A man in search for the creation of utopia in the present. First, as a member of a commune on an Estonian island, then alone in the majestic wilderness of Northern Finland and later as the singer of a neo-pagan, black metal band in Norway.

From pagan re-enactors to failed communes, black metal festivals to Arctic hermits, and the forever Golden Hour to the Northern Lights, 'A Spell to Ward off the Darkness' is an inquiry into the possibilities of a spiritual existence within an increasingly secular Western culture. A participatory ethnography in the best possible sense, A SPELL choreographs the actions of non-actors within existing Scandinavian landscapes in an effort to arrive at a hybrid document of the past, present, and future; it is a record of experience that proposes belief in transcendence as a viable outcome of living in the now.—Ben Rivers and Ben Russell