On the Margins of Life: Life Stories of Radical Nationalists

Abstract

This essay discusses the life stories of four radical nationalists. It is based on life story interviews as well as information gathered through a year of fieldwork. This includes conversations with all forty participants of the Norwegian radical nationalist subculture in 1993-94, and in-depth interviews with all the leading activists, except one. Elsewhere I have analysed the identities of these young people in terms of group membership, ideology and gender issues. In this essay, I highlight the radical nationalists' lives prior to their entrance into the radical nationalist underground. I focus on the way they relate to common interpretations of them by outsiders, and the way they themselves argue in order to bring reason into their choice to join a group which is condemned by most people. I look for the common features we can find in these life stories, and in the mechanisms of recruitment described by these four men.