Here is the full story of how the burned (in June 1992) Fantoft Stave church photo taken and then became a cover in the iconic ASKE EP. One of the most cult Black Metal releases ever!
Answered by Are Mundal
You took the photos of Fantoft Stave Church in ashes used on the cover of the Aske mini-LP. Would you please share some of the details of this very fascinating story?
Yes, for instance I went to see Varg in Ibsensgt. to deliver some guitar equipment, and he asked me if I could take a picture of the Fantoft stave church that had just burned down. He lent me his camera and I went there on my way home to take the pictures I was asked too. This was later that day, and there were some bystanders and fire fighters still on the premises. They were doing some post fire security work, and the heat was still radiating from the ruins and the ground. I definitely stood out in the crowd of bystanders which made me a little uneasy, and I was concerned the people there would find it suspicious that I was photographing the remains of the church. I definitely did not look anything like a reporter either. When I next saw Varg I returned the camera to him with the film in it. One of these pictures made it to the album cover of the Aske EP. To me it's a very symbolic picture, because this was my Lutheran, bigot, sorrow and misery inflicting grandfathers favourite church.
Anyway, one day a police car stood outside my home place in Fana, and the police man said: "Hi, you know what this is all about don’t you? Just get dressed and get in the car!". Apparently I was a suspect of the fire or something, because I was taken into custody and they took my mugshot and my fingerprints and interrogated me for hours. The interrogations started with screaming and threats, waving Varg's camera in front of my face. It lasted for hours until they let me go. I was also called in for a second round of this, and when the interviews were finished, I heard nothing more from the police, and I never testified to anything in his court case.
Source: https://aremundalinterview.blogspot.com/
“The knight is a man of blood and iron, a man familiar with the sight of smashed faces and the ragged stumps of lopped-off limbs; he is also a demure, almost maidenlike, guest in a hall, a gentle, modest, unobtrusive man. He is not compromise or happy mean between ferocity and meekness; he is fierce to the nth and meek to the nth. The man who combines both characters – the knight – is not a work of nature but of art; of that art which has human beings, instead of canvas or marble, for its medium.”
C. S. Lewis
"It has turned out fortunate for me to-day that destiny appointed Braunau-on-the-Inn to be my birthplace. For that little town is situated just on the frontier between those two states the reunion of which seems, at least to us of the younger generation, a task to which should devote our lives and in the pursuit of which every possible means should be employed...."
In the Beginning was the Word
One of the most famous paintings of the Third Reich era is undeniably Am Anfang war das Wort (In the beginning was the Word) from 1937, painted by Hermann Otto Hoyer, a German artist who, very unfortunately for him, had to go through the tribulations of both wars, losing an arm in the process and experiencing the ignominious life of a prisoner in enemy territory. However, the loss of his right arm during WWI did not deter Hoyer from continuing with his artistic career, and in fact we can see photos of Hoyer painting sketches of the aforementioned work with just one operative arm.
In spite of having gone through both conflicts as a combatant Hoyer managed to stay alive up to the age of 75, though after WWII, he had to go through the humiliation of being imprisoned once again by the Al-lies in his own homeland for another couple of years.
He became an early member of the NSDAP Party. With the famous painting SA Man with a Swastika Flag and Wounded Comrade on the Shoulder (1933) (actually known as Bild der Kampfzeit) he put his art at the service of the NSDAP. In the House of Art in Munich in 1937 Hoyer introduced the famous painting Am Anfang war das Wort (In the Beginning was the Word) representing Adolf Hitler speaking to the citizens of Oberstdorf in the initial Kampfzeit of the National Socialist movement. Hitler bought the painting for the planned art gallery in Linz. This painting was reproduced in thousands of postcards and art magazines.
But… what happened to the celebrated painting “In the beginning was the Word”?
On the orders of the Allied Control Commission, the painting was seized and taken to a military depot of the United States on 13 May 1946. Up until today the painting is still unavailable to public view, due to the painting being considered “blatantly propagandistic”. The painting is currently in the custody of the U.S. Army at the United States Army Center of Military History in the basement of a skyscraper in Washington DC.
Source: third-reich-posters.co.uk
Astronomical references in Homer's Iliad. Something which shows how far and back it goes the knowledge of Ancient Greeks about the stars and their course in the sky.
"Achilles was shining like a star as he sped across the plain - like the star that comes in autumn, outshining all its fellows in the evening sky. They call it Orion's Dog, and though it is the brightest of all stars, it heralds no good, brining fever to wretched mortals."
Homer ILIAD
