Varg Vikernes: 'Spaniards are not Europeans'

Varg Vikernes and the debate over whether Spaniards are European

A Norwegian musician based in France, Varg Vikernes, to whom the thread attributes the thesis that Spaniards are not phenotypically distinguishable from North Africans. The thesis has peine an old dispute: what it means to be European and who hands out that card. The response has not remained at the level of easy insult. Some have replied with genetic coordinates; others, with an uncomfortable question: why give a platform to someone with his track record.

Who is Varg Vikernes and why he is back in the conversation

Norwegian, linked to the circle around the black metal band Mayhem. His record does not allow for friendly nuances: he was convicted of the murder of a fellow scene member and of several church burnings, and in the exchange it is recalled that he left prison claiming mental health problems. With that résumé, some doubt he deserves more attention than he already has.

He lives in France with his family and, according to the exchange, relies on public aid from the country that hosts him. The paradox is pointed out with a sneer: the same man accused of despising his neighbour collects from the state that takes him in.

Do Spaniards have North African antiestéticatures?

Here the tone changes and the technical toolkit of the amateur comes in. Those who respond do so with genetic coordinates—the so-called g25—with ancestral components such as Baltic and with the classic nomenclature of typologies: north atlantid, atlantid, atlanto-med, gracile med, beride, alpine. The problem is the standard. If the yardstick for Europeanness is the Norwegian blonde, any Mediterranean phenotype is left out of the picture, and along with it half of Europe.

The most generous calculation assumes that there is a common European genetic base distributed unevenly. The opposite scenario holds that the southern peninsula drags centuries of mixing and that this shows in the face. Neither version is settled in the exchange, and the standoff continues.

Why are Spanish children blonde and adults not?

The most repeated comparison is not genetic but climatic. It is argued that the Spanish phenotype darkens with age and sun: children with blonde or light brown hair and fair skin who, as they grow, turn dark brown. And that process is contrasted with that of North African minors, who according to the same thesis show stable pigmentation from childhood. It is an argument of perception, not of the laboratory, and it is used as such.

The opposite thesis also appears, more convoluted: that true blondes carry a much larger Asian component than any North African marker in southern Spain. Irony does the work that data do not.

Nordicism versus Hispanism: two narratives that feed each other

The clash is not only with Vikernes. Some accuse Hispanists—and an author cited by them—of wanting to cut any tie between Spain and the rest of Europe, of pushing the country towards a three-race mixing in the American style. The reply is symmetrical: Nordicists would be as insecure as those who demand laboratory purity to recognise a neighbour.

Underneath lurks the same obsession: measuring Spanishness in millimetres of skull. In the exchange, skin tones of a Spanish politician and a Norwegian musician from the Mayhem circle are compared, and it is recalled that Vikernes himself has called a PP leader Nordic. Such a criterion holds up poorly.

Hispanidad versus Europe: a false dilemma

There is a line that considers the underlying approach dishonest. It opposes Hispanidad to Europe as if they were mutually exclusive alternatives. Holding that what is Spanish is alien to what is European ends up benefiting the same mental framework that is denounced: the one that turns genes into a border.

The other reading insists on the contrary, that southern Europe has its own history of mixing and that reclaiming it is not renouncing anything. Two incompatible narratives with the same vice: both need the other.

Immigration as a backdrop

Behind phenotype appears the issue that really drives everything: immigration. One side argues that the biological argument is used as a cover to justify closure policies and that this cover collapses on its own. Another replies that criticism of immigration does not need to disguise itself as genetics and that the exchange is lost when it degenerates into a contest of antiestéticatures. Both positions share ground: identity treated as a political weapon and not as data.

Why is so much importance given to a tweet?

Because the character is a hook. One sarcastic intervention sums it up: welcome to the internet, where anyone can be heard by hundreds of people. The same logic explains why the exchange goes from genetics to spectacle in two messages.

And as a curiosity, clarification is sought about a scar on the musician's chin: there are two versions, a childhood skiing accident or a prison fight. No one provides the right one. It is the portrait of a discussion where biography is used as an argument and data always arrive late.

A final detail unsettles any manual of coherence: the same man to whom the thread attributes denying Europeanness to an entire country has publicly defended the rapper Kanye West.