Independent/Commission Producer: Nicholas Ahlmark

Independent/Commission Producer Contact Details: +447966184396 / nick.ahlmark@me.com

Commission/Independent Production Company and Address: Storytime Films Ltd, 1st Floor Flat, 36 Brunswick Road, Hove, BN3 1DH

Al Jazeera Commissioning Executive: Emile Guertin

Al Jazeera Commissioning Executive Contact Details: Guertine@aljazeera.net

Al Jazeera producer/program editor:

Al Jazeera producer/program editor telephone number:

AL Jazeera bureau: KL

Instructions:

Please use colour-coding when listing contributors and sourced footage. This will enable those elements to be more easily compared and added to the PasC form.

Narration – in CAPS

Dialogue – in italics

Correspondent to Camera, PTC – in plain text  

Names and references as they appear in this transcript:

Time Code

(10:00:00:00)

Description of Scene

Audio

TITLE CARD:

KUNGALV, SWEDEN

00:05

Robin in flat with son getting ready for school.

Son: I don’t want to go to school.

Robin: Why not?

00:19

Son: Oh it’s raining!

00:24

Robin dropping son off at school.

Robin: I would describe myself as an ordinary guy living an ordinary life here in Sweden.

00:25

Robin in car on way to work.

Robin teaching in class.

I’m a single dad and a school teacher, but I’m also living another kind of life...

00:55

FIRE TEXT:

Every weekend across Sweden, young men and women gather in remote locations to act out the lives of their Viking ancestors in Live Action Roleplays, also known as LARP’s.

Drone shots of LARP village.

01:05

Drone shots of LARP village.

Robin: The Viking age, it has such special characteristics. We don’t have so much writing all we have are the folktales and stories. It gets a bit mysterious, exciting.

01:21

Robin walking through snow.

There’s a lot of misconceptions floating around about the Vikings. You might think about a big blonde tall man with horns on his helmet and that’s actually very far from the real picture of Vikings.

01:39

NAME CARD:

ROBIN LUNDIN

MODERN DAY VIKING

Robin eating food in dining room.

01:44

Viking warriors duelling watched by Robin and crowd of Vikings.

Robin: Of course the Vikings were capable of violence as well, but the medieval ages were very violent times, so compared to other cultures they weren’t more violent than anyone else.

02:00

Most Viking LARP’s are usually about some big event like a feast or a holiday, maybe some gladiatorial battle. Sort of like Game of Thrones but without the killings.

02:36

Night time: Robin and fellow Vikings standing around fire watching funeral ceremony.

Singer: This is my final resting place, this is my final resting place.

02:44

Robin: This particular LARP is about the death of a young king and the politics surrounding his funeral. But we are purely interested in the history and mythology of the Viking age and having fun. We are not in any way a nationalistic movement at all.

03:01

But I’ve noticed that as soon as I talk about my interest in Viking culture, people become worried that you are a racist or a Nazi.

03:34

Day time: Robin and group of Vikings standing around in a circle.

Robin: I am part of the community ‘Vikings Against Racism’. We’ve noticed that many Viking symbols are getting hijacked by extreme groups, in particular Nazis and racists.

So I have these info-merrcial flyers about Vikings Against Racism. If you would like to please take these to hand out.

03:59

Blonde Woman: It’s not only scary, it’s embarrassing that what I do is connected to this (racism). I’m ashamed. It’s an embarrassment! 

04:13

Long Haired Man: You feel ashamed to wear the Hammer of Thor. When I go to work or to school in my ‘modern’ clothes, I feel the urge that I need to...hide the Hammer of Thor or whatever I might be wearing. Just to not be embarrassed and be called a racist or a Nazi.

04:31

Woman with Shaved Head: You can’t see them right now but I have many tattoos. Now I’m considering getting Viking tattoos but how will people perceive me?

04:47

Robin at home in his kitchen on laptop.

Robin: Our main forum is on Facebook.

 TITLE CARD: “VIKINGS AGAINST RACISM”

05:09

Archive footage of NRM conflict with police.

The Nordic Resistance Movement, NRM, are a neo-facsist group. They believe in the supremacy of the northern culture. Their main goal would be to prevent any other culture to enter into the Nordic countries, according to their online propaganda videos. And the arrow that they use for their logo is actually a run symbol from the viking age.

