As this is a Frequantly asked question I’m going to go for the long version: 

The story begins in the Swedish town of Norrköping. I did my last year in a music high-school/Gymnasium and I was the vocalist of a band which played some kind of mix between death and progressive metal. But I felt that this wasn’t my kind of music, and yet I was the one who always took the responsibility for live shows, contacts etc. But as nobody of the other band-members wanted to take responsibility for the band, combined with feelings that the music was not even a piece of myself, I decided to leave the band. 

I decided to, for some time, leave the music behind and start with photography. I created a Tumblr the 25th of January 2012 under the name “Heathen Harnow”. Harnow is one of my middle-names originating from my danish side. (My mothers father came to Boden, Sweden in the 60′s to work as a barber/hairdresser as there was a lack of this profession). Shortly after this I graduated from the gymnasium and due to this my first photos was taken with a regular phone. However after a couple of months I got a job at the local school as a substitute-teacher. Because of the salary I could finally afford an SLR camera. 

During one weekend I went to the Arosian Black mass in Västerås. (a black metal 2-day festival which can be compared with the Nidrosian Black mass). There I saw a band called “Draugurinn”. Even to this day this is one of the best live-performances I’ve ever been to. I dare to say it was even stronger than when I saw Wardruna. When hearing this music I could feel that there was so much me within it, and I got a vision of combining my photos together with music. I saved some salaries and could finally afford to purchase an Imac to work with. As the summer arrived I also loosed my job as the municipality wanted to save money.

During the summer I worked and worked, trying to find the sound which I was going to continue with. I did a few demo’s but it was firstly at the arrival of the autumn that my very first full song was created. I was walking by a nearby forest area when suddenly coming to a place which had been completely ruined by machines and all the trees cut down. Somehow I got nothing but a feeling of death within me when looking at the very scenery which was before my eyes.  I went home and created the song “Flykt” and also made a small video for it.

Just some month later I decided to go for Norway as I had no special plans for the future and just wanted some kind of income for my music and art. The work was at a security-company and the job was literally to go in teams to a variety of villages outside of Oslo, knock on people’s doors and ask them if they wanted to purchase home-securityalarms. I sold one alarm during the very first day to a very nice lawyer. During the rest of the 2 weeks it went shit and I finally decided to give up, but I stayed the month out, walking in the forests in the outskirts of Oslo, going to museums etc. I continued to work on the EP and wrote all the songs except for “Återkomst” which I finally wrote when I was back home. 

The Flykt EP was finally released by myself. Shortly after I also started to study Ethnology at the Stockholm University, thinking it would be much about folklore. Sadly it was much more about modern things, very political, and I quickly loosed the interest of the subject. So I tried to find another subject which suited me better and finally found “History of Religion”, where one had the opportunity to focus on a specific religion, and in my case, the old norse religion. 

Later on, I changed my name into “Forndom” as I felt that the old name was a bit dull and I wanted something that described what this project was actually about. I continued to take pictures of the surrounding nature but finally came to a point where I felt this wasn’t enough anymore. There was so much inspiration within me from reading all the old norse sources that I had to find another way to express it, so I started with painting, inspired by runestones and petroglyphs.
 To me the old norse religion is more than just interesting reading, it has in some ways become my religion. But I am always careful to say that to people as this often brings associations to wicca/new spiritual kind of things, sacrificing flowers etc. To me the religion is more a way of thinking about life. We are of nature, the closer we come to nature, the closer we come to the gods, for the gods are within nature, just as they are within each and every one. Now one might wonder, so are we controlled by the gods? No, we are not, we are controlled by fate - the Norns. Everything that we do, all our actions and our personalities have existed earlier in history. We are predictable. To me the gods are to be seen as pathways, personalities, just as much as they are to be seen as forces of Nature. But I guess I’ll leave that for now and write a book about that in the future, hehe. 

However, then I got signed by Nordvis, I just finished the coming release and now awaits to paint the cover and booklet motives. I have a clear view of how my music will develop in the future. But I’ll wait with telling my ideas for that. 
Today I study to become a scholar in Norse religion and work with my project during my whole sparetime.