Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative: Nordic Maritime Museums’ Portrayals of Shipping, Seafarers and Maritime Communities 9781800733893

Table of contents :
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
Introduction. Th e Maritime Museum in Time and Space
Part I. The Museum in the Landscape and the Landscape in the Museum
Chapter 1. A Phenomenological Journey
Chapter 2. Ancient and Modern Ideals Entwined
Chapter 3. Human and Ocean – Land and Sea
Chapter 4. New Museum – Old Architecture
Part II. Th ematic Analyses
Chapter 5. In the Waves of the Ocean and the Depths of Emotion
Chapter 6. Men of Iron and Women of Wood
Chapter 7. Worldviews and Images of the World
Chapter 8. Global Trade and Cultural Encounters
Chapter 9. A World without Borders but with High Walls
Conclusion. How Maritime Museums (re)Present the World
References
Index

Citation preview

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

Museums and Collections Editors Mary Bouquet, University College Utrecht, and Howard Morphy, The Australian National University, Canberra As houses of memory and sources of information about the world, museums function as a dynamic interface between past, present and future. Museum collections are increasingly being recognized as material archives of human creativity and as invaluable resources for interdisciplinary research. Museums provide powerful forums for the expression of ideas and are central to the production of public culture: they may inspire the imagination, generate heated emotions and express conflicting values in their material form and histories. This series explores the potential of museum collections to transform our knowledge of the world, and for exhibitions to influence the way in which we view and inhabit that world. It offers essential reading for those involved in all aspects of the museum sphere: curators, researchers, collectors, students and the visiting public. Recent volumes: Volume 15 Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative: Nordic Maritime Museums’ Portrayals of Shipping, Seafarers and Maritime Communities Annika Bünz Volume 14 Contested Holdings: Museum Collections in Political, Epistemic and Artistic Processes of Return Edited by Felicity Bodenstein, Damiana Oțoiu and Eva-Maria Troelenberg Volume 13 Transforming Author Museums: From Sites of Pilgrimage to Cultural Hubs Edited by Ulrike Spring, Johan Schimanski and Thea Aarbakke Volume 12 Exchanging Objects: Nineteenth-Century Museum Anthropology at the Smithsonian Institution Catherine A. Nichols Volume 11 Extinct Monsters to Deep Time: Conflict, Compromise, and the Making of Smithsonian’s Fossil Halls Diana E. Marsh

Volume 10 The Witness as Object: Video Testimony in Memorial Museums Steffi De Jong Volume 9 Visitors to the House of Memory: Identity and Political Education at the Jewish Museum Berlin Victoria Bishop-Kendzia Volume 8 Museum Websites and Social Media: Issues of Participation, Sustainabiity, Trust, and Diversity Ana Luisa Sánchez Laws Volume 7 The Enemy on Display: The Second World War in Eastern European Museums Zuzanna Bogumił, Joanna Wawrzyniak, Tim Buchen, Christian Ganzer, and Maria Senina Volume 6 Exhibiting Europe in Museums: Transnational Networks, Collections, Narratives, and Representations Wolfram Kaiser, Stefan Krankenhagen, and Kerstin Poehls

For a full volume listing, please see the series page on our website: https://berghahnbooks.com/series/museums-and-collections

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative Nordic Maritime Museums’ Portrayals of Shipping, Seafarers and Maritime Communities

Annika Bünz

berghahn NEW YORK • OXFORD www.berghahnbooks.com

First published in 2022 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com © 2022 Annika Bünz

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A C.I.P. cataloging record is available from the Library of Congress Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Control Number: 2022016729

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-80073-388-6 hardback ISBN 978-1-80073-389-3 ebook

https://doi.org/10.3167/9781800733886

In Memory of Aunt Irma

Contents List of Illustrations

viii

Acknowledgements

xi

List of Abbreviations

xii

Introduction. The Maritime Museum in Time and Space

1

Part I. The Museum in the Landscape and the Landscape in the Museum Chapter 1. A Phenomenological Journey

21

Chapter 2. Ancient and Modern Ideals Entwined

26

Chapter 3. Human and Ocean – Land and Sea

50

Chapter 4. New Museum – Old Architecture

72

Part II. Thematic Analyses Chapter 5. In the Waves of the Ocean and the Depths of Emotion

95

Chapter 6. Men of Iron and Women of Wood

117

Chapter 7. Worldviews and Images of the World

133

Chapter 8. Global Trade and Cultural Encounters

145

Chapter 9. A World without Borders but with High Walls

156

Conclusion. How Maritime Museums (re)Present the World

168

References

175

Index

179

Illustrations Figure 0.1. Maritime Centre Vellamo in Kotka, Finland, 2017. © Annika Bünz

3

Figure 0.2. On a sign located in the harbour area, visitors can see a photograph showing how the area looked when Kotka’s old harbour was in use. 2017. © Annika Bünz

3

Figure 0.3. M/S Maritime Museum of Denmark. The red buoy slowly rocks back and forth. 2017. © Annika Bünz

6

Figure 0.4. The architecture presents an open space and a narrow passage. 2017. © Annika Bünz

7

Figure 2.1. The Maritime Museum in Stockholm, Sweden, 2017. © Annika Bünz

26

Figure 2.2. The Naval Museum in Karlskrona, Sweden, 2015. © Annika Bünz

27

Figure 2.3. From the air, the building is supposed to resemble an anchor. © Annika Bünz

29

Figure 2.4. The sailor is placed behind the museum, outside the enclosing circle. 2018. © Annika Bünz

32

Figure 2.5. The museum building is divided into three different sections. © Annika Bünz

35

Figure 2.6. A crowned man placed at a point of focus created by the architecture. 2015 © Annika Bünz

40

Figure 2.7. Based on Unwin 2014: 191–92. © Annika Bünz

41

Figure 2.8. The Figurehead Hall. 2019. © Annika Bünz

42

Illustrations

ix

Figure 3.1. The Maritime Museum of Norway. 2015. © Annika Bünz

50

Figure 3.2. Maritime Centre Vellamo in Kotka, Finland. 2017. © Annika Bünz

51

Figure 3.3. The Norwegian Maritime Museum’s main building and the Boat Hall, connected by a roof sheltering a paved path. © Annika Bünz

52

Figure 3.4. Five human bodies aligned with the direction that the architecture points out. 2015. © Annika Bünz

55

Figure 3.5. Maritime Centre Vellamo. © Annika Bünz

60

Figure 3.6. Maritime Centre Vellamo viewed from a rocky knoll in a city park in Kotka. 2017 © Annika Bünz

62

Figure 3.7. The staircase immediately inside the entrance. 2017. © Annika Bünz

66

Figure 3.8. A secluded area in the exhibition ‘At Sea!’ where visitors can sit down on a soft bench. 2017 © Annika Bünz

70

Figure 4.1. Reykjavík Maritime Museum. 2017. © Annika Bünz

72

Figure 4.2. M/S Maritime Museum of Denmark in Helsingør. 2018. © Annika Bünz

73

Figure 4.3. Location of the Reykjavík Maritime Museum adjacent to the westernmost corner of the Old Harbour. © Annika Bünz

74

Figure 4.4. The large trawler and the small boat standing prow to prow. 2017. © Annika Bünz

76

Figure 4.5. The façade of Reykjavík Maritime Museum after reopening in summer 2018, with the poster for the new exhibition ‘Fish & Folk’. 2018. © Annika Bünz

76

Figure 4.6. The stairwell is used to create a focal point that highlights the cod as a ‘main character’. 2018. © Annika Bünz

78

Figure 4.7. The Culture Harbour Kronborg. (1) Kronborg Castle, (2) The dry dock and M/S Maritime Museum of Denmark, (3) The Culture Yard. © Annika Bün

82

x

Illustrations

Figure 4.8. Kronborg Castle and the bridge leading to the museum entrance. 2015 © Annika Bünz

83

Figure 4.9. A steep, twisting staircase leading down to the café. 2015 © Annika Bünz

86

Figure 4.10. The auditorium. 2015 © Annika Bünz

87

Acknowledgements The research presented in this book was conducted during the years 2017–19 and it was financed by the Swedish Research Council, grant number 2016-01091.

Abbreviations MCV-Fi

The Maritime Centre Vellamo, Finland

MM-Fi

The Maritime Museum of Finland

MM-Ic

Reykjavík Maritime Museum, Iceland

MM-No The Norwegian Maritime Museum MM-Sw

The Maritime Museum in Stockholm, Sweden

M/S-Dk

M/S Maritime Museum of Denmark

Nav-Sw

The Naval Museum in Karlskrona, Sweden

Introduction

The Maritime Museum in Time and Space Memories and artefacts associated with shipping and seafaring are collected, sorted, categorized and (re)presented in maritime museums all over the world. The narratives that these museums stage can depict relations between the local and the global, land and ocean, and humans and nature, as well as relations between life and death. The stories include military leaders and mariners, shipowners and sailors, seafarers and land dwellers, fishermen and tourists, emigrants and refugees. Global trade and national economies depend on shipping, both today and historically, and maritime narratives play an important part in the creation of national identities – a process to which the maritime museums contribute. And yet, for some reason, there is almost no research on the category of the maritime museum, and the few articles that can be found confirm that critical museum studies, which, for decades, has scrutinized archaeological, ethnographic and natural history museums, for example, has not addressed maritime museums (Tibbles 2012: 160, Leffler 2004: 24, Hicks 2001: 159). Since these make up a large group of museums worldwide, we need to critically analyse how they depict the world, nations, shipping and people through maritime cultural history. In this book, I therefore analyse, compare and discuss the stories told at national maritime museums in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland and Iceland.

Museum and Place Geographically, maritime museums are often located in a borderland where land and sea meet: in old harbours, shipyards or areas close to shipping lanes. Next to the museum, there may be a pier with ships and smaller boats that belong to the museum, and remnants of historical activities

2

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

can often be identified in the surroundings. A characteristic trait of the maritime museum is thus that it is often located in a contemporary and/ or historical environment from which its collections and narratives originate. Through architecture, design and (re)presentations, the museum can be directly linked to the site and its history. For this reason, I choose to examine the maritime museums in this study in terms of relationships between landscape, architecture, museum and collections – relationships created both in the external landscapes and in the interior landscapes of the museum building. A good deal of research has been done on museum architecture and the meanings generated in the interactions between architecture and collections (see, for example, Naredi-Rainer 2004, Searing 2004, Newhouse 2007, McClellan 2008, Self 2014, Hoffman 2016), but it has almost exclusively focused on art museums and galleries. Knowledge is lacking about other museum genres and their specific characteristics, problems and assets (Fleming 2005: 58). Through this book, I wish to initiate discussion about the different layers of meaning that the architecture of museums and their placement in historical environments bring to the narratives. The Maritime Museum of Finland is a good illustrative example. It is located in Maritime Centre Vellamo in the old harbour of Kotka. The building that houses the maritime centre follows the softly rounded quayside and rises toward the navigable fairway and the new harbour. From a certain angle, the lines of the quay and the museum building blend together, merging into the shape of a huge, swelling wave. A couple of harbour cranes and some railroad tracks are visible remnants of the activities that once flourished at this site. The lines of the harbour cranes, both near and far, are silhouetted against the sky and two cranes stand directly adjacent to the museum building. Walking toward the museum, visitors are presented with two ship bells that are lined up with a missile and a rescue boat. There is also a poster with pictures, maps and texts. The texts inform visitors that the harbour area is part of Kotka National Urban Park. They explain that the park tells the story of a fortress and border town that was first established to make use of resources from the Baltic Sea and the Kymijoki River, with the town gradually evolving into a multifaceted port and industrial city. The text is illustrated by a large black-and-white photo of Kotka’s old harbour when it was still in use, sometime in the early 1900s. The photo depicts an environment bursting with activity and filled with freight cars, stacked goods, buildings and ships moored at the quay. People are walking in the area and a couple of trucks roll up and are met by a horse wagon. White steam pours from a locomotive. The photograph depicts a lively place where life on land meets life at sea. It is a borderland where the local everyday life

The Maritime Museum in Time and Space

3

of the harbour city interacts with global shipping. And this location has been chosen for Maritime Centre Vellamo, which houses the Maritime Museum of Finland, the Museum of Kymenlaakso and the Coast Guard Museum.

Figure 0.1. Maritime Centre Vellamo in Kotka, Finland, 2017. © Annika Bünz

Figure 0.2. On a sign located in the harbour area, visitors can see a photograph showing how the area looked when Kotka’s old harbour was in use. 2017. © Annika Bünz

4

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

The architect Simon Unwin argues that identification of place is the essence of what we call architecture (2009: 28). Architecture is an intellectual activity that typically also involves physically changing a part of the world through the construction of a building, Unwin states, but it does not always have to entail physically building something. As identification of place, architecture may simply consist in recognizing that a specific location can be distinguished as a place. Places can be identified based on elements of the landscape, such as a cave or the shade of a tree. When a site is identified, a choice can be made to use it for something. The shade of the tree can become a resting place and the cave a hiding place. The identification, recognition and use of a place is often a communal activity, with the place being associated with collective memories, for practical, social, historical, mythological or religious reasons (Unwin 2009: 69). In the city of Kotka, a place was first identified and used as a port, and there were probably several different practical reasons for choosing this particular location. When the shipping activities were relocated to other areas, the old harbour was instead identified as a place for a maritime centre that, among other things, houses a national and a regional museum. Both museums have a historical connection to the identified and used museum place, which now coexists with the old-harbour place. The museums are located in the kind of environment where the collections belong, and are in dialogue with what remains of the historical activities. The newly designed architecture of the maritime centre is intertwined with the older buildings and constructions, as well as with both historical and contemporary operations. Furthermore, the objects in the collections are not only displayed in exhibition halls, but have also been arranged in the surrounding landscape. Thus, the maritime centre and the museums not only communicate with visitors through the exhibitions that are staged within the museum walls. They communicate in the environments where the museums are located, and this particular place, which has been identified and chosen for the building, is itself an important part of the stories being told about maritime history and seafarers’ lives and realities. A visit to the Maritime Museum of Finland begins long before the visitor has entered the premises of the maritime centre; it includes the place and the scenarios that one can experience when discovering and approaching the museum building.

Semiotic Resources; Modes of Communication In the inner landscape of a museum building, visitors encounter reception areas, shops, restaurants and exhibition halls. The architecture frames the

The Maritime Museum in Time and Space

5

institution and provides spaces and conditions for the museum’s activities and the design of exhibitions. Museum exhibitions are narratives that are organized in the room. They consist of spatiality, materials, colours, sound, light, images, artefacts and props. They are a four-dimensional storyscape and meanings are created when visitors perceive and experience the room and all the materials in it, both through their senses and by being and moving in the room (Bünz 2015: 183). The exhibited artefacts can be considered in their own right, but the design of the exhibition has the potential to create additional meanings for the objects depending on how they are placed and combined in the room (Hooper-Greenhill 2000: 103, 115; Moser 2006; Psarra 2009: 4, Bünz 2018c) and how lighting, sound and material have been arranged (Falk and Dierking 2000: 124, Roppola 2012, Bünz 2015). Based on a social-semiotic theory of multimodal communication, the many kinds of media and materials that are used in the design of a museum exhibition can be examined as modes of communication (Kress 2010). Modes, according to Gunther Kress, are socially shaped and culturally given semiotic resources for creating meaning, such as images, writing, layout, music, gestures, speech, moving pictures, audio tracks and 3D objects. Kress emphasizes that the materiality of the resources is an important component of the semiotic work. Cultures choose ‘material’ that appears to be useful or necessary for meaning making; by material, Kress means, for example, sound, clay, movement (of parts) of the body, surfaces, wood and stone (Kress 2010: 82). When it comes to staged storyscapes at museums, the conditions that the architecture generates can also be considered a semiotic resource, as can the visitor’s presence and movements in the room (Roppola 2012: 211, Bünz 2015: 298). One museum where the properties of the architecture are actively incorporated and used in the design of exhibitions is the M/S Maritime Museum of Denmark in Helsingør. The museum building is located underground in an old disused shipyard and surrounds a nineteenth-century dry dock. Inside the museum’s premises, the exhibitions are staged in a sequence that follows a trail around the long and narrow cavity. The first thing that visitors encounter on the way into the row of exhibitions is a poetic staging commented upon by a quotation from Hans Christian Andersen’s ‘The Little Mermaid’ (1837): Far out in the ocean, the water is as blue as petals on the prettiest cornflower, and as clear as the clearest crystal, but so very, very deep; deeper than any cable can fathom. Many church steeples would have to be piled one upon the other to reach from the bottom and above the surface. There dwell the sea people.

6

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

In the middle of the open, bright, blue room, there is a red buoy; it is slightly tilted and rotates slowly around a fixed point on the floor. The gently rocking marker can disturb the visitor’s sense of balance, as if it is the room, and not the buoy, that is moving. On two of the surrounding walls, clips of moving images are screened. The film sequences are cropped with a round frame, as if they were being viewed through a telescope. The images appear in different places and gradually glide across the walls in various directions. The sounds and the images convey mystery and tension, a sense of drama, and the compositions suggest a sequence of events. The spectators, however, have to use their imagination to put together a narrative. Regardless of what storyline the visitor imagines, the design creates an atmosphere in the room that suggests that those who continue further into the exhibitions will encounter a world that is separate from and unlike everyday life outside the museum. In order to continue beyond the introduction, along the trail of permanent exhibitions, visitors must pass through a narrow passage that is created by the architecture. The passage leads to the first exhibition, titled ‘Our Sailors’. It starts with the quotation: ‘There are three types of people: The living, the dead and mariners. (Anacharsis, Greek philosopher, ca. 600 bc)’. Furthermore, it is stated that the way of life at sea is so foreign that it has bred many myths that are part of our common culture today. In other words, the poetic staging with the rocking buoy has prepared visitors

Figure 0.3. M/S Maritime Museum of Denmark. The red buoy slowly rocks back and forth. 2017. © Annika Bünz

The Maritime Museum in Time and Space

7

Figure. 0.4. The architecture presents an open space and a narrow passage. 2017. © Annika Bünz

to step into what is presented as the world of a mythical seafarer, and the spatial properties of the architecture have been actively employed to create the experience of a passage from one world to another.

Linking Together the Outer and Inner Landscapes of the Museum These analytical descriptions of two maritime museums illustrate what I will discuss and examine in the first part of this book. The analyses begin in the environment where the museum is located and then continue through the door into the interior landscape generated by the architecture, where I explore the staged scenes and storyscapes created by the museum staff. Passing through the door and crossing the threshold between outside and inside is an example of what Juhani Pallasmaa calls the primary feelings that architecture creates. Another primary feeling is the link that is created with the surrounding landscape when a person looks out through a window (Pallasmaa 1996: 452). I will thereby also examine whether any links are created between the museums’ surroundings and the staged and designed narratives within their walls, that is, whether and if so how the outer and inner landscapes of the museums are connected in the narratives.

8

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

The analyses of the designed exhibitions that I present in this first part of the book address general relationships between spatiality, design and artefacts that appear clearly when one walks through the inner landscape of the building. In the second part of the book, I will go more deeply into the designed narratives, asking questions about what the museums are communicating, how it is presented, and whether it is in line with the meanings suggested by the museum and the architecture as a whole, or indeed if other meanings appear in the exhibitions’ texts and showcases. As stated above, maritime museums are often located next to water; the maritime narratives describe life at sea, but also life in coastal communities and port cities, both at home and in foreign countries. The questions to which I seek answers in this book are: what meanings are conveyed in the maritime museums about relations between humans and the ocean, between life on land and life at sea? How are encounters between the foreign and the familiar, between ‘Us’ and ‘the Others’, described? What meanings are conveyed about encounters, influences, conflicts and friendships between continents, nations and cultures? What norms and identities are created?

Five Nordic Countries from the Perspective of the Maritime Museum The museums that I will study are the national maritime museums of the five Nordic countries, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland and Iceland. Of Sweden’s three national maritime museums, I have chosen to include the Maritime Museum in Stockholm (MM-Sw) and the Naval Museum in Karlskrona (Nav-Sw). I made this decision because both are interesting to investigate in relation to the framework of this study. The other museums are M/S Maritime Museum of Denmark in Helsingør (M/S-Dk), Reykjavík Maritime Museum, Iceland (MM-Ic), the Norwegian Maritime Museum in Oslo (MM-No), and the Maritime Museum of Finland in Kotka (MM-Fi), which is part of Maritime Centre Vellamo (MCV-Fi). All of these museums have a national mandate to preserve and depict the pasts, presents and futures of maritime technology, societies and cultures. My reason for choosing these five nations is that, throughout history, they have been closely linked with each other in unions and coalitions and through the back-and-forth movement of national borders. Iceland was founded by settlers who migrated from Scandinavia in the ninth century. From 1262 until the Second World War, the Icelanders were ruled first by the King of Norway and later by the King of Denmark. In 1944, Iceland unilaterally declared itself a republic. A union between the kingdoms of Denmark, Norway and Sweden was declared in 1380. The Swedish king-

The Maritime Museum in Time and Space

9

dom left and re-entered the union several times before finally leaving for good in 1521. The Denmark–Norway union, ruled from Copenhagen, lasted until 1814, when, after a war with Sweden, Denmark was forced to cede Norway to Sweden. The Sweden–Norway union lasted until 1905. Finland was a part of Sweden from around 1157 to 1809. Throughout history, Finland has been characterized by its location between Sweden to the west and Russia to the east, but the influences from the West have dominated, and, from early on, Finland was part of the cultural sphere of the West. Today the five Nordic countries are all independent nations. Denmark, Sweden and Finland are members of the European Union (EU) and Finland is also a member of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). Norway and Iceland are not members of the EU, but as a result of agreements made in the 1950s, the populations of the five Nordic countries are free to cross the borders between the countries without passport. Finland has two official languages, Finnish and Swedish, but a large majority of the population speak Finnish. The official languages of the other four countries, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish and Icelandic, all have a common origin in a language spoken in prehistoric Scandinavia. People in Sweden, Norway and Denmark can communicate with each other fairly easily because their languages are very similar. Icelandic is a bit different, but one can still discern the common origin. Finnish belongs to another language family and is related to Karelian and Estonian, for example. Throughout history, museums have played an important role in the production and representation of nations and in the making of ‘imagined communities’ (Anderson [1983] 2016) within them. Peggy Levitt concludes that museums have helped to create uniform ‘teams’ of millions of people who never really meet, by staging in collections and exhibitions the knowledge, customs and traditions that they declare to be held in common. Even today, museums on every continent exhibit collections of paintings, furniture and other decorative objects and inform visitors that these selected artefacts represent a nation. Each type of museum participates in some way – intentionally or unintentionally – in the creation of citizenship, staging the nation from slightly different angles. ‘National’ collections of paintings, beautiful objects and material culture tell us something about how nations represent themselves both inwardly and for outsiders, Levitt states, and the ethnographic objects that have been collected by colonizers and explorers tell us what the collectors want people to know about the world beyond the nation. As representations of ‘constituencies’, the experiences of specific groups are arranged in the museums’ showcases, but the arrangements also reveal something about how each group stands

10

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

in relation to the nation as a whole (Levitt 2015: 2–3). Inspired by Levitt’s work, I will argue that maritime museums stage the maritime world and reality as a national narrative from the specific perspective of maritime cultural history, while also showing how the maritime societies and cultures relate to the nation (and world) in general. Asking what kinds of citizens museums create in today’s global world, Levitt demonstrates how the globalization of the museum world influences local institutions and how the local speaks back, exploring how museum staff worldwide think and act in relation to nationalism and globalism. She notes that, in her material, she has not found any museum that depicts only a national or a global narrative. Instead, the nation is always displayed through images of the cosmopolitan and the international narrative always includes something about the nation. The institutions can all, according to Levitt, be placed on a continuum of cosmopolitanism and nationalism (2015: 2–3). In this book, I will investigate how the Nordic national maritime museums combine the national and the global. Phyllis Leffler emphasizes that the narratives conveyed at the maritime museums are relevant both nationally and internationally, and that the museums have an important capability to shape national awareness. Leffler has carried out a comparative study of maritime museums in the United Kingdom and the United States, and one conclusion she draws is that although these museums have traditionally focused on objects that belong to the sea, well-known naval leaders and maritime art, many maritime museums in these two nations have begun to engage with issues of ‘race’, gender and class in narratives of inequality, domination, hegemony and elitism. By looking inside the nation (at issues such as ethnicity, class and immigration) and at issues that cross national borders (globalization, the slave trade and the expansion of empires), UK and US museum staff have made room in the maritime museums for talking about social history. At the same time, however, the two nations on either side of the Atlantic create unique national identities, values and even myths about their national characteristics (Leffler 2004: 24). The Nordic national maritime museums are, of course, also devoted to objects that belong to the sea, and maritime art is displayed at these museums, though to varying extents. Naval leaders are depicted at the Naval Museum in Karlskrona, while the other museums focus on merchant vessels, shipping companies, the fishing industry, seafaring and seafarers. In the second part of the book, I will examine whether and how the six museums engage with social history and relations within the nation and across national borders, as well as engaging with questions of how the maritime museums participate in creating national identities and myths.

The Maritime Museum in Time and Space

11

Museums and Architecture: Making Order of Space and Time Michaela Giebelhausen emphasizes the relationship between the museum and architecture, and argues that the museum is the architecture; the architectural design is what gives the museum meaning (Giebelhausen 2006: 42, see also Roppola 2012: 189–90, Moser 2010: 24). In other words, it is not possible to separate the museum from the building that houses it; nor can the architecture be separated from the institution it frames. The museum buildings are, of course, influenced by trends and fashions within architecture and by notions of what architecture should be and do; the museums are inevitably a part of the history of architecture. At the same time, the idea of what a museum should be has also changed throughout history and therefore one can talk about specific trends within museum architecture. In this book, I will not discuss architectural-historical categorizations and styles in general, but I must, to some extent, relate changing forms of museum architecture over time and how they are linked with notions of how objects should be displayed and what kinds of narratives should be presented. With that said, the analyses in this book will first and foremost examine architecture as a meaningful semiotic resource that is an important part of the narratives conveyed by the museums. When analysing the relationships between the museum, the building and the landscape in which it is situated, I draw on phenomenological architectural theory. From this starting point, I argue that museums and architecture both basically involve arranging human existence in time and space. Mari Hvattum notes that the art of building throughout history has been centred practically and theoretically around the human body, on the one hand, and the cosmos, on the other hand (2015: 48). Phenomenological architectural theory defines architecture as the means for humans to relate to the world and reality, and as a tool for organizing their existence. According to Pallasmaa, architecture is fundamentally involved in the mutual dependence of dimensions of reality, such as the dialectic between external and internal spatiality, the physical and the spiritual, the material and the mental, and the unconscious and conscious priorities of the senses (2012: 19). As mentioned above, Unwin defines architecture as the identification of place, and the core of this identification consists of ‘geometries of being’, which describe the different social and practical properties of the world in which people exist, move and interact with each other and the environment (2009: 69). The architect and the user create and use architecture together in the world in which they exist and move (Unwin 2009: 131,

12

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

138–39). ‘Architecture is the practical, poetic and philosophical art by which we organise and give form to space; it is the medium by which we make sense of our world spatially and physically’ (Unwin 2014: 5). Architecture is largely about creating frames. Buildings frame threedimensional spaces that also include aspects of time. Architecture creates boundaries between inside and outside, and the product of the architect’s work is a set of multidimensional frames that can comprise many different layers (Unwin 2009: 103–4). Sophia Psarra argues that by creating relationships between three-dimensional spaces and abstract frameworks of rules, architecture arranges both conceptual and perceptual layers of order. It thus expresses meaning and participates in the construction of meanings by arranging spatial and social relations (Psarra 2005: 2; Unwin 2014: 5). In other words, architecture articulates meanings (Pallasmaa 2015: 54) and it can make allusions, induce metaphors (Unwin 2009: 6; Pallasmaa 2015: 54), provoke emotional responses (Unwin 2014: 5), create narratives (Psarra 2009; Coats 2012; Unwin 2014: 3) and even affect who we think we are (Unwin 2014: 5). With regard to the relationship between architecture and the museum, the design of the building determines the conditions of the museum visit, both conceptually and physically (Giebelhausen 2006: 42). In the interior of a building, the spatial organization also generates relations (1) between galleries (exhibitions), determining how visitors can explore them, (2) between artefacts, determining how visitors can perceive and read them, and (3) between visitors, creating the conditions for co-presence and meetings (Tzortzi 2015: 2); and further, the placement of the collections creates relations in the room (4) between visitors and artefacts (Bünz 2018c: 120). Therefore, the architecture of the museum is not an empty vessel; it is an important part of the museum’s narratives. The museum staff can choose to work with the architecture and allow it highlight messages, or instead adopt strategies to counteract and perhaps even hide what the architecture communicates, with the help of designed elements, props, lighting and so on. But the relationship between the museum and architecture does not end with how the building frames the museum in material and meaning-bearing structures that provide the conditions for the exhibition design. The museum practices of collecting, sorting and categorizing are, like architecture, ways of gathering and arranging space and time in order to understand humanity’s relationship with the world. The museums create (re)presentations of fields of knowledge, geographical locations, historical eras and events, contemporary and future visions, the universe and humanity. In the phase of collecting, choices are necessarily made that de-

The Maritime Museum in Time and Space

13

termine what things are considered important or unimportant to collect. Decisions are then made about which artefacts to display, how to exhibit them and what to tell about them. The description that Pallasmaa gives of the basic function of architecture (2012: 19) is just as good a description of the museum. It deals with metaphysical questions about the self and the world, inside and outside, time and duration, life and death. The architectural design and the museum together domesticate endless time and boundless space, enabling them to be tolerated, inhabited and understood by human beings.

Creation and Re-creation of Space and Place Suzanne MacLeod has investigated the various actors and processes involved in a museum project and argues that the groups working at the museums are excluded from the history of museum making. Instead, specific stories about museum buildings and architects are prioritized (MacLeod 2013: 7). This leads to museum architecture being discussed and valued only as the product of the architect’s work, while the actual creators and users of the building are forgotten, which MacLeod sees as a problem (2013: 176). In line with MacLeod’s reasoning, I wish to generate knowledge about the contexts in which the museum was built and the architecture has been used and transformed by the museum staff and visitors, and in which the building is a part of the staging and use of the place where it is situated. MacLeod emphasizes that the interior of the museum is created through a collection of practices and a system of knowledge. The museum’s inner landscape is an environment with its own history; it consists of spaces that are active in the creation of meaning and open to change (MacLeod 2005: 1). The people who use the architecture are not merely an audience for the ‘stories’ that the building tells; they are characters involved in the telling (Unwin 2014: 3). At cultural-history museums, objects and texts are almost always arranged with various types of designed elements, such as temporary walls, showcases and props, as well as sounds, pictures, films and so on. Visitors are guided through the exhibitions by elements in the room, by generated perspectives, and by created volumes or frames consisting of actual constructions or suggested spatialities (Falk and Dierking 2000: 124). The staff not only stage exhibitions; they also utilize the spaces that the architecture offers and create lecture halls, museum shops, play corners and places to eat a packed lunch. The museum visitors in turn transform the spaces by how they use them and move in them (Toon 2005: 35). Unwin

14

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

argues that thinking about architecture as identification of place gives rise to the notion that architecture is an activity performed by more than one individual (2014: 29) and that ‘architecture is penetrated by the people whose activities it accommodates’ (2014: 31), which means that the museum building is penetrated by the staff, the events and activities organized by the institution, and also by the ways in which the museum visitors use the arranged spaces and exhibits. There will be places proposed by the architect, places created by the staff and places identified by the visitors. In other words, there are always negotiations about meanings in a reality in which people and their surroundings mutually shape each other. Tricia Austin puts it like this: This position implies that the physical and cultural context of the museum and the gallery, the architecture, the collection, the curators, the layout, the lighting, the typography, the materials, colours, forms chosen for the design, the media, the sound and the visitors’ expectations and behaviours all have a part to play in producing and sustaining the meaning of the place. (2012: 109)

Staged Narratives Narrative is a fundamental ingredient in all work related to museums (e.g. MacLeod, Hourston Hanks and Hale 2012). Bruno Ingemann argues that the museum visitor primarily experiences exhibitions as a whole, in stories, rather than as separate exhibits (2012: 16). Narrative is also fundamental for museum visitors’ ability to channel their experiences. The creators of the exhibition use storytelling as a tool, and visitors construct their own stories to find meaning in the exhibition. An absence of narrative can be perceived as confusing (Roppola 2012: 204–5). The museum can be viewed as a theatre, a dramatic ritual and a narrative of the world in miniature (MacLeod, Hourston Hanks and Hale 2012: xx). Tiina Roppola calls the work of designing and building exhibitions ‘stagecraft’; the finished exhibitions are designed scenes where the viewer moves in performative spaces that have been created for pedagogical and political purposes (2012: 11–12). And regardless of whether it is intentional, ‘exhibitions express a discursive stance . . . they express “reality” from a particular perspective and have particular interests at their core’ (Roppola 2012: 5–6). In this book, I use the idea of visitors moving in performative spaces when analysing the museum building in the landscape where it is situated. I regard ‘the museum in the landscape’ as a staged narrative, and the visitor’s walk toward the entrance of a maritime museum as a walk through a perfor-

The Maritime Museum in Time and Space

15

mative staging of maritime history. This means that the discursive stance staged by the museum spreads out into the surrounding environments, communicating narratives and meanings that also reach people who never pass through the museum’s doors.