05:37

TITLE CARD:

FREDERICK VEJDELAND

NORDIC RESISTANCE MOVEMENT

Archive footage of NRM rally.

Frederick: They have opened up our country to an invasion of foreign peoples. They allow Swedes to be murdered, gang-raped and humiliated! I want you to think about all these things!

05:56

Drone footage of Kungalv. Robin walking around his council estate.

Robin: There was this guy Frederick Vejdeland, he is the Nordic Resistance Movements propaganda person and he’s actually from Kungalve, my town.

06:10

I live here in Kungalv, not far from Gothenburg. To me Kungalve is the perfect small town. It’s big enough to have everything you need but it’s small enough to get some peace of mind.

06:25

I live in Kulmarken, it’s one of the more diverse areas in Kungalve. There’s a lot of different people coming from all different backgrounds to me it’s my hometown.

06:49

Drone footage of school.

Robin greeting kids as they enter school.

Robin dressed as Viking teaching in class.

Robin: I am a teacher at an elementary school, where a lot of kids are first or second or third generation immigrants. Once in a while I dress up as a Viking and teach the kids about history and culture. For me it’s important that they know the viking world is something inclusive, even if your background is from another part of the world.

07:05

Robin (to kids): I have been reading a lot of research about Viking discoveries.

Robin: We have this fur hat.

Student (off camera): Is it real fur?

Robin: Yes, it’s made from real fur and it’s a Russian design. They had certain artefacts that were important to their culture, for example a cow horn.

07:31

Robin: It was really in the 19th century that the nationalists started saying the Vikings were this kind of Germanic master race. But all the modern research says Vikings intermixed with a lot of different cultures, a lot of different people from the Middle East and the Americas. So the Vikings were very tolerant of other cultures and other people that they met. They didn’t adhere to the concept of nationalism.

07:58

Robin (to kids): When the idea of nationalism was founded in the 1800’s, the Vikings came into focus. Unfortunately they (politicians) didn’t care about what was true or false.

08:14

‘A Viking, no he looks way to nice with this helmet’

‘Let’s add some horns too’

‘and let’s make him very angry’

08:30

Student: Is this why they have horns?

Robin (to students) : Yes. The Vikings never wore horns until they started lying about it in the 1800’s. That’s why people today still think Vikings had horns but they never did.

08:46

Robin: These kids would be targets of the Nordic Resistance Movement.

08:52

Kungalv high street.

NRM are targeting Kungalve because there’s been an increase of unemployment, people are losing faith in the system and there’s been an increase of people coming from afar, so it has a clear scapegoat group to pit these people against.

09:12

Robin standing on hill overlooking Kungalv.

There are good people living here. To me, who loves Kungalve, it’s hard to watch. So I’m really seriously considering if I should try to meet the NRM face to face so I can confront them about their use of Viking culture.

09:42

Night time: Robin apartment with son.

Son: Daddy?

Robin: Yes?

Son: I want to take a bath.

Robin: My love, we don’t have time to take a bath now. It’s bedtime.

09:56

Night time: exteriors of Robins council estate.

Robin: I’ve been thinking a lot about the security of me and my family. It is a risk. The Nordic Resistance Movement is famous for harassing people, physically and on social media, even hurting them and their families.

10:12

Night time: Robin apartment with son.

Robin (to son) : Oh no, oh no I’ll have to drag this to the store tomorrow and replace it with a new model.

10:33

Robin in living room with laptop.

Archive news reports of John Hron murder.

Robin: Here in Kungalve in 1995 there was a fourteen year old boy called John Hron who was severely beaten, tortured and then murdered by Nazi’s because he was anti racist.

10:50

Local Politician: I would describe this as a senseless case of meaningless violence in our society.

10:59

John Hrons mother: John was our son and we loved him. He was everything to us, we lived for him.

11:09

Robin in living room with laptop.

Robin: This murder was a big shock for everyone here in the region and so a teacher, Christer Mattson started the tolerance project here in Kungalve

11:22

News archive footage of Christer doing a talk on stage for school kids.

Christer: They say it’s not economically beneficial to accept refugees and that there are no ‘real’ refugees coming here!

11:29

Robin: It’s an outreach program to prevent young people from joining radical groups, which grew and grew

11: 41

Christer is regarded as a leading academic on extremist right wing groups here in Scandinavia and he actively works do de-radicalize neo-Nazis.

11:55

TITLE CARD:

GOTHENBURG, SWEDEN

Drone shot of Gothenburg skyline. Robin walking down Gothenburg street.

