Viktor Bomstad & Magnus Holmen

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Devil’s Kin is created through collaboration between the artist and filmmaker Magnus Skei Holmen and the joiker and musician Viktor Bomstad. It is an audiovisual performance that examines ancient ideas about the Sámi as ‘the devil’s own kin in the North’.

‘For evil appeareth out of the North’, wrote the cartographer and priest Olaus Magnus in his book Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus (A Description of the Northern Peoples). Published in Rome in 1555, the book is spiced with stories about people who use sorcery to create diabolical darkness and storms. A manuscript by an anonymous author, Historia Norwegiæ (ca. 1500, possibly based on a 12th cen. source), describes how travellers experienced the Sámi people’s use of magic and spells to cause grotesque deaths. Learned men claimed that demons and devils, with their hellish cold and violent winds, lived in the North. The devil inhabitedrunebomms (shamanic ceremonial drums) and other Sámi objects, which where often confiscated and destroyed on site by the travellers.

The audiovisual material in Devil’s Kin is based on places with links to stories told by the Sámi themselves and to places that have been important for outsider conceptions of Sámi culture. While the music is inspired by Dante Alighieri’s vision of Hell, it is rooted in joik, with an electronic treatment of musical instruments and the human voice.

Using demonisation as a prism for producing playful distortions of Sámi traditions and ways of life, Bomstad and Holmen’s project overturns the ancient demonisation. In this way, the work creates a larger room for reflection on colonialisation and storytelling.

The project has been developed with support from Arts and Culture Norway and Scene Nord.

Viktor Bomstad (b. 1992) is a traditional joiker and experimental guitarist from the north of Sápmi/Norway. He is the current regional joiker of Troms and Finnmark counties, a one of a kind employment in Norway that seeks to promote exciting joikers in the region. Viktor is passionate about exploring different sonic traditions and pushing the boundaries of how joik can be heard in new contexts and sonic traditions. He is regularly seen on the Norwegian experimental scene in different constellations both as a solo artist and in different bands. In 2022 Bomstad released his first solo album Sámi Noise on Nice Things Records. His band Sex Magick Wizards has garnered a cult following in psychedelic rock clubs in Norway and Germany, with their third album Death Grip being released in august 2024. His music tends to be gritty, trance inducing and feverish, with a heavy emphasis on improvisation. 

Magnus Skei Holmen (b.1991) is an artist-filmmaker and curator from Stjørdal, living in Romsa/Tromsø. In his artistic practice, Holmen mainly works with artists moving images and installation. He is interested in building a practice that consists of making/producing film and writing/thinking about film. He is dedicated to the social life of film, thereby programming/curating filmscreenings and talks around the use of the medium; how it influences us and shapes our gaze. In 2018, he co-founded the parasitic screening collective HÆRK and are now co-organizing the artist-run space Kurant Visningsrom and DIY club concept Kabelvogue - en klubb for alle.