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Comment by vintermann | Hacker News Reader

It's not Americans doing these things. I've met plenty of Europeans with exotic identity claims, romanticizing some past culture instead of the living culture around them - Viking metal rather than folk music, to put it like that (there are also of course responsible ways to enjoy exotic metal genres).

By making it into Americans vs. Europeans you're doing a bit of what you're criticizing yourself. Yeah sure, we all agree someone walking up to you and saying they're Saxon is embarrassing, but that sweet old lady from Minnesota who's done rose painting (a national romantic fad around the time her ancestors immigrated) for 20 years is part of a living culture, which isn't simply "American", even if she has outrageous Norwegian pronounciation and otherwise isn't someone you'd like to identify with.

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Viking metal is a folk music tradition of Europe! Just a very modern one that postdates the invention of the electric guitar and Tony Iommi losing his fingertips in an industrial accident :)

A lot of Viking-themed metal is pretty historically uninformed and cheesy, although that's true of lots of metal and for that matter lots of other art.

Yes, I'll accept that it's a modern folk tradition. And I'm actually OK with cheesy too, as long as something doesn't pass itself off as more historically accurate than it is. As Farya Faraji pointed out, we don't know what Norse Viking music was like, but it's unlikely to have included throat singing, and we know they liked pan pipes. (Invading England to a George Zhamfir soundtrack?)

> that sweet old lady from Minnesota who's done rose painting (a national romantic fad around the time her ancestors immigrated) for 20 years is part of a living culture, which isn't simply "American"

I 100% agree with you.

Men hun er faen meg heller ikke norsk.

Hvis hun ser på seg selv som norsk, så har ikke jeg noe problem med det.

If she sees herself has Norwegian, I have no problem with that.

We should let people identify with whatever they want. Identity is deeply personal - that's kind of the whole thing with identity - and as long as you don't use your identity to argue for something that's objectively wrong (such as rewriting history to suit it) then it's fine. If someone wants to identify as the same kind of thing as me, I may be flattered or embarrassed or worst case offended, but let's go for the facts, not with the identity.