My hopes in meeting Christer is that I can share some of my experiences and maybe hear some of his and I would like some advice from him on how to approach and talk to the Nordic Resistance Movement.

12:08

Robin & Christer meeting inside building entrance.

Robin: Hi I’m Robin

Christer: Christer, welcome

Robin: Thank you it’s nice to be here.

12:18

Inside Christers office.

Robin: Wonderful to finally meet you.

12:25

TITLE CARD:

CHRISTER MATTSSON

ASSOCIATE PROF. GOTHENBURG UNIVERSITY

12:27

Archive photo of Christer debating with student.

TITLE CARD:

GOTLAND, 1996

Robin: You have researched this for a long time but it all started early in your career, right?

Christer: It was a talk I did about the (far right) Sweden Democrats.

12:37

Inside Christers office.

Christer: A student challenged me and it turned out he was a Sweden Democrat.

It was a public debate in front of other students and the media and I destroyed him in the debate.

12:51

Archive photo of Christer debating with student.

Christer: It wasn’t the Jews who killed people

it wasn’t the Jews who created the concentration camps

it’s not the Jews who shave their heads and attack people on the streets,

you are the ones doing this!

You can’t focus all your anger on an ethnic group you know nothing about!

You have to understand this, you should be ashamed.

13:17

Archive photo of Christer debating with student.

Christer: He lost the debate but not only that, it also lead to him being prosecuted for hate speech.

This was the first conviction for hate speech in Sweden and he was sentenced in the Supreme Court.

13:40

Inside Christers office.

Christer: In one way, I did what was expected of me during the nineties…

I accepted a debate with a racist and I won that debate.

The only problem was that this became his radicalisation process.

He became an active Nazi because of this situation.

13:58

Christer: For me, this was a huge lesson on what you should not do

how you shouldn’t act like a school teacher if you want to prevent radicalisation.

I took the debate and won but I lost the student.

14:17

Robin: Do you have any tips on how to approach this kind of meeting?

14:25

Christer: I would start as I do when I interview people, by asking them ‘who are you?’

Because from this question you will find the answer to many things

and from there you will know which route to take.

14:46

Christer: So now I am curious to find out more about you Robin.

Who are you and why are you doing this?

14:55

Robin: I feel I have to do something for myself but also for the sake of my family.

I don’t want to sit here in thirty years time when my son has grown up

and he asks me ‘how could this happen?’

and I shrug my shoulders and say ‘I don’t know’

‘I didn’t bother to take any action’.

15:29

TITLE CARD:

KUNGALV

15:36

Daytime exteriors of Kungalv and NRM members.

Robin: The Nordic Resistance Movement claim to adhere to Viking culture and Viking values and trying to protect them from outside influences...

15:50

Robin at his apartment reading through history books, getting dressed as Viking, preparing to leave to go confront NRM.

...but the Vikings themselves never had any such qualms. They travelled all over the world. There is so far only evidence that they embraced other cultures and other points of view. Embracing other cultures would be an anathema to a Nordic Resistance Movement member because they are claiming they want to preserve a very specific, very frozen in time version of Nordic heritage, which never existed.

16:36

Robin driving car down highway on way to confront NRM.

Robin: We’re going to a meeting with the Nordic Resistance Movement. I never had that direct contact, only through social media, with the NRM.

On social media I’ve had NRM supporters contacting me or commenting on something that I’ve shared or something that I’ve written on social media and it usually just boils down to ‘you are wrong, this is how it is’. The conversation stops there.

It’s very easy to throw something out in that anonymous way and just leave it like that. That’s why I believe in this face to face meeting instead.

17:09

Drone shot of highway bridge.

Robin in car.

Robin: Unfortunately, most of my Viking friends live in Gothenburg so they couldn’t make it today. So I’m doing this solo.

I’m very nervous. Some people might get violent. Yeah.

17:38

Robin arriving at NRM rally.

Robin: And the Police are here that’s good.

17:43

Robin watching NRM and counter demonstrators.

So here we have the Nordic Resistance Movement having a small speech. Maybe fifty people.

So here we have the counter demonstration. In Sweden it’s become a thing to turn your back against the Nazis, to turn your back against everything that they stand for. And I would say that there are more of us than them. That’s good.

18:21

Robin amongst counter demonstrators.