From a Museum Visitor’s Perspective The analyses will be conducted from the perspective of the museum visitor and will investigate what a person can see, hear and feel when approaching a museum and exploring its outer and inner landscapes. The six museums that I examine in this book were built at different times and the architecture was chosen and designed based on different political and ideological notions. But whatever the contexts and reasons behind the choices and prioritizations that are made when a museum is built, the institution will thereafter be run by a group of staff that move into, and thus take over, the building. Some of the museums in this study mention the architects’ ideas about the building’s design on their websites and I take that information into account in my analyses because it is information that museum visitors can find. If the museum does not provide easily accessible information on the history of the building and the objectives and intentions of the initiators and architect, I do not seek out such information. The same applies to the museum staffs’ objectives for and ideas about how they use the premises and how they think about the design of exhibition narratives. Information that is available to the general museum-goer on websites or in brochures is included in the analyses, but I have not asked questions about the museums’ aspirations and intentions. What I am searching for are the meanings that museum visitors can experience when they visit the maritime museums. But it also needs to be kept in mind that visitors can come from different cultural contexts and therefore understand and interpret their surroundings in different ways (Kress 2010: 54, Kjær 2016: 238). It is not, however, within the scope of this study to investigate those kinds of variations and differences. When analysing the meanings and stories conveyed by museums, it is important to remember the position of the researcher. To be able to engage meaningfully with analyses and interpretations of the narratives that the museums stage, the researcher must have a basic understanding of the cultural context being investigated. In addition, the researcher has an academic background and it is imperative to consider which disciplines – with their accompanying accepted beliefs, forms of knowledge and canons

16

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

of literature – the researcher is trained in. A person with a background in maritime history does not have the same starting point as, for example, an architectural historian. Sara Ahmed (2006) argues that the various academic disciplines function as a form of inheritance that follows a specific line of descent. In philosophy, for example, a line can be traced from one philosopher to another, like an inheritance from parent to child. Disciplines also draw lines in the sense that they create a specific ‘take’ on the world, a way of arranging time and space through the decisions that are considered important in the field of knowledge. Such lines, Ahmed claims, mark the boundaries of disciplinary affiliation, thereby also marking that which is ‘out of line’. Ahmed points out that she herself was ‘raised’ between disciplines and never felt truly at home in any of them. From this starting point, Ahmed formulates what she calls a queer phenomenology, whereby she is ‘out of line’ when she reads philosophical texts. This is a risk, she says, of going astray when reading philosophy as a non-philosopher, because one is not trained in all the intellectual narratives from which the texts have emerged. But this can also be creative and can lead to something new (Ahmed 2006: 22). Inspired by Ahmed, I conclude that, as a researcher, I am situated in a position in which I am ‘out of line’ with regard to maritime history and architectural history. I am therefore taking a creative risk by investigating the combination of maritime narratives and architecture, but I expect that it will yield interesting results.

Part I: The Museum in the Landscape and the Landscape in the Museum In Part I of the book, I introduce, describe and analyse the museums in pairs. The pairings have been selected on the basis of aspects that unite the two museums but that can also create contrasts between them. The analyses are then performed in two steps: ‘the museum in the landscape’ and ‘the landscape in the museum’. This method will be presented in detail in chapter 1. There are two underlying reasons behind the choice to introduce, describe and analyse the museums in pairs. The first is that it is more practical, both for me, when performing and presenting the analyses, and for the reader, when following the reasoning. The groupings have not been made entirely randomly, but are based on aspects that a first review of the material has revealed to be interesting and worth exploring in more detail. Hence, the second reason is that the pairing of the museums is a fundamental part of the results of the analyses.

The Maritime Museum in Time and Space

17

Part II: Thematic Analyses In the second part of the book, I penetrate more deeply into the museums’ designed exhibitions and investigate whether the narratives and meanings conveyed by ‘the museum in the landscape’ and ‘the landscape in the museum’ can also be discerned when looking more closely at the narratives. The stories told in texts, showcases and exhibition designs are analysed in greater detail and the analyses are organized according to a number of themes that I have identified as important in the six investigated museums’ narratives. In exhibition halls, the communication between visitor and museum can be expected to intensify, both because it is here that visitors probably expect to find the museum’s narratives and because the communication, explicitly follows planned scripts and narrative strategies. Museum exhibitions, as Roppola puts it, are assemblages of objects, texts, media and spaces that have been put together to communicate, to provoke thoughts and/or feelings, to persuade, to inform or otherwise to create a meaningful impression (2012: 5). Therefore, when analysing the stories and meanings conveyed, I assume that ‘every part of the exhibition, every square inch of it, is a carrier of meaning, regardless of what the curator and the designer have in mind’ (den Oudsten 2012: 18). Since the narratives conveyed by maritime museums have not been investigated before, it is interesting to unravel which aspects of maritime history and maritime societies they choose to exhibit and how the lives and realities of seafaring people are depicted. The second part of the book therefore consists, to some extent, of reflective descriptions of the contents of the exhibitions with the aim of finding and defining characteristic features, which can also lead to conclusions about what the museums do not tell visitors about or deal with. Another aim is to enter more deeply into what kinds of worlds and realities the museums stage and which identities and relationships they depict.

Notes 1. Elisabeth Grosz also makes a point of being outside a field and its concepts and traditions, arguing that being in a position ‘outside’ can result in new perspectives. Outside of disciplines and their most prominent and accepted forms, and beyond their accepted notions, Grosz believes that ‘we will find the most perilous, experimental and risky of texts and practices’ (2001: xvi).

Part I.

The Museum in the Landscape and the Landscape in the Museum

Chapter 1

A Phenomenological Journey Standing on the upper deck of a ferry heading toward the harbour of Mariehamn, I can see the four-masted barque Pommern. A little to the right of the sea vessel, I distinguish the bright façade of Åland Maritime Museum. As I view the scene from the perspective of a seafarer on a ship heading into the harbour, the large sailing ship Pommern, with its black-and-white steel hull, appears clearly against the background, while the maritime museum subtly blends into the surroundings. The Åland Maritime Museum is an interesting example of how relationships that are created between landscape, architecture, museum and collections can communicate meanings. A place on land has been chosen for the museum, but it is close to the water, and in the outer landscape the details of the architecture are intertwined with both land and sea. The parts of the façade closest to the ground are interwoven with the colours and patterns of the paved walkways that surround the building, while the lines of a semicircular extension might suggest a ship’s stern. The first floor of the extension leans slightly inwards and the small windows are round, like portholes. In the inner landscape, an older section of the museum frames a large hall that connects two floors. Details in the architecture of the hall reflect the shapes, colours and materials of a ship, while other parts of the room have the characteristics of land-based architecture. The upper floor is like a large balcony that surrounds the room, and visitors can stand at the ‘railing’ and look down at the ground floor. The staging resembles two levels of a ship’s deck, with visitors being able to walk up and down between the levels on stairs styled like a ship’s companionway. In the hall, within the part of the building that resembles a stern, a ship’s wheel for steering has been placed on the upper floor and the design of the room depicts the aft area of the ship’s deck. Visitors can stand by the wheel and imagine looking aft from the vessel, which is staged with a combination of architectural properties, arranged artefacts and designed elements. From this position, a line of sight is created through the window

22

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

and toward the harbour. Thus, the designed storyscape does not direct the visitor’s gaze toward the bay where the museum ship Pommern is docked; instead, the arrangement invites visitors to take a position parallel to the water, gazing toward the navigable fairway. When visitors position themselves by the wheel, they can see through the window a statue of a sailor standing on a high pedestal. He holds a wheel with his hands and, just like the person standing in the exhibition room, is oriented toward the incoming sea traffic in the harbour. This brief analysis of Åland Maritime Museum is an example of how constructed relationships between landscape, architecture, the museum, collections and exhibition design can be investigated. The analysis covers what can be experienced by a person who visits the site. It starts in the outdoors landscape, where stories and meanings can be created in the interplay between the architecture, the institution and the built and natural surroundings, and considers what visitors encounter when they continue into the museum’s interior, into the narratives staged in the exhibition halls. The analysis discusses the detection and exploration of the museum building, but experiences of architecture in most cases consist of four steps – detection, approach, entry and exploration – and also involve memory, as Simon Unwin notes in a parenthesis (2009: 37) without elaborating further or explaining what he means by memory. With the intention of developing a method for investigating the relationships that are created between the museum and its surroundings, I use Unwin’s four steps to structure the analyses (Bünz 2016). When it comes to memory, I draw on architect Juhani Pallasmaa’s explanation. A meaningful experience of architecture, Pallasmaa argues, always consists of an encounter, a confrontation that interacts with memory. In the memories of the individual, the past is embodied in actions such as walking toward the building, passing the entrance, looking out through a window (Pallasmaa 2012: 67–68). In other words, the statement that experiences of architecture always involve memory means that people bring their own previously lived experiences to their encounters with built environments. From a phenomenological point of view, we always experience and perceive things in relation to other things, objects and people. We see our surroundings through a horizon that consists of objects, beliefs, expectations and so on. When we perceive something, it is within a field of coherent things and all experiences take place in a surrounding world of everyday life, which includes both natural and human-made phenomena within a specific cultural and historical situation (Shirazi 2014: 153). An important part of the above analysis of Åland Maritime Museum is the act of describing. By describing what I see in the environment, how the

A Phenomenological Journey

23

light falls, the colour of a building, the shape of a window, I am forced to put words on shades, shapes, materials, directions and spatiality, which in turn can lead to discoveries of details and contexts that were not obvious at first. In working with the description, the researcher (following the arguments of Reza Shirazi 2014: 158) can be likened to a traveller on a phenomenological journey, a comparison that emphasizes the essential mobility of the phenomenological interpreter. The traveller – the interpreter – approaches the building from its periphery and begins the study at a macro level by reading the characteristics of the surroundings. By approaching the building from the periphery and continuing to the interior, the traveller experiences it from a continuously shifting sequence of positions and viewpoints, that is, in motion. The traveller moves toward the site (discovery), walks up to the building (approach), experiences the exterior, passes into the interior (entrance), perceives the interior by following the general path of circulation (exploration) and takes careful note of all details (description). What Shirazi seeks to achieve is an analysis that does not focus on individual selected views but instead interprets the architectural work as a whole, experiencing all its dimensions through movements through the room. He notes that not only the whole, but also the details are perceived and read, and the interpreter’s body is a living body in motion, a multisensory body. The same point is made by Pallasmaa, who argues that ‘a building is encountered . . . [and] architectural experiences have a verb form rather than being nouns’ (Pallasmaa 2012: 67–68). Shirazi also emphasizes the importance of investigating both the outside and the inside. By reading exterior and interior at the same time, one can understand the architecture as dynamic (Shirazi 2014: 158). In the above analysis of Åland Maritime Museum, I examine the dynamic relationship between the outside and the inside, as well as between the outer and inner landscapes. These analyses thus fundamentally depend on the experience and interpretation of ‘the museum in the landscape’ and ‘the landscape in the museum’ through the human body’s senses and movements. As mentioned above, we all bring our own lived memories and experiences to our interactions with our surroundings. But, at the same time, the experiences and the meanings we create are intersubjective; everything we do occurs in mutual interaction with other individuals with living human bodies that have approximately the same prerequisites as us and share similar historical and cultural contexts. Although one person is tall and another short, one cannot see and another cannot hear or walk, our bodies all have the same logic, the same senses (though their functioning may vary), and the same scale in relation to the environments with which we interact (compare us, for example, to a fly or a whale). There are, of course,

24

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

variations and the architecture that surrounds us is based on the average length and width of the adult human being, which means that a child, a short person or a very tall individual does not perfectly fit the scale. However, that which unites us still outweighs our differences, which makes it possible phenomenologically to read and interpret staged meanings and narratives. Creating and using architecture is a social activity that communicates attitudes and relationships (Unwin 2009: 117, 141, 145–47) and our bodily activities are fundamental to how we experience architecture. People perceive the scale of a work of architecture in terms of their own size as human beings and how a human body can move. But, while people decide the scale of the buildings they use, the buildings also determine the scale of the lives that can be lived in them. We perceive the dimensions of architectural works we inhabit and use these measurements to make different types of assessments. For example, a large doorway exaggerates the status of the occupant and diminishes the status of the visitor. Following the same logic, a small doorway reduces the status of the occupant and enhances the status of the visitor, while a human-scale doorway puts the resident and the visitor on an equal footing (Unwin 2014: 142–43).1 We interact with and organize our surroundings according to a body that has a centre and six intrinsic directions: front–back, up–down, left– right (Unwin 2014: 144). We are spatial creatures and because of our human bodily identity, we must always assume a direction toward something (Shirazi 2014: 153) or, as Sara Ahmed puts it, orientate ourselves toward an object. The concept of orientation comes from navigation, and Ahmed uses it as a metaphor to examine, with a queer reading of phenomenology, what it means to ‘orientate’ sexually toward some ‘others’ and not other ‘others’ (2006: 68). But since phenomenology assumes that our way of understanding the world is based on our physicality, the metaphor is founded at the same time in our physical being and acting in the world, which means that actual physical direction easily merges with metaphorical orientation toward other people, objects and phenomena. Sophia Psarra emphasizes that architecture arranges experiences through space–time relationships in which the conceptual sphere interacts with the world of senses in a way that cannot be described by the traditional binary division between abstract and physical (2009: 3). In the analysis of Åland Maritime Museum, I investigate the physicality, spatiality and directionality of the experiencing body. The statue of the sailor that is positioned in front of the museum shows a human body that is literally oriented ‘in line’ with the architecture and it also shows how a body is usually orientated toward an object called a ship’s wheel. Inside the exhibition room, museum visitors are invited to assume the same

A Phenomenological Journey

25

position and orientate in the same direction, which is also ‘in line’ with the architecture and the design of the exhibition room. In the narrative staged by Åland Maritime Museum, the material and physical direction of the staged room merges with what can be interpreted as a metaphorical orientation ‘in line’ with the museum as a whole; the museum is staged ‘in line’ with the navigable channel into the harbour, as if it participated in the seafarers’ movements out toward the world (cf. Ahmed’s (2006: 22) notion of figuratively being ‘in line’ with a discipline, described in chapter 1). An interesting question that remains to be answered is whether a deep analysis of the museum’s exhibitions would show that this message also permeates the narratives conveyed in texts and showcases. The results of the investigations in this first part of the book will facilitate the asking of such questions in Part II.

Notes 1. Our body and our being in the world are actually fundamental to how we create meaning in all contexts, according to Mark Johnson, who argues that all meaning-making arises in bodily activities where the qualities of human interactions with the contours of the environment are the premise and foundation of linguistic conceptual systems (2008: 10). Our common sense is shaped by our body, and the conceptual systems that we use to communicate and understand the world – to create meaning – grow out of our bodies (Lakoff and Johnson 1999: 5–6).

Chapter 2

Ancient and Modern Ideals Entwined Two Swedish Museums When comparing the Maritime Museum in Stockholm (MM-Sw) and the Naval Museum in Karlskrona (Nav-Sw), one can identify both similarities and differences. A clearly visible difference is that the architecture of MM-Sw describes a gentle arc that suggests a circle, while Nav-Sw is in the form of an elongated rectangle. And while Nav-Sw is located on a pier beside and above the water, MM-Sw is situated on a hill, at some distance from the water. But even at first glance, there are also similarities: the main buildings of both museums are symmetrical, white, elongated, and have two storeys, and the architecture shows signs of inspiration having been taken from both classical ideals and modernist functionalism, two different styles that have been influential in the history of museum architecture.

Figure 2.1. The Maritime Museum in Stockholm, Sweden, 2017. © Annika Bünz

Ancient and Modern Ideals Entwined

27

Figure 2.2. The Naval Museum in Karlskrona, Sweden, 2015. © Annika Bünz

The practice of designing buildings explicitly intended to house and display collections was established in the eighteenth century, and in the early nineteenth century the foundation was laid for what Kali Tzortzi calls an architectural typology of museums. The most important feature of this museum architecture is a monumental entrance with a portico (a hallway in front of the entrance supported by columns), a long colonnade that follows the entire façade, and longitudinal exhibition rooms sometimes arranged around a rotunda (a cylindrical building or hall that is often covered by a dome) or courtyard (Tzortzi 2015: 17–19). The architecture of the first museums was thus inspired by the symbolic language of ancient Greece and Rome, which was used to emphasize the notion of the museum as a temple of art, or as a ‘monument of culture’ (Giebelhausen 2011: 225–31). When the Renaissance architects used shapes and details from classic buildings, their intention was to suggest associations with a historical epoch that was considered heroic (Unwin 2009: 65); ever since the Renaissance, it has been common in official architecture to use a rhetoric with roots in the classical era, a rhetoric that communicates ideas about the state (Duncan and Wallach 2004: 53). Over time, other types of museums have developed, along with new ideas about what a museum should be. To understand the different directions that museum architecture has taken, Michaela Giebelhausen highlights two different views of the museum – the museum as a monument and the museum as an instrument – that she claims define the complex

28

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

relation between contents and containers (Giebelhausen 2011: 223). A museum can be regarded as a monument when the collection and the building emerge in tandem, Giebelhausen argues, and building and collection are considered together as a monument where there is no room for change. In this way, the museum conveys permanence. As an instrument, the architecture instead emphasizes impermanence and flexibility, and the outer and inner frames of the architecture can be changed and expanded based on transient needs. When the idea of the museum as an instrument took form, the notion of neutral exhibition spaces was conceived (Giebelhausen 2011: 232). In the early 1900s, stylistic decorations were not used in any architecture, and architects worked with basic forms, which was an expression of a desire to turn their backs on history. These buildings can be considered as symbols of ‘modernity’ (Unwin 2009: 65) and this clearly affected museum architecture and ideas about how exhibitions should be arranged. Whereas previous types of exhibition design placed the art in expensive and beautiful interiors, the ideal was now to create environments in which the objects were the focus. The notion of the aesthetics of the ‘white cube’ was born; the white, bare and functional room without adornments was meant to offer a space that was conducive to aesthetic contemplation and gave visitors an opportunity to immerse themselves in art without distractions. Monumental museums, which originated in palaces, had constituted the norm for the nineteenth-century museum, and at the beginning of the twentieth century the ‘white cube’ became the paradigm of modernism (Giebelhausen 2011: 232). The two buildings that house MM-Sw and Nav-Sw can be considered a combination of the classically inspired monumental museum and the functionalist ideal of modernism.

The Maritime Museum in Stockholm MM-Sw has a mandate to gather, preserve and exhibit material on commercial shipping, shipbuilding and naval defence.1 The building was designed by architect Ragnar Östberg and built during the years 1934–35. However, the museum did not open until 1938. The elongated building was given a curved shape, which, according to the architect, should remind the viewer of ships. The idea was that rounded shapes are better equipped than straight lines to withstand the forces of stormy seas. Viewed from the air, the shape of the building can also resemble the ‘arms’ of an anchor.2 The building stretches from north to south, with the south gable facing the water. It is divided in the middle by a round extension for the entrance,

Ancient and Modern Ideals Entwined

29

Figure 2.3. From the air, the building is supposed to resemble an anchor. © Annika Bünz

which resembles the first floors of a lighthouse. Viewed from ground level, the entrance tower gives the architecture a midpoint and the long, curved shape can be perceived as two wing buildings that extend from the middle, like long arms bent slightly forward. A staircase that follows the curved shape of the tower leads up to the elevated doorway. The long walls are covered with rows of windows on both floors. The main entrance leads to a rotunda containing the reception area and shop. Columns with Corinthian capitals form an inner circle, and the floor and walls are clad with marble. Straight ahead of the entrance door, visitors can see into the Memorial Hall, a large gallery that occupies an extension at the back of the building. The entrance area and the Memorial Hall are both central nodes connecting all the paths that lead further into the exhibition halls. The Memorial Hall also combines the two floors in a joint spatiality.

30

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

The Museum in the Landscape From central Stockholm, there are two main paths of approach to MM-Sw. One option is to travel by bus or car and when arriving from this direction the front of the white, curved museum building is upon discovery turned slightly away from the viewer. Those who arrive by bus find themselves diagonally behind the building, and must walk around the north gable to the front and continue along the curved wing to the entrance. Another route by which to approach the museum is via a pedestrian and bicycle path that follows the edge of the water. On this route, visitors coming from the centre of Stockholm discover a building on top of a hill, with its front façade turned toward them. The resemblance to an anchor is not apparent when walking toward the museum at ground level. The two elongated wings may instead evoke a large, white bird that is spreading its wings, ready to fly, and with that image in mind, the building might suggest direction and movement. Regardless of the route by which visitors choose to approach the museum, all visitors end up in the open area in front of the entrance. Being in this area, which is partly framed by the curved shape of the building, evokes a special sensation, as if the architecture is about to enfold me in a big embrace. The arc of the architecture can be regarded as part of an imagined circle and the building thus suggests a large circle that encloses an area in front of the museum building. The circle, the rectangle and the triangle are basic geometric shapes that are important for architecture in many different ways. In a Western context, the rectangle and the circle in many respects function semiotically as each other’s opposites.3 The ideal rectangle and circle do have in common, however, that they are perceived as certain and unchanging, and therefore as reassuring (Unwin 2009: 159). Simon Unwin defines two different ways of utilizing geometry in architecture. One is to use geometry as it emerges from the conditions of being and the other is to impose it on, or (with the intellect) cover, the world with an ‘ideal geometry’. Geometry can originate from acceptance of how the world works or it can be ‘imposed or overlaid upon the world (by the mind)’ (Unwin 2014: 135). In a ‘geometry of being’, the circle is one of the most powerful symbols of human community. The circle, in a social geometry, is a pattern that is created when people, who all want to see each other, gather around a campfire. It is a pattern associated with conversation, and architecturally it speaks of people being equal and united in a shared experience (Unwin 2014: 151). The architecture of MM-Sw is marked by an interesting contrast because it both suggests a static circle and indicates a direction, which is re-

Ancient and Modern Ideals Entwined

31

inforced by the fact that the two wings bend and reach forward. Since the entrance tower divides the building in the middle, it is possible to identify right–left, front–back and up–down in the architecture. It thus has the same six directions and centre that are inherent to the human body. The building’s resemblance to a body with arms explains the association with the bird and its spread wings. It also explains its obvious directionality – the museum building assumes a direction toward something, it orientates itself toward an object. Sara Ahmed makes a distinction ‘in the very “orientation” of “orientation”’ and argues that there is a difference between orientation ‘toward’ and ‘around’ something. When we are orientated ‘toward’ an object we are facing something ‘other than’ us (2006: 115). Being orientated ‘around’ something means making that thing central or treating it as at the centre of our being or our actions. For example, I can orientate myself ‘around’ writing, which orientates me ‘toward’ certain things, such as pens, tables or keyboards. According to Ahmed, being orientated ‘around’ something is what allows us to maintain a centre or perhaps even to establish ourselves as the centre of these other things. Being orientated ‘around’ something is thus to constitute oneself as that thing. Ahmed illustrates this with the example of Edward Said’s concept of Orientalism, arguing that the Orient is the object that we are orientated ‘toward’, as an object of yearning and desire. And by being orientated ‘toward’ the Orient, we are orientated ‘around’ the Occident (Ahmed 2006: 116). The fact that MM-Sw’s architecture suggests a direction ‘toward’ something while at the same time indicating an embracement ‘around’ an area results in the building being orientated ‘toward’ something ‘other than’ the museum and being orientated ‘around’ everything within the implied circle. As I stand in front of the museum, my perception that the building is about to enclose me is, based on this reasoning, completely logical because when I am inside the circle, I am enclosed within what the architecture is literally orientated ‘around’. Just behind the south gable of MM-Sw stands a statue of a man on a pedestal. I interpret the artwork as depicting a sailor. It is probably a monument commemorating people lost at sea. His body is facing in approximately the same direction as the front of the building, but he is situated obliquely behind the museum, outside the enclosing circle. At a maritime museum, it might be expected that the sailor would be one of the main characters in the narratives about shipping and seafaring. But at MM-Sw, the monument to the seafarer is positioned outside the circular area suggested by the architecture. ‘The museum in the landscape’ is not orientated ‘around’ the sailor and does not emphasize him as central; it does not constitute itself as the seafarer (following Ahmed 2006: 116). The museum

32

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

Figure 2.4. The sailor is placed behind the museum, outside the enclosing circle. 2018. © Annika Bünz

visitors who are about to walk through the entrance, however, are enclosed in the embracing circle.

The Landscape in the Museum The design and placement of the doorway determines how the transition to the museum’s interior landscape can be arranged and experienced. Thus, it is an important part of visitors’ experiences of the museum and of the meanings and narratives that can be staged and perceived. Unwin argues that the doorway is one of the most powerful instruments available for organizing spatiality. Our encounters with doors and passages through openings affect our experiences of the world. Doorways mark the transition between one place and another, and affect perceptions, relationships and even our behaviour (Unwin 2007: 3). A doorway is the point at which entry and exit are controlled; a door can shut out or let in, and the doorway is the place of welcoming and saying farewell. A doorway can be used to frame a view and to establish a relationship between things on both sides, or with something at a greater distance. It can suggest a link between the person and something remote, such as a mountain, a sacred place or an altar (Unwin 2014: 42).

Ancient and Modern Ideals Entwined

33

The main door of MM-Sw is elevated above the ground and visitors have to climb a low staircase to reach it. Raising the entrance above ground level is a way to enhance the status of the owner of a dwelling and to impress those who come to visit (Unwin 2007: 65). MM-Sw’s doorway is narrow and twice the height of a human being, which also exaggerates the status of the occupant and diminishes the visitor (Unwin 2014: 142–43). The doorway thus communicates that the museum has a higher status than the approaching visitor. However, the door itself is adapted to the human scale and, at the moment of entrance, the experience of being diminished in relation to the building is not so pronounced. The passage through the entrance leads to a rotunda and the doorway is positioned in line with two other doorways that provide a clear view straight ahead into the Memorial Hall. Along the ‘line of sight’ (Unwin 2014: 138) into the hall, a richly decorated ship’s stern has been placed. A work of architecture often creates a focus, which can be any element toward which the architecture directs attention (Unwin 2014: 38). The architecture of MM-Sw directs attention toward the Memorial Hall, thus making it the focus of the museum. The central object of the room is the colourful ship’s stern, which is surrounded by large figureheads and maritime art on the walls. What is interesting is that the curved lines of the shape of the building and in the entrance rotunda – the lines that the architect argued are better adapted to confronting the forces of the ocean – are not visible in the central hall. The lines in the Memorial Hall are straight and the room is almost rectangular in shape. Beside the ship’s stern is a short text that informs visitors that this was once the rear of the royal schooner Amphion and that it is one of the only surviving parts of Gustav III’s pleasure vessel, together with the cabin and the figurehead. On either side of the stern, doorways lead into a smaller extension, where a narrow path surrounds the fully furnished saloon. The walls are covered with pictures and texts telling stories about the royal vessel and eighteenth-century Sweden. The text by the ship’s stern informs visitors that the Memorial Hall was designed to house the salvaged parts of the royal schooner. In other words, the extensions that house the Memorial Hall and the furnished cabin were designed in tandem with the salvaged parts of the schooner, and thus the architecture and artefacts, as Giebelhausen puts it (2011: 232), emerged together as a monument with no room for change. In this monument, the rectangular shape contrasts with the curved, enclosing lines of the rest of the building. The museum as a whole is inclusive and invites visitors to participate in an equal social relationship, whereas the architecture and arranged artefacts in the Memorial Hall emphasize the king’s power and central position in the nation.

34

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

The other exhibition halls offered by the architecture are large and spacious frames, which are empty containers (Giebelhausen 2011: 223), with a slightly curved shape that can be filled with content. The exhibitions that have occupied these halls during my work on this project have, for the most part, been designed as enclosed storyscapes, with the rows of windows being hidden behind curtains or other elements in the design. All but one of the exhibition narratives are therefore completely separated from the reality outside the museum. The exception is the exhibition ‘Shipping & Shopping’, which fills the second floor of the south wing of the building. Here, the windows facing the park in front of the museum are left uncovered, which gives the room an open and airy atmosphere. The narrative in ‘Shipping & Shopping’ follows a marked route that visitors can follow. The path leads around and through a row of large boxes that, in their size, shape and colours, resemble shipping containers. The straight lines and perpendicular angles of the large boxes create a contrast with the curved lines of the room. The boxes are also positioned slightly obliquely with regard to the line and direction suggested by the architecture. In the ground-level room of the south wing, the exhibition ‘The Voyagers’ describes a journey from Gothenburg to China with the Swedish East India Company in the eighteenth century. Along one wall, a simplified shape of a ship has been built out of what look like cubical plywood boxes that are stacked into walls that frame a space resembling the inside of a ship, but the arrangement is rectangular and does not have the curved lines typical of sea vessels. The design thereby creates tension in relation to the architecture because the straight lines and right angles of the box-shaped ship do not align with the curved shapes of the building. The design of these two storyscapes are thus not ‘in line’ (following Ahmed 2006: 22) with the museum building.

The Naval Museum in Karlskrona Nav-Sw is the national museum of the history of the Swedish navy. It is located on the island of Stumholmen in the city of Karlskrona. It was opened in 1997 and expanded in 2014 with the Submarine Hall. Both buildings were designed by HMXW architects AB.4 Karlskrona is situated on the south coast of Sweden in an archipelago. Large parts of the city extend onto the mainland, which is broken up into bays and peninsulas, but the old city centre is located on the island of Trossö. In 1998, the island and parts of the surroundings were registered as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the ‘Naval City of Karlskrona’, as Karlskrona is considered

Ancient and Modern Ideals Entwined

35

the best-preserved and most complete of the naval cities. The naval base is still active and the harbour area and parts of the city are enclosed by high fences. Sometimes naval vessels pass by, crossing the paths of tourist boats and ferries. The island of Stumholmen, where Nav-Sw is located, was a restricted military area for three hundred years and it was not until the 1980s that the public was allowed access to the area. The museum is surrounded by preserved military buildings dating from the eighteenth century until the 1950s.

Figure 2.5. The museum building is divided into three different sections. © Annika Bünz

36

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

The architecture of the museum can be divided into three sections. A two-storey, white, elongated, rectangular building is situated on a pier. One gable faces the water to the north-east and the other faces south-west toward the island. The two gables are in the shape of a simplified Greek temple with four square columns. On the east side of the main building, a red extension houses an auditorium and the museum shop. The third section is the newly built Submarine Hall, a grey, shiny, irregularly shaped building that houses two submarines. The entrance is located on the white gable facing the land and leads to a large hall with a reception area to the right and a restaurant to the left. A narrow staircase leads up to the second floor’s exhibition halls. On the entrance level, visitors can either turn right and enter the Submarine Hall or continue straight ahead through a sequence of exhibition halls on the ground floor. In the north gable, a collection of large figureheads is displayed in a two-storey gallery.

