By Kiki Ryan and Jeff Dufour

You can’t say the Norwegian Embassy doesn’t take seriously its commitment to supporting the country’s art. Even when that art happens to be death metal.

On Wednesday night, the Norwegian death metal band Enslaved played the 9:30 Club, its first show in D.C. And, to the crowd’s surprise and delight, there were a group of embassy staffers in the VIP section, getting a shout-out from front man Grutle Kjellson.

Anne Myklebust, a cultural adviser at the embassy, said she and four of her colleagues went to see the show. But that wasn’t by any means the beginning of their support. She said the embassy helped the band out with funding for its U.S. tour. So “they asked if they could see the embassy,” and Wednesday afternoon, the band met with Ambassador Wegger Strommen for an hour. Did they wear suits?

“No,” Myklebust laughed. “They wore their road wear of t-shirts and shorts. But the ambassador wore a suit.”

The second half of the night’s bill: Swedish metal band OPETH. So were any staffers from the Swedish Embassy on hand? “We know them pretty well, but we didn’t see any of them,” Myklebust said.

The Swedish Embassy was closed Thursday afternoon, so we couldn’t confirm that no one attended. But maybe the Norwegian Embassy just rocks harder.

Enslaved's Ivar Bjørnsom comments the visit:

”We were very excited about visiting the Norwegian Embassy in Washington D.C. We were invited to talk about the band’s history, our own efforts in the American music market and more in more general terms about the export of Norwegian music; Metal in particular. We were heartily welcomed by Ambassador Wegger Chr. Strømmen and a large group from the Embassy staff. Their questions were updated and detailed; it turned out to be a very interesting and fruitful conversation. Later that night a group of five staff members came to the concert – we know this for a fact; as shouts of 'go Norway!' came from the vip-section when Grutle told the audience about the visit from the Embassy. We hope we get to meet them again, and that other foreign stations take on the challenge to get as involved in Norwegian culture abroad as the Norwegians in Washington D.C.”

(Photo: Enslaved and Ambassador Wegger Chr. Strømmen)