The First Official Greatest Norwegian

The First Official Greatest Norwegian Award: And the Winner Is…

As such, dear reader, we decided that we weren’t going to take the Nobel Peace Prize committee’s appalling choices lying down. Or, if we were going to take them lying down, at least we weren’t going to get comfortable. No pillows for us.

In fact, we aimed to get even. Accordingly, we decided to inaugurate our own award, the Official Greatest Norwegian Award. If the Nobel Peace Prize committee was going to offer nominations to the most disgraceful American scoundrels, we were going to present awards to the most despicable Norwegians in history.

And, like the Nobel Peace Prize committee, we were going to pretend that said despicable humans were paragons of magnanimity and goodliness.

At the end of our announcement for the First Official Greatest Norwegian Award, we exhorted readers to send in a nomination.

And send them in they did. Pretty much everyone who owns a personal computer offered up a name for our contest. In fact, we had no idea that we were so popular until we had our crack young interns open our crack young e-mail box. Our readers were growing. Kind of like a fungus.

Naturally, this gave our Official Greatest Norwegian Award Judges much to ponder. Obviously, we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” weren’t the only ones who wanted to stick it to Norway.

Still, we would be remiss if we did not mention a curious fact about the nomination process: All but two of the nominations went to Norway’s Benedict Arnold, Vidkun Quisling. And one of the remaining nominations went to Edvard Grieg. This wasn’t, dear reader, because the late composer was a horrible character; our lone nominator simply informed us that he was the only Norwegian of whose existence he was aware.

All of this naturally left our Official Greatest Norwegian Award Judges a bit miffed. How could they hand the award to such an obvious moral reprobate as Vidkun Quisling? His very last name is a synonym for “traitor”!

To be sure, giving the award to Vidkun Quisling would offer us the opportunity to revel in Norway’s past sins. We could point out that Mr. Quisling was a disgraceful Nazi sympathizer who urged his countrymen not to fight invading German forces during World War II. And we could point out that, in addition to his horrid racism, Mr. Quisling was also a loser: Even his short stint as Hitler’s puppet in Norway proved unsuccessful.

And there is one more reason to laud Vidkun Quisling: The Norwegians executed him on October 24, 1945. Accordingly, he could serve as a perfect platform for some delightful moral preening: Clearly, the state-sanctioned murder of Mr. Quisling demonstrates the disgraceful barbarity of the Norwegian people. Why not rehabilitate poor Mr. Quisling? Why did all of Norway stoop to his level?

As you can imagine, dear reader, if we were going to offer an Official Greatest Norwegian Award, we couldn’t very well leave Vidkun Quisling out of the picture.

Our Official Contingencies Department came up with the perfect solution: We shall henceforth refer to our contest as the Official Vidkun Quisling Greatest Norwegian Award. That way, the very name of the prize is liable to irk our Scandinavian chums.

Without further ado, then, we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” are content to present:

The First Official Vidkun Quisling Greatest Norwegian Award

This year’s award goes to Varg Vikernes. And what, you may be asking yourself, makes Mr. Vikernes worthy of this prestigious prize? We’re collectively glad you collectively asked.

The good Mr. Vikernes is serving a 21-year prison term for the murder of a guitarist named Oystein Aarseth and the burning of three churches, which led to the death of a fireman. In addition, whilst he was on a 17-hour leave from prison in 2003 (!), the good Mr. Vikernes was briefly on the run, until he was captured in a car chase.

Clearly, Mr. Vikernes is one of the most admirable men in the history of Norwegian civilization. What’s more, his rough treatment at the hands of his countrymen demonstrates that Norway has a lot to learn about the civil treatment of society’s great humanitarians.

It doesn’t take a genius to realize that the brutal—nay, ghastly—maltreatment of Mr. Vikernes demonstrates Norway’s religious intolerance.

How’s that, you say? Well, obviously Mr. Vikernes’ “crimes” were making a statement about the Judeo-Christian oppression rampant in Norwegian society. As such, he took it upon himself to murder a Jew (if “Oystein” isn’t a Jewish first name, we don’t know what is) and to burn three churches.

Although Mr. Vikernes admittedly went a bit far, clearly he was intent on demonstrating the crushing Islamophobia—not to mention the irrational fear of Buddhism—rampant in Norwegian society.

Accordingly, dear reader, we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” are delighted to offer our First Official Vidkun Quisling Greatest Norwegian Award to Varg Vikernes, a true Norwegian patriot.

Take that, you dilapidated Vikings.