The Museum in the Landscape Visitors can get very different first glimpses of Nav-Sw, depending, on the one hand, on how attentive they are when they arrive in the city of Karlskrona and, on the other hand, the crucial choice of which way they walk toward the museum. Visitors arriving by car or train from the north can see Nav-Sw from a distance when crossing the bridge connecting the island of Trossö with the mainland. From this perspective, the white main building looks as if it is floating on the water, together with three museum ships that are docked in a row by the museum pier. In other words, the discovery of Nav-Sw can take place long before visitors are actually on their way to the museum; virtually everyone who has an errand to run in the centre of Karlskrona has the opportunity to view the scene with the long, white building. That is not to say that everyone actually discovers it. And it is only from the north that the museum can be discovered from such a great distance. From the south, it is hidden behind other buildings. Once the train has reached the station in Karlskrona, the museum and the water have disappeared from my field of view, hidden behind the city buildings. But the sea is never far away, and when wandering through the city, I am often presented with a free line of sight toward the water and catch glimpses of the harbour and shipyard. In several places in the city, there are illustrated posters informing visitors about the history of the city and about the material remains. In Karlskrona, contemporary activities blend with history, and visitors encounter staged narratives long before they begin the walk toward Nav-Sw, if they even plan a visit. Those who

Ancient and Modern Ideals Entwined

37

decide to walk to the museum from the city centre can choose between several different routes. The street I happen to choose slopes down to a parking lot, a marina and a quay where small yellow ferries come and go. From this position, I can see the profile of the white north gable protruding from behind other buildings. On a summer’s day, bustling activities unfold around the museum on land and on water. On a day in March, the area is quieter and more peaceful. But regardless of the season, the museum building is, from this perspective, an integral part of the harbour area and central Karlskrona. Visitors that walk toward the museum from the southern parts of the city centre have, upon crossing the bridge to the museum island, probably still not discovered the museum. The main building is hidden behind the ‘The Sloop and Longboat Shed’ and visitors who have so far not seen Nav-Sw from any other location in the city experience an abrupt discovery when the temple gable suddenly becomes visible (Figure 2.2). From a distance, the main building appears low and very long. From the angle by which I approach the entrance on land, the elongated shape is almost completely hidden behind the temple gable and the building appears short and high instead. From the angle by which visitors approach the entrance of the museum, its resemblance to an ancient Greek temple is very obvious. The front, with its four square columns, is emphasized and when I walk toward the doorway, I can feel the building towering over me. The ancient Greek temples were constructed with a rectangular body, but the columns were round and the surfaces were richly decorated. In Roman architecture, circular shapes were also used to create rotundas and it is primarily to this style of architecture that MM-Sw connects. Nav-Sw’s architecture, on the other hand, takes the basic shape of the rectangular temple and blends it with functionalism by leaving the surfaces undecorated and smooth and giving the columns a rectangular shape. MM-Sw and Nav-Sw, with their circular and rectangular forms, constitute each other’s opposites. But they also stage the opposition between process and stasis, as the architecture of MM-Sw points out a direction while the architecture of Nav-Sw communicates total stability, with a building that stands as a steady, unchanging rectangular block in the landscape. Nav-Sw’s main building can also be said to have a symmetrical structure. Sophia Psarra notes that when the parts of a composition are the same, the viewer can perceive the simplicity of the whole and she concludes that the Greek monuments were deliberately placed so that the viewer would face them at an oblique angle, with the result that a single glance was sufficient to understand the whole building. In comparative analyses of the Parthenon and Erectheion temples on the Acropolis in Athens, Psarra states that

38

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

the Parthenon is regular and can be understood through its stability, while the Erectheion is irregular and must be experienced through movement (Psarra 2009: 25–26). This can be interpreted as contradicting Reza Shirazi’s claim that all architecture must be experienced through movement (2014: 158). But movement is not excluded from Psarra’s analyses of the encounter with the Parthenon. Visitors who approach the building must follow a path created by surrounding architectural elements, which leads them to the position where the first discovery of the sanctuary takes place, and it is from this position that the viewer, with one glance, can see the ordering principle of the architecture. Thereafter, the person must move to approach, enter and explore the building. And even if viewers can see the logic of the whole building in one glance, they cannot fully experience its narratives and meanings until they have explored it. Nav-Sw’s main building is a simplified image of the Parthenon and museum visitors encounter the building from an oblique angle when discovering and approaching the entrance. From this point of view, a person can perceive the logic of the building in a single glance. However, this first impression exaggerates the resemblance with the Greek temple because one cannot see how long the building actually is. And from this perspective, one cannot see that the museum extends out over the water on a pier. Rather, it appears to be anchored just as firmly on land as the ancient Greek original. The analysis of ‘the museum in the landscape’ has so far highlighted two interesting aspects that are worth discussing in more detail. First, the main building stages relationships between land, water and architecture that can be investigated further. However, it is even more interesting to discuss these relationships in the context of the analysis and comparison of the MM-Fi and the MM-no, so I will save this discussion for the next chapter. Second, the architecture of the main building explicitly references the ancient Greek sanctuary, which calls for a presentation of Simon Unwin’s definition of the ‘temple’ and ‘cottage’ archetypes. Unwin argues that architecture is an intellectual activity and that the result therefore always reflects the creator’s attitude. Attitudes can be conscious or unconscious, but they always affect the nature of what is produced. If an attitude of dominance is assumed, the dominance will be expressed in the architecture, as will attitudes of symbiosis and submission. As a means of investigating and discussing these underlying attitudes expressed in the architecture, Unwin defines the archetypes ‘cottage’ and ‘temple’ (2014: 119–32). The ideal ‘temple’ stands on a platform that replaces the uneven ground with a controlled surface. This platform separates the building from the world. The ‘temple’ also has its own system of proportions, which contributes to its separation from the world. The scale of the ‘temple’ relates to the stature of the god to whom it was dedicated,

Ancient and Modern Ideals Entwined

39

a god that is larger than human beings. And, as the house of God, the ‘temple’ does not provide for the practical and bodily needs of mortal human beings. It is complete in itself where it stands and it does not respond to other architecture. It is more likely that surrounding buildings will be related to the ‘temple’ as a point of reference; the ‘temple’ symbolizes a stable centre. Whereas the ‘temple’ expresses detachment from the world, the ‘cottage’ adapts to its context in a number of ways. The scale of the ‘cottage’ is directly adapted to the size of the human body, which is particularly obvious in doorways. The ‘cottage’ accommodates pragmatic needs, and to fulfil these needs, its layout is not regular and symmetrical but complex and irregular. The difference between the ‘cottage’ and the ‘temple’ is most evident in terms of formality and irregularity. What can be confusing is that it is easy to find cottages (i.e. small houses) that are, to some extent, ‘temples’ (i.e. architecturally) and temples (shrines) that are architecturally ‘cottages’. And many architectural works are neither a pure ‘cottage’ nor entirely a ‘temple’, but a mixture of both (Unwin 2014: 119–32). The relationship between Nav-Sw’s main building and the newly built Submarine Hall can largely be understood in terms of formality and irregularity, and in terms of the ‘temple’ and ‘cottage’ attitudes. The exterior shape of the main building is symmetrical, while the shape of the Submarine Hall is adapted to its contents; it follows the shape of the larger submarine and encloses the two vessels as if it were a shell, resulting in an asymmetric building. It relates to the main building and meets the pragmatic need to house an exhibition hall devoted to the two submarines. The main building, like the archetypal ‘temple’, is complete unto itself where it stands. It separates itself from the world and does not relate to the surrounding buildings. In the three sections that make up the architectural setting of Nav-Sw, the white building constitutes the static centre, to which the other sections adapt. And just as the Submarine Hall on land is related to the main building as a centre, the museum ships on the water have adapted to the museum building by lining up beside the pier. From a distance, the museum may appear to be floating alongside the ships, but when experienced from the bridge, the building appears to be a stable block on the ground next to the ships on the water.

The Landscape in the Museum The entrance is located on the gable, between two columns, just as in the ancient Greek temple, but when one approaches the doorway, the difference between the archetypal ‘temple’ and the museum building becomes very obvious because the door opening is not elevated above the ground.

40

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

The height of the doorway is also adapted to the human scale, which conveys an equal relationship between the museum and visitors (Unwin 2014: 142–43). It is also quite wide, unlike the narrow doorway at MM-Sw. Such a door conveys generosity and welcoming, Unwin argues; it is a doorway for meeting and being greeted as equals, rather than a symbol of superior status (2007: 66). In this way, at the moment of entrance, the architecture communicates an equal relationship between museum and visitor. But at the same time, the temple gable towers over visitors when they approach the museum, and the two high columns that frame the door generate a narrow and high opening on a scale that is much larger than the human scale. When visitors approach the doorway, they have to pass through an opening that communicates the attitude of a ‘temple’ on a scale adapted to a titanic god. The entrance hall is divided in the middle by a curved staircase. Above the narrow staircase, there is a large opening in the ceiling. From just inside the entrance, visitors who lift their gaze toward the top of the stairs can see, through the opening, an arrangement with a figurehead at its centre. The figurehead is a depiction of St Erik, the patron saint of Karlskrona, painted white. He has a long beard and long hair, and is wearing a crown. The wooden figure is mounted on the dark brown prow of a ship that is flanked by two cat heads. The arrangement is situated high above the head of a person standing on the ground floor and when regarded from just inside the entrance, the figurehead is framed and emphasized by the rectangular opening in the ceiling.

Figure 2.6. A crowned man placed at a point of focus created by the architecture. 2015 © Annika Bünz

Ancient and Modern Ideals Entwined

41

Just as architecture can communicate relationships and attitudes such as domination and subordination, objects, props and design can be arranged in museum galleries in such a way that they convey attitudes toward and relationships with visitors (Bünz 2015: 253–61). When people are placed in a position in which they have to look up at another person, depicted or actual, a relationship of subordination and dominance is created, and when two individuals are placed at eye level with each other, an equal relationship is created (Kress and van Leeuwen 2006: 140). The principle is the same as when an entrance is raised above ground level and when a doorway has a larger than human scale. The relationships convey who has the higher status and/or who has power over the other. At Nav-Sw, the architectural elements have been used to create a focus on a male figure that is elevated to such a high position that visitors will inevitably find themselves in an extremely subordinate position, and in the inner landscape, the white-painted male figure can be perceived as the face of the museum. The architecture of Nav-Sw’s main building is based on the principle of two parallel walls, which, according to Unwin, is a simple but very useful Two parallel walls

Ancient Greek temple

The Naval Museum in Karlskrona

the Figurehead Hall

back

focus

focus

front

front

Figure 2.7. Based on Unwin 2014: 191–92. © Annika Bünz

front

42

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

architectural strategy. The strength of using parallel walls lies, above all, in the control it affords over horizontal directions that can be used in a specific way to create a sense of security, direction and focus. The parallel walls limit the directions of approach to two, front and back, and the addition of a transverse wall can restrict visitors to only approaching from the front (Unwin 2009: 187). The strategy of the parallel walls and the constraint of only approaching from the front can be seen in the classic Greek temple, where visitors are directed toward the place of the god, which is the point of focus created by the architecture. There is only one entrance to Nav-Sw and visitors must approach from the front in order to cross the boundary between outside and inside. The elongated building is divided on both floors into sections with smaller rooms and larger halls. The dividing walls all have a square opening in the middle, and the line of doorways generates a visual tunnel running straight through the entire building. At the far end of the tunnel, one can see the Figurehead Hall. The gallery in the gable facing the water is the focus of the museum, and the row of door openings creates a link between the visitor and the Figurehead Hall. The walk through the building culminates in the two-storey hall, where thirteen figureheads are displayed; most of these figureheads are unusually large.

Figure 2.8. The Figurehead Hall. 2019. © Annika Bünz

Ancient and Modern Ideals Entwined

43

The text panels in the Figurehead Hall inform visitors that many of the wooden figures were created by the royal sculptor and artist Johan Törnström, who was trained in the neo-classical artistic style of the late eighteenth century (Färnström 1994: 9). The figureheads were made for the fleet that King Gustav III used in his war with Russia (Lindqvist in Färnström 1994: 2). Törnström is well known internationally. He is said to have been the greatest of all figurehead sculptors (Bünz 2018: 27–28) and Nav-Sw’s website relates that the collection exhibited in the Figurehead Hall is the pride of the museum, along with the submarine Neptun that is housed in the Submarine Hall. The Submarine Hall was designed and built to house Neptun and it seems probable that the Figurehead Hall was designed with the enormous wooden figures in mind. When visitors enter the hall on the ground floor, perhaps the largest figurehead of all, a red-painted Greek athlete, hangs right in front of them (figure 2.8). The figure carved in wood is the work of art to which the architecture draws attention and it is already partly visible through the long line of door openings when one steps into the first exhibition room. The enormous male figure constitutes the centre of a semicircle of eleven figureheads that hang on three walls of glass, high above a person standing in the hall. Two figureheads depicting bearded men hang even higher up on the white wall. One of them is a portrait of the Swedish King Gustav II Adolf and the other depicts the god Odin, described in the caption as the most powerful of the Norse gods. The position of these two male figures conveys their superiority over everything and everyone in the room (Bünz 2018: 120–22). In addition, most of the figureheads exhibited in the room are several times larger than human scale, which also diminishes a person standing in the room. Two small female figures flank the central male athlete. On each of the other two glass walls, four wood carvings hang – three female figures and one male – all of which are almost as large as the red Greek athlete. The symmetrical arrangement of the scene is disrupted, however, by a long, curved staircase that cuts through the room, concealing part of three of the figures on one wall. The staircase prevents visitors from experiencing the semicircle of wooden figures as a unified composition, as well as preventing visitors from properly studying the three partly concealed figures (all of which depict women). The fourth figure on this wall, a male head mounted on a shield, is not obscured in the same way by the architectural element. Consequently, in addition to the male athlete being placed in a position of focus and flanked by two much smaller female figures that underscore his size and central position, three female figureheads have been placed so that the stairs partly conceal them, which prevent visitors from

44

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

fully appreciating them. This can be discussed from two different points of view. On the one hand, the architectural features include a staircase that both complicates the work of distributing the figureheads in the hall and prevents visitors from fully experiencing all the figures. This may seem rather unfortunate as the room is so obviously designed to house this collection. On the other hand, decisions have then been made about how to distribute the figureheads in the room, decisions that resulted in an arrangement that puts the male athlete in a central position and several of the female figures behind the staircase. The spatiality in which the large figureheads are arranged is almost exclusively framed by transparent glass walls, and the visibility of the surrounding outer environment is almost unrestricted. The entire room is like a (panorama) link (Pallasmaa 1996: 452) that connects the inner landscape to the city, the marina and the archipelago. It is a room where the boundary between inside and outside is almost erased; the hall blends into the surroundings and the surroundings blend with the hall. In the Figurehead Hall, stories are told about magnificent and richly decorated warships and the wars fought by Swedish kings in the eighteenth century. Outside in the archipelago, visitors can see a small concrete bunker that, rather than displaying splendour to impress the enemy, is camouflaged and blends into the environment. All that shields inside from outside are the almost invisible glass walls, which only prevent the sounds of the activities outside from reaching the room within. Everything that happens outside is oddly silenced. And there are no sounds inside. Everything in the room is quiet and the large wooden figures hang like enormous human bodies frozen in their postures. When I enter the hall and the door closes behind me, I can hear only the sounds of my own body. The sounds of my movements allow me to appreciate how large the hall is and how hard and naked the surfaces surrounding me are. Suddenly, the door to the balcony opens and two people enter the hall. Their voices and the sound of the door are an abrupt interruption of the great silence, which they themselves quickly notice. Lowering their voices to a whisper, they walk down the stairs and then disappear out through the doorway on the ground floor. The next time I visit the museum, it is windy outside, and from inside, I can hear the dampened sound of small waves hitting the pier on which the building stands. The ships that lie alongside the museum are rocking back and forth. A short while later, a ferry passes and its wake hits the pier with a couple of hard clonks. I now realize that an autumn storm would create the howling sounds of winds. Waves would break against the pier, creating thundering sounds and vibrations in the building.

Ancient and Modern Ideals Entwined

45

The other exhibition halls and smaller rooms of the museum are framed by thick white walls with small windows. In these spatialities, one can identify traces of the modernist notion of the ‘white cube’. The halls provide possibilities for change and creative design, which are put to varying degrees of use in the staged storyscapes. In some exhibition rooms, the windows are covered by curtains and design elements; in others, they offer glimpses of the reality outside the museum. The archipelago, the marina and the city are not as immediately present as in the Figurehead Hall, but visitors never really lose contact with the outer landscape. The links created through windows can give different types of experiences, depending on the shape of the openings and where they are located. But a window can always be regarded as a frame; the opening frames a view of a room inside a house or a view of the landscape outside a building. Unwin argues that ‘it is within the capacity of architecture to frame “pictures” – as the rectangle of a window frames a view of distant hills, or a doorway the figure of a person’ (2014: 107). In several of the exhibition halls at Nav-Sw, the scenes that can be seen through the windows are actively used to link the narrative to the surroundings. On level two of the main building, the architecture opens up to the outside world through square-shaped windows deeply embedded in the thick walls. In one of the galleries, these openings have been integrated into the design of the exhibition. On the west wall of the gallery, the windows frame views of the marina and the city, and on the east wall, a view of the archipelago is framed by the square opening and also by a niche that has been built around it. This view really does look like a ‘picture’ of some buildings on a small rocky island. The detail that draws the most attention in the scene is a two-storey house built of grey stone. This house is an easily recognizable landmark in the area surrounding the museum. In a corner of an exhibition hall on the second floor, a weapons factory has been staged. There is one square-shaped window in the scene, but it is hidden behind a green double door with paned windows. A human figure dressed in blue is positioned in such a way that it looks like a worker standing on the threshold of the door. The environment outside the museum can be seen through the paned windows and here, too, the grey house on the island is visible. The figure, personifying a person in the narrative, seems to be heading toward the world outside the museum. In this scene, the window has been used to create a link between a staged storyscape and the real world. On the ground level, the windows are rectangular, low and go all the way down to the floor. In the exhibition ‘The History of Diving’, two windows on the eastern wall create a connection with the wooden quay that

46

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

surrounds the building. The floor of the exhibition room is only separated from the planks outside by the transparent glass. On the bottom floor, the view through the window is almost at the level of the water’s surface, which creates a completely different experience than on the second floor, as the water is much closer. The proximity to the water surface gives visitors the opportunity to imagine themselves in the position of a diver on the point of leaping into the water. There is also a spiral staircase in the room that leads down to the tunnel beneath the pier. On the way down, a mark on the wall shows where the surface of the water is; standing there, I can hear the sound of water thumping and drumming on the wall. The museum literally invites visitors to follow the diver down below the surface and further down to the seabed. When visitors leave the museum, they re-enter the reality that serves as a surrounding environment for the narratives staged inside the museum. From the area in front of the entrance, I can see the archipelago and the island with the grey house. The walk back into central Karlskrona is surrounded by a mosaic of material remains from historical eras that blend with the present-day naval city. On the fences that enclose the naval base, yellow signs inform visitors that the base is a restricted military area and that it is forbidden to take photographs. A replica of the yellow sign can be found inside the museum, in the storyscape of ‘Surface Tension – Cold War in the Baltic Sea 1979–89’. Some museum visitors may already have seen one of the signs near the military area and recognize it in the exhibition room. Other visitors may only discover the real signs after visiting the museum, at which point they can link the narrative and the city together in reverse order, as a re-connection to reality. The real signs out in the city are a reminder that war and military defence are just as much a part of everyday life today as they were in the historical epochs described in the museum exhibitions. When visitors explore the World Heritage Site the Naval City of Karlskrona, they can literally hear modern-day naval personnel marching behind the fences that surround the modern-day naval base.

Concluding Remarks The Importance of Place The exploration of the inner landscape of Nav-Sw demonstrates that an authentic environment just outside the museum is a useful resource. And this is precisely what the place chosen for MM-Sw does not offer, as becomes clear in a comparison between these two museums. In one of the exhibitions

Ancient and Modern Ideals Entwined

47

at MM-Sw, however, there is an interesting example of design being used to create the illusion of looking out a window into an authentic environment. The exhibition ‘The Voyagers’ is staged in a hall on the ground floor. Instead of using the windows that the architecture offers to create views of the park and inlet, the openings have been completely covered by a wall. This is used as a large screen for projecting moving pictures of eighteenth-century ships sailing on open water. The images also depict the passing of a day; the sun rises in the morning and turns red at dusk. This film serves as a background to a narrative that describes a voyage to China in the eighteenth century. Visitors can walk ‘inside the hull’ and ‘outside the hull’ of the box-shaped ship that is aligned parallel to the film screen. When they look out from the interior of the ship through a square opening in the hull, the opening frames a picture with a motif of ships sailing on the ocean. The ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ that this creates, with the moving pictures and the square opening in the ‘hull’, allows visitors to imagine that they can see the ocean through a ‘window’; they can envision the opening as a link to a ‘real’ world out there. With the help of design, the creators of the exhibition ‘The Voyagers’ have generated a scene that very much resembles the ‘picture’ at Nav-Sw, where the sea and the island with the grey house are framed. But it is not only visually that the ocean, the archipelago and the marina create a believable environment for the naval museum’s narratives. There are also the sounds of water underneath the building, the smaller and larger waves breaking on the pier – sounds that tell me that I am actually ‘there’ – and the storyscapes in the interior of Nav-Sw sometimes blend almost seamlessly with the environments. Nav-Sw is, however, not only a maritime museum that has been situated in a place where the collections and narratives originate; it also functions as one of several nodes in a storyscape spread throughout a city where historical tourism and contemporary military activities coexist in merging layers. Both at the museum and in the city, history and the present day blend, and visitors can see that tensions and wars between nations are as much a part of reality in contemporary Sweden as they were a couple of hundred years ago. All this becomes very obvious if one compares Nav-Sw with MM-Sw, where the maritime environment instead has to be staged entirely through exhibition design; MM-Sw can thus be interpreted as a storehouse of objects representing bygone times.

Something ‘Other than’ the Seafaring The choices of place also involve interesting contradictions with regard to the design of the museum buildings. Although Nav-Sw is located in such a

48

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

way that it appears, from a distance, to be floating alongside the museum ships, the rectangular shapes of the architecture nevertheless communicate stability on land and when visitors approach the entrance, the museum’s ‘front’ resembles an ancient Greek temple, steadily grounded on land.5 In contrast, the architecture of MM-Sw has been designed with curved lines, creating a semiotic connection to the shape of a ship, but the building is situated on a hill, with no direct connection to the water. The identified and chosen places for the two museums thus contradict the metaphors staged in their buildings. Nav-Sw’s rectangular, box-like shape does not belong in the water and the curved lines of MM-Sw do not belong on land. And thus the combination of place and architectural design in both museums creates a distance from the sea. Neither museum is actually orientated ‘around’ (Ahmed 2006: 116) the water; both museums are, rather, orientated ‘toward’ (Ahmed 2006: 115) shipping and the ocean and seafaring reality – positioning the latter as something they are not. In the Swedish maritime narratives, the ocean and seafaring reality are something ‘other than’ the museum. And the architecture of both museums is designed in tandem with collections (following Giebelhausen 2011: 232), that are directly connected to King Gustav III of Sweden. The museum narratives are therefore orientated ‘around’ the nation with the king as a leader. At Nav-Sw, this leader is given the stature of a deity, the body of a Greek athlete and the face of the Norse warrior-god Odin (one of the many gods and goddesses in Norse mythology). The Swedish nation is staged as an ancient unchangeable centre characterized by both the ideals of ancient Rome and Greek and Norse mythologies.

Notes 1. Retrieved March 2019 from https://www.sjohistoriska.se/en/about-the-museum. 2. Retrieved March 2019 from https://www.sjohistoriska.se/om-sjohistoriska/museetshistoria/ragnar-ostberg-sjohistoriskas-arkitekt.

3. In a Western context we associate circles and curves are something with an organic, natural order, whereas rectangles are not found in nature. Angles are associated with an inorganic, crystalline world or technology, which is a world we create ourselves and thus, at least in principle, can fully understand. The organic world is not created by us and will therefore always have a certain degree of mystery (Kress and van Leeuwen 2006: 55, Unwin 2014: 157–62). 4. Retrieved November 2017 from https://www.marinmuseum.se/besok-oss/om-marin museum. 5. Martin Heidegger uses the Greek temple as an example when arguing that a work of art (a category that includes works of architecture) is fundamentally related to its place

Ancient and Modern Ideals Entwined

49

and that when a work of art is removed from its original place, it will perish. In a phenomenological analysis of the Greek temple, he describes it as physically related to the environment where it rests on the rocky ground. Heidegger concludes that the Greek temple is earth manifested (Heidegger 2008: 167). And the Greek temple situated in a rocky environment is probably an image most visitors have seen and remember. There is nothing in that scene that relates to water and the ocean.

Chapter 3

Human and Ocean – Land and Sea A Norwegian Museum and a Finnish Museum At both the Norwegian Maritime Museum (MM-No) and the Maritime Museum of Finland (MM-Fi), the architecture housing the institutions is characterized by vibrant colours, shapes, lines and materials that convey process, movement and force. These buildings are the opposite of the static circular and rectangular forms, smooth surfaces and symmetrical structures of the buildings that frame the two Swedish museums discussed in the previous chapter. The architecture of MM-No and MCV-Fi make allusions and evoke metaphors that can be perceived quite easily from specific perspectives, but, at the same time, much exploration is required to

Figure 3.1. The Maritime Museum of Norway. 2015. © Annika Bünz

Human and Ocean – Land and Sea

51

Figure 3.2. Maritime Centre Vellamo in Kotka, Finland. 2017. © Annika Bünz

discern the layers of narrative and meaning that can be read in the buildings’ outer and inner landscapes. During the 1960s and 1970s, there was a reaction against the omnipresent ‘white cube’ of modernism, its guaranteed neutrality and the notion of aestheticizing and depoliticizing art. Post-modernism led to the development of a number of different types of museums that many times offered unique environments and spatial experiences that were unlike those of any other museum. Universality was replaced by individuality. In the late twentieth century, a trend emerged within museum architecture whereby the buildings increasingly became a kind of signature of the museum. The shapes of these buildings often create a link between the museum and the place where it is located, and the building can express specific meanings (Giebelhausen 2011: 234; Tzortzi 2015: 30, 35–36). MCV-Fi, which opened in 2008, is an example of this particular trend, since the shapes, lines and façade of its architecture merge with the old harbour and the water, staging a metaphorical image of the relationship between land and sea. MM-No was designed and built in the 1960s and 1970s, which means that it was created at the time of the initial reaction against modernism, but the building also partly fits descriptions of late twentieth-century architecture. The Norwegian museum’s link with the history of its site is not as pronounced as that of the Finnish museum, but its location close to the Oslo fjord creates an obvious connection to the narratives about shipping. The complex building also constitutes a unique and expressive architectural work that serves as a signature for the museum.

52

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

The Norwegian Maritime Museum MM-No in Oslo was founded in 1914, and has, since 2015, been a part of the Norsk Folkemuseum foundation.1 It is a national museum responsible for gathering, researching and conveying maritime cultural heritage. It is located at Bygdøynes on the Bygdøy peninsula in western Oslo, together with the Fram Museum (opened in 1936) and the Kon-Tiki Museum (opened in 1957). There are marinas around the group of museums, small boats and large ships pass by in the Oslo fjord, and one can see Oslo’s harbour at a distance. The museum is housed in two separate buildings and it was built in stages over a period spanning more than thirty years.

Figure 3.3. The Norwegian Maritime Museum’s main building and the Boat Hall, connected by a roof sheltering a paved path. © Annika Bünz

Human and Ocean – Land and Sea

53

The first building, ‘Båthallen’ (the Boat Hall), was opened in 1958. In 1964, the first part of what is now the main building was opened and the most recent expansion opened in 2000. Everything was designed by the architects Trond Eliassen and Birger Lambertz (Norsk Maritimt Museums årbok for 2000). The dark red main building is a complex architectural work that comprises many extensions, shapes, angles and details, including the triangular section that protrudes over the water, with its tip pointing south-east. The Boat Hall is connected to the main building by a paved path covered by a roof. The path links the entrances, which are located opposite each other. Toward the north-east, the Boat Hall and the Fram Museum stage a unified composition with three triangular gables facing the fjord. The main building of MM-No and the row of smaller wedge-shaped buildings frame a courtyard with green lawns and paved paths connecting the three entrance doors of the two museums. The inner landscape of MM-No’s main building generates unique and complex spatialities, structures and details. The interior environments consist of combinations of large galleries linked by narrow passages in corridors with sloping floors that connect the different levels. In several of the galleries, broad walls of windows offer generous views of the fjord.

The Museum in the Landscape Visitors can travel to MM-No by car or public bus and during the summer months it is also possible to take a boat trip from the harbour in central Oslo. Viewed from the area where people come walking from the parking lot, the main building of MM-No presents a two-storey façade covered by windows. Visitors arriving from this direction thus discover a low and discreet two-storey building. What stands out from this position is the A-frame building of the Fram Museum; its triangular yellow gable is quite conspicuous. Visitors who choose to come by boat encounter the museums from another direction; standing on the pier, they can see the scene with the three wedge-shaped gables. To discover the main building, one first has to walk a bit; from this perspective, it is the higher section of the building that appears in the line of sight. In what appears to be the highest section from this perspective, an oblique row of windows breaks the line of a corner. To me, this row of windows resembles the bridge of a ship and the different parts of the architecture merge into a ship’s profile (figure 3.1). When the architecture of MM-No is experienced by moving from one end of the museum to the other, the perception emerges of a building that

54

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

goes from standing on the ground and blending discreetly with the environment to gradually rising, separating from the land and finally standing aloof above the water (or vice versa). In other words, just like the Greek Parthenon temple (Psarra 2009: 25–26), the narrative of the architecture must be experienced through movement. The area with the three museums was first identified and chosen as a place for a maritime museum when the Fram Museum was built in the 1930s. The yellow A-frame building was thus already an established part of the landscape when places where chosen in the late 1950s for the Boat Hall and the Kon-Tiki Museum. The connection to the navigable channel was present from the beginning, but when the places for the two museums were identified, it was probably equally important to gather the three museums in the same area, so that they would mutually constitute each other’s surrounding landscapes. The positioning of the buildings, the lines and shapes in the architectural works, and the design of the courtyard result in the combination and intertwining of MM-No and the Fram Museum in a scene in which the two different museums can be perceived as merging into one. The Fram Museum was literally built to frame the ship Fram and to tell stories about it. On the museum’s website, one can read that ‘Being the most famous wooden polar vessel in the world, Fram is a symbol of Norway’s significant participation in the heroic age of exploration’ (Fram – the Polar Exploration Museum). The Fram Museum describes the explorer as a heroic man who represents the nation of Norway. When approaching the entrance to MM-No, visitors encounter a blue sign with large white letters proclaiming ‘Explore the sea!’. Visitors can thereby discern, in the combination of the two museums, a common theme comprising the act of ‘exploring’ and the narrative character of ‘the explorer’. The building that houses the Kon-Tiki Museum is not as closely connected with the other two museums in its positioning or in the lines and colours of its architectural design. But it does connect with the exploring theme, as it conveys stories about Thor Heyerdahl’s voyages and adventures. It is thus not just three maritime museums that make up this museum place; the theme of exploration emerges as an equally important common feature. In the courtyard, there is a monument with five statues representing the participants in Roald Amundsen’s expedition that reached the South Pole a hundred years ago. The five men stand on a low platform of stone; they are on roughly the same scale as a human body; and they all turn their backs to the courtyard and gaze toward the fjord. The five explorers are orientated approximately ‘in line’ with the direction that the architecture points out.

Human and Ocean – Land and Sea

55

They stand on a low platform onto which visitors easily can step up to position themselves beside the men. The statues embody the ‘the explorer’ and visitors can literally join the group of men and orient their body and gaze ‘in line’ (Ahmed 2006: 22) with the statues. In contrast to the hierarchical relationships staged at Nav-Sw between visitors and the male superior ruler, visitors are here invited to experience an equal relationship with the narrative character. On those occasions when I have been in the area, I have seen people standing beside one of the men for a photograph, people sitting on the platform eating packed lunches and a group of pre-schoolers greeting and hugging the statues. The roofs that cover the paved pathways also contribute to creating an equal relationship between museum and visitors. The height of the roofs is adapted to the scale of the human body and prevents visitors from gazing up toward the buildings, some sections of which rise high above a human being. Instead, it directs the gaze straight ahead, which, on the way from the bus stop to the entrance, means in about the same direction as is pointed out by the group of statues and the museum building. The roofs thereby create a line of sight toward a rather striking view of the Oslo fjord. When it is raining, visitors do not have to hurry to the entrance to escape the weather; they can instead linger for a while under the roof and enjoy the view.

Figure 3.4. Five human bodies aligned with the direction that the architecture points out. 2015. © Annika Bünz

56

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

The primary geometric shape that characterizes MM-No’s architectural framework is the triangle. In contrast to the square and the circle, the triangle conveys direction and points at things. The rectangle and the circle denote a being, while the triangle denotes processes; it can be a symbol of generative force (Kress and van Leeuwen 2006: 54–56). The main building can be perceived as an arrow; the tip of the triangular section points out a direction, as if the museum were heading out to sea. Triangles can also be seen in many other architectural elements, in both large and small details. The details of the architecture do not only comprise variants of triangles, however; there are many other oblique angles and intersecting lines. The details in the different sections of the building and all the smaller and larger extensions create a façade and a main body of the building where no part looks like any other part. In the courtyard, oppositions between the straight lines and geometric shapes of the architecture and the animate, organic patterns of the vegetation are created. The area between the museum buildings is a wickerwork of organic and geometric shapes interwoven in complex patterns; this can be regarded as a way of using ideal geometry as a counterpoint to irregularity (Unwin 2009: 156). This counterpoint generates a tension between the forms of human-imposed shapes and those of organic growth. But even if one can see a counterpoint between the forms of architecture and nature, MM-No’s main building and the roofs that cover the paved pathways also adapt to the height differences in the landscape. The architecture of MM-No conveys the attitude of ‘cottage’ (Unwin 2014: 119–32) in relation to the land it stands on.

The Landscape in the Museum Regardless of the route visitors choose when they approach the museum, they all have to pass under the roof that covers the paths before they can go through the entrance door that is located on ground level. The doorway is, as Simon Unwin puts it (2007: 66) wide, generous and welcoming. After passing through the entrance, to the left one can see directly into the Central Hall, which is only separated from the entrance area by a row of pillars. The hall combines several floorsand serves as an inner hub around which the museum revolves. As in the rest of the building, the walls are covered with the same kind of red bricks as the outer façade. With the dark, murky colours and untreated rough surfaces of the bricks, and its multifaceted contours, the Central Hall embodies the opposite of the idea of the supposedly neutral ‘white cube’. The small and large artefacts that

Human and Ocean – Land and Sea

57

are exhibited on the floor and walls therefore do not stand out as clearly and distinctly as, for example, the richly decorated stern in MM-Sw’s Memorial Hall. The architectural design of the Central Hall does not emphasize a specific place in the room and the arrangements of objects do not create a link between visitors and any specific object. The room is instead an open environment where boats, figureheads and other objects seem to be placed almost randomly. Unlike the halls of the two Swedish museums, the Central Hall is not a monument created in tandem with (Giebelhausen 2011: 232) a specific collection. Visitors who follow the passage leading to level two reach a large hall with a broad wall of glass that offers a view of the Oslo fjord. The exhibition rooms in the main building have, for the most part, relatively low ceilings, which result in the same effect in the inner landscape as the roof does in the yard: they guide one’s gaze forward instead of upwards and thus also further out through the glass wall. Continuing on from this hall, visitors can choose to go into the exhibition ‘At Sea!’, which is staged in the triangular section of the second level. The two walls that meet at the triangle’s tip are covered with small, triangular extensions with windows. These are, however, covered with transparent images that screen off the view but still let in light. ‘At Sea!’ is a chronological depiction, following a path around the room, of a thousand years of Norwegian shipping history. At the outer tip of the hall, which protrudes over the water, a small space has been framed by screens. A place has been created where visitors can step out of the timeline. A soft, clover-shaped bench stands on a wooden floor surrounded by two walls of glass that make up the tip of the triangle. In this room, the windows have not been covered and the arrangement invites visitors to sit for a while and experience the panoramic view of the water. In this position, one can see and feel the direction that the architecture points out. On the third level of the triangular section of the building, the exhibition ‘Norway Is the Sea’ is staged; here, too, a place for visitors has been created in the outermost tip of the hall. Tiina Roppola argues that providing seats for visitors in exhibition rooms can affect their experiences in several different ways. The people who physically move in the storyscape may need to sit down for a while and rest their feet. A tired person cannot take in as much of what is conveyed in the room, but (1) a moment’s rest can contribute to increasing one’s attention. The possibility of sitting down also tends to (2) start processes of reflection; when you sit down for a while, you often begin to ponder your impressions. Visitors can also (3) interpret the seat semiotically as a sign that there is something worth stopping for. In the same way, a lack of places to sit can convey that visitors should pass by without stopping

58

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

(Roppola 2012: 183–85). Thus, the framed room with its place to sit and enjoy the view of the fjord may semiotically convey that it is the view of the fjord and the indicated direction that are important. And this might also explain the effect of the roofs in the courtyard. Perhaps they semiotically convey that the view is worth stopping for, even when the weather is bad – this view and direction are staged as important. The arrangements in the triangular spaces provide the opportunity for what Roppola calls processes of resonance, an experience of coalescence as a physical, personal and/or social uniting with the exhibition environment. Visitors can feel as if they are a part of the storyscape (1) in a bodily sense, (2) by being strongly emotionally affected by the exhibition, or (3) through social engagement with it. Roppola points out that it is important to remember that processes of resonance reveal an intertwined relationship between body and intellect (2012: 4). The concept of resonance involves igniting relationships with visitors, ‘drawing’ them into a relationship with the exhibition environment (Roppola 2012: 125). The framed spaces with glass walls are places created for visitors, places that give them the opportunity to experience themselves as merging with the narrative’s implied ‘exploration of the world’, to actually be a part of the voyages over the oceans. In these staged places, the stories can be perceived as orientated ‘around’ (Ahmed 2006: 116) the visitor, who is thereby enclosed in what Norwegian maritime history ‘is’. The architecture of MM-No does not direct visitors’ attention toward the Central Hall and/or an object or work of art. The large hall is thus not the focus of the building, and the museum does not emphasize any specific artefact or collection. Instead, the building emphasizes the direction and the motion of the voyages over the seas, and the two areas in the outermost tip of the triangular section indicate a focal point in the far distance. The exclamation ‘Explore the Sea!’ on the poster by the entrance and the titles of the exhibitions ‘At Sea!’ and ‘Norway Is the Sea’ are ‘in line’ (Ahmed 2006: 22) with the message staged by the architecture, and the design of the exhibitions utilizes the properties of the building in the staged places where visitors can imagine themselves participating in the ‘exploration’ of the world.

