Chapter 10: Finnish Folk Metal: Raising Drinking Horns in Mainstream Metal

Folk metal as a sub-genre has been around for some years but the 2000s saw the genre become part of the metal mainstream, with Turisas, Finntroll, Moonsorrow, Korpiklaani and Ensiferum becoming successful internationally. All these bands are from Finland, where the folk metal genre has been popularised and commodified. These Finnish folk metal bands had already appeared on the covers of mainstream metal magazines and websites and had strong commercial and critical backing (Makkonen, 2017). In this chapter, I will show how these bands rose to prominence in the 2000s and maintained their status. In the 2000s, folk metal was still perceived as cool, and the underground, black metal origins of bands such as Moonsorrow and Finntroll gave them authenticity and credibility, even if Korpiklaani and Turisas were seen to be “cashing in” on the rise of folk metal by aiming their songs – about drinking, about being a warrior – at teenage boys (Oksanen, 2011). I will show that although many fans see the bands as good-time music with fun lyrics, there is a strong normalisation of hegemonic masculinity, whiteness and nation in their representation.