Techno Viking is an internet phenomenon or meme based on a video from the 2000 Fuckparade in Berlin, Germany.
The 4-minute video shot by experimental video artist Matthias Fritsch at the Fuckparade on 8 July 2000 begins with the title "Kneecam No. 1" and shows a bare-chested man wearing a Thor's hammer pendant. He grabs the arms of another man and starts pointing his finger at him after the man jumps from a truck and stumbles into a blue haired woman accidentally shoving her. He is offered an inverted bottle of water by another man, then proceeds to dance down Rosenthaler Straße (52°31′33.8″N 13°24′13.2″E) to techno music. Fritsch intended it to raise questions of whether the action was real or staged.
Fritsch uploaded the video to the internet in 2001. In 2006 he uploaded it to YouTube, and it went viral in 2007. According to Fritsch, its popularity began on a Central American pornography site. After being posted on Break.com, it peaked on 28 September at more than 1 million views per day and was watched by over 10 million people over 6 months. More than 700 responses and edited versions were posted. It was the #1 clip on Rude Tube's series-three episode Drink and Drugs. Mathew Cullen and Weezer wanted to include Techno Viking in their compilation of Internet memes for the "Pork and Beans" music video but were unable to. Techno Viking was also rendered in oils as part of a series on internet memes. By mid-2010, the video had generated over 20 million hits on YouTube alone; as of January 2013, the original version had more than 16 million views. Techno Viking has a Know Your Meme page, which documents aspects of the meme including derived images such as Techno Viking with his finger raised and the word "Obey", and an Encyclopedia Dramatica page.
Fritsch mounted an installation and the online Techno Viking Archive "to research the strategies of participatory practice in digital social networks" and presented lectures on the reception of the video. His Music from the Masses project was suggested by the Techno Viking experience: it explores web collaboration by providing silent films for artists to provide soundtracks. In response to legal action by the man featured in the video, access to the Techno Viking video itself has been restricted and annotations on YouTube blocked since late 2009.
Fritsch did not know the man's name at the time of filming. There was speculation about his identity, for example on Encyclopedia Dramatica. A man who appeared in the 2009 "Bodybuilding" broadcast of the German television show segment Raab in Gefahr was taken to be Techno Viking in a YouTube upload. In 2008, fans claimed MMA fighter Jason Blackford was Techno Viking.
The unnamed man's court case against Fritsch concerning infringement of personality rights opened in Berlin on 17 January 2013. In June, a decision was reached for the plaintiff and Fritsch was ordered to pay the man €13,000 in damages, almost all he had made from YouTube ads and sales of Techno Viking merchandise, plus €10,000 in court costs, and to cease publication of his image. The legal decision put Fritsch into debt. He raised money with a crowdfunding campaign to make a documentary film about the case, The Story of Technoviking, which was released in 2015.