The Maritime Museum of Finland and Maritime Centre Vellamo The task of MM-Fi is to preserve and interpret the history of Finnish seafaring. The museum is located in Maritime Centre Vellamo in Kotka, a small town on the south coast, situated on an island with the same name. The maritime centre also houses the Kymenlaakso Museum, which ‘serves

Human and Ocean – Land and Sea

59

as the city museum of Kotka and the regional museum of Kymenlaakso’, the Coast Guard Museum, which ‘introduces the history of the maritime operations of the Finnish Border Guard’, and the Information Centre Vellamo. The building was designed by Lahdelma & Mahlamäki Architects and the centre opened to the public in June 2008.2 What distinguishes MM-Fi from the museums in the other Nordic countries is the fact that the building that frames the institution does not only house the national maritime museum. The architecture is designed to be a maritime centre where local stories are exhibited along with national narratives. MCV-Fi is also a multilingual milieu, where all information is provided in the two official languages of Finland – Finnish and Swedish – as well as in English and Russian. A place has been chosen for MCV-Fi in the old City Port of Kotka. From above, the building has a long, narrow, slightly curved shape, stretching from north to south, with the west and north sides framed by a quay edge. The southern end is very low and narrow, and the building gradually gets wider and higher toward the northern end before culminating in a wide, high top, only to slope back down sharply. On the west side, the museum building has a softly bent shape and, from the water, resembles the profile of a wave breaking over land. The building is cut straight across by a wide path that divides it into two sections. The intersection of the two sections generates a roof-covered area in front of the entrance, situated on the south-facing short side of the north section. An icebreaker is moored by the western quayside and some small boats lie along a jetty. At the south end of the building, a paved walkway leads up to the roof, and visitors can continue all the way up to a large, wide terrace called Estraden or The Roof Stage. At its highest point, the ‘wave’ breaks over the terrace in the form of a curved roof. The institutions housed by MCV-Fi are located in the high, wide part of the building. The lower section is not furnished, except for a simple hall containing boats that is open in the summer. The façade consists of sheet metal cassettes in white, black, grey, light and dark blue and various shades of green. The entire body of the building is also covered by a grid of aluminium, which forms narrow rectangles. Silk-screened glass panels are interspersed throughout the grid. They feature pictures of the crew of the steel barque Favell (1912) and the masts of the merchant fleet of Lavansaari Island (1914).3 The metal cassettes and the aluminium grid coincide and generate vertical lines about 2 metres apart, while the horizontal lines do not coincide and are randomly distributed. Segments placed perpendicular to the façade are scattered irregularly on the grid. All these details can only be properly seen, however, when standing close to the building. Viewed from a distance, they merge into a

60

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

1 2 1. Entrance 2. Roof-covered area

Figure 3.5. Maritime Centre Vellamo. © Annika Bünz

Human and Ocean – Land and Sea

61

vivid surface. When evening comes, lights are illuminated behind the glass panels and the museum glows white and yellowish green in the darkness. As I mentioned in the Introduction, when the old City Port of Kotka was in use, the area would have been filled with freight cars, buildings and activity. All that remains from those days are some railroad tracks along which a high blue fence divides the Old Port from the city. A steam locomotive with a couple of railway cars is parked near the museum building. A number of port cranes are located by the quayside, two just by the museum building and two a bit further south. The tracks on which they once stood have been removed; their wheels are now locked in asphalt. On the far side of the water to the north-west, one can see the new port, port cranes, factories and smokestacks. When visitors enter the building, they find themselves at the foot of a wide, gently zigzagging staircase that leads them directly to the second floor. The reception area, restaurant and cloakroom are situated just above the staircase. The entrance to the central and very large Boat Hall is located straight ahead of the staircase. The Boat Hall encompasses the entire building, from the ground floor to the roof. This large space frames the Coast Guard Museum and the boats exhibited by MM-Fi. In addition to the shared Boat Hall, MM-Fi has a large gallery at its disposal. It is situated on the second floor, on the west side of the building, and is where the institution’s large permanent exhibition ‘The North Star and the Southern Cross’ is located. The museum also has the use of a hall near the north end, devoted to temporary exhibitions.

The Museum in the Landscape Many of the images of the MCV-Fi that one can find on the internet are quite striking and depict a very conspicuous building. This is especially true of photos taken after dark, when the façade is illuminated. The scene I encountered when I first discovered the building, however, was quite different from the photos I had studied. What I saw was a quite cluttered environment and from where I was standing the iconic building was somewhat obscured by all the lines and shapes surrounding it. The MCV-Fi building was surrounded by port cranes, high-voltage lines, trees, lamp posts, signs and a blue fence separating the port from the street where I was standing. The contrast with the beautiful photographs on the internet was enormous. After having explored the different routes by which museum visitors can choose to approach the maritime centre, and what kinds of first im-

62

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

pressions they can obtain of the building, I concluded that although the discovery can be made from slightly different perspectives, along almost all routes of approach the first glimpse of the museum is of a scene in which MCV-Fi is partly concealed behind the fence, vegetation, signs, lamp posts and so on. As long as one has not passed the blue fence and is headed directly toward the museum, the spectacular building remains relatively inconspicuous, when regarded from land. MCV-Fi is not part of the contours of the city in the same way as Nav-Sw; its circle of visual presence (Unwin 2009: 131) does not spread into the nearby urban environment. Instead, it primarily spreads out over the water and toward the new port. There is a place in the city, though, where one can get a good view of the museum area; a rocky knoll in a city park offers a view from above. From this rocky knoll, one can see the whole context in which the building is situated. But it is not primarily the conspicuous and striking architecture that draws my attention; rather, I now understand the idea behind the identification of a place for the maritime centre. I can see that the building is situated in the old abandoned port and that it communicates with the new and very active port in the distance. This scene may be especially meaningful for those who have lived in Kotka for many years and have seen how the harbour has changed throughout history. For them, this scene probably contains a historical depth in which they can see how bygone times merge with the twenty-first century.

Figure 3.6. Maritime Centre Vellamo viewed from a rocky knoll in a city park in Kotka. 2017 © Annika Bünz

Human and Ocean – Land and Sea

63

There is also a path on ground level on which visitors can discover the maritime centre as part of a scene that is not disturbed by other elements. Walking from the south, along the quayside, affords one a clear view of the water and, further ahead, MCV-Fi. From this angle, it looks as if the architecture follows the smooth curved shape of the quay. It is difficult to see a metaphor and/or narrative in the complex shape of the building from other positions; however, from this position, I can see how the architecture blends with the lines of the quay and stages a metaphorical message. The museum and the quay edge unite in a long arc that constitutes the border between land and sea. The quay and the building appear to blend together in the shape of a large wave that, at the furthest end, rises high and breaks over land (figure 0.1). The place chosen for MCV-Fi and the lines in the architecture create a scene in which land and sea meet and in which land and water are combined in a shared shape that demonstrates the power of an ocean wave. And this message is not dependent on the perfect conditions – involving clear weather and glittering reflections on the water – that characterize many of the photographs on the internet. This scene appears regardless of weather and light conditions, because it is generated by the interplay between the lines of the new architecture and the shape of the old quayside. Once visitors have discovered MCV-Fi, they still have some distance to cover before reaching the entrance and they can choose different paths to approach the building. When I approached MCV-Fi on foot, the building that, upon discovery, had looked quite compact grew in length, and as I walked on the pathway beside the building, I began for the first time to appreciate how long it actually is. There are many interesting details and perspectives to study just by walking around the building and experiencing the architecture from different positions and angles. The complex shapes and lines of the architecture, its multifaceted façade and the walkway on the roof make the investigation of the building a journey of discovery, since every perspective offers a unique scene. This building is not just a ‘museum in the landscape’; the architecture is a landscape in itself and one can do a great deal of exploring before entering the inner landscape. When one stands at a spot north-east of the building and studies the elongated shape from an oblique angle, the lines of the architecture and the patterns of the façade generate a form that appears to be ‘slithering’ over the asphalt surface. The building can also resemble water rushing forward in a winding stream. These images are enhanced by the fact that the vivid pattern of the façade reaches all the way down to the ground around the entire building. This creates the impression that the building is lying/ slithering directly on the ground. But regardless of what image comes to

64

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

mind for the viewer upon seeing the building, it is the illusion of movement that is the important thing. And this impression is not produced, as in the architecture of MM-No, by pointing out a direction. Instead, the architecture of MCV-Fi creates the impression that it, in itself, is a streaming or slithering mass. MCV-Fi’s architecture, through the combination of the shape and the façade of the building, depicts water in its different states. The high, breaking wave stages the enormity and power of the ocean during a storm. The long, narrow ‘slithering’ shape depicts a large stream of flowing water, an effect that is enhanced by the aluminium grid covering the façade. Finally, in some light conditions, the façade itself shows what the water around the building looks like when the surface is covered with small splashing ripples. And that is just what the façade looks like when the building is viewed from a distance on a day when rays of sunlight are shining on the metal. The glittering of the façade recalls the sun hitting the small waves on the water’s surface. Water can also fall as snow and freeze to ice, but I have not had the opportunity to visit MCV-Fi during the winter months and therefore I cannot describe how the building appears when it is surrounded and covered by snow and ice. But I have studied photos in which high snowdrifts reach all the way up to the rooftop terrace. The building appears to blend in with the snow and the façade shines like ice against the white snow. The experiences one can have of the scenes staged by the architecture of MCV-Fi vary considerably under different weather and lighting conditions. In daytime, when the sky is clear blue and the sun is shining, the aluminium grid glitters and sparkles in cold colours. On a rainy day, the conditions enhance the experience of the façade as flowing water. In the evening, when the sun is setting, the warm evening light results in the blue-grey-turquoise shades of the façade shifting to warm greenish, brown and beige tones. Unlike at MM-No, in the environment surrounding MCV-Fi, one cannot see what Unwin calls a created counterpoint between the organic forms and the ideal geometry (2009: 156). Instead, the shapes and materials of ‘nature’ have been used to stage discreet arrangements that merge with the worn asphalt and at the same time soften the human-made shapes of the building. By ‘the shapes and materials of nature’, I mean stones and planted plants, because there is nothing in the area that has not been arranged and put in place by humans at some point. The walkway leading toward MCV-Fi is lined with a mixture of carefully designed elements, temporary arrangements and old, worn and mended surfaces that in some cases seem to be abandoned. In the middle of a traffic island, a collection

Human and Ocean – Land and Sea

65

of rusty anchors lies on a heap of stones that is overgrown with vegetation. The paved pathway following the east side of the building toward the entrance is lined with stones that are stacked along the wall. Plants and grass grow among the piled stones and it rather looks as if the building is protruding out of the ground among grass, stones and bushes. The worst potholes in the asphalt covering the area around the building have been repaired, but nothing radical has been done to design the area. Instead, it is allowed to look a bit worn and uncared for. The run-down appearance of the environment contrasts with the spectacular, unique and iconic architectural work that is the main attraction of the site. But the boundaries between that which is worn and mended and that which is smooth and shiny are not sharp. Rather, one glides seamlessly into the other via the designed arrangements. They soften the transition between the shiny and smooth architecture and the somewhat rough and worn environment by being designed, but in a way that makes them look like part of nature. The black anchors in the middle of a traffic island have been arranged as if they were left in ‘nature’ and the human-made artefacts are rusty and worn; it is clear that they will eventually rust and rot away among the grass and stones. The pile of stones through which the grass penetrates has been arranged to look as if it has not been carefully designed and the arrangement as a whole suggests that the objects have been forgotten in a place that is slowly decaying into ‘nature’. The scene reminds me of abandoned railroad tracks in a place that trains have stopped travelling through. The design of the area surrounding MCV-Fi stages a place that was previously designed and used by humans, but has since been abandoned. This is a place to which the boats have stopped coming and all that remains are some forgotten artefacts that are slowly decaying and becoming overgrown with organic life.

The Landscape in the Museum MCV-Fi’s entrance is situated on ground level; it consists of a row of glass doors. The doorway is wide and welcoming. Visitors approaching the entrance encounter railings that guide them toward the doorway, both from the land side and from the quay side. The two railings form a funnel that widens the entrance even more and ensures that visitors know which way they are supposed to go. The architecture that frames the area is large, however; the ceiling is high and the wall in which the doorway is situated is high and wide. Compared to the building, a human being is very small. Like the rest of the building, the surface of the wall under the roof is

66

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

covered with metal cassettes, but here the aluminium grid instead follows the outer contours of the elongated shape, thereby connecting the two separate buildings, which are actually only connected by the roof. When I look at the grid that covers the opening, with the sky as a background, the motifs on the screen-printed glass panels appear clearly and I can see the features of the crew of the Favell. These are the only depictions of human beings that can be seen outside the walls of MCV-Fi and its immediate vicinity. The pictures of the seafarers are interwoven with the façade and they are a part of the web of visual illusions that the complex surfaces of the façade create. When I passed through the entrance for the first time, I was a bit surprised by the stairway that one immediately encounters in the foyer. I perceived it as towering over me just inside the doors and it seemed like I would have to climb up very high. The hall on the bottom floor takes up the entire height of the building. Walls, floor and ceiling are covered by oak panels in bright, warm colours and the different elements thereby merge into a single whole, like a huge tunnel. The staircase zigzags slightly and from the foot of the stairs it looks narrower at the top. That is just an illusion, however; it is equally wide all the way up. The stripes on the wood panels and the winding shape generate an illusion of flow.

Figure 3.7. The staircase immediately inside the entrance. 2017. © Annika Bünz

Human and Ocean – Land and Sea

67

The area at the top of the stairs is the central point of the building, where MCV-Fi’s different types of rooms and halls meet. With its colours and curved lines, the area blends seamlessly with the spatiality of the staircase and the foyer on the ground level. The museum shop and reception area stand out in the form of a triangle with a rounded tip and all the corners in the space are blunted and pointed angles that generate soft meandering shapes. From the stairs, I can see the Boat Hall through a wall of glass straight ahead. As the wall is transparent, I can see that the wooden panels, as well as the soft lines and the rounded corners, continue into the large hall. The foyer, the staircase, the reception area and the Boat Hall together constitute a large undulating spatiality. The Boat Hall is an unfathomably large space, enormous even for a museum gallery. A footbridge zigzags through the hall, high above the floor where the exhibited boats stand. A staircase and an elevator lead down to the exhibitions. The stairwell creates a boundary between MM-Fi’s part of the hall and the section devoted to the Coast Guard Museum. MM-Fi’s small boats are positioned in line with the long and narrow hall, with their prows facing the entrance of the building. Because the ceiling in the Boat Hall merges with the roof of the building, it gets successively higher and, at the furthest end, two pontoon planes hang high above the bridge. Down on the floor stands the largest vessel in the Boat Hall, a coastguard boat. Two human figures stand on board the boat, giving an indication of the scale of the huge room. The rows of boats suggest a water surface on which they travel and they give the impression of movement and direction. The undulating waveforms depict an ongoing movement, but it is not like the flow of water or the slithering creature of the outer façade. Instead, the interior of the building can be perceived as a cavity created by water gouging its way through a mountain. The oak panels, however, suggest the interior of a sea vessel and their colours create a link with the boats exhibited in the gallery. The combination of the winding spatiality and lines and the smooth surfaces of the oak panels can create the experience both of standing in the interior of a ship and of being in a current of running water. The large hall has no outer walls and it is therefore deeply embedded in the architecture. The Boat Hall is the inner focus of the building and the maritime centre; it is the heart through which the ‘flow’ passes and branches out into the three museums and their galleries. MM-Fi’s permanent exhibition is staged in a long and narrow room. The only window in the large hall is covered with a black curtain and thus no link is created to the water, shipping or the new port. Many different

68

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

resources are used in the enclosed storyscape to create atmospheres and environments. One wall is covered with filmed scenes of the sea and ice – cold, white, blue – and cracking, creaking sounds fill the room. The scenes with the winter ocean link to the icebreaker docked at the museum pier outside the building; in the exhibition, it is stated that the icebreaker is a national symbol for the Finns.

Concluding Remarks Landscape and Museum MM-Fi is interwoven in what Tricia Austin calls a ‘narrative environment’, one that can be considered to have a high level of narrative (2012: 112– 13). Austin argues that the benefit of taking the view that ‘all environments tell stories is that it . . . dissolves the museum walls, it extends the museum and the gallery into the living, changing world’ (2012: 2010). In chapter 2, I noted that this is a fitting description of Nav-Sw, but it is even more relevant to the interpretation of MCV-Fi and the design of the area in which it is situated. In the old City Port of Kotka, the ‘museum in the landscape’ and ‘the landscape in the museum’ continuously blend into each other and stage a narrative about the relationships between humanity, the oceans, the forces of nature and human-made technology.

Human and Ocean The comparison between the Norwegian and the Finnish museums mainly gives rise to questions of how the relationship between ‘human and ocean’ is staged, unlike in chapter 2, which was concerned with how the two Swedish museums stage the relationships between ‘the institution and the ocean’. MCV-Fi is a huge building that, at its highest point, looms above a person standing next to it. Nevertheless, it does not exhibit the attitude of the ‘temple’ archetype. The architecture does not separate itself from the world and does not depict something created by humans. The architecture is not characterized by the ‘cottage’ attitude either, because there is nothing in the building that is directly adapted to the human scale and our pragmatic needs (following Unwin 2014: 119–32). The building instead describes the different shapes and states of water, and where it rises up high, it demonstrates the forces of the ocean rather than the greatness of a god. Whereas MM-No stages how humanity uses the ship to rise above the

Human and Ocean – Land and Sea

69

sea, MCV-Fi depicts how humans can travel the oceans on nature’s terms if they follow the flow of the water. But the difference goes deeper than that. The Norwegian museum, as well as both the Swedish museums, depict the human being as an autonomous being separate from ‘nature’. Male rulers, sailors and explorers are given faces and bodies with the help of statues and figureheads. At MCV-Fi, visitors encounter no monuments with a human form and the architecture depicts humanity, museums, oceans and shipping as mutually interwoven components that cannot be separated. The Finnish museum building thus conveys a completely different view of the world than that conveyed by the museums in Norway and Sweden.

Time Staged as Frozen versus Staged Movement in Space Having come this far, I can also see an interesting opposition between the messages conveyed by Nav-Sw and MM-No. Nav-Sw’s static rectangular form is opposed to the process-indicating triangle of MM-No. But there is also a similarity in how the architecture of both museums protrudes over the water, and the spaces that are furthest out in both buildings open up with walls of glass that offer visitors a panoramic view. The spaces are almost free of designed elements and instead emphasize direct contact with the surrounding archipelagos and navigable channels. Although Nav-Sw’s Figurehead Hall is used as a gallery for exhibiting artefacts, the hall, with its three walls of glass, can be regarded as a large showcase, but instead of standing outside and looking into the case, visitors stand inside the case and walk among the exhibited artefacts. An exhibition case frames the objects it contains and Unwin notes that, just like the frame of a picture or an ancient Greek temple, it holds something static, ‘something for which time has been halted’ (2014: 109). In other words, artefacts arranged in a showcase stage a moment as frozen in time; it is the visitors who move in the room and it is their time that passes as they study the exhibit (Bünz 2015: 222). Visitors entering the Figurehead Hall step into a huge showcase and find themselves in a room that stages a frozen moment in time, as highlighted by the unmoving poses of the carved human figures in the static rectagular space (figure 2.8). From this position, they have a panoramic view of the world outside the museum/showcase. They stand in a place where time has halted, in contrast to which the surrounding world is busy with carryings-on. The triangular room that protrudes over the Oslo fjord at MM-No offers the opposite experience. Whereas the world that surrounds Nav-Sw functions as a backdrop to the storyscape arranged in the Figurehead Hall and can be perceived as almost leaking into the nar-

70

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

Figure 3.8. A secluded area in the exhibition ‘At Sea!’ where visitors can sit down on a soft bench. 2017 © Annika Bünz

rative, at MM-No it is instead the museum and the exhibition narratives ‘At Sea!’ and ‘Norway Is the Sea’ that, through the sharp tip of the triangle, penetrate the world outside the museum and indicate direction and movement.

Time Goes On Through the cracks in the asphalt and only sporadic repairs, the area surrounding MCV-Fi illustrates how the human-created environment is worn down by time and, if nothing is done to maintain it, crumbles and collapses. This impression is enhanced by the discreet design of the traffic island where the rusting anchors appear to be falling apart and vegetation seems to be taking over. The boats no longer dock here and the area can be regarded as a memorial site of what once was a thriving harbour. But when human activities cease, time does not halt. The message staged is that ‘time goes on’ and things change even though humanity has abandoned the place. The water, the wind, the seasons, the circadian rhythms and the growing vegetation continue as usual. And while the dark brick building of MM-No appears to be unchanged by the seasons, weather and time of the

Human and Ocean – Land and Sea

71

day, the shape and façade of MCV-Fi participate in the shifts of seasons, weather, sunrise and sunset, just like the water it resembles.

Notes 1. The Norsk Folkemuseum foundation includes Bogstad Manor, Bygdøy Royal Manor, Eidsvoll 1814, the Ibsen Museum and Norsk Folkemuseum Retrieved April 2021 from https://marmuseum.no/en/about-the-museum. 2. Retrieved April 2021 from https://www.merikeskusvellamo.fi/en/museums and https://www.merikeskusvellamo.fi/en/maritime-centre-vellamo. 3. Retrieved January 2018 from https://www.merikeskusvellamo.fi/en/mariti me-centre-vellamo.

Chapter 4

New Museum – Old Architecture An Icelandic Museum and a Danish Museum The building that houses the Reykjavík Maritime Museum, Iceland (MM-Ic) was previously a fish-freezing plant. The museum thus reuses a piece of architecture originally designed for the very fishing industry whose history it now conveys. The newly built M/S Maritime Museum of Denmark in Helsingør (M/S-Dk) is located underground in an old disused shipyard and surrounds a former dry dock. The historical architecture of the dock remains, testifying to the shipbuilding previously conducted in the area. The interconnections between these two institutions and the historical buildings add an extra dimension to the analyses of the ‘museum

Figure 4.1. Reykjavík Maritime Museum. 2017. © Annika Bünz

New Museum – Old Architecture

73

Figure 4.2. M/S Maritime Museum of Denmark in Helsingør. 2018. © Annika Bünz

in the landscape’ and ‘the landscape in the museum’ in this chapter. But it is equally important that both M/S-Dk and MM-Ic are located in old maritime areas that have changed significantly since commercial shipping was relocated and since the time when the fish-processing plants and shipyards were in full use. The areas have been transformed into culture and tourism areas, and the two maritime museums are both now part of a larger context in which present and past merge in several layers and in which the storytelling expands outward in wide circles around the museum buildings.

Reykjavík Maritime Museum The fish-freezing plant that today houses MM-Ic was first renovated and used as an office for a number of years before the premises were handed over to the maritime museum, which opened its first exhibition in June 2005. In February 2008, the museum was expanded with the addition of the former coastguard vessel Óðinn, moored at a pier next to the building.1 The museum’s main purpose is to collect items and narrative accounts documenting the fishing industry and to convey these as stories in exhibitions. Since the 1990s, when commercial shipping was moved to Sundahöfn, east of the city, Reykjavík Old Harbour has changed into an area largely characterized by culture and tourism. However, there is still fishing activity

74

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

Figure 4.3. Location of the Reykjavík Maritime Museum adjacent to the westernmost corner of the Old Harbour. © Annika Bünz

and a shipyard that is in use. MM-Ic is located at the westernmost corner of the area. The building can be described as having an elongated shape, stretching from north-east to south-west. The museum occupies the lower narrow section of the building, which is situated along the water, with one long side facing the harbour and the other facing land, where a street passes next to the building. The museum has two entrances, one facing the street and one facing the harbour. On the ground floor, the part of the building that faces the water is surrounded by a bridge that serves as a terrace and walkway.

The Museum in the Landscape Reykjavík’s Old Harbour is a lively environment where tourism, the fishing industry and shipbuilding create an environment that is teeming with activities. In the middle of the area, there is a sign with the heading ‘Welcome to Reykjavík Old Harbour’. A map of the harbour is framed by ‘pinned notices’ advertising local attractions, such as ‘The Saga Museum’, ‘Gallery Grandi’, ‘Reykjavík Art Museum’, ‘Reykjavík by Boat’, ‘Sea Ad-

New Museum – Old Architecture

75

ventures’, ‘Icelandic Fish & Chips’ and ‘Víkin Kaffihús’. Standing by the sign and looking out over the water to the east, one can see the newly built iconic concert and opera house Harpa. Also to the east of the sign, there is an open-air exhibition. The theme in October 2017 was the celebration of the hundredth anniversary of the building of the harbour. On large placards, pictures and texts depicted how the harbour was built and what has happened in the area since the merchant shipping was relocated. There is a statue of two fishermen wearing long coats, boots and rain hats. One of them rests his hand on the other’s shoulder while pointing with his other hand toward the harbour entrance. They both gaze in the direction of the pointing hand. By the harbour entrance, one can see a green, evenly shaped mound next to a white, block-like fish-processing plant. It looks like half a tennis ball, with a small hut on the top. The mound is a sculpture titled Þúfan by the artist Ólöf Nordal, which, along with the spectacular concert hall, frames the harbour entrance. Visitors who explored the open-air exhibition could immerse themselves in a ‘narrative environment’ (Austin 2012: 112–13), where history and the present day blended into a shared narrative about a maritime community. Walking from the outdoor exhibition toward the museum on the day of my visit, I saw a large red trawler on a boat slipway. The prow of the trawler pointed straight at the entrance of a hotel and the ship almost brutally confronted tourists exiting through the door. To get to the museum, I had to cross a street into a large parking lot, where the ground was bare and the surface uneven, with small mounds and pits. A small wooden fishing boat with flaking paint stood near the parking lot. Slightly to the side, in front of the boat, there was a wooden cable drum. A low wall behind the boat was covered with a painting of fish in water. The arrangement with the fishing boat, the mural and the cable drum looked like a staged scene and it was possible to imagine that the mural motif was the water on which the boat was floating. But, at the same time, the arrangement seemed to be in a state of decay. When standing by the old boat, looking south toward the shipyard and the hotel, the red trawler towered above rows of parked cars. The sea vessel was pushing up onto the land, almost into the city, and it looked as if it had been parked with the land vehicles. The arrangement with the time-worn boat was a remnant from a day of activities arranged by the museum, but during my visit it was still easy to identify a staged narrative in which history and the present merged. The story conveyed by both the ongoing activities in the shipyard and in the scene with the old boat could be that the fishing industry penetrates the city and affects the everyday lives of everyone.

76

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

Figure 4.4. The large trawler and the small boat standing prow to prow. 2017. © Annika Bünz

The path leading to MM-Ic’s harbour-facing entrance is carefully designed. In the area in front of the doorway, one can discern design strategies that emphasize the entrance and guide visitors toward it. A wooden bridge and a parallel asphalt path create a straight line of sight and a passage that

Figure 4.5. The façade of Reykjavík Maritime Museum after reopening in summer 2018, with the poster for the new exhibition ‘Fish & Folk’. 2018. © Annika Bünz

New Museum – Old Architecture

77

directs visitors toward the doorway. Together, the designed elements emphasize that visitors are approaching something special. For a couple of months while I was working on this project, the museum was closed for renovations and when it opened again large posters at the entrances advertised the new permanent exhibition, ‘Fish & Folk – 150 Years of Fisheries’, with a photograph of a woman who met the viewer’s gaze with a smile. Her rain hat suggested that she worked on a fishing boat. The large terrace on the harbour side invites one to stop for a while to enjoy a view of the lively harbour before entering. The harbour may not be what it once was, but it is not like the Old Port of Kotka, a place to which ships have stopped coming. One day, as I looked out at the scene, I happened to see how a large trawler gently slid into the water from the boat slip in the shipyard and then slowly moved away.

The Landscape in the Museum MM-Ic’s two entrances are located on ground level and the discrete doorways are, as Simon Unwin puts it, broad and welcoming rather than high and superior (2007: 66). When I approached and entered the museum in October 2017, I encountered a rather anonymous museum and no human faces. In August 2018, I encountered a statue of a fisherman in the foyer and the new exhibition ‘Fish & Folk’ was presented in a folder with the heading ‘How the Ocean Formed a Nation’. The poster on the façade and the statue in the foyer put a woman’s face and a man’s face on the ‘Folk’ of the nation. In the furthest corner of the exhibition hall on the ground floor, a spiral staircase leads to the second floor. A semi-circular alcove frames the staircase, and all the architectural elements combine to create a centre point. On my first visit, the statue of the fisherman stood in this framed position. The walls were painted white and the floor was covered with a carpet that looked like a surface of very fine gravel. The base of the statue was surrounded by a ring of stones. The carpet and the stones presented what could be interpreted as a rocky and barren landscape. But, at the same time, the architectural elements, the niche and the staircase, created an aesthetic frame around the fisherman and he stood there almost like the figure of a saint in an alcove. Since the museum reopened after the renovation, the space on the ground floor has been used for an introduction to the permanent exhibition. In the alcove, where the fisherman formerly stood, the spiral staircase now encloses a cylindrical glass case in which models of small and large cod are arranged to appear as if the fish are moving upwards in a spiral. The

78

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

walls of the niche have been repainted in a turquoise hue and a full circle is painted on the floor, giving the impression that the semi-circular alcove expands into a full cylinder. The affordances of the architecture have been used to place the fish centre stage and the lights cast fish-shaped shadows on the wall around the staircase, giving life to the scene. In both the old and new exhibitions, the stairwell has been used to create a focal point that highlights a ‘main character’. Whereas the earlier arrangement with the statue of the fisherman fixed the male figure in a static position, the staging with the spiralling fish instead conveys movement, a swirling process that leads upwards. The glass cylinder with swirling fish continues all the way up to the ceiling of the second floor, where the white walls of the hallway have been covered with colourful pictures of large and small fish. Visitors who go up the spiral staircase follow the upward stream of cod and then encounter at the top of the stairs a multitude of species of fish, of different colours and shapes, all of which follow the same direction of movement as the cod in the cylinder. Although the statue of the fisherman was moved between my visits, on both occasions it stood in a position in which every visitor could see it. Those who have explored the harbour area before visiting the museum and have seen the statue in the outdoor exhibition will recognize this type of male figure wearing a rain hat, a long coat and boots. The two statues

Figure 4.6. The stairwell is used to create a focal point that highlights the cod as a ‘main character’. 2018. © Annika Bünz

New Museum – Old Architecture

79

convey the same message: in this environment, the ‘fisherman’ is the person who matters most. Like the yellow signs that inform the public about the restricted military area in the Naval City of Karlskrona, the two statues function as a link between the narratives staged in the harbour and the storyscape created in the inner landscape of the museum building. The spiral staircase leads to a lobby in which, straight ahead, one can see the entrance to the exhibition hall. In the old permanent exhibition, ‘From Poverty to Abundance’, silence prevailed. But when the wind was howling outside the museum, it also howled within the designed storyscape. The windows of the long and narrow exhibition hall were covered, but one could find a couple of small peepholes that offered a view of the outside world; standing by these openings, looking out, I could almost feel the wind. The exhibition ended with a description of the fish-freezing operation that had previously been housed in the building. The walls of the room were covered with large photos of different tasks performed in the plant, and some of the machines and utensils that the workers used were exhibited. Visitors who knew about the history of the building were given an opportunity to link the pictures and the objects to the place and the building, but this connection was not explicitly made in the texts. When the new exhibition ‘Fish & Folk’ was created, the windows were covered over completely and all contact with the outside world was broken. The storyscape is now enclosed in its own, artificial world. A text on the first floor informs visitors that the building was originally designed to house a fish-freezing plant. When visitors reach the second floor, they encounter a doorway framed with shiny aluminium plates and covered by a transparent plastic curtain. The passage through the curtain of plastic strips leads to a large, bright room where some of the walls are covered with white-glazed tiles. The wall that conceals the first room has three doorways framed with shiny aluminium. In the middle of the room, a rowing boat is placed in line with the middle passage through the wall. When I stand by the boat and look through the opening, I can see a ship’s wheel in the next room, which is also positioned in line with the opening and the rowing boat. The entire storyscape is structured along this line, which reminds me of a production line that follows the fish from the ocean, up onto the trawler, into the fish-freezing plant and out the other end, packaged in cans and boxes. Along the way, narratives about historical times are intertwined with descriptions of the modern fishing industry. The rooms are filled with the soundtracks of three films that are projected on the walls. Among other things, one can hear the roar of ocean waves, the song of a whale, seabirds screeching, the sounds aboard a trawler at sea and the rattling and pounding in a fish-freezing plant.

