi-natural contradiction between people of Nordic descent and their enemies.

The main objective of this conference is to fathom the ideological principles and intellectual depth of European Nordicism. Due to the great many of Nordic mythologems that have gained contour in various fields in the first decades of the last century, we need a reflective interdisciplinarity to deal with the iridescent and multifaceted character of the Nordic idea adequately. It is not easy to apply stable categories to a rather unstable and frayed subject matter developing tenable generalizations in so doing. Therefore we thought it necessary to bring together different methodologies and scholarly approaches in order to overcome the usual phenomenology of glimmering ideas and repulsive behaviors. Only if we widen our perspective and sharpen our methodological tools we will be able to come to grips with the ramifications and heterogeneous character of the Nordic ideology. The question in which manner the situation in Scandinavia coincided or stood at odds with the German understanding of the North still waits to be answered in the context of a broader analysis of politics, religion and culture in Europe. An international and interdisciplinary approach obviously ought to go hand in hand in the case of European Nordicism. It is our hope that this symposium may help to strengthen cross-border networking in both geographical and subject-related regard. Although history does not repeat itself, the reinvigoration of the North as ideological reference point against a threat connected with the East, the West or the South seems to be not purely hypothetical in times of crises.

Das Konferenzprogramm wird zusammen mit den Abstracts der Vorträge auf der Homepage des Forum for German Studies (s.u.) veröffentlicht werden. Dort auch weitere Informationen.