Description
Extreme right groups often understand gender identity in ‘biologically’ reductionist terms; it is perceptible and directly impacts upon individual behaviour. Yet, members of these groups can upset binary understandings of gender and damage the ontological security of the group itself; this happens in the Nordic Resistance Movement. NRM men and women are expected to perform different kinds of gendered activism, the former as protestors and fighters, the latter as caregivers and mothers. When an NRM woman engages in protest, she challenges the stability of these gender roles. She does not conform with the NRM’s version of femininity nor can she be masculine, because of the NRM’s ‘biological’ understanding of identity.
I argue that the activist resistance woman occupies a liminal space between the NRM’s versions of masculinity and femininity. I conceptualise this through the metaphor of the shieldmaiden, a Viking Age Nordic woman, considered an equal when fighting alongside men but who took on a ‘traditional’ maternal role once the fighting ceased. Nordic and Viking history are core to the NRM’s biographical narratives of its people and self; the contemporary performance of the shieldmaiden role strengthens the link between the NRM and its narratives, aiding ontological security. Therefore, I argue that the shieldmaiden acts as a source of both ontological security and insecurity.