80

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

The design of the storyscape ‘Fish & Folk’ explicitly emphasizes that the exhibition is built in a room that was previously part of a fish-freezing plant. The history of the building, authentic objects and designed elements interweave reality and story. I sometimes wonder what was here from the beginning and what has been added to create what can be perceived as an authentic environment. A recurring element in the design is a kind of plastic fish container that was used to transport freshly caught fish. In some places, these have been stacked to create walls that divide and frame spaces. They are also used as showcases in which objects and films are displayed. Some of the containers contain artificial ice that looks so real I can almost feel the cold. At times, I get a whiff of fish; at first, I thought that I was imagining it because the environment is so realistic. But the smell comes from real fish. Thin, white, dried fish hang on a round black stand with the same shape and colour as the glass cylinder with ‘live’ fish in the spiral staircase. At the furthest end of the narrow room, the story continues into a stairwell and follows the stairs down to the first floor. The walls in the stairwell are covered with pictures of people who once worked at the plant; they are taking a break in a lunchroom. The narrative follows the fish from the bottom of the ocean to the consumer’s dinner table, but the designed storyscape never really leaves the clinical environment of the plant, which brings the history of the building to life. The theme of the exhibition ‘From Poverty to Abundance’ was the barren Icelandic landscape, which was depicted both in the spatial arrangements and in illustrations and photos. A distinctive feature of the design was that almost everything in the room was standing free, rather than being behind protective glass in showcases. The exhibition also included several staged scenes with human figures and props, such as stones and dried fish. In one scene, a man stood in front of a woman who was bending forward as she lay out fish on the ground. The wall behind the scene was covered by a photograph of fish on the ground and more people, in a dramatic landscape. The props in the room blended with the scene in the picture and it looked as if the two-dimensional motif in the photograph continued out into the room in the form of the three-dimensional arrangement. Because everything in the exhibition room was arranged in this manner, without protective glass and on the same floor that the visitor walked on, the boundaries between photos, artefacts, props and exhibition room were blurred, and visitors could walk among furniture, boats and artefacts in the stone-covered landscape ‘together’ with the actual people in the narratives, who were illustrated by numerous drawings, paintings and photographs. The combination of pictures and props generated a very tangible presence of the historical environments, both on land and at sea,

New Museum – Old Architecture

81

and there were many human faces to connect with. The iconic image of the fisherman, depicted in the statues, could also be found in the exhibition. As the title of the new exhibition ‘Fish & Folk’ suggests, the relationship between human beings and fish is the core theme of the narrative. The poster on the façade primarily visualizes the ‘Folk’, but when visitors walk up the spiral staircase on their way to the exhibition, they can see the colours, shapes and ‘faces’ of the ‘Fish’. Moreover, the first section in the exhibition room is devoted to the sea and to the abundance of life that can be found in the environments beneath the surface. The humans appear in the next room, as the fish are being hauled up onto the fishing boat. The artefacts in the new exhibition are arranged behind glass in showcases, but even so, as in the old exhibition, visitors can imagine being a part of the storyscape, caught up in the midst of the activities at the fish-freezing plant, among fish containers, fishing nets and working people.

M/S Maritime Museum of Denmark M/S-Dk is the national maritime museum of Denmark. In 2013, its new building, situated underground in the Culture Harbour Kronborg in Helsingør, opened its doors to the public. Previously called the Trade and Maritime Museum, it had been housed in Kronborg Castle since 1915. The new museum building was designed by the Danish architectural firm BIG – Bjarke Ingels Group. It surrounds an old concrete dry dock on a site that was once one of Denmark’s most significant and progressive modern shipyards. M/S-Dk is an expression of the same late twentieth-century trend of communicative museum architecture as MCV-Fi. As it is completely hidden below ground, however, the museum is not a visible part of the architectural environment and it has no external façade on any kind of identifiable building that can be experienced and described from the outside. The museum building constitutes an underground rectangle that encloses the cavity of the dock, which extends from north-west to southeast. The main entrance is accessed via a bridge that zigzags through the dry dock. Visitors can also walk down into the dry dock via a staircase at the back end. Some buildings in the Culture Harbour Kronborg are preserved from the period when the shipyard was active. The building that is most visible from the city centre of Helsingør has been remodelled and, in 2010, it was inaugurated as the cultural centre Kulturværftet (The Culture Yard). The most conspicuous building in the area is Kronborg Castle, which is listed as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. It was when the castle was

82

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

Figure 4.7. The Culture Harbour Kronborg. 1) Kronborg Castle, 2) The dry dock and M/S Maritime Museum of Denmark, 3) The Culture Yard. © Annika Bünz

designated a World Heritage Site that the decision was made to move the museum from the castle to new premises.

The Museum in the Landscape During the approach to M/S-Dk, Kronborg Castle is a characteristic and easily recognizable feature of the landscape. The building communicates both toward the city of Helsingør and toward Øresund strait and the narrow shipping lane. It is also clearly visible from Sweden on the other side of the strait. The castle is connected to different layers of history, it is highlighted as the pride of Helsingør and, during the summer months, it attracts tourists from near and far. In addition to its own history, Kronborg Castle is known as ‘Hamlet’s castle’, because Shakespeare’s play Hamlet is set in Helsingør (Elsinore) and the play has been staged there several times. As mentioned above, the building that houses the Culture Yard also catches my eye as I walk toward the harbour. The old rectangular building with red-brick façade is now framed by dramatic triangular extensions of

New Museum – Old Architecture

83

glass. The historical building has been transformed into a conspicuous architectural work. Along the front façade, there is a row of outdoor seating where one can buy a beer or a cup of coffee and sit down for a while. All those who intend to visit the museum or go out to Kronborg Castle must pass through this environment. But this is not a place to just walk by; for many people who live in Helsingør, this is where they might go to have a beer or take part in cultural events. The activities that once filled the area have ceased and it has been transformed into a cultural centre where contemporary entertainment, recreation and tourism are mixed in a place where the old architecture tells of past times and the new architecture is woven into the old in a way that both preserves the historical remains and contrasts with them. What visitors cannot see as they approach the museum and walk in the area is the building that encloses M/S-Dk. It is completely hidden underground. And since the area is so flat, there is no position from which an approaching viewer can detect the museum. This means that visitors have to approach the museum before they discover it and the discovery takes place rather abruptly when visitors reach the edge of the museum dock. The museum is not interwoven with the contours of the cultural harbour; there are, however, design details that link the maritime museum both to the fortification around the castle and to the harbour and cultural centre (Bünz 2016: 59), and when one finally discovers the dry dock and the maritime museum, there is some exploring to do before entering the inner landscape of the museum. Standing in a specific position by the west side

Figure 4.8. Kronborg Castle and the bridge leading to the museum entrance. 2015 © Annika Bünz

84

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

of the dock, looking eastward, one can discover a scene in which the bridge leading to the museum’s entrance creates a line that connects the museum with the castle. This can be perceived as what Unwin calls a ‘line of sight’, an alignment that establishes a link between a distant object and the viewer. When architecture is regarded as identification of place, a line of sight creates contact between the two places (Unwin 2014: 138). The museum may have been moved out of the historical building, but a connection remains. When one approaches the staircase at the rear of the dry dock, one is suddenly presented with a scene in which the museum, the dock, the Culture Yard and some old workshops merge into a complicated architectural staging that blurs the line between above and below ground (Bünz 2016: 60). The dock’s rough, worn and discoloured walls blend with the red buildings’ brick façades and large workshop doors. Everything is human-made, and the old and worn are allowed to emerge with a bit of shabbiness, roughness and practical ‘ugliness’ alongside the shiny surfaces of the new architecture. Whereas the architecture of MM-No creates a counterpoint between ideal geometry and organic forms, the architecture of M/S-Dk creates a counterpoint between old and new, between the smooth and shiny and the rough and worn. If the viewer takes a step back from the stairs, the complex scene disappears and the museum again becomes invisible. Visitors who go down to the bottom of the dock can see through the glass walls into the museum’s auditorium and a gallery in the space beneath the bridge. The glass walls also reflect the sky and the buildings at ground level. The visual effects of the museum appearing and disappearing, and the reflections created by the glass walls, result in the ship-shaped hole in the ground serving as a kind of event horizon in a black hole. That which is inside the dock is completely hidden from the surroundings and cannot be detected until the viewer stands at the very edge of the cavity. But the surroundings are pulled down into the underground spatiality through the reflections in the glass walls. The museum does not participate in the landscape, but the landscape participates in the museum (Bünz 2016: 66). The architecture of M/S-Dk offers visitors a path that leads into the secluded realm of the museum that cannot be detected by the outside world.

The Landscape in the Museum Museum visitors are guided toward the main entrance of M/S-Dk by the V-shaped bridge that traverses the dry dock. The walkway slopes downward and leads to a doorway located just beneath ground level. During the approach, the scenery described above appears where the ground-level

New Museum – Old Architecture

85

workshop buildings blend with the surfaces of the dry dock’s walls. The doorway conveys (following Unwin 2007: 66) generosity, welcoming approaching visitors and treating them as equals. After passing through the glass doors of the main entrance, visitors stand in a foyer in which the floor slopes at the same angle as the bridge leading to the doorway. But it is not just the floor that is tilted; at the reception desk and in the museum shop, it can be perceived as if everything is tilted. The architectural elements of the room create shapes and lines that twist and turn and generate a spatiality with no right angles. This is characteristic of the architecture that encloses M/S-Dk. For example, the stairs in the dry dock outside and inside the premises are skewed and twisted; when I walk on them, I suffer from vertigo and dizziness and sometimes it feels as if I do not really have control over my body and my movements – as if the laws of nature do not apply (Bünz 2016: 65–66). Several of the stairways are also steep and it is actually a bit scary to walk on them, as the skewed lines confuse me. Thus, walking through the museum often requires concentration and watchfulness, so that I do not lose balance, put a foot in the wrong place or hit my head on a segment that cuts through the room. The bridge leading to the main entrance serves as the roof of a V-shaped exhibition hall with walls entirely made of glass. The corridor-like room follows the slope of the bridge and – connecting to the walls of the dry dock at three points – ties together the three levels of the museum building. The cavity of the dry dock is also traversed by an auditorium with glass walls. The architecture is innovative and defies the traditional rules for designing a lecture hall. Rows of chairs are placed on steps on a leaning floor that goes all the way down to the bottom level. Another triangular-shaped floor slopes down from the other side of the dock and the two floors meet in the middle of the hall, creating a kind of three-dimensional cross. The transparent walls admit the outer world into the auditorium. This consists above all of the colours and shapes of the dry dock that surrounds the hall, but one can also see the sky and parts of the surrounding buildings. At the same time, the glass creates transparent reflections of the interior of the hall and these reflections blend the indoor environment with the dry dock outside. Inside and outside merge and it is sometimes difficult to determine what is real and what is an illusion generated in the reflections. The auditorium interweaves the old architecture of the dock with the new architecture of the museum, but it does not seem to be practical as a lecture hall. An auditorium can be expected to function as what Unwin calls a ‘theatre’, which is a place for public appearances (2014: 102). But this lecture hall only has seats for the audience and there is no given position where a performer can stand. Thus, the most important component

86

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

Figure 4.9. A steep, twisting staircase leading down to the café. 2015 © Annika Bünz

required for a hall to really be a ‘theatre’ is missing. The auditorium, like the skewed and twisted staircases, appears to be more about sculpture and design than functional architecture. And it actually creates a story in itself, rather than being the place where the drama can be performed.

New Museum – Old Architecture

87

Figure 4.10. The auditorium. 2015 © Annika Bünz

The café, which is located on the bottom floor at the back end of the dry dock, is also a place where inside and outside almost seamlessly blend into each other. The café is situated within the frame of the dock, with only a transparent glass wall separating it from the outdoor environment. Along the walls, three concrete steps cover the angle created where the walls meet the ground. In the café, these steps are used as seats and shelves, decorated with flowers, lamps and candles, with soft cushions to sit on. The auditorium and the café are places located within the museum premises but outside the exhibition halls. Both of these spaces are closely linked to the dry dock, but their contact with the world above ground is not as pronounced. The world above ground is ‘far away’ and the architecture does not create any links to the cultural harbour. Instead, it is first and foremost the relationship between the museum and the dry dock that is emphasized. The museum is intertwined with the dock and visitors’ attention is directed toward the old concrete structure outside the glass walls. The dry dock is the area of focus, enfolded and traversed by the museum in a way that makes the two architectural structures inseparable. The interaction between the historical place and the museum place is primarily staged in spaces that are not dedicated to designed exhibitions. The V-shaped gallery beneath the zigzag bridge is an exception, however. Temporary exhibitions are often staged in this space, sometimes with simple designs that incorporate the dock outside and the world above. But I have

88

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

also seen an exhibition in which the glass panes were covered and the link with the outside world broken. Nevertheless, regardless of the exhibition design, the long and narrow V-shape and the steeply slanting floor always remain the same. In the spaces where the permanent exhibitions are staged, the framing architecture is not as intrusive as it is in the foyer, the café and the glass corridors, and the floors can be perceived as flat, even though one is actually walking down an incline. What is much more obvious is that the design of several of the permanent exhibitions reflects and complements the architecture by creating tilts and skews where the lines and shapes of the rooms are straight and almost perpendicular. Just as the architecture destabilizes my movements and my being in the spaces outside the permanent exhibitions, the design in several of the exhibition halls stages storyscapes that challenge the inherent horizontal and vertical directions (Unwin 2014: 144) that I can feel in my body. On my first visit to the museum, I found a smaller room built within the room. Inside, all the pictures were hanging at an oblique angle, making the narrow space feel tilted. As I observed this, the visual impressions confused and destabilized me, even though I was standing on flat, solid ground. Many showcases and designed elements are like this. In the V-shaped gallery, however, the design and architecture sometimes switch roles, with the design flattening out the inclined floor, but only visually. Visitors must always walk on a slope, which constantly reinforces their awareness of the room and of being a human body moving within it. During one period, the entire dry dock was transformed into a construction site and the zigzag bridge was surrounded with scaffolding. The newly constructed building could not cope with the elements and rainwater was leaking into the museum. A thorough renovation was needed and this affected the atmosphere in the V-shaped gallery. Whereas previously the museum and the dock had almost seamlessly blended with each other, the scaffolding created a network of visual obstacles outside the glass walls. The museum seized the opportunity and staged a temporary exhibition telling the story of how and why the museum was built underground around the old dry dock. The narrative was conveyed through texts, drawings and films, and enlarged photos hung along the transparent walls, just in front of the panes of glass. Visitors could follow the construction of the museum step by step and there were pictures and texts describing how the dry dock was built in the nineteenth century. The exhibition also described the shipyard when it was in operation. One of the texts explained that development and revenue were more important than the view of the Kronborg Castle, with the result that the castle was hidden behind cranes

New Museum – Old Architecture

89

and ships for a century. As visitors stood in front of the photos and read the texts, the construction work and scaffolding outside functioned as props that put the narrative in an authentic environment. By simple means, the museum had created a story about a new museum that, just through the choice of place, encloses much of the history it depicts. Instead of trying to hide the scaffolding outside the walls of glass, the museum fully utilized the practical and material reality and included the ongoing construction work. The present and the past, historical events and contemporary processes were portrayed in parallel and transparent layers, which resulted in a storyscape that can be described as a palimpsest, with texts written on the four dimensions of time and space. This narrative also explained why the new museum is hidden underground. The World Heritage Site, which was hidden and disconnected from the city for such a long time, was to be an undisturbed architectural landmark in the landscape, clearly visible from the harbour and the city of Helsingør.

Concluding Remarks Inside and Outside The Icelandic and Danish museums do not stage messages in the surrounding landscape; instead, they turn inward and first and foremost communicate with visitors who explore the inner landscapes and, in the context of the Danish museum, the interior of the dry dock can be seen as a part of this inner landscape. In some ways, the former fish-freezing plant in Reykjavík Old Harbour and the nineteenth-century dry dock in the Culture Harbour Kronborg in Helsingør can be regarded as museum artefacts that the museums embrace and revolve around. The two museums are thus orientated ‘around’ (Ahmed 2006: 116) the old architectural structures and their histories. The building that houses M/S-Dk also generates an interplay between above and below ground and between visible and invisible. But the architecture creates no frame; it does not frame the museum and no inside and outside are actually distinguishable (Bünz 2016: 65).

Human and Ocean In Reykjavík Old Harbour, the relationship between human and sea is not expressed in the land-based architecture. Rather, it is the sea vessels that are allowed to be very present on land. The shipyard is as present

90

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

and palpable in Reykjavík Old Harbour as the military base in the city of Karlskrona. Visitors strolling in the harbour can see how shipping and the fishing industry are integrated with the city and how the sea vessels literally penetrate life and reality on land. In chapter 3, I concluded that MM-No depicts the Norwegian people as explorers and stages a directionality, pointing from land toward ocean. MM-Ic instead describes a nation that is built on resources from the ocean and emphasizes that it is the sea and the fisheries that have shaped the nation. The fisherman is highlighted as an important identity and, since the summer of 2018, it is the woman’s face that that can be seen from a distance. The ‘museum in the landscape’ thus conveys that she plays an important part in the national narrative about the fishing industry. Another interesting aspect of the Icelandic narrative is that the newly opened permanent exhibition designates the fish as the main character in a narrative that describes the relationship between humans, the elements, the creatures that live in the ocean and the entire aquatic ecosystem. This contrasts with the other five Nordic national maritime narratives, which mainly describe shipping and seafaring as means of transporting goods and people. The architecture of M/S-Dk is characterized by how it communicates with the human visitor’s bodily schema by constantly inducing an awareness of being and moving in the room. The entire museum building is a ‘narrative environment’ that generates tension by constantly provoking visitors’ sense of balance and direction. The architecture and exhibition design literally create an environment that does not correspond to the six directions inherent in the human body. This can be perceived as if the narratives are intended to mimic being on board a ship at sea, with all the disorienting motion that involves. Sara Ahmed argues that the concept of ‘orientation’ can make us think about how we inhabit the world: not only how we ‘find our way’, but also how we come to ‘feel at home’. And even if we are in an unfamiliar environment, we can find our way because we are familiar with the social form, how the social is arranged (Ahmed 2006: 7). The spaces created by the architecture of M/S-Dk do not offer a familiar environment and it is sometimes hard to ‘feel at home’. In the analysis of MM-Sw in chapter 2, I noted that the design of the exhibitions ‘Shipping & Shopping’ and ‘The Voyagers’ creates a tension between the building’s curved rooms and the straight lines in the design of the storyscapes. In other words, the design is not ‘in line’ (Ahmed 2006: 22) with the architecture. At M/S-Dk, the exhibition design works ‘in line’ with the architecture; it is, rather, the human body of the visitor that is placed ‘out of line’. The visitor is placed on an oblique angle toward the museum; visitors are positioned ‘off line’.

New Museum – Old Architecture

91

Ahmed concludes that those inhabiting a queer slant in their everyday life have to deal with the perceptions of others and the ‘straightening devices’ created by such perceptions when they are frozen into social forms (2006: 107). However, the architecture and exhibition design of M/S-Dk rather functions as an ‘un-straightening device’ that creates a ‘queer slant’ that can be interpreted as embodying the message that it is the maritime world that is queer in relation to the visitor (Bünz 2016: 65). Seafaring and maritime life can be perceived as another universe; visitors may experience themselves as ‘off line’ in relation to the universe of the seafarers. But it could also mean that the ocean makes up another world, with different rules than the world on land. Humans cannot live on the water without a vessel; the world of the open seas is actually not a world where human beings belong – we would drown without vessels and technology. The experience of not being fully able to orientate myself and having trouble aligning the six directions inherent in my body with the world framed by the architecture of M/S-Dk can be interpreted as a created relation between the human body and the ocean. The human body is positioned ‘out of line’ with the ocean, it encounters the open waters ‘slantwise’ and the relationship between human and ocean can thereby be perceived as queer. Another interpretation could be that the museum stages the seafarer’s experience of going ashore after a long journey. A person who is used to the constant heaving motions on board a ship can feel ‘out of line’ when standing on still and steady land.

Notes 1. In 2014, MM-Ic became part of Reykjavík City Museum, which also consists of Árbær Open Air Museum, The Settlement Exhibition, the Reykjavík Museum of Photography and Viðey Island.

Part II.

Thematic Analyses

Chapter 5

In the Waves of the Ocean and the Depths of Emotion In exhibition narratives that describe the everyday realities of people’s lives in maritime communities, it is often emphasized that a life with the sea is characterized by worries, danger, fear, anguish, ‘not knowing’, death and sadness, but also by relief and joy. In the exhibition ‘Coastland’ at Bohusläns Museum in Uddevalla, Sweden, it is stated that ‘The sea is a considerably more dangerous workplace than the farmer’s fields’, and worry is depicted as an ever-present feature of daily life in the coastal region. In the old permanent exhibition at MM-Ic, ‘From Poverty to Abundance’, visitors could listen to a fisherman’s daughter’s story. She said that when her father stopped fishing after fifty-four years at sea, he surprised her by saying: ‘All these years I was always seasick, always afraid’. From these narratives, and many other like them at maritime museums in southern Scandinavia, I have learnt that for people living their lives with the sea, questions of life and death, fear and loss, are always present; in this chapter, I examine the aspects of the relationships between human beings, shipping, technology, the ocean, danger and the forces of nature that the six national Nordic maritime museums discuss and represent, and how the museum visitors are addressed and made to feel involved, or not involved, in these narratives. To do this, I first need to clarify and describe different kinds of relationships that can be created in exhibitions. As the analyses in the previous chapters have shown, experiences of a museum visit always involve attitudes and relationships between (1) museum and visitors. But they also generate relationships between (2) the visitors and the people described in the narratives, and between (3) the characters of the story, for example, between the sailor and the sailor’s wife (Bünz 2018: 26). In addition, relationships are created between (4) visitors and the worlds and realities depicted. To illustrate this last point, I start with descriptions and analyses of three exhibitions that I have chosen because they can serve as illustrative

96

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

examples of the different kinds of relationships created between visitors and the storyscapes, the depicted people and the described events. In other words, they are examples of different strategies for communicating with museum visitors. I then follow the themes ‘to live and die with the ocean’ and ‘the waves of conflict and war’ when investigating what the six national maritime museums emphasize and discuss in narratives about the realities of maritime communities, and how design and narrative strategies are used in the storyscapes to address and involve the visitors.

Communication between Museum and Visitor Encountering the Ocean When the temporary exhibition ‘Thirst’, an installation made by the video artist Voldemārs Johanson, was shown at M/S-Dk, one could hear a thundering noise from up ahead when walking through the sequence of permanent thematic exhibitions.1 The installation was mounted in the section of the building where the ceiling is highest, and a plain, dark-grey wall separated the adjacent exhibition from the installation. The word ‘Thirst’ was written in large white letters next to a thick dark curtain that covered an opening in the wall. Next to the covered opening, there was a short text: Enter a landscape of troubled waters. Look in the eye of a storm in safe distance of the waves. Thirst depicts the Atlantic Ocean during a fierce and dramatic storm. Filmed from the coast of the Faroe Islands in a single-shot recording during the period of winter storms.

On the other side of the curtain, everything was almost black, except for a film screen that covered one of the walls. The floor in front of the screen was painted with patterns that resembled wet and foamy traces of breaking waves. This generated the impression that the filmed ocean continued out from the wall, into the room where I stood. The sound of water smashing against cliffs was so realistic that I could almost feel droplets falling all around me. The film of the stormy ocean, the roaring of the wind and the crashing of the waves were the only things to experience in the dark room – everything else was bare, black and empty – and the sound was so strong that I could feel the vibrations in my body.

In the Waves of the Ocean and the Depths of Emotion

97

The title ‘Thirst’ can connote many different things and the sentence ‘Enter a landscape of troubled waters’ is ambiguous as it could suggest that the reader will step into a landscape of trouble and chaos rather than a coast ravaged by a storm. But regardless of the meanings visitors derived from the title and texts, and whatever thoughts and ideas they gave rise to, when visitors stood in the dark in front of the screen, they literally were confronted with the storm and the sea. Visitors could experience the forces of nature – in the wind and the water – in what could be perceived as a direct encounter with the ocean. The installation comprised qualities of light, sound and spatiality that had been used as semiotic resources (Kress 2010) to design a storyscape in which visitors were given the opportunity to imagine themselves there on the cliffs, by the ocean. They could perceive with all their senses, in an experience that could be felt physically, especially because of the sound that vibrated through the room. In many exhibitions, the designed storyscape primarily functions as a background and setting for narratives conveyed in showcases and texts. In ‘Thirst’, in contrast, it was the staged environment and the encounter between a human being and the ocean that was the story. In the analyses of MM-No in chapter 3, I introduced the concept of resonance, as defined by Tiina Roppola. Processes of resonance can also explain the experience of standing in front of the installation ‘Thirst’. Museum visitors’ experiences of exhibitions are largely created in a process that Roppola calls perceptual resonance. This depends on the everyday phenomenon of perceptual completion, whereby we unconsciously ‘fill in’ perceptual details that are missing and integrate information from multiple sensory sources. This is an essential aspect of our ability to comprehend the world and experience meaning. Processes of perceptual resonance are vital in museums, because the exhibitions can never be more than stylized representations. The fragments of the world presented in the exhibitions are routinely filled in with larger constructions in visitors’ minds (Roppola 2012: 4). The semiotic resources used in the installation ‘Thirst’ activated the phenomenon of perceptual resonance in a way that allowed visitors to feel and hear the water splashing in the room. This also encouraged processes of resonance as a sense of coalescence (Roppola 2012: 4) with the storyscape; by perceiving the vibrations from the loud noise and hearing the wind roar and the waves crashing on the rocks, visitors could experience a physical union with the room and thereby imagine what it would be like to really stand there in the wind and feel the wetness of the cascading water. The person standing in the room was put in the position of being the feeling and experiencing individual in the narrative.

98

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

The installation ‘Thirst’ did not tell visitors someone else’s story. This story was about ‘me’; I was given the opportunity to perceive myself as the ‘main character’. But the real meaning of the title ‘Thirst’ was something visitors had to figure out on their own, as with ‘a landscape of troubled waters’. Many visitors may have imagined being out there in the storm, on a ship in distress, and envisaged the small human being’s helplessness in the face of the forces of nature. Perhaps some other visitors associated the title with situations in the world in which water is a problem of some sort. One could also interpret ‘troubled waters’ as referring to the contemporary situation whereby humanity is causing ‘troubles’ on a global scale. The installation ‘Thirst’, with its title and short text, could provoke various thoughts and reflections, perhaps initiating what Roppola calls ‘processes of broadening’. ‘Broadening’ relates to whether visitors are given the opportunity to be self-aware participants in the meaning-making or whether the exhibition instead restricts the individual’s performance of meaning. Roppola defines four different kinds of broadening processes described by museum visitors: (1) experiential (something I would not have been able to see otherwise), (2) conceptual (grasping a theoretical principle), (3) affective (being provoked to judge my feelings or to feel differently about something), and/or (4) discursive broadening (seeing contrasting points of view) (2012: 216). Tricia Austin argues that in order to stage a ‘narrative environment’, it is necessary to create a story world that generates excitement – a sense of orderly development – but that also has physical and mental elements of uncertainty, that is, unfamiliar surroundings, objects or information, to awaken a longing for a resolution. A successful ‘narrative environment’ will induce bodily perception, physical action and intellectual change or transformation (Austin 2012: 109). The installation ‘Thirst’ certainly provoked bodily perception, in what for many visitors was probably an unfamiliar environment, and it may have inspired some visitors to gain intellectual insights – all of which could perhaps be called processes of broadening (following Roppola 2012: 216). In any case, visitors were put in a situation in which it was hard not to be a self-aware participant in the meaning-making.

Encountering People in Distress At the County Museum of Kalmar, in Sweden, there is an exhibition devoted to the story of the regal ship Kronan, a seventeenth-century warship that capsized during a battle and sank to the bottom of the Baltic Sea. It

In the Waves of the Ocean and the Depths of Emotion

99

is a large exhibition displaying many artefacts that have been rescued from the wreck and it thoroughly describes the ship and the time period. The dramatic event that resulted in the loss of the ship is depicted in a small, secluded room. Next to a wall, there is a 3D model of violent, dark-blue waves. In the water, two men struggle for their lives and a third person floats face down, unconscious or dead. A text informs visitors that the loss of Kronan was one of the largest ship disasters in Swedish history. Of the 850-man crew, only forty survived. The model is in full scale and the features of the men’s faces are so realistic that the scene appears very real. One of the men clings to a wooden log, a piece of the ship that has capsized. He meets the viewer’s gaze and his facial expression conveys fatigue and resignation. The other person’s wide eyes and open mouth express panic and horror. The scene with the two men fighting for their lives shifts the focus of the narrative from the historical era, the battles of the kings and the design of the ship, to the people who served aboard ships. In the realistic facial expressions of the humans struggling in the water, visitors can see the sailors’ feelings and they are given the opportunity to empathize with the experience of being tossed about in the water, gasping for air. The man who is staying afloat with the help of a log establishes contact with visitors by meeting their gaze; he acknowledges them and addresses them as ‘you’ (following Kress and van Leeuwen 2006: 117–19). Whereas in the installation ‘Thirst’ visitors are faced with the forces of the storm and the ocean, the scene with the sinking ship Kronan instead positions them eye-to-eye with human beings struggling for their lives and the man who meets the viewer’s gaze draws the visitors into the drama. And while ‘Thirst’ may give rise to thoughts about different kinds of ‘troubles and worries’ in a wider sense, the narrative of the crew of Kronan describes a specific situation in which everything has gone catastrophically wrong. In this scene, visitors encounter a perspective on the historical events that is rarely discussed in narratives of the battles of the military leaders. For a moment, they are invited to engage in a close relationship with the ordinary people, those who suffer when leaders fight and warships sink.

Encounters with Human Interpreters The relationship between human beings and the ocean was also the theme of the temporary exhibition ‘Refugee across the Sea’ at the Maritime Museum & Aquarium in Gothenburg, Sweden.2 In the exhibition room, there were five low booths where visitors could sit and watch films of people

100

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

describing their experiences and memories of travelling over the sea as refugees. Four booths were devoted to four bodies of water: the Baltic Sea, the Øresund strait, the South China Sea and the Mediterranean. Visitors could choose from lists of names of people and press a button to start a film and listen to the testimony. A number of actual people, with faces, names and life stories, described the events from their perspectives. Together, they made up a chorus of experiencing subjects; they functioned as narrative voices that contributed their perspectives (Abbot 2008: 73; Bal 2009: 18). The booths provided a secluded place and invited visitors to take the time to listen to the rather long stories in peace and quiet. Inviting visitors to engage with actual people and to listen to their personal narratives can induce processes of social resonance and by interacting with human interpreters, visitors can find social coalescence (Roppola 2012: 157). There were also testimonies describing experiences of rescue operations and receiving refugees. In a quote, a Coast Superintendent during the Second World War described situations in which people suffered severely during trips in open boats, in biting cold, with water frequently washing over them. A man from the Swedish Sea Rescue Society says that there seemed to be an entire industry around refugee trafficking in the Mediterranean and he concludes that there are always unscrupulous people who are prepared to try to make money out of the situation.

Strategies to Engage and Involve On the basis of experience gathered from working with successful museums in Liverpool, David Fleming argues that exhibitions that evoke strong emotions, such as sadness and grief, open up new communication channels and new ways of engaging visitors (2017: 73). In the exhibitions described above, I discern three different strategies for communicating with visitors by provoking strong emotions and engaging them in the narrative. People who entered ‘Thirst’ were given the opportunity to physically experience a direct encounter with the forces of sea and storm; those who walked through the exhibition ‘The Royal Ship Kronan ’ were drawn into a scene with fictional characters in distress; and those who visited ‘Refugee across the Sea’ encountered actual people describing their experiences of fear, danger and relief. The installation ‘Thirst’ primarily spoke to visitors’ senses and to their ability to coalesce with a situation, while the scene with the drowning men in ‘The Royal Ship Kronan ’ and the exhibition ‘Refugee across the Sea’ may instead evoke the visitors’ compassion and empathy for other people and their experiences. But perhaps all three exhi-

In the Waves of the Ocean and the Depths of Emotion

101

bitions induce processes of affective broadening (being provoked to judge your feelings or to feel differently about something, Roppola 2012: 5–6). The historical situations described in ‘Refugee across the Sea’, the stories presented and the different positions from which they are described (e.g. refugees and sea rescuers) also facilitate processes of discursive broadening.

