
Norway’s Vikings Are Reclaiming Valhalla at the World Cup
The far right spent a century claiming the Vikings. Norway’s World Cup team — horned helmets, runes, a viral row-chant and all — just took them back.
Mímir Kristjánsson is a member of parliament in Norway for the Red Party (Rødt) and a former news editor of Klassekampen.

The far right spent a century claiming the Vikings. Norway’s World Cup team — horned helmets, runes, a viral row-chant and all — just took them back.

Norway’s billionaires spent the election campaign smearing the Red Party as totalitarian extremists. But the party kept its focus on working-class Norwegians’ material interests — and secured a historic electoral breakthrough.

Norway has become famous for its social harmony and relatively generous welfare system. But the social-democratic compromise we know today doesn’t owe to some eternal national character — rather, it was a product of the revolutionary struggles of the interwar period.

Founded 100 years ago today, the Communist International quickly won the backing of Norway’s mighty Labor Party. The alliance promised to link the Soviets to mass politics in the West — but Moscow soon wasted its opportunity.

From Winston Churchill to the Nazis, anticommunists have long blamed the spread of socialism on Jews. With the Left again on the rise, the antisemitic trope of "Judeo-Bolshevism" is back.