Woman: So you’re on the good side? I was afraid at first because I saw this…

Robin: We are working against the Nazis and racists so they don’t take our heritage.

Woman: I need to thank you, that’s so good. At first I was a bit afraid, ‘oh no’ I thought. So your name is Robin? Good luck Robin!

Robin: Thankyou.

18:41

Robin giving speech to counter demonstrators.

Robin: We are a little organisation with an interest in history. We work to keep our heritage open and accessible for everyone. So Nazi’s, racists and xenophobics can’t take our symbols and heritage for propaganda. That is why I am here!

19:09

Robin watching NRM rally.

Frederick: Mass Immigration is a threat to our nation and multiculturalism is shattering our country and creates chaos in our society.

19:20

Robin: The Nordic Resistance Movement is not being challenged with logical arguments, with facts.

I can understand that people get angry and get afraid and just want them to go away.

If I do not debate the NRM, if I do not show other people their faults, they will get new recruits.

We have to show that these people don’t know what they’re talking about!

19:58

TITLE CARD:

FREDERICK VEJDELAND

NORDIC RESISTANCE MOVEMENT

20:09

Robin approaching Fredrick.

They both walk over to a different area in front of an NRM member holding a flag.

Robin: We are a small network of history lovers as you can see we love the Viking age a lot.

I see you use the Tyr rune as a symbol why have you specifically chosen that one?

Frederick: Yeah it represents Tyr of course, and Tyr represents justice, battle and war.

20:27

In my opinion our culture is on the verge of being completely destroyed we need to build up a new culture, a new Nordic culture. So the Tyr rune is a part of that. It not only symbolises combat and victory but also the Nordics. By that I mean us.

20:46

Robin: I’d like to know how you define the (Nordic) people? For example, I’ve lived my whole life here in Sweden and so have my parents. Would I be part of these people?

Frederick: Yes absolutely.

Robin: How is that defined? What is the criteria?

21:11

Frederick: The people are the Germanic tribes who came here ten thousand years ago.

Robin: Research says that the Vikings travelled very far and met many ethnically different people. They went all the way to Constantinople and major parts of Asia and over the ocean to Vinland, to America.

We’ve found graves in Sweden which tell us people settled here from far away, from all over the world. It didn’t seem to be a problem back then...

21:47

Frederick: Actually, I think the inter breeding was negligible.

Robin: The ones who wouldn’t fit in and be deported where would they go?

Frederick: They came from somewhere…

Robin: How about someone who’s a third or fourth generation immigrant?

Frederick: Yes

Robin: They’ve never been in that country and they have no connection to it.

22:05

Frederick: We’ll need to negotiate with the governments from those countries. If they can’t go there maybe they could find another country with a similar culture.

Robin: But what if no one accepts these people who grew up in a Swedish culture?

Frederick: We will have to solve that.

Robin: How will we solve it?

Frederick: No matter what, they will have to leave the Nordics. That is our priority!

22:36

Robin: Honestly I can say that I was quite scared. I thought a lot about whether I should do this or not but in the end I think I did the right thing, even if the conversation I had with him sort of ended up hitting a brick wall.

22:55

Robin talking to group of NRM members.

After Fredeick, I heard that somebody called out that they appreciated my clothing. So I turned around and there was three or four guys standing there looking at me.

23:05

NRM member: Nice clothes

Robin: Thank you

23:08

Robin: One of the young men said, ‘Well, maybe we have our differences, but we have something in common as well.’

The realization that there is something in common, and we can talk about that. It made that connection possible.

They’re still human beings and if we can see them like that and we can find something, anything, that connects us, then we can build a bridge on that connection, and we can start to understand each other and maybe they won’t feel so afraid and so angry.

23:50

Robin in car driving back home.

Drone sunset shot of Kungalv.

Robin’s car arriving at his council estate at night.

Robin: I believe that Nazism, and racism in general, is founded on fear and hatred.

So far I haven’t seen any part of the world in any history books or in any era, where fear and hatred is conquered by fear and hatred.

24:16

Robin reading bedtime story to son inside sons bedroom.

Robin: How to become a Viking, these are the first steps…

How to choose your name, a worthy name is achieved by good acts.

You are still young and carrying your father’s name but soon you will create your own path in the world and win your own name.

24:46

Robin exits sons bedroom walks into kitchen.

24:55

Exterior nighttime shot of Kungalv.

25:03

THE END