To Live and Die with the Ocean A Walk through the Six Museums’ Themes and Stories MM-No introduces the exhibition ‘At Sea!’ with the words: ‘People here have gone to sea throughout history, on the high seas and in fjords, in storms and when the water is as still as a millpond, through times of bitter cold and of burning heat’. It is also stated that ‘Shipping has provided work, income and cultural inspiration as well as drudgery, danger and separation’, which implies a community where people live and die with the ocean. This statement, however, is an exception to the overall message conveyed by MM-No, which rather depicts a people that explores and conquers the oceans. At MM-Ic, a section of the old permanent exhibition ‘From Poverty to Abundance’ was devoted to accidents at sea. It was stated that during the times when fishermen went out in open rowing boats, many were killed. It also highlighted that, despite the introduction of covered vessels and trawlers, the sea continued to take many lives. In a dramatized documentary film, a narrative voice described the women’s worry when the men were out fishing – they never knew if everyone would come home again. The subject is discussed even more intensively in the new exhibition ‘Fish & Folk’, in which walls made of plastic fish containers frame a dark space that is separated from the otherwise very bright and shiny storyscape. Within this secluded room, the walls are black and stories are told about terrible storms and experiences of fear in life-threatening situations. The surrounding walls offer visitors a peaceful and quiet space to read the texts, watch the films and study the exhibited artefacts, which include rescue equipment, letters, newspaper clippings, a painting and a model of a ship. Many of the objects are arranged in the showcases as if they were being tossed around on the waves. One can choose between the films that are shown on small monitors, put on a headset and listen to people talking about their own experiences. A sailor describes a long and horrible storm, for example, and family members share thoughts about loss and grief. Through these narratives, visitors are given the opportunity to experience social resonance

102

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

(Roppola 2012: 157) and the secluded room creates a close relationship between visitors and the persons describing what it is like to live and die with the ocean. The exhibition ‘Navigation and World Views’ at M/S-Dk emphasizes that navigation is vital when travelling the oceans and visitors are guided through technical details of and solutions to practical challenges in navigating open waters. The museum argues that the most dangerous part of the journey is when the ship sails close to land and explains that generations of seafarers have relied on help from the coast. Pilots, lighthouse keepers, meteorologists, radio operators and telegraphists have, throughout history, worked hard to make seafaring safer. MM-Ic emphasizes in ‘Fish & Folk’ that safety at sea has improved significantly due to preventive measures, training and technological developments. At MM-Fi, in ‘The North Star and the Southern Cross’, visitors can read that ship designs, rescue equipment and information channels have changed for the better and new navigational instruments have been developed. But the museum drily states that: ‘Many of the inventions and practices that improve the safety of shipping have only been adopted after disasters’. It concludes that there have been many accidents and that it ‘always involves tragedy: at its worst, the loss of life and the death of loved ones. One of the worst incidents was when the passenger liner Estonia went down off Utö island in 1994, and 852 lives were lost’. By mentioning the MS Estonia, the exhibit highlights that sea-related tragedies and grief are not only of relevance to those living in maritime communities; the Estonia accident reminds people living in the Nordic countries that death and grief can affect us all. It also shows that tragedies are not limited to historical eras with rowing boats and sailing ships; they can happen here and now, despite our modern technology. This facilitates processes of affective broadening (Roppola 2012: 5-6, 231), especially for those visitors who do not live in a reality where the ocean, the forces of nature and life-and-death situations are ever-present aspects of everyday life. The exhibition ‘Navigation and World Views’ at M/S-Dk tells visitors about three accidents that caused much sorrow, both for the families and for the nation, and also that an accident can be caused by a simple mistake. Norge: Hope and Despair during the Forgotten Catastrophe In late June 1904 the steamship ‘Norge’ was on its way from Denmark to New York. One early morning it rammed a submerged reef west of Scotland and quickly began to sink. While passengers ran around among each other in panic, attempts were made to launch the lifeboats. Six boats were launched, but more than 600 people died due to a simple navigation mistake. Days full of angst, thirst, and hope

In the Waves of the Ocean and the Depths of Emotion

103

awaited those in the lifeboats. They were the only ones who knew that the NORGE had sunk.3‘

Sometimes a ship is lost without a trace and the families never find out what actually happened. M/S-Dk tells the story of the ship København, which mysteriously disappeared on 22 December 1928. Visitors are informed that the young men on board were gone forever and only lived on in their parents’ memory. The museum also describes a situation in which an accident had political ramifications, when a ship on route to Greenland sank in 1959: The loss of the ship took not only 95 lives, but a Social Democratic dream of a welfare state as in Denmark also suffered a shock. For the bereaved the sinking was traumatic and the case was a controversial one. Had the captain been forced to sail even though it was too dangerous? Was it the minister’s fault? Did the state ignore its responsibilities?4

These stories conveyed in ‘Navigation and World Views’ situate shipping and accidents at sea within a reality filled with living people and they show that shipping not only affects seafarers and shipowners, but is also closely linked to social ties of family and friendship. Visitors are presented with several perspectives and the exhibition facilitates processes of discursive broadening (Roppola 2012: 231) as it offers different, and sometimes contrasting, points of view. National politics can also lead to conflicts and war, and the exhibition ‘At Sea!’ at MM-No describes how commercial shipping and thus also sailors were affected by the Second World War. It is said that in 1939, due to the war, merchant seamen were cut off from their homeland and separated from their families, and no one knew how long the war would last. The museum notes that the sailors were at constant risk of torpedoes and mines as they worked and about one in ten lost their lives. A letter that a sailor named Jonas sent to his wife Aslaug via the Red Cross is exhibited and the museum informs visitors that after this letter it was a year before Aslaug had contact with Jonas again, and that was when the war was over. In these situations described by MM-No, everyone involved had to live with the double fears of the forces of nature (which always affect the lives of sailors and their families, though this aspect is not discussed in the narrative) and the weapons of the combatting nations. By telling this story, the museum offers visitors an opportunity to empathize with actual persons who lived their lives in times of war; in other words, to experience social resonance (Roppola 2012: 157).

104

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

War and tension between nations, religions and ideologies are also part of reality today, and in ‘The North Star and the Southern Cross’ at MM-Fi, visitors can read that since the 2001 terrorist attack in the United States, port surveillance has been intensified and all ships have a security plan. In the same exhibition, it is stated that systems for traffic monitoring have been developed, enabling vessels to be monitored in real time. The text is placed next to a wall of showcases in which safety equipment and lifeboats are exhibited and the story is illustrated by a number of photographs of ships in distress. In two grainy photos, the name Estonia can be discerned on the hull of the passenger liner that now lies at the bottom of the ocean – again serving as a reminder that tragedies still happen and that there are always risks associated with travelling on open water. Not everyone has access to safe ships with modern equipment, though. Many people are forced out onto the waterways as refugees, often crossing dangerous bodies of water in small substandard boats, with no modern technology or safety regulations. In the exhibition ‘Escape’, Nav-Sw presents stories of people who have fled wars and oppressive regimes; visitors get to know two people and can read their stories, in which they describe how they escaped and their experiences of coming to a new country. At MM-Sw, the exhibition ‘I Save Lives’ tells visitors about Swedish rescue work on the Mediterranean in 2015 and 2016, from the perspective of the rescue workers. Four people describe their experiences and feelings, and visitors can listen to their recorded voices or read their narratives in booklets. The feelings they describe relate to encountering people in distress and saving someone’s life. Whereas visitors to the exhibition ‘Escape’ at Nav-Sw can experience social resonance (Roppola 2012: 157) with the refugees, the exhibition ‘I Save Lives’ instead offers the opportunity to empathize with the rescuers. But neither exhibition depicts a direct encounter between human and ocean. In the exhibition ‘The Gate to the World’ at M/S-Dk, a text describes the sorrow and grief evoked in families when sailors perished at sea and it was not possible to hold a proper funeral. The dead were instead put to rest somewhere far from home, which, the museum points out, was often a cause of great sadness for the families because they had nowhere to go with their grief. This text is situated next to a plaque commemorating a German sailor buried in a Danish cemetery. It also states that in the old coastal communities the families had a social network and everyone would receive support and help if a husband or father died at sea. In addition to the grief, life could be very difficult for those who were left alone, often with children to support. This is the only story I can find at the six Nordic national maritime museums that discusses how people in coastal commu-

In the Waves of the Ocean and the Depths of Emotion

105

nities have dealt with the loss of family members whom they cannot bury and also how they took care of the bodies of persons, perhaps completely anonymous and foreign, who washed ashore.

‘Storm’: An Exhibition about the Storm The temporary exhibition ‘Storm’ at M/S-Dk was staged in a V-shaped gallery with a steeply slanting floor that zigzags through the dry dock and the last part of the narrative was staged in an adjacent hall on the bottom floor of the main building.5 The text by the entrance to the exhibition had the heading ‘Facing the Gale’: Breakers are towering above the ship. Only the slightest sliver of sky is visible. Suddenly, the world reveals itself, and the sailor gazes upon the sea. Then, the ship plunges into the trough of the waves that darkly threaten to devour the vessel and men. Storms are very real to sea and seamen and are a symbol of life’s turmoil in all of us. In the exhibition Storm we head into the wind and the waves and emerge on the other side. We meet seas, ships and sailors: Those who spoke mostly with their eyes. Those who never returned.6

The introduction suggests that the exhibition will inspire affective and discursive broadening (Roppola 2012: 5–6) by offering both staggering perceptual experiences and strong emotions, while at the same time using the storm as a metaphor for the challenges of life in general. But the description of the exhibition could perhaps also provoke interest in the same way that an amusement park attracts visitors with an exciting roller-coaster ride. After passing through the entrance, visitors first encountered the painting Saved by Valdemar Irminger, which depicts a sailor crawling from breaking waves toward safety on land. Pieces of wreckage in the frothing water indicate that a ship has sunk in the storm. The foaming water through which the sailor struggles is so realistically rendered that I could almost feel the power of the waves breaking over the man and then pulling him back toward the sea again. A heart is tattooed on the man’s outstretched arm. This shows that there probably is someone at home who is thinking of him – someone who may receive word that the ship has been lost and will not know if the loved one has survived. The function of the artwork in the exhibition was to illustrate a reality filled with dangers, tragedies and relief, the struggle to survive and the worries and concerns of the families at home. On the wall opposite the painting, there was a quote from the Epic of Gilgamesh:

106

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

For the whole next week the sky screamed and storms wrecked the earth and finally broke the war which groaned as one in labor’s throes . . . Ocean silent. Winds dead. Flood ended . . . I peeked through the portal into a morning sun then turned, knelt and cried. Tears flooded down my face.7

One could also read about a similar situation in another text in which a seaman described a storm on the Baltic Sea sometime around 1900: We lashed the wheel and went below to sit down. There was nothing more to do. From time to time we thrust up our heads to see, if the weather had improved. The waves broke over the deck. We might be hove-to for a whole week.8

The two quotes illustrate that human beings have nothing to match the power of the gale without sea vessels and technology. In these situations, the sailors had to trust the ship in the storm; they could do nothing themselves. And when it was over and the storm had subsided, a sense of relief is described that we all can probably recognize and identify with. The exhibition narrative was divided into thematic sections dealing with different aspects of a life with the sea. One section discussed tools for predicting the weather and winds, and some of the artefacts described could be studied in the exhibits. Under the heading ‘Premonitions’, one could read about how ‘we’ watch for the first signs of the storm. Under the heading ‘Fabled Seas’, it was emphasized that the wind is different from sea to sea and from season to season. ‘Some areas are notorious because of their gales. Others have particularly steep waves. We chart the seas, so we may sail in greater safety than our ancestors did’. In this part of the room, I could hear soft sounds of water and seagulls screeching, a soundscape conveying that ‘there and now’ the sea is still and the sun is shining. It was the calm before the storm though and visitors who continued further along the staged path walked straight into the gale. Moving pictures of storming seas were shown on two large screens. In one of them, a seagull glided just above the surface of the heaving water. On the other screen, the motif in the foreground changed, showing images of people and wrecked ships. The soundscape in this part of the room was filled with dramatic music and the roar of the storm. Between the film screens, there was a station where I could look into goggles that provided a virtual experience of being aboard a ship in a storm. When I turned around in the room, I also turned around in the virtual world and I could thus look to the fore and aft of the ship. In the actual room, I was on a slanting floor, which forced me to be very aware of my body and my movements while I visually experienced the virtual heaving of the ship.

In the Waves of the Ocean and the Depths of Emotion

107

The last part of the exhibition was situated in a hall with a level floor. Where the long and narrow glass hall met this last section of the storyscape, there was a primitive ‘cable car’, a construction in which people can be sent to safety from a ship in distress. In this arrangement, the slanting section of floor represented the churning water and the level floor the shore where the ‘cable car’ was mounted. Stepping from the slanting floor onto the flat surface could be perceived as akin to stepping out of the storm onto firm and steady ground. The showcases in the last section resembled large wooden boxes and lay scattered about the room, as if they had been washed up on a beach. One of the walls was covered by large photos with dramatic motifs: a ship in distress at sea, a ship by a steep and rocky coast, and pieces of wreckage on a shore. One photo showed a large grave filled with rows of wooden coffins. The image conveyed the message that a wreck had occurred, many had died and this time the bodies could be buried. The walk through the storyscape ‘Storm’ could be interpreted as a metaphorical journey from the calm sea into violent weather and out the other side again, just as it was described in the introductory text, when one is finally washed ashore among pieces of wreckage, dead seamen and a stranded figurehead. The theme of the narrative was the storm, but it was just as much a contemplation of what it means to be a human being, to experience security and anxiety, powerlessness and control, fear and relief, joy and sorrow. And it was also a narrative about the relationship between humanity and nature. In the exhibition room, semiotic resources such as sounds, lights, moving pictures and expressive art were used alongside photos that described a harsh reality. To this was added the sensory experience of walking in a room with a tilted floor. The whole and the parts gave visitors the opportunity to experience processes of resonance (Roppola 2012: 157) by physically experiencing themselves merging with the storyscape, by listening to actual persons’ narratives and by being included in a ‘we’. The narrative was thus orientated ‘around’ (Ahmed 2006: 116) the visitor. This could perhaps also initiate processes of affective broadening (Roppola 2012: 5–6).

Fear and Danger in Conflicts and Wars The Stories of the Naval Museum Nav-Sw is devoted to the naval history of Sweden, and the seafarers depicted are those who serve on warships and submarines. There are some

108

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

quotes taken from sailors’ descriptions of their experiences, but they talk about neither the dangers of battle nor the challenges of bad weather and high waves. The museum also describes ‘The History of Diving’, about which it is stated: ‘Reflect on man’s constant yearning to master his physical environment and investigate the unknown’.9 Humanity is thereby depicted as a man and the relation described concerns how ‘he’ masters the forces of nature. It is also stated that early diving was, to a large degree, connected to ‘the development of the warship and the rise of Sweden as a powerful maritime nation’. The museum notes that in Scandinavian waters the diver’s worst enemy was the cold and ‘limited visibility was but one of the difficulties with which he had to contend’. Nothing is said about the kinds of feelings these early divers might have experienced in these dangerous and probably quite uncomfortable situations, but the storyscape is staged in a room in which visitors can see the water surface outside the window and they can hear the water during the walk down to a tunnel below the museum. Maybe this is enough to allow them to imagine what it was like inside a diving bell far beneath the surface. In Nav-Sw’s Submarine Hall, it is said that life aboard a submarine is always dangerous, in both war and peacetime, because the vessel travels under water at a depth at which humans cannot survive without the vessel’s protective shell. And when a submarine is wrecked, the crew is forced to follow the vessel down to the bottom, deep below the surface, making it both complicated and dangerous to carry out a rescue operation. There are no personal testimonies about how people experience these situations, but the museum notes that being trapped in a dark, cold and perhaps partially water-filled submarine stranded at the bottom of the sea is a difficult and psychologically demanding situation that the crew must be able to handle and they are therefore regularly trained to avoid dangerous situations, but also to deal with them if they should occur. The museum notes, with a touch of cynicism, that there has always been an awareness of the need to be able to save submarine crews, but from a strategic military perspective, it was perhaps not primarily motivated by considerations relating to the actual people in need; it was, rather, a question of facilitating the recruitment of crews. In these narratives, visitors do not really come into contact with the seafarers and their lived realities. The story is told in a ‘museum voice’ and from the perspective of the Swedish navy. There is one exhibition at Nav-Sw where visitors encounter actual people and their narratives. In the story ‘Surface Tension – Cold War in the Baltic Sea 1979–89’, people who were directly involved in naval operations and political decisions during incidents with submarine violations of Swedish waters in the 1980s tell their own stories and describe their

In the Waves of the Ocean and the Depths of Emotion

109

feelings and experiences. Visitors can sit down and watch filmed and edited interviews with naval officers and Swedish politicians who describe the events. They all depict a very tense political and military situation from the perspective of how they perceived, interpreted and felt about what was happening. One person emphasizes that the military operations were very psychologically stressful and he had problems sleeping for a long time afterwards. The title ‘Surface Tension’ captures several aspects of the reality depicted in the exhibition. Relations between the East and the West were very tense. The Swedish policy was to remain neutral, but the nation nevertheless perceived a strong threat from the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. The word ‘tension’, therefore, on the one hand describes the relations between nations and pacts, and the worries about foreign vessels hiding beneath the surface of Swedish territorial waters, and, on the other hand, it depicts the emotions of the people involved. The Minister of Foreign Affairs during this period describes what she experienced as total shock spreading through the room when the prime minister announced that there were nuclear weapons aboard a Soviet submarine that had been stranded in Swedish waters. These very honest testimonies and personal interpretations that the interviewed people share with the visitors can initiate processes of social resonance (Roppola 2012: 157). The narratives can also inspire an affective broadening (Roppola 2012: 5–6) as visitors can learn about many different aspects of the events and listen to various perspectives on them. The tension and worry that is portrayed in ‘Surface Tension’ does not derive from the relationship between human and ocean and the dangers it entails. ‘Surface Tension’ can signify the surface of the water, but in the sense of the threat of a foreign power, hidden beneath the surface, creating the tension. It is the enemy, human conflicts and the strained political situation that create anxiety, fear and psychological stress.

Merchant Shipping in Times of War Wars and conflicts pose risks for commercial shipping. For the seafarers and their families, war adds further emotional tension to the ordinary worries experienced by the maritime community. MM-Fi notes, in the exhibition ‘The North Star and the Southern Cross’, that during the First and Second World Wars more than three hundred sailors died when Finnish merchant ships were sunk. MM-No describes, in the exhibition ‘At Sea!’, how the vessels plying the most vulnerable routes sailed in convoys surrounded by naval ships, but they were still attacked and many ships were sunk. As it

110

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

was important for ships to maintain their position in the convoy, the museum notes, it was forbidden to stop and try to rescue sailors from sinking ships. In one text, it is stated that, ‘Many sailors have described their worst experience: the feeling of helplessness when being unable to help people they saw were in mortal danger’.

Two Exhibitions about the Horrors of War MM-No described the sailors’ situations during the world wars in the temporary exhibition ‘Torpedoed’, which told the story of a steamship sunk by a German U-boat during the First World War.10 At M/S-Dk, the permanent exhibition ‘In the Shadow of War’ describes the situation for civil shipping during wartime. These two exhibitions have much in common and the narratives deal with the same kinds of events and experiences. But, whereas ‘Torpedoed’ described a specific event, ‘In the Shadow of War’ focuses on the emotional experiences of the seafarers. I will describe and analyse how the contents overlap but are depicted from different perspectives. MM-No presented the exhibition ‘Torpedoed’ as follows on its website: Life as a sailor was dangerous during World War I. Many ships ran into mines or were attacked by U-boats. About 2000 sailors on Norwegian merchant ships perished at sea during the war. The exhibit is based on the real event of the sinking of the SS Gurre from Bergen which was torpedoed by a German U-boat on 1 March 1917. Twenty people lost their lives.11

The ceiling, walls and floor of the exhibition hall were painted a plain dark grey and elements of the design were the same colour. It was totally quiet in the room except for the sound of people in other parts of the museum. A model of a U-boat’s conning tower stood in the middle of the squareshaped spatiality. On the floor, the outlines of the whole craft were marked and framed with painted rippling water. The floor of the room could thus be perceived as a surface of water through which the U-boat was penetrating. The conning tower was surrounded by a number of curved wall segments. In front of it stood a large black mine and a white rescue boat that intersected the U-boat’s path. The design of the storyscape suggested that the craft had suddenly burst out of the water, creating waves that spread through the room. The atmosphere created in the storyscape ‘Torpedoed’ reminds me of the exhibition ‘Surface Tension’ at Nav-Sw and the design of the narrative depicted the effect of the sudden emergence of an enemy U-boat that has been hidden under the surface.

In the Waves of the Ocean and the Depths of Emotion

111

The exhibition ‘In the Shadow of War’ at M/S-Dk is about the fear and dread felt by Danish sailors who served during the two world wars. The storyscape is ‘shaped like a ship that has just hit a mine or been struck by a torpedo. The explosion is frozen, with plates of metal forming a background for the films and exhibits’.12 In order to enter the exhibition, visitors must turn a corner and pass into a very narrow passage, which soon widens into a long and narrow spatiality that gives the storyscape the shape of a ship. A scene in which a torpedo has penetrated the hull is staged. The museum describes it as a frozen explosion, but the metal pieces can also be perceived as if they are moving inward, with the sharp tips directed toward the person standing in the room. Regardless of how visitors interpret the staging, the spatiality has been designed to make one feel trapped; perhaps it could give rise to a sense of claustrophobia. This gives visitors the opportunity to coalesce with the situation aboard a ship exposed to hostile fire, to experience the life-threatening situation at the moment of the explosion. But there is also a narrative in the soundscape. With the help of moving pictures that are screened on the metal fragments, one can discern a series of events that result in a ship being sunk. First, the wind is blowing over the ocean. Then lively tunes are played on an accordion. The scene quickly becomes dramatic. A man’s voice speaks German; is it perhaps Hitler? Guns are firing and bombs are falling. We hear violent sounds, the horrors of war. A ship is sinking. A slamming sound, something drops into the water with a splash, then sounds are dampened underwater – as if someone is slowly following the ship down to the seafloor. A telegraph signals SOS. The two storyscapes ‘Torpedoed’ and ‘In the Shadow of War’ are both designed as ‘frozen’ dramatic events that spread outward from a centre. In ‘Torpedoed’, arc-shaped wall segments surround the emerging conning tower like rings on the water and artefacts are exhibited in showcases built into these walls. Each segment is devoted to a theme from the main story, narrated through texts, images and exhibited objects. Many of the showcases in ‘In the Shadow of War’ are made of metal pieces that could be parts of the ship rupturing in the explosion. Other showcases are traditional glass cubes, in which the exhibited ship models are positioned at dramatic angles, as if they were sinking toward the bottom of the sea. The storyscape ‘Torpedoed’ orchestrates the enemy’s unexpected emergence in ‘ice-cold’ silence. ‘In the Shadow of War’ depicts a moment of explosion, both visually and in the soundscape, in which the whole world breaks into pieces as a result of the enemy fire. The tension and drama generated in these two exhibitions are not created with words but by means of many other semiotic resources that visitors can perceive with all their senses and

112

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

with their bodily presence and movements in the room. Visitors are given the opportunity to experience resonance in the form of a bodily fusion (Roppola 2012: 4) with the drama and terror of the war. Although the focus of the exhibition ‘Torpedoed’ was a specific event, it also described a wider reality during war and general aspects of being a seafarer in wartime. Visitors could learn that the sinking of the SS Gurre was one of many similar events, the effects of which, like the effects of war as a whole, were felt throughout society. The image of the surge caused by the conning tower as it breaks the surface could be interpreted as a metaphor for the effects of the war, which spread in wide circles, affecting everyone’s everyday lives. In one exhibit, ports were depicted as bursting with activity during the wars. The museum described an environment in which goods were loaded and unloaded, and the sailors were happy to be safely in port. It is said that there was a great deal of suspicion because everyone knew spies could send information about the ships to the U-boats; therefore, fear of foreigners increased during the war and passport and border checks were introduced. Through this description, the museum made the reader aware of another aspect of the war: the suspicion and fear of the stranger and what ‘they’ could do to ‘Us’. ‘The Disasters’ was the title of another section, in which war actions at sea were described. The museum showed photographs taken from German U-boats. A text read that at the beginning of the war, the Germans issued warnings about the attacks and allowed crews to get to safety. U-boats sometimes even helped the rescue boats ashore. But gradually the war became crueller and more desperate and, the museum concluded, the lives of civilian seamen became less valuable. Under the heading ‘The Submarines’, visitors could read about the captain who sank SS Gurre. From a photo of him, he met the onlooker’s gaze. In the text, it was stated that he also sank four other ships, but during all those operations everyone on board the ships survived. By allowing visitors to meet this captain, the exhibit gives even the enemy a face and a name, and lets visitors look an actual person in the eye. The attacking nation and the U-boat crew were not depicted as anonymous and dangerous strangers. The exhibition ‘Torpedoed’ thus allowed processes of discursive broadening (Roppola 2012: 216) as it described and explained aspects of the fear of the stranger and the enemy, while also depicting the stranger as a person who, despite the situation, performed his duty to his nation without causing unnecessary loss of life. This narrative about the enemy captain makes this exhibition special. I have not found anything like it at the other five national Nordic maritime museums. The exhibition ‘Surface Tension’ at Nav-Sw comprises many different voices and perspectives, but it does not include voices or faces of

In the Waves of the Ocean and the Depths of Emotion

113

the enemy. In ‘Surface Tension’, the enemy is very abstract. The terror and fear depicted in ‘In the Shadow of War’ only reflects the emotions of the Danish sailors. Visitors are not given any information about the people who were sailing the attacking vessels. The enemy is thus described in ‘Surface Tension’ and ‘In the Shadow of War’ as a featureless, uniform ‘Other’. The storyscape ‘In the Shadow of War’ starts with a narrow and dark passage and ends with an open space into which sunlight shines through large windows. The walk through the exhibition can therefore be perceived as a walk toward the light at the end of the tunnel. In the middle of the open and bright space, a winged, white, female figure stands on a metal construction that looks like part of the shattered ship. A text states that the figure is a copy of an angel at a monument with the names of 648 Danish sailors who lost their lives during the First World War. The museum explains that about three thousand Danish sailors died during the two world wars and all who survived were affected by their experiences. It is also noted that after the Second World War, many sailors felt that society did not give them the recognition they deserved, which led to bitterness. Many carried wounds of the body and soul, but had to continue working to survive. The museum states that after the war, various laws compensated them for the physical harm they suffered, but it took many years before their mental wounds were properly recognized.

Concluding Remarks The editors of the anthology Iron Men, Wooden Women (Creighton and Norling 1996) state that the title is a reference to the older book Wooden Ships and Iron Men (Wallace [1924] 1937), which, they say, neatly summarizes what the author Frederick William Wallace considered to be the most important components of maritime history and the connection he perceived between shipping and a harsh and coarse masculinity. The notion that maritime history and literature consist of stories about men, ships and the sea, and that the sailors were hard and tough has long been generally accepted, according to Margaret S. Creighton and Lisa Norling (1996: vii). Based on the analyses in this chapter, however, I can state that the museums investigated in this study do not describe tough and harsh seafarers, but rather the opposite. I will develop this point in the next chapter when discussing constructions of gender. Furthermore, several exhibitions describe anxiety, fear, relief and joy in staged storyscapes that allow visitors to identify with, get close to and empathize with the people described in the narratives.

114

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

Different Kinds of Fears The six Nordic national museums stage many different perspectives on and aspects of realities characterized by the relationship between humans and the ocean. But there are variations in how much space the different museums devote to these kinds of narratives and the kinds of relationships the museums create between visitors, narratives, people, oceans and environments. The museums can be divided into two groups. The exhibitions in Denmark, Iceland and Finland integrate seafaring with life in coastal communities in narratives about both seafarers and land folk. In these exhibitions, visitors sometimes encounter people – sentient and experiencing individuals – who live their lives in a reality in which the sea and the forces of nature are cause for constant concern. Visitors are invited to identify with and get close to people and their emotions and in some cases the design allows visitors to experience direct encounters with the sea and storms. The Swedish and Norwegian museums instead describe the emotions, dangers and dread experienced when nations are at war and depict a reality in which the fear of strangers and enemy attack permeates everyday life. The museums in Denmark, Iceland and Finland all depict both seafarers’ worries and dangerous experiences at sea and families’ concerns, grief and longing. All three museums also, to various degrees, situate tragedies at sea in larger national and global contexts. Visitors can thereby see the realities of seafaring people and the seafaring life, while at the same time understanding maritime cultural history as entwined with the history of the nation. M/S-Dk goes to great lengths to describe human experiences in maritime communities; in several exhibitions, general human issues are addressed in expressive exhibition designs that describe strong emotional experiences of fear, worry and relief. Visitors are given many opportunities to step into situations and moods and to perceive by means of their own being in the room. The museum provides a nuanced picture of humans as sentient and experiencing beings and the relationship between human and ocean is described as a relationship between humanity and the elements. In a more in-depth reading of the texts, it is possible to find narratives that discuss accidents and tragedies in relation to the Danish nation’s political decisions and actions. But, as a whole, the nation in these narratives is relegated to the background of the story and humanity and maritime cultural history are in the foreground. At MM-Ic, maritime cultural history and the lived reality of the fishermen and their families are the history of the nation. The Icelandic mu-

In the Waves of the Ocean and the Depths of Emotion

115

seum also describes how the development of technology has changed the relationship between humanity and the elements. It is emphasized that in the past, the ability to read winds, water, clouds and scents to predict bad weather could mean the difference between life and death. Today, ships are equipped with advanced technology, which has improved the situation considerably. But the overall message that the museum conveys is that bad storms and violent waters are still dangerous. In the narratives staged by MM-Fi, the design is not as expressive as in the exhibitions in Denmark and Iceland. The Finnish story is instead told in what can be perceived as an ‘objective’ narrative voice that describes the harsh and dangerous reality confronting seafarers and their families. But the museum also emphasizes, on the one hand, that we are all vulnerable when we travel on the sea and, on the other hand, that the nation depends on shipping and when bad weather, a harsh climate or wars between nations prevent ships from travelling by sea, the entire Finnish population suffers. The descriptions are illustrated with images and objects that can generate empathy and compassion, but the story primarily seems to be intended to speak to the intellect and inspire new insights, rather than to evoke immediate affective responses. MM-No explicitly declares that it portrays the relationship between humans and the sea. This is also expressed in the museum’s logo, which, in a simple line drawing, combines a fingerprint with the shape of a wave – human and ocean entwined. However, the only time visitors really encounter the ocean is in a film describing a journey around Cape Horn. It is said that the route around the southernmost tip of Africa is the most dangerous sea passage in the world because of the combined dangers of icebergs, waves, strong winds, currents and proximity to land. But this story is more ‘in line’ (Ahmed 2006: 22) with the museum’s staging of exploration and conquest of the world than with the idea of portraying a perilous situation and/or anxiety and fear experienced by human beings. The description of the war is the only narrative in which MM-No integrates shipping and seafaring with life on land. On the few occasions when the families’ worry and the seafarers’ fear are mentioned, the narratives are describing warfare at sea and the perceived danger is the enemy’s weapons. The exhibition ‘Shipping & Shopping’ at MM-Sw contains a few descriptions of accidents at sea, and the dangers of war are also mentioned. Otherwise, MM-Sw does not discuss the relation between humanity and the elements, as in encounters with storms and violent waves or in maritime communities’ constant worries, fears, deaths and sorrows. Nor is this relation staged through expressive designs in the exhibition room. The stories and descriptions are largely practical and technical and when the

116

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

seafarers in ‘Shipping & Shopping’ speak, they describe their tasks and roles on board. Nav-Sw portrays tense relations between states and military alliances and describes the fears of people directly involved in the military actions. But encounters with the sea, harsh weather and the elements are not described. Neither MM-Sw nor Nav-Sw discuss family ties, the community on land or the connection between life at sea and life on land. The two Swedish museums address Swedish shipping, but do not portray a maritime community and they do not describe a reality in which people live together with the sea.

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

6 October 2017 to 28 January 2018. 18 November 2017 to 26 August 2018. Retrieved October 2017 from M/S-Dk, ‘Navigation and World Views’. Retrieved October 2017 from M/S-Dk, ‘Navigation and World Views’. 1 October 2015 to 12 June 2016. Retrieved March 2016 from M/S-Dk, ‘Storm’. Retrieved March 2016 from M/S-Dk, ‘Storm’. Retrieved March 2016 from M/S-Dk, ‘Storm’. However, the Swedish version of the text says: ‘Människans önskan att bemästra naturen och utforska det okända’ (The human being’s yearning to master nature and the unknown). 10. 8 August 2017 to 11 November 2018. 11. Retrieved April 2019 from https://marmuseum.no/en/torpedoed-norwegianseamen-during-world-war-i. 12. Retrieved April 2019 from https://mfs.dk/en/exhibition/in-the-shadow-ofwar/.

Chapter 6

Men of Iron and Women of Wood In this chapter, I will analyse how gender is constructed in the six Nordic national maritime museums’ narratives and investigate the kinds of relationships that are created between men and women. But first I need to clarify that I find the idea of discussing gender only on the basis of the man–woman duality problematic. Gender constructions must be discussed from perspectives that include LGBTQ aspects, and gender intersects with categorizations such as class, ethnicity and ‘race’. I therefore consider it necessary to adopt an intersectional approach and will keep this in mind throughout the analyses. In this chapter, however, I choose to focus on the construction of men and women. The reason for this is that in narratives about maritime communities, the man–woman duality is linked to the division between the man’s sphere at sea and the woman’s sphere on land. This means that analyses of how relationships between sea life and life on land are described automatically also encompass aspects of how men and women are depicted. The notion that, throughout history, the sea was a single-sex masculine sphere in contrast to a feminized and home-centred community on land has not always been self-evident, say Margaret S. Creighton and Lisa Norling. Rather, it primarily reflects nineteenth-century conceptions of gender roles, which still remain the norm today. The prevailing idea is that the maritime work created hardened men of ‘iron’, along with the equally persistent corollary that women and institutions on land were peripheral to the maritime experience (Creighton and Norling 1996: vii–x). As I mentioned in the previous chapter, Creighton and Norling coin the expression ‘iron men, wooden women’, arguing that women in maritime history ‘appear mostly on the periphery, as stiff and objectified as the wooden figureheads that faced the sea at the bows of sailing ships’ (Creighton and Norling 1996: vii). However, the previous chapter’s analyses of the Nordic maritime museums’ depictions of the relationship between human beings

118

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

and the ocean show that these museums do not depict seafarers as ‘men of iron’, but actually quite the opposite. The ‘women of wood’, on the other hand, can often be seen both literally and figuratively. At several of the six museums, it is emphasized that the figurehead was the only woman the sailor saw when he was at sea. The wooden figures with female features are also often the only women, or at least the most visible women, that visitors encounter at the maritime museums. For the most part, women are very much at the periphery of the museums’ narratives, which mainly focus on men and their worlds. The wooden figures can also be used to stage masculinity, as I showed in the analysis of Nav-Sw in chapter 2. However, the figureheads are never arranged in scenes that challenge the duality of women and men (Bünz 2018c: 145). The human figures carved in wood are mostly used by maritime museums to stage gender roles that are just as ‘stiff’ as the expression ‘iron men, wooden women’ suggests (Bünz 2018c: 139–43). The question I seek to answer in this chapter is whether this permeates all the narratives of the six Nordic national museums or whether I can find more complex and nuanced depictions of men and women. An interesting aspect of the expression ‘women of wood’ is that historically the carved wooden figure was connected to the ship and was always at sea with the crew. But, throughout history, there have also been many women of flesh and blood who have travelled the seas, most frequently perhaps as passengers, companions or slaves, but in recent times also as crew members. Today seamen are also women, which calls for analyses of how seafarers, who can be either women or men, and of course LGBTQ, are portrayed. Undoubtedly, the six Nordic national maritime museums’ narratives are dominated by men – men as kings, as explorers, as fishermen, as captains, as first-year seamen, as pirates and as marines. So, in summer 2018, when I encountered a woman’s face on the façade of the MM-Ic building, I interpreted it as an explicit challenge to the habitual conception of maritime history as only involving men. In the Icelandic narratives, women are also interwoven into maritime history as the museum describes life on land and life at sea as mutually dependent and equally important. An exhibition that takes this even further is ‘Vasa’s Women. Always Present – Often Invisible’ at the Vasa Museum in Stockholm. This museum is one of Sweden’s three national maritime museums, but I did not include it in this study because of its specific focus on the ship Vasa. Nevertheless, in the context of my investigation of how women, men and relationships between seafarers and land folk are portrayed, I found that I needed to bring the Vasa Museum’s exhibition about the seventeenth-century women into the discussion, because it is the only example I have found of an entire exhibition devoted

Men of Iron and Women of Wood

119

to women and their roles in a maritime community. Hence, I will begin with a brief summary and analysis of this exhibition.

‘Vasa’s Women. Always Present – Often Invisible’ The first thing that visitors encounter when they enter the Vasa Museum is the ship Vasa. The seventeenth-century sailing ship towers high above human visitors in a hall capacious enough to enclose the enormous vessel. Glancing around the hall, however, I soon discover a wide partition on which there is a large picture of a woman’s face. After a few moments, the picture of the face gradually blends into an image of a leather bag that slowly disintegrates leaving only the handles. Beside the illustrations, a text informs me that the handles are made of horn and were found aboard the Vasa. The museum explains that they are all that remains of what was once a Sami leather bag that disintegrated in the water – the leather bag, together with the identity of its owner, is gone forever. The text also states that working in horn has been regarded as a craft for men, while working with leather has been considered women’s work. The preserved handles are exhibited in a glass case in front of the pictures. The text states that the artefact symbolizes the presence of men and the absence of women that have prevailed in the writing of history, although, it continues, that is not to say that women were invisible or unimportant in the seventeenth century. The woman’s face also covers the wall beside the entrance to the room in which the exhibition is staged. The museum does not merely talk about making women visible; the depicted woman is the first and most visible human face visitors encounter when they enter the museum. In the exhibition ‘Vasa’s Women’, it is emphasized that our picture of the seventeenth century becomes richer and truer when historians also study the roles and actions of women in the everyday life and reality of that time. In this narrative, the spotlight is moved from the ship and the sea to a broader description of an entire reality in which people’s lives on land and at sea were bound together. There is plenty of source material for such a narrative, the museum emphasizes; it is just a matter of changing focus. It is explained that the historians at the Vasa Museum are searching through the collections; they are finding new stories and perspectives and have thus begun to build a new picture of the seventeenth century. They have also found plenty of strong and energetic women. It is noted that the seventeenth-century legal framework mostly gave decision-making power to men, but in reality the women had considerable scope for action. Much of what is said in the exhibition is conveyed in the voices of the researchers

120

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

themselves; visitors can listen to filmed interviews in which historians and archaeologists describe different aspects of the place and time of Vasa’s construction and launching. The Sami object mentioned in the introductory text can be interpreted as an attempt to include an ethnic minority in the narrative, but that thread is not followed up in the story. What is discussed instead is class and it is emphasized that, in the past, a person’s ancestry and marital status were more important than gender. The museum also notes that in the seventeenth century there were often women on ships; it was only in combat situations that they were not allowed to stay on board. And it is stated that the notion that having women on board brought bad luck derives from the nineteenth century; in the seventeenth century, there were no such restrictions based on popular beliefs. There are several interesting things about the Vasa Museum’s portrayal of seventeenth-century women and their lives and conditions in the maritime community. First, (1) the story weaves together life on land and the reality at sea and thus provides a more complete picture of the historical epoch than that presented in many of the other national Nordic maritime museums’ narratives. This also solves the dilemma of life at sea being a male-dominated world and thereby (2) makes it possible to include women in the writing of history in a believable and effective manner. Thus, through this narrative, it becomes clear that aspects of how the relationship between seafarers and land folk is depicted are linked to (3) the tendency in the writing of history to focus only on men’s worlds and what men do, while women and their worlds are ignored and forgotten. The exhibition also shows that (4) the presence of women on ships, and notions about what women can, ought and want to do, have all varied over time. The narrative demonstrates that gender constructions and norms are not carved in stone and have changed over time. In other words, the exhibition portrays complexity, while challenging persistent notions about the roles of women and men, which allows processes of discursive broadening (Roppola 2012: 216). Furthermore, the materials on which the exhibition is based also has the potential to add aspects of ethnic diversity to the narrative, a perspective that is almost always lacking in the six Nordic national maritime museums’ narratives.

Life at Sea and Life on Land Bound Together by Social Ties The notion of the sailor as a harsh masculinity is today challenged by the completely different myth of a young, male sexuality whose desire can be

Men of Iron and Women of Wood

121

directed toward both men and women (Warkander 2014: 64). Another common depiction is that of a free man who has a woman in every port; he drinks too much and often ends up in trouble. This image tends to be either romanticized or rendered as a stereotype (Nilson 2014: 490). In the exhibition ‘The North Star and the Southern Cross’ at MM-Fi, a romanticized image of sea life is discussed and it is argued that such romanticization is typical of a culture that admires masculinity. The heading of one text is ‘Wooden Ships and Iron Men’ (again a link to the 1924 book of that title by Frederick Wallace). The exhibition text states that: The relationship between men was valued, and the lack of homeliness was emphasised. . . . Up until the 1970s, sailors were free from society’s usual activities. The sea had its own rules and values. A ‘real sailor’ had rounded Cape Horn, and he had ‘a girl in every port’. Climbing up the ship’s mast was considered particularly heroic, because it was dangerous.

It is stated that the: romanticisationof maritime history began in the early 20th century when people realised the last sailing ships were disappearing. . . . The romance of sailors, freedom, rootlessness and sailing around the world are history. . . . Despite this – or perhaps because of it – the romantic image of sailors is still present in our culture today.1

What is interesting about these texts is the fact that the museum actually discusses the image of the sailor and life at sea, situating it in broader historical contexts and relating it to notions of masculinity. The sailor’s freedom outside the frames and norms of society is also emphasized in the exhibition ‘Our Sailors’ at M/S-Dk, where it is stated that the seafarers’ life is so alien that it has given rise to many myths that have become part of our common culture. Under the heading ‘Romantic and Carefree’, it is stated that: The films show a happy, care-free sailor who is a good comrade and who is always ready for fun and games. He is honest, trustworthy and has a romantic streak. He may also have a girl in every port.

The exhibition ends with the statement that: The masculinity and sexuality of the sailors has always been attractive to landlubbers. When sailors were in port, they let down their hair. That has bred the notion of the sailor as a particularly masculine, self-confident individual with a well-trained body and strong sex drives. The sailor has become an icon for both heterosexuals and homosexuals.2

122

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

The story ‘Our Sailors’ is devoted to the myths about the seafarers, while, in the adjacent exhibition ‘The Gate to the World’, the museum describes the reality and everyday life of seamen and their families. The museum thus makes the point that there is a difference between the culturally created image of sailors and their actual lives and realities. At MM-Fi, the descriptions of the myths about tough and free sailors are interspersed with descriptions of the actual worlds of the seafarers and their families. ‘The Woman of Myth’ is also included. She is described from the sailor’s perspective in a text that considerably softens the supposedly harsh masculinity: To many sailors, women were the subject of dreams and represented home and life on land. Romantic motifs such as roses, hearts and women were popular subject matter for sailors’ tattoos. They reflected a longing for home, where their mother or girlfriend waited. . . . When ships were in dock, so-called ‘ship girls’ were allowed to visit. . . . The ship girls offered sex in return, but they were also girlfriends and pals to the sailors.3

This text paints a picture of a complex man who needs love, friendship and family, which is also emphasized in several of M/S-Dk’s permanent exhibitions. The focus in ‘The Gate to the World’ is on the relationships between the many different people who lived together in coastal communities. This results in nuanced descriptions of both sailors and the women and men who surrounded them in their social and historical contexts (Bünz 2018b: 26). It is said that family members lived apart for long periods; they missed each other and were worried and therefore the letters they sent to each other were very important: In the letters, they expressed their thoughts, pleasures, sorrows and yearnings. Where was he? Was he OK? How were things at home? Was the family in good health? How were the children doing at school? . . . The letters gave answers and were read many times.4

The exhibition ‘The North Star and the Southern Cross’ at MM-Fi also describes the family situation and the everyday lives of the sailor and his loved ones: In the past, slow communications were a cause of worry for both sailors and their families. If a letter reached its destination, it was a cherished link between the sailor and his family. Modern communications make it much easier for families to stay in touch when one of them is away for long periods.5

The notion of sailors as ‘men of iron’ is not conveyed in any of the six Nordic national maritime museums and the Danish and the Finnish narratives

Men of Iron and Women of Wood

123

explicitly portray seafaring men as people with feelings and close ties to family and friends. In both ‘The Gate to the World’ and ‘The North Star and the Southern Cross’, the expression ‘the sailor and his family’ is used in the texts. However, in ‘The Gate to the World’, diaries, letters and objects are exhibited that show that the family consisted of parents, siblings, wives and children, and the different kinds of relations are also talked about in the texts. In ‘The North Star and the Southern Cross’, it is above all the sailor’s wife who is mentioned. It is said that she received a meagre and irregular income from her husband and earned her own money by taking various jobs. Those who lived on the outskirts of town could keep animals and a small vegetable garden. In ‘The Gate to the World’, it is emphasized that the woman spent much of the year living an independent life while her husband was at sea. She managed the farm that was passed down from mother to daughter, she took care of the children and it is also suggested that she could have a lover. Agricultural tools are displayed in showcases and a text explains that they were made in sizes that would suit a woman because it was women who used them. The Danish narrative also stresses that fellowship and cohesion were important in the coastal community because many of the men were away for long periods and it was not uncommon for husbands, fathers and sons to be lost. Sometimes, however, the captain did bring his wife on journeys and thus the woman could go to sea and the couple did not have to live separate lives. In the exhibition room, the Danish women are visualized in the form of four figureheads that are entwined in a story about the seaman’s longing for his wife, mother or daughter when he is out on long journeys (Bünz 2018b, 2018c). In ‘The Gate to the World’, the images of the women are made of wood, but the women depicted in the narrative are not stiff at all; they are living and acting individuals. The two exhibitions ‘The Gate to the World’ and ‘The Northern Star and the Southern Cross’ both depict a sailor who is part of a social context with family and friends, and both narratives describe a world in which life at sea and life on land are closely linked by social ties. Both the Finnish and the Danish museums emphasize that the seaman and life at sea are often romanticized and both show that the seaman is actually a fairly ordinary man who longs for home and family, but who may also go to prostitutes or have a steady relationship in a foreign harbour. In other words, the men are not depicted as harsh and tough; they are instead described as rather ‘soft’, while the women are referred to as strong and independent. The close relationship between life at sea and the family on land is also evident in both the old and the new permanent exhibitions at MM-Ic.

124

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

In the Icelandic stories, however, the sailors are, without exception, fishermen, which distinguishes this museum from the other Nordic national narratives. In the old exhibition ‘From Poverty to Abundance’, a living room from the 1950s was staged. Visitors could sit on a sofa and listen to a wife and three children of fishermen, who described a reality in which their fathers or husband were away for long periods. Since I do not understand Icelandic, I could only listen to the sound of their voices, but I could read the English translations that were provided. The exhibit was called ‘The Fisherman’s Home’ – a somewhat misleading description as the fishermen were rarely at home and it was their wives and children who actually lived there. In a text, it was stated that the fisherman’s wife managed the home on her own; she handled the money and raised the children. It was noted that it was a big event when the father came home. He brought many ‘unusual and exotic things’ that were difficult to obtain in Iceland: candy, toys, nylon stockings, household machines and furniture. The museum also stated that he brought cultural influences home to Iceland. The personal testimonies largely confirmed what was said in the museum’s text. Both the wife and the children described a hard reality: someone talked about alcohol and someone said that there were money problems. There were descriptions of being afraid that something would happen to the father when the weather was bad. But there were also stories of happy moments, for example, when he came home with exciting things that no one else had. The only voice that was not present in ‘The Fisherman’s Home’ was that of the seafarers themselves and visitors therefore only got to know them through the descriptions provided by family members. But since the scene of the narrative was the home where they so rarely were, there was a kind of logic in the arrangement. Visitors learnt about the fishermen through their absence; it was their absence that defined them, at least for the families. But since it was the perspectives of family members that were conveyed, visitors could not learn anything about what happened in foreign ports. One could read between the lines that the fishermen visited salesmen, but there was no mention of girlfriends or visits to prostitutes. The new permanent exhibition ‘Fish & Folk’ includes a short story about the role of the fishing industry and seamanship in Icelandic culture. The museum emphasizes that fishing played, and still plays, a fundamental role in Icelandic society, as attested by everyday objects such as stamps and coins. ‘And every Icelander speaks a language that abounds in imagery and metaphor derived from the nautical life’. In the Icelandic narrative, the fisherman and life at sea are neither foreign nor different; the fishing industry has shaped the culture and impacts everyone in their everyday life. The Danish and Finnish exhibitions’ portrayals of the myth and romanticism

Men of Iron and Women of Wood

125

of the sea describe seafaring and sailors as something ‘other’ than ‘Us’. The iconic image of the Icelandic fisherman is, rather, a romanticization of what the nation and the people are said to be – it relates to ‘Us’ and ‘our’ history. MM-Sw describes in detail ships, environments, tasks and hierarchies on board old and modern sea vessels. In the exhibition ‘Shipping & Shopping’, visitors who read the texts thoroughly can find elements of the seafaring people’s narratives here and there. For example, they can read about shipowners and an eighteenth-century pirate and there is an extract from a sailor’s letter to his mother. But these stories are just small fragments that do not really provide a picture of either the sailor or the family and the other social bonds binding together life at sea and life on land. After visiting MM-Sw, I did not have a clear picture of who the sailor is and I knew almost nothing about family ties and the maritime community on land. In the previous chapter, I mentioned the story of Aslaug and Jonas, told at MM-No. Apart from this story, the Norwegian exhibitions do not discuss relationships and bonds between the families and the seafarers. The exhibition ‘At Sea!’ describes a thousand years of Norwegian maritime history through fictional persons, but they mainly represent different time periods and various functions and professional roles aboard ships. They do not come to life as actual individuals and they are not described as being formed by relationships, such as between women and men or between life on land and life at sea (Bünz 2018b: 29). One of the two female characters, however, is portrayed as the captain’s wife, a definition that is based on her relationship with a man. At Nav-Sw, a wife is mentioned in a personal testimony in the exhibition ‘Surface Tension’. In the Submarine Hall, the families of the crew can be discerned in a story about protests that occurred in the 1980s, when women were first permitted to serve as crew members on submarines. A text informs visitors that there was some concern among the submariners that it was difficult enough for their wives and girlfriends that their men were away from home for a long time in a hazardous environment without also having to worry about them falling in love with someone on board. Apart from that, Nav-Sw does not deal with relationships between women and men or the connections between life at sea and on land.

Sometimes the Seaman Is a Woman In the exhibition ‘Shipping & Shopping’ at MM-Sw, visitors can listen to recorded narratives in which sailors share their experiences of their work

126

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

and everyday life on board. Several of these informants are women. Visitors cannot see their faces, but they can hear their voices. One person describes working as a machine operator; it is obvious that she is proud of her job and her knowledge. She says that she knows the ship and its engine and newly recruited young men have to come to her for advice and help. The stories also comprise descriptions of how hard it can be for a woman in a world dominated by men. The most interesting aspect of these testimonies is how they are presented and integrated within the exhibition without the museum making ‘a big deal’ about the fact that seamen also can be women. The museum thereby conveys that there is nothing strange about women working on board. However, these narratives, which can be listened to using headsets, are not positioned and ‘advertised’ in such a way that they stand out in the room as something that everyone will inevitably notice. The recorded interviews are located in a large exhibition hall filled with an enormous amount of information and many visitors probably do not even discover them. At MM-No, the woman is made visible in the exhibition ‘At Sea!’ The museum emphasizes that this is a narrative about people and consists of ‘imagined moments at sea’ that will ‘allow you to get closer to those who worked at sea’. These people are not only traditional sailors; instead, humanity is portrayed as a ‘seafaring species’ and it is emphasized that there are many tasks on board a ship. A total of twelve moments are presented, involving children (one) and adults, women (two) and men, crewmen and officers, military personnel and pirates. At the entrance to the storyscape, a collage depicting some of the characters shows a motley crowd of people. Only one of the two women is represented though and she has her back to the viewer. The other woman in the text is called ‘the girl working as a telegraphist’, which reduces a grown woman to a girl.6 In the niche where the story of the woman depicted in the collage is told, visitors find out that she is a captain’s wife, sometime around 1900, and her image is placed in context aboard a ship. She stands diagonally behind a man who has stepped up on a wooden box. Further ahead is a group of people, who also have their backs to the viewer. Perhaps something is going on in front of them. Whatever the people in the picture are doing, it is obvious that the woman – who is in the foreground of the picture – is in the background of the event. She has no role to play in this context; she is merely a spectator. Her posture conveys passivity and she keeps her head bent downwards. This woman can be compared to the picture in the adjacent niche, in which the story of a ‘motorman’ is told. In the illustration of the man, he is facing the viewer and his posture conveys action. Positioned next to each other, the two illustrations show the active/passive dichotomy.

Men of Iron and Women of Wood

127

In the same exhibition, the 1960s are described as a time of change for women. It is noted that women traditionally did work cleaning and cooking on board ships, but new positions were gradually opening up. The first new role that became available was that of telegraphist. Photographs and texts present some of the women who worked as telegraphists. In a text, it is stated that it could be difficult to enter the male-dominated community on board and that it was important to maintain professional relationships; careless flirting could lead to problems. In the exhibition ‘The North Star and the Southern Cross’ at MM-Fi, visitors can read a more detailed description of a long-term process whereby women enter the labour market at sea: There has been fierce opposition to women working on board ships. The Finnish Maritime Act of 1928 prohibited women from working on ocean-going vessels. Women were thought to represent a moral danger on the ship, but, on the other hand, they were also said to spread venereal diseases. The Seamen’s Union considered women to be unskilled labour and feared that women would reduce wages. This ban was only repealed in 1955. Until 1979, the minimum age for working at sea was still higher for women than for men.

The maritime occupations traditionally held by men gradually began to open up to women. The first woman to achieve the grade of first mate started her training in 1969 and the first female engineers graduated in 1976. Arja Rauramo was the first woman to graduate as a sea captain at Kotka in 1974.7 But the museum also concludes that ‘Traditional gender roles and sexual harassment still limit women’s work at sea’ and it is stated that: The division of workplace roles according to gender echoes that in society at large and at home: the majority of women take care of and serve other people, whereas men manufacture, manage and steer things. Maritime transport is just a concentrated example of this. Most women still slog away in the catering department and on the lower rungs of the ship hierarchy as part of the crew. In 2006 about 5 per cent of those working in deck crews and one and a half per cent of those in engineering were women.8

The sailors that visitors encounter at Nav-Sw are crew members on submarines. The texts in the Submarine Hall for the most part consist of descriptions of the vessels, the technology and equipment, and all kinds of challenges associated with travelling underwater. But there are also some quotes from submariners, for example, in a narrative about when women began serving aboard submarines, which did not happen until 1989. The museum notes that many submariners were sceptical about having women on board, but states that it has been shown that women can handle sub-

128

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

marine service just as well as men. The museum also tells visitors that when women went aboard, they were not to expect any special treatment. Regardless of gender, everyone had to share toilets, showers and bunking spaces and thus, in one stroke, the male sphere became a two-sex environment on equal terms. (It would, however, be interesting to hear a woman’s perspective on how equal these terms really were.) The museum concludes the story by stating that, afterwards, several of the sailors who were hesitant initially realized that there actually are benefits to having women on board. One voice says: ‘The atmosphere is better; people watch their language and the banter is not as crude’ (my translation).9 The travelling installation ‘Sex & the Sea’ was exhibited at MM-Sw, M/S-Dk and MM-Fi in succession during the period when I was collecting material from the Nordic museums.10 As the title suggests, the installation dealt with sailors’ sexual relations during their long journeys. In the artistic film that was the centrepiece of the installation, contemporary male sailors, interviewed by the creators, talked about their sexual desires and encounters. But visitors could also listen to two female seafarers’ narratives. They were very visually present in the installation and, in this storyscape, visitors could really see that sometimes the seaman is a woman, which is not the case in any other exhibition at the six Nordic national maritime museums. But while the seafaring men talked about their sexual encounters, the women described their experiences of the sea, the journeys, the new ports and the men’s relations with women. They said nothing about their own sexual desires and did not discuss their own sexual relationships with men or women. The message conveyed was that sexual desire is only an issue for men, with their one-way yearning for female bodies (Bünz 2018b). The artistic film comprised a great number of photos, illustrations and moving pictures that showed various types of female bodies, often naked or dressed in ‘sexy’ garments. The depicted women represented diverse skin colours and facial features, suggesting that they came from different parts of the world. In the exhibition room, artefacts such as figureheads and ‘double coconuts’ were used to visualize the naked female body. ‘Sex & the Sea’ gave a raw and, at the same time, romanticized picture of a world in which the man is freed from many of the norms that apply in ‘our’ everyday lives. But the narrative did not reveal that the norms restrict female seafarers to monogamous relationships; otherwise, they would be regarded as everyone’s property (Kaijser 2005: 178–97). Sexual harassment of female seafarers was not mentioned either. ‘Sex & the Sea’ conveyed that sex is something that only concerns men, while women are just the bodies they desire. Life at sea was portrayed as a separate, somewhat alien and exotic world and the narrative consolidated and strengthened gender con-

Men of Iron and Women of Wood

129

structions whereby the man is an active subject and the woman a passive object; man is soul – woman is body (Bünz 2018b).

Intersectional Perspectives LGBTQ aspects are not discussed at all at the six Nordic national maritime museums and the seafarers are almost without exception depicted as heterosexual. One of two exceptions is when the myth and the romanticized image of the sailor is discussed in ‘Our Sailors’ at M/S-Dk. But when the museum describes actual people and their lives, there is no mention of homosexuality. The second exception is the installation ‘Sex & the Sea’, in which one of the male sailors mentions that he is homosexual. In segments of the film, visitors could also see erotic encounters between women. That is all that is said about same-sex love and, as a whole, the installation ‘Sex & the Sea’ presented a stereotypical picture of a one-dimensional male seafarer who only has temporary relationships with women prostitutes (Bünz 2018b). In some of the exhibitions, visitors can discern that life on board is a multicultural world. The exhibition ‘At Sea!’ at MM-No ends with a film that describes the reality for current seafarers aboard large cargo ships. The filmed narrative shows images of both women and men working on the ships and one can also see that the crew is multicultural. Except for the statements from some of the seafarers, there are no texts that supplement, explain or discuss the scenes or the mixture of the crew. In the exhibition ‘The Magic Box – Shipping, Shopping and the Global Consumer’ at M/S-Dk, visitors can learn from the images that the crews of modern ships are multicultural. But, as at MM-No, this is not explicitly discussed in the texts. Apart from a brief mention of the ship’s chief cook adapting the menu to the crew’s wishes (which, in this case, meant Filipino and Indian food), nothing is said about the seafarers’ identities and nationalities, despite it being obvious in the pictures and movies that the seafarers come from all around the world. There are no women in these pictures. In the exhibition ‘The North Star and the Southern Cross’ at MM-Fi, the phenomenon of flagging out is discussed. The narrative begins by explaining that the Finnish seamen’s working conditions were poor and their wages were low for a very long time and therefore, at the end of the nineteenth century, many deserted, as they were offered higher wages on other ships. The museum states that the working conditions at sea left much to be desired until the 1930s. It is noted that the trend today is that seafarers are hired from other countries, where the cost of labour is lower. The story ends with the statement:

130

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

The Finnish Seamen’s Union has fought against these flags of convenience. In their view, foreign sailors should have the same benefits as Finnish sailors. On those grounds, low wages for workers would be eliminated.

In the exhibitions ‘The North Star and the Southern Cross’, ‘At Sea!’ and ‘The Magic Box’, visitors learn that, today, seafarers from different parts of the world work together aboard the ships. But this is not just a contemporary phenomenon: most sailing and steam vessels that travelled on long sea voyages in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries had multicultural crews (Tibbles 2012: 161). This can be seen in the exhibition ‘The Gate to the World’ at M/S-Dk, where it is emphasized that when seafarers gathered in harbours looking for jobs on boats, people of different nationalities met and it did not matter where the sailors came from.

Concluding Remarks There Are no Men of Iron, but Some Women of Wood As I stated in the previous chapter, the six Nordic national maritime museums do not describe seafarers as ‘men of iron’. But even though several exhibitions depict women as strong and independent individuals who take care of everything at home while the husband/father/son is away, the metaphor ‘women of wood’, which signifies that women only appear in the periphery, applies to most of the exhibitions at the investigated museums. In many cases, the women are not present at all. The exhibition ‘Vasa’s Women – Always Present – Often Invisible’ at the Vasa Museum is unique; nothing comparable can be found at any of the museums included in this study or in any other maritime museum I have visited. ‘Women of wood’ also signifies that women are depicted as ‘stiff and objectified’, but this is only true of the temporary installation ‘Sex & the Sea’ that was shown at three of the Nordic national maritime museums. In the previous chapter, I stated that there are variations in how the museums deal with the relationships between life on land and life at sea; these variations mirror how the museums deal with the relationships between men and women, and how much of the narratives are devoted to descriptions of women and their lived realities. Therefore, in drawing conclusions from the analyses of gender constructions and depicted relationships between women and men, the museums can be divided into the same two groups as in the previous chapter. The Danish, Icelandic and Finnish museums describe strong and independent women and they intertwine

Men of Iron and Women of Wood

131

shipping and seafaring with the communities and life on land; the Swedish and the Norwegian museums do not. In other words, one of the keys to the problem of women not being included in maritime history is the tendency to describe only parts of realities that actually are entangled in mutual relationships with other contexts. There is another side to this story, however: namely, how the seafarers are described and the fact that the seaman can be a woman. The only exhibition that gives a detailed description of seafaring women and their experience is the Finnish narrative ‘The North Star and the Southern Cross’, in which sexual harassment is also mentioned. Fragments of information can be found here and there at the other museums and the Icelandic museum advertises itself using the face of a fisherwoman, but MM-Fi is the only museum that actually describes what it means to be a woman working at sea.

Eurocentrism, Heteronormativity and So On . . . The analyses in this chapter have focused on constructions of men and women, and the discussions about intersectional aspects of identities in the narratives have been very brief; in other words, a great deal remains to be done. What I can say is that the museums describe the realities of many different class positions. But the narratives are heteronormative and even though images of contemporary seafarers sometimes show that the crews are multicultural, very little is said about this in the exhibition texts. There are no discussions of injuries and physical impairment. The exhibition ‘The Gate to the World’ at M/S-Dk describes the situation for elderly sailors, but other than that, the full life course is not discussed. The six Nordic national maritime museums, almost without exception, describe the world from Eurocentric perspectives, from the healthy and able white man’s point of view, and sometimes one can also discern the ‘colonial gaze’, the West’s gaze on non-Western cultures, which encompasses a sense of superiority and the right to scrutinize.11 This will be further discussed in the next chapter under the heading ‘“We” and “the Others” ’.

Notes 1. Retrieved August 2017 from MM-Fi, ‘The North Star and the Southern Cross’. 2. Retrieved October 2017 from M/S-Dk, ‘Our Sailors’.

132

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

3. Retrieved August 2017 from MM-Fi, ‘The North Star and the Southern Cross’. 4. Retrieved June 2017 from M/S-Dk, ‘The Gate to the World’. 5. Retrieved August 2017 from MM-Fi, ‘The North Star and the Southern Cross’. 6. This was not done in the original Norwegian text, though. Hvem var hun som telegraferte? (Who was it that sent the telegrams?) 7. Retrieved August 2017 from MM-Fi, ‘The North Star and the Southern Cross’. 8. Retrieved August 2017 from MM-Fi, ‘The North Star and the Southern Cross’. 9. ‘Stämningen blir bättre, språket mer vårdat och jargongen inte lika rå’. 10. An artistic installation created by multimedia director Saskia Boddeke and film director Peter Greenaway. 11. See for example: Fanon (1967), McClintock (1995), Pratt (2007).

Chapter 7

Worldviews and Images of the World Museums and their exhibitions can be regarded as staged scenes where conditions and situations outside the institutions are transcribed and presented as a ‘take’ on the world. But in the process, underlying assumptions and beliefs, of which the creators may not always be aware, are brought into the narrative. The museums thus do not reflect the world through their collections and designed exhibitions; instead, they generate (re)presentations and assign values and meanings that express historically specific perspectives (Lidchi 1997: 160). These perspectives are, as Sara Ahmed (2006: 22) would put it, ‘in line’ with a specific view of the world – a worldview. At M/S-Dk, the concept of worldview is linked to navigation in the exhibition ‘Navigation and World Views’. The introductory text asks two questions: Where am I? Where am I going? Two questions that sailors throughout the ages have tried to answer during their voyages in the elements, in science, and in beliefs.

In other words, navigation is about keeping track of where we are and where we are heading, but the above text suggests that it is not just a question of where we are in space. By emphasizing that it concerns the elements too, as well as science and beliefs, the text implies that the word ‘worldview’ has multiple meanings. A depiction of the world can take the form of a map or a globe, but it can also be a metaphorical image that is more about cultural and ideological ideas – a worldview that consists of notions about knowledge, life and the cosmos. The literal and metaphorical worldviews merge, however, because, on the one hand, a map or globe depends on the navigation and measurement instruments that are available at the time and, on the other hand, the image of the world is shaped by the historical, social, cultural and material situation of the world and the position from which it is drawn.

134

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

And just as the material and the immaterial merge in a drawn map of the world, material arrangements and underlying ideas blend in the museums’ staged storyscapes. Tiina Roppola notes that exhibitions consist of endless combinations of materials that innovatively unite contents and ideas in an outward form (2012: 12). They are basically material, discursive phenomena that produce meaning performatively, not just through words but also through how they (re)configure the world (Roppola 2012: 257). In this chapter, I will focus on the worldviews that the six Nordic national maritime museums participate in creating and how the museums situate human beings, shipping and national identities in their staged (re) configurations of the world. The specific perspective from which the maritime museums orchestrate reality involves journeys across the seas, encounters in ports and contacts through trade, immigration, colonialism and war. Therefore, the maritime narrative is necessarily both global and national and the maritime museums participate in (re)configurations of the world by positioning the nation in the global shipping network. In the worldviews that are generated both on maps and in the exhibition rooms, directions, relationships and hierarchies are staged between people, places, objects and phenomena. I will first discuss literal and metaphorical images of the world and I will thereafter address questions of how ‘We’ and ‘the Other’ are depicted.

Literal and Metaphorical Images of the World In the maritime community, narratives about images of the world are necessarily intertwined with the need to be able to navigate on open waters and through dangerous coastal areas with treacherous reefs and dangerous waves. Knowledge of the geography of the world and the skill of navigating using, among other things, navigational charts and star charts are, and always have been, vital to seafarers. At the same time, painted and drawn images of the Earth often reflect their creators’ own position and view of reality. At MM-Sw, Nav-Sw and M/S-Dk, I encountered exhibitions that focus specifically on navigation and various types of images of the world. At the other three museums, the theme is woven into other stories. At MM-No, there are three large exhibitions and several smaller ones, but relatively little space is devoted to narratives about navigation; The narratives consist of technical and factual descriptions of aids for navigation and there is no discussion of how maps and descriptions of the world can reflect historical contexts and beliefs.

Worldviews and Images of the World

135

At MM-Fi, the one large permanent exhibition is titled ‘The North Star and the Southern Cross’, which directly connects to navigation, as well as to the geographical space through which the seafarers travel. The exhibition is introduced with a text that reads: The sea has always been an important channel for the movement of people, goods and ideas. If it were not for seafaring, the world we live in now would be completely different. . . . it is good to keep in mind that seafaring is international by its very nature. Finnish ships have plied the seven seas, under both the North Star and the Southern Cross.

In this introduction, the museum stresses the fact that shipping is global: Finland is a part of the world and the world is a part of Finland. The exhibition narrative does not follow a timeline; instead, maritime history is divided into a number of themes. The first theme that visitors meet is navigation. The story begins with a description of the role of the pilot throughout the ages. The exhibit describes technical aids used to carry out the observations necessary for navigation in time and space, as well as displaying a number of charts from different times and telling visitors how they were made. The descriptions are technical and practical and there is no discussion of how they may reflect metaphorical worldviews. In the exhibition ‘Navigation and Worldviews’ at M/S-Dk, the walls, ceiling and floor of the large hall where the storyscape is staged are light grey in colour. Showcases are scattered across the floor, with white elements and panes of glass being used to frame the exhibited artefacts. The shapes do not have any right angles; they lean and twist in various directions. The showcases can be interpreted as blocks of ice floating in crystal-clear water. Their design accentuates the colours and shapes of the exhibited artefacts, which contrast sharply with the white and grey. The texts explain that the artefacts are tools and pieces of equipment that were used to calculate longitude, latitude, speed, depth and course. The exhibition design emphasizes the aesthetic dimensions of all these practical tools. On the three surrounding walls, a projected film depicts a series of scenes from voyages at sea. Sometimes the film shows forward movement on the smooth surface of water and sometimes it shows images of high waves that are divided into sections that are out of phase with each other and shift up and down from floor to ceiling. The room is also filled with the sound of water, but this is not as intrusive as the visual impressions. The continuous movement on the walls can induce motion sickness. This gets even worse when the waves are high. By fairly simple means, this design gives visitors the opportunity to imagine the reality at sea. It is a staged encounter between visitor

136

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

and ocean, and the relationship between the human being and the forces of nature is portrayed as one of movement, both vertical and horizontal. These impressions may be another way of inducing a feeling of conflict, perhaps not with the cosmos, but at least with the constant movement of the water. Life at sea appears to be completely different from life on the firm ground of land and those who are not used to the constant heaving and movement may become seasick. In a text, one can read that maps have been used for thousands of years and various types of maps have been made for different purposes: All of them are a result of our way of seeing the world. At the same time they give an indication of our view of the world. Charts have changed a lot through the ages. They tell us about the ideals, ideas and needs of various peoples in graphic form. They are practical tools for the mariner as well as tales of human attempts to understand the world.

A showcase tells visitors about two celestial globes, one from 1636 and the other from the eighteenth century. It is said that astronomy, astrology and geography were combined and that art and science went hand in hand. It is precisely the combination of art and science that this storyscape stages. Visitors can see that the artefacts are beautiful and read that they are vital tools when sailing the oceans. At MM-Sw, the temporary exhibition ‘Maps & Globes – Old Globes for Young Explorers’ was staged in a round exhibition hall on the second floor of the entrance tower. The walls of the storyscape were dark blue, the exhibited maps and globes were highlighted and the artefacts glowed in the dark room. Some of the exhibited charts looked familiar, according to a contemporary Western worldview, and some pictures resembled worldviews from other times and places. There was a didactic tone in the texts about the maps and globes, indicating that the primary target audience of the exhibition was children. One text talked about the Greek scientist Ptolemy who lived two thousand years ago. ‘He believed that all planets and the sun orbit the Earth. But that is not the case – the Earth and all other planets orbit the sun’. The text was placed by a painting that shows the Earth surrounded by semi-circles that were probably intended to describe the orbits of the planets and the sun. In another case, a painting was exhibited that showed a metaphorical worldview that positioned Jerusalem at the centre. A text informed visitors about portolan charts, a kind of map that only shows coasts and ports. The museum explained that ‘these are maps for sailors and explorers. But also for those who were at home dreaming of faraway places’. Another text explained that it could be difficult to sail into an unfamiliar port; one way to make this easier was to use

Worldviews and Images of the World

137

a drawn sketch of the port to find the correct route. The globes exhibited in the room were from different times and places. By one globe, the text said: ‘The Dutch who made this globe have also drawn their own vessels and strange animals which they sighted in foreign countries’. By another globe, one could read that ‘[star] constellations are drawn on the celestial globe’. As in the exhibition ‘Navigation and Worldviews’, the storyscape ‘Maps & Globes’ emphasized the combination of science and art, though this was not explicitly stated in the texts. Visitors’ attention was primarily directed toward the aesthetics of the created images of the world, and the maps and globes were discussed in terms of the metaphorical images they convey. The choice to place the exhibition in a round room enhanced the notion of the world as round. And in the darkened room, spotlights made the aesthetically pleasing artefacts shine and glimmer. At Nav-Sw, the exhibition ‘The Ancient Art of Navigation’ describes how people throughout history have developed methods for navigation. The exhibition is introduced with a question: Nowadays, we can find our bearings almost down to the exact metre or so, but how did our forefathers navigate before the advent of radar, GPS satellites, echo sounders and accurate charts?

In the exhibition, narratives describing ancient navigational knowledge and descriptions of the development of tools and technology to aid navigation are interwoven with accounts of historical events. The focus is on the establishment of Sweden as a powerful nation. It is said that the Swedish navy was founded by King Gustav Vasa in the sixteenth century and it is argued that achieving dominance at sea facilitated the cohesion and expansion of the kingdom. One text gives a detailed description of developments during the seventeenth century. It states that: This period also saw the emergence of Sweden as a major European power. As both her navy and merchant marine were of vital importance, qualified navigators, accurate charts and sailing descriptions were in great demand.

The museum notes that the sailor sees movement on the Earth as an angle on a spherical Earth, while land dwellers see it as a distance on a flat map, and it is stated that the placement of the prime meridian in Greenwich was a political decision. Apart from that, however, there is no discussion of how the drawn pictures of the world may reflect ideological notions. The worldview depicted in ‘The Ancient Art of Navigation’ revolves around the Swedish nation as a great power and, in this context, navigation is about acquiring tools for the royal navy.

138

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

‘We’ and ‘the Others’ In the previous chapter, I mentioned the concept of ‘the colonial gaze’, which refers to the West’s view of non-Western cultures and encompasses a sense of superiority and the right to scrutinize. A criticism of modern museums is that they often stage the world in line with this attitude of superiority. The museum is one of many institutions in the Western world that participate in describing the world from a Eurocentric perspective, portraying ‘the West’ as ‘Us’ and other parts of the world and other cultures as ‘the Other’. Stuart Hall calls this phenomenon ‘the West and the Rest’, with ‘the West’ referring to a Western society that is considered to be developed, industrialized, urbanized, capitalist, secular and modern, as opposed to non-Western societies that are associated with the opposites, with negative values (Hall 1992: 277).

The Exotic Other Another way of understanding the construction of ‘Us’ and ‘the Other’ is proposed by Sara Ahmed, who, understanding the phenomenon phenomenologically, describes it as a process whereby we orientate ourselves ‘around’ or ‘toward’ something (2006: 115). The ideas and notions that make up a worldview involve ‘taking directions’ toward objects, places and people. As mentioned in chapter 2, Ahmed employs Edward Said’s concept of Orientalism, arguing that the Orient is the object we are orientated ‘toward’, as an object of yearning and desire. And: the Occident coheres as that which we are organized around through the very direction of our gaze toward the Orient. . . . The Orient provides the object, as well as the instrument, that allows the Occident to take shape, to become a subject as that which ‘We’ are around. The Occident would be what we are orientated around. Or we could even say that ‘the world’ comes to be seen as orientated ‘around’ the Occident, through the very orientation of the gaze toward the Orient, the East, as the exotic other that can just be seen on the horizon. (Ahmed 2006: 116)

Ahmed argues that the Orient is filled with that which is ‘not Europe’ and this ‘not-ness’ appears to point toward a world of romance, sexuality and sensuality. Ahmed also notes that Orientalism involves the transformation of ‘far away’ from being a spatial marker of distance to indicating characteristics of people and places, and that that which is far away is often what we experience as exotic (2006: 114). The difference between Hall’s concept ‘the West and the Rest’ and Ahmed’s approach is that Hall describes how

Worldviews and Images of the World

139

‘the West’ is associated with positive values and ‘the Rest’ is constructed as a negative counterpart, while Ahmed describes how something is made to be something ‘other than’, which does not necessarily mean that it is laden with negative values. The ‘other than’ can just as well be perceived as something ‘the West’ is assumed to be lacking (Ahmed 2006: 114). What is interesting about Ahmed’s reasoning when it comes to the narratives conveyed by the maritime museums is that it explains the use and understanding of the word ‘exotic’, which appears now and then in descriptions of what the seafarers encounter in ports around the world. This is especially noticeable in the exhibition ‘The Gate to the World’ at M/S-Dk: Sailors visited places other people had only heard of. . . . They saw foreign peoples in Africa and China and icebergs along the Greenland coast. . . . sailors brought souvenirs home to remind them of the travels . . . . . . On its way, the ship visited many exotic places . . . . . . Exotic nuts, shells and woodworking . . . . . . Postcard showing scantily dressed exotic women . . .

M/S-Dk, however, also gives a glimpse of the perspective of ‘the Others’ in the exhibition ‘Tea Time – The First Globalization’. One text describes how, in 1724, the Greenlanders Pooq and Qiperoq travelled to Bergen and Copenhagen. They wanted to study Christianity and bring it home as teachers, but only Pooq returned to Greenland, bringing with him stories about ‘the strange people in the south’.

‘We’, ‘the Other’ and the ‘Other Other’ The exhibition ‘Surface Tension – Cold War in the Baltic Sea 1979–89’ at Nav-Sw describes the situation in Sweden and the world in the 1980s. The story revolves around one known and several suspected submarine violations of Swedish territory in the Baltic Sea, events that occurred as part of a very tense situation in the relations between East and West. The museum explains that Sweden was much more ‘in line’ with the West than the East, but was geographically positioned very close to the Soviet Union and the violations of Swedish territory were considered a very serious threat. The exhibition also depicts a decade when the balance of power shifted as the Eastern Bloc fell apart, dramatically changing the lived reality of many people. One section of the exhibition is devoted to the year 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell. As the Soviet Union collapsed and the walls between East and West were being demolished, the Swedish people experienced an

140

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

abrupt awakening when Prime Minister Olof Palme was assassinated on a public street in 1986. Visitors can listen to testimonies describing how ‘we didn’t think something like that could happen in our country’. The exhibition also relates how, in the same year, a major nuclear accident occurred at Chernobyl in the Soviet Union, which had consequences for Sweden. The storyscape ‘Surface Tension’ is staged in a hall that visitors can enter from two different directions. When passing through one of the entrances, visitors enter a large hall with a high ceiling. Visitors who enter at the other end of the storyscape first encounter a smaller room that has been used to stage the opposing positions of the West and the East. The wall to the left tells visitors about the United States and the West, and the wall to the right describes the Soviet Union and the East. On both sides, there is the same introductory text, with the heading ‘Global Conflict’. It is said that the Cold War was in full swing soon after the end of the Second World War in 1945, that the United States and the Soviet Union were the two main adversaries and that these two superpowers led military alliances‚ NATO and the Warsaw Pact respectively. It is further noted that they never engaged in open warfare, but the situation was very tense and affected the rest of the world. The exhibition argues that a large part of the conflict concerned ideologies and the world was divided into power blocks – the West, led by the United States, and the East, led by the Soviet Union. On both sides of the room, photographs show contexts, situations and people in images that are supposed to represent the characteristics of the two sides. The depicted people in the West are old, young, children, ‘white’, ‘black’, women and men – and everybody is smiling. The people in the East are also of different ages; some of them are smiling or laughing, but several have grave expressions on their faces. The text reads that behind the Iron Curtain, society was permeated by communist ideology and planned economies. About the West, it is said that the wheels of capitalism rolled ever faster and that, for many, prosperity grew. The museum notes that this increasing wealth, together with American popular culture, which had a great impact, contributed to strengthening the attraction that the West exerted on the population of the East. It is also stated that, at the same time, popular culture, and especially Hollywood films, painted a stereotypical picture of the East. The exhibition states that the two blocks were mainly distinguished by planned versus market economies and dictatorship versus individual freedom. A narrative about ‘the Swedish way’ is literally positioned in the middle of the room, between ‘the East’ and ‘the West’. The exhibition explains that Sweden was not a member of either military alliance and therefore the government needed to clearly show the outside world that Sweden

Worldviews and Images of the World

141

was serious about not taking sides. This necessitated the country having a strong defence of its own, even if it counted on support from the West in case of attack. The exhibition also states that Sweden engaged in secret military cooperation with the West, which, among other things, involved the sharing of intelligence. It is highlighted that the Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme criticized both East and West and that he wanted to find a middle way for Sweden between the two blocks. But it is not explained what this ‘middle way’ actually involved, since it is also emphasized that when it came to ideology, Sweden’s economy and culture were much more ‘in line’ with the West than the East. The West’s alliance and the East’s pact are, on the one hand, described as two ‘Others’, as two opposing sides, both of which are ‘not Us’. But, on the other hand, it is obvious that ‘the West’ is considered to be much less of an ‘Other’ than ‘the East’ and the East is depicted as absolutely ‘not Us’. In the large hall, the exhibition ‘Surface Tension’ deals with different aspects of the global and national political situations during the 1980s. In the four corners of the hall, places are arranged where visitors can sit down and watch filmed interviews, combined with archived documentation, news reports and other material. Several politicians who served in government during the 1980s express their feelings and opinions, as well as their doubts and suspicions. In one corner, the Swedish songwriter Björn Ulvaeus talks about the musical Chess, which tells the story of a Soviet chess player who defects to the United States. Ulvaeus also expresses his personal thoughts and feelings about the Cold War, dictatorship and communism. His narrative can be interpreted as the ‘voice of the people’, whereas the other personal testimonies come from politicians, mariners and historians. The walls of the hall are covered with plates of matte, grey metal sheets with spots of rust. The two short walls are also covered with gleaming shapes of missiles. Throughout the entire storyscape, fears – of an attack (from the East), of nuclear weapons and of the unfree dictatorship of the East – are staged and described. The stories in the room revolve around an incident in which a Soviet submarine ran aground in a Swedish restricted military area in 1981. There were nuclear weapons on board. In the following years, a number of incidents that were believed to be violations of Swedish territories were investigated. The Swedish navy was on edge, guarding the borders toward the East. In 1982, observations were made that led to Sweden’s largest submarine hunt since the Second World War. The exhibition describes a situation in which depth charges were released. The operations were followed by the world press. The people talking in the room differ in their opinions, however, when it comes to whether or not the reported incidents really were submarines from the East. It is said

142

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

that there was no technical evidence that the observations pointed to a submarine from the Soviet Union. However, there was nothing to prove that there had not been such a submarine either. The relationship with the Soviet Union was strained. But the hunt for submarines yielded no results. The politicians, the press and naval personnel ask themselves if the picture that was given of the situation was accurate. One person states that there were probably never any violations; another insists that they really happened, but says that they could also have been NATO submarines from the West. The museum notes that during the 1980s, both the West and the East likely had an interest in monitoring the Baltic Sea, because of its central position between the countries involved in the two military agreements. The exhibition narrative does not take a stand on what really happened in Swedish waters during the 1980s. The focus of the story is rather on the depiction of a small nation that was caught in the middle, in a vulnerable position, absolutely distrustful of ‘the Other’ in the East, but not entirely trusting of ‘the Other’ in the West either. In the same museum, the Submarine Hall offers plenty of information about submarines, how they are used for reconnaissance and what it is like to serve on board. The museum describes an accident that received much international attention. In August 2000, the Russian nuclear submarine Kursk sank to the seabed after a series of explosions on board. Russian navy rescue craft tried to get down to the submarine and save the crew, but the rescue mission failed. The museum notes that the rescue vessels were in poor condition and the crews lacked sufficient training. It is also stated that the British and Swedish navies prepared their rescue craft in order to help and the Russian authorities asked for assistance. Two days later, British rescuers were in the area. When they went down to the Kursk, they discovered that the submarine was water-filled and all 118 people aboard were dead. The museum also tells visitors that today there is international cooperation on submarine rescue and there are exercises in which several countries participate. Vessels are standardized so that one nation’s rescue craft can be connected to other nations’ submarines. This story conveys the message that the hostilities between East and West were a situation of the past; today, everyone cooperates instead of fighting. But, at the same time, it underlines that the United States and British navies have often been at the forefront. It is noted that the Americans have openly reported their experiences of various submarine accidents and the conclusions they have drawn for their submarine rescue systems. There is thus also an underlying message that the West is the representative of freedom and openness and that it is in the West that research and progress are made, while Russia (and the East) appear to be lagging behind modern development – one

Worldviews and Images of the World

143

can detect a touch of the notion that ‘the West’ is developed and ‘the Rest’ is underdeveloped.

The Cod Wars: The Story of the Icelanders’ Fight for Their Position in the World The Icelandic narrative has not yet been mentioned in this chapter, but I conclude that the worldviews and images of the world that are conveyed in both the old and the new permanent exhibitions at MM-Ic are, for the most part, characterized by the idea that humans and nature are intertwined in mutual relationships. The Icelandic museum does not engage with world politics. As far as I can see, there are no ‘We’ or ‘Others’ in the stories; rather, they describe an ‘Us’, the Icelandic people. However, there is one exception. The temporary exhibition ‘ÞORSKASTRÍÐIN (The Cod Wars), For Cod’s Sake’ described the history of the ‘Cod Wars’, a political dispute between Iceland and Britain regarding fishing rights in Icelandic waters that lasted from 1958 to 1976. The exhibition states that the history of the ‘Cod Wars’ is complex and many people with different interests were involved; rocks were thrown on land and boats collided at sea. However: Perhaps dispute is a more accurate term than war, as thankfully not many perished, although one man did die while fixing a ship at sea after a collision had taken place. The Cod Wars have always been recollected with an air of victory and are remembered as a small nation’s battle for justice.

Whether it was a war or a dispute, when walking through the exhibition, I could not help but realize that the struggle for its territorial waters was a very important battle for the Icelandic nation: The Cod Wars were three and each one more fiercely fought than the last one. Rammings and collisions happened often and in the second war the clippers came to be the secret weapon for Icelanders. Iceland’s independence in 1944, national pride and the Cold War strongly influenced the Cod Wars.

As a background to the events, it is stated that ‘Icelandic waters are bountiful, and foreign fishermen have fished here since the early 15th century’. It is further noted that, since 1901, fishing rights have been regulated and the rules have been revised several times over the years. Whereas the old and new permanent exhibitions mostly describe an ‘Us’ shaped by the relationships between humans, fish and nature, this temporary exhibition described a political ‘Us’ whereby Iceland is a part of the world, a world where ‘We’ have had to fight ‘the Others’ for ‘Our’ rights.

144

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

Concluding Remarks In this chapter, I have dealt with some aspects of how the six Nordic national maritime museums stage (re)presentations of the world by asking questions about how they describe and discuss geographical and metaphorical images of where, when and who ‘we’ are in time and space. What the ‘we’ encompasses varies between the museums and between different exhibitions. Sometimes ‘we’ are a nation, sometimes ‘we’ are humankind and sometimes ‘we’ are, or are not, the maritime community. The narratives therefore also vary with regard to who ‘the Other’ is. The temporary exhibition ‘Maps & Globes’ at MM-Sw and the permanent exhibition ‘Navigation and World Views’ at M/S-Dk stand out in comparison to what is conveyed about navigation and drawn maps of the world at the other four museums. Aside from these two narratives, the descriptions of methods and technologies for navigation tend to be rather practical and technical, without critical reflections. Another narrative that stands out is ‘The Ancient Art of Navigation’ at Nav-Sw, which, ‘in line’ (Ahmed 2006: 22) with the message staged by the museum as a whole, connects navigation and the drawing of maps with an emerging powerful nation. There is thus an interesting contrast between the two Swedish museums, because MM-Sw problematizes the concept of ‘images of the world’ while Nav-Sw uncritically paints a picture of a strong nation led by a king. In the next chapter, I ask questions about how the museums describe global trade and cultural encounters and, in chapter 9, I investigate how the museums describe the relationships between shipping and the environment and between shipping and migration. These narratives also entail worldviews and staged images of the world, even though this is not always explicitly discussed in the exhibitions. The subject of this chapter is therefore not yet completely explored and I will discuss it further in the following chapters.

Chapter 8

Global Trade and Cultural Encounters In this chapter, I explore how the museums describe the role of shipping in processes of globalization. The six national maritime museums in the five Nordic countries all say something about how the people and industries of the nation are part of global networks of shipping and trade. In these stories, I discern two topics that are dealt with quite thoroughly in a couple of exhibitions. One is the colonial era of the eighteenth century, when European nations spread across the world, colonized countries and peoples, and built networks for trade in goods and slaves. The second is contemporary shipping with container ships, which transport enormous amounts of goods back and forth across the oceans at a low cost: artefacts, clothing and food that are sold to the ‘modern’ consumer.

Global Trade and Colonialism in the Eighteenth Century In the eighteenth century, Denmark, Norway and Iceland were members of the Denmark–Norway union, which was ruled from Copenhagen and also included the Faroe Islands and Greenland. This period of history is not discussed at all at MM-Ic. MM-No mentions the ‘Danish–Norwegian Empire’ and colonial trade in the exhibition ‘Norway Is the Sea’. It is noted that ‘Norway participated in an international trade that was becoming increasingly globalized’. It is also stated that Denmark and Norway secured certain transport routes by making deals with ‘pirate states’ in North Africa, which protected their ships from being attacked. At the same museum, the conditions aboard a slave ship are described in the exhibition ‘At Sea!’ in a story about a ship’s surgeon. At M/S-Dk, the exhibition ‘Tea Time – The First Globalization’ describes the eighteenth century as a world that was tied together by a large network

146

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

of trade dominated by the Europeans. Even though the exhibition focuses on the trade network, the narrative also describes the reality of the people. Denmark is referred to as ‘the small Danish–Norwegian Empire’, the centre of which was Copenhagen, a city where over fifteen languages were spoken and that was a hub for imports, consumption, re-exportation and the smuggling of goods from the colonies. It is further stated that during this period, beautiful new palaces and large warehouses were built, financed by the merchants and seamen and using slave labour. At MM-Sw, the exhibition ‘The Voyagers’ takes visitors on a trip from Gothenburg to China on a ship sailed by the Swedish East India Company. Sweden is described as a small nation entwined in a large network of global trade during the eighteenth century, when Europe colonized the world. The two exhibitions ‘The Voyagers’ and ‘Teatime’ both depict hierarchical societies with large disparities between rich and poor. But they are described from the perspective of the wealthy class. In ‘The Voyagers’, it is explained that this is because there are no extant sources that give information about the lives and experiences of ordinary seafarers, while diaries written by people in high positions provide insights into these people’s thoughts and experiences. The permanent exhibitions at M/S-Dk depict the maritime life and reality in a number of thematic narratives that are staged along a continuous path. In all of these thematic stories, it is the seafarers’ and their families’ lives, feelings, experiences and lived realities on land and at sea that are the central focus. In ‘Tea Time’, the focus of the narrative shifts from people to the networks of trade and the materiality of the merchandise. The depiction of eighteenth-century colonialism and the slave trade maintains a distance from the people described. Visitors are instead invited to follow the goods in an interactive game and thereby to participate in the challenges of trade and the hunt for profit. In the space where the exhibition is staged, the ceiling is quite low, unlike in the other parts of the museum. There are a number of constructions in the room, with combinations of showcases displaying artefacts and shelves filled with merchandise. In conjunction with the low ceiling, they generate a storyscape that can be perceived as narrow and crowded. Visitors exploring the exhibition walk among stacks of bricks, colourful fabrics, wooden barrels, sacks of grain and rows of Chinese porcelain bowls. The arrangements highlight the diversity of the materials, shapes and colours of the goods that are displayed without protective glass. If I want, I can explore with my fingers the shapes and surfaces, fabrics, bowls, sacks and barrels and, by doing so, imagine actually being in the cargo hold of a ship. A sailing ship’s cargo hold is also staged in ‘The Voyagers’, in which the narrative is organized as a path through a simplified representation of a

Global Trade and Cultural Encounters

147

ship. The cargo is visualized as a stack of wooden barrels. Along the path, visitors can also ‘go ashore’ at ports that the ship visited en route to Canton in China. The design in these rooms stages environments and moods. This is most obvious in the storyscape representing Java, where visitors step into a green environment with chirping birds and images of wildlife and dense vegetation. When visitors exit the other end of the ship, they encounter the harbour area of Canton in China. Colourful images, paintings and moving pictures visualize the Chinese people, and the environments and Chinese artefacts are exhibited in showcases. On the way back to Gothenburg, visitors are guided along the exterior of the staged ship. On the outside of the ‘hull’ and on parts of the floor, spotlights create patterns that resemble rippling water glittering in the sun. On the opposite wall, a wide film screen depicts open, calm water, with moving images of the ocean and sailing ships. The story of ‘The Voyagers’ is about the journey and the storyscape comprises environments and cultural encounters in various parts of the world, on land and at sea, and conveys atmospheres that visitors can perceive through sounds, images, moving pictures, artefacts, colours, lighting and spatial arrangements. Aboard the ship, visitors can read about harsh weather and storms, diseases, poor food and death at sea. The narrative thereby demonstrates that we have enough knowledge to describe the conditions of the lives of the ordinary people involved, even though there are no sources informing us of their thoughts and feelings. It is also stated that, in line with regulations, the company was supposed to hire Swedish crew members, but in reality the persons hired came from many different places – the seafarers’ world was a multicultural one. In the previous chapter, I noted that the exhibition ‘Tea Time’ mentions the Greenlanders Pooq and Qiperoq, who met ‘a strange people’ in the south when they journeyed to be educated as teachers of Christianity. This reflection on how ‘Other’ people perceived ‘Us’ can encourage processes of discursive broadening (Roppola 2012: 216). But nothing is said about the kinds of beliefs the Greenlanders had before they met the Danish people. The exhibition ‘The Voyagers’ asks a number of questions that encourage visitors to think about prejudices, racism and biased storytelling. The questions are asked in relationship to quotes selected from the travellers’ diaries. Sometime during 1750–52, Pehr Osbeck wrote: ‘But a correct knowledge of the Supreme Being is a deficiency that all their other prosperity cannot compensate for’. The text is written on a shutter that visitors can flip. On the other side, the museum asks, ‘The Supreme Being according to who?’, and suggests, ‘Try to change your perspective’. In the exhibition ‘The Voyagers’, it is stated that tea, coffee, chocolate and sugar were the new products of the eighteenth century and that they

148

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

were grown far away from Europe. The emerging global trade in these goods created new trends, the museum says. It is further noted that those who could afford to do so drank hot drinks in Chinese porcelain cups; in England, tea was popular and the practice of drinking tea spread throughout the population, out-competing beer as a daily drink. The exhibition ‘Tea Time’ emphasizes the introduction of tea drinking in the title, but the message conveyed is that it was primarily practised by the wealthy part of the population. In ‘The Voyagers’, it is said that in China a trade in objects that were mass-produced for export developed and these goods became symbols of an ‘exotic’ China. The museum notes that the commercial areas where this merchandise was sold were perceived as foreign, both by Westerners and Chinese alike. The artefacts were, in other words, created for the sake of trade with the West and there was nothing genuinely Chinese about them. It is also explained that in Sweden, the objects from China became fashionable among the rich, who decorated their homes with them and built Chinese-style pavilions in their gardens. The eighteenth-century slave trade is described in the exhibition ‘At Sea!’ at MM-No. Told from the perspective of a ship’s surgeon, the narrative describes the harsh reality of the slave trade and states that it is a part of Danish and Norwegian history. It is explained that conditions on board the slave ships were poor, diseases spread and one in five slaves died on average. The museum notes that the ship’s surgeon had instruments for amputating damaged body parts, but such operations were reserved for the crew and were not available to the slaves, even though the ship’s surgeon had a personal financial incentive to keep as many slaves as possible alive. The narrative is illustrated by paintings and drawings that, among other things, show how the slaves were stored in the cargo hold. Some texts and pictures depict a journey aboard the slave ship Fredensborg, during which one in three slaves died of disease, accidents and malnutrition. It is stated that: the voyage across the sea had to be swift; otherwise the slaves would have to be thrown overboard alive, and drowned. There was not enough food and water on board if a voyage was delayed.

In ‘The Voyagers’ at MM-Sw, it is noted that the slaves were also badly treated when the journey was over: Both mornings and evenings, in several different places, I became aware of the roars of unfortunate slaves due to the exorbitant punishment of their masters. (1783 Anders Sparrman)

The museum asks: ‘Do you dare to interfere when something feels wrong?’

Global Trade and Cultural Encounters

149

As I have already noted, the narrative of the exhibition ‘Tea Time’ primarily revolves around colonial networks of trade and the storyscape highlights the colours and materials of the goods. To some extent, the lived reality of the unfree people of the eighteenth century can also be discerned in the texts, but it is more explicitly staged in the spatial-material narrative. A large showcase demonstrates how people were stowed in the hold in the same way as other kinds of cargo. The arrangement shows faceless people crammed into a cargo space, with only pairs of hands and feet visible, in narrow sections just large enough for a human body. The faces that visitors can see in the storyscape ‘Tea Time’ are those of the white, rich Europeans and the hands and feet of the featureless people in the cargo hold are black. One can read under the heading ‘The Danish West Indies’ that hundreds of Danes and thousands of enslaved Africans lived and worked on three small islands in the Caribbean. A slave necklace from Sankt Croix is exhibited in a glass case and a text explains that captured people were clapped in irons; to prevent them from ‘escaping into the vast sugar cane fields, the collar had hooked arms that snagged the sugar cane’. In the same showcase, a ‘Freedom letter’ is shown and a text says that in 1774 the slave Hannah and her daughter Nancy were freed by their owner. It is also noted that: ‘Only a few hundred of the over 100,000 slaves who worked in the plantations were freed. Freed children were often the plantation owner’s own’. Next to the letter there is a large bell; it is explained that this bell was once used to to summon the slaves at the La Grange plantation and ‘today it functions as a symbol of the history of a free black population in the U.S. Virgin Islands’.

The Container: A Symbol of Modern Low-Cost Shipping In the exhibition ‘The Voyagers’, it is stated that in the twenty-first century, shipping between Sweden and China is more important than it was in the eighteenth century. It is highlighted that today a significant amount of cargo is transported in shipping containers and that about a quarter of the containers handled in Sweden go to, or come from, China. But it is also noted that the ships are no longer owned by Swedish shipping companies; instead, the routes are operated by two of the world’s largest container-shipping companies, the Danish Mærsk Line and the Swiss MSC. In the exhibition ‘The North Star and the Southern Cross’ at MM-Fi, a blue container stands in a corner. The museum notes that formerly, when the cargo was transported in sacks and wheelbarrow loads, it could take three weeks to unload a ship. When the goods are transported in containers, the ship can be unloaded in a couple of days. The museum concludes that:

150

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

Thanks to containerisation, transport costs are reduced to a minimum, which means that goods are cheaper and more things can be transported. This can be seen in the increasing outsourcing of manufacturing to low-wage countries. It has been claimed that shipping containers have been even more important than the Internet in the globalisation of the world economy.

The container is also mentioned in other exhibitions that discuss shipping and trade. In two of these, ‘The Magic Box’ at M/S-Dk and ‘Shipping & Shopping’ at MM-Sw, the characteristic block shape is incorporated into the design of the storyscapes and used in the narratives as a symbol of global shipping, trade and consumption.

‘Shipping & Shopping’ The exhibition ‘Shipping & Shopping’ is introduced with the statement: We humans have engaged in trade for thousands of years. Our way of living would not be possible without trade. Trade would not be possible without shipping.

‘Shipping & Shopping’ is a large exhibition that provides an extensive description of maritime history. Despite the title and the introduction, the subject ‘shipping and shopping’ is only discussed in a small, secluded area of the large storyscape. There, it is stated, among other things, that Sweden’s economy is entirely dependent on shipping and that about 90 per cent of the country’s foreign trade travels by sea. The rest of the large storyscape is filled with objects, ship models and stories about everything from different types of ships used throughout history to the seamen’s work schedule on board – but the theme of ‘shipping, shopping and our way of life’ is never really dealt with. As described in chapter 2, the design of the room is characterized by a couple of large boxes that resemble containers. It is these shapes and their colours that bring contemporary, global merchant shipping into the room and into the story, but the relationship between modern container transport and shopping culture is only briefly mentioned. Hence, the theme ‘shipping and trade’ is not followed up. The containers and the notion of ‘shipping, shopping and our way of life’ are left unexplained.

The Magic Box After walking through the narrow space where the eighteenth-century Danish Empire is described as ‘Tea Time’, visitors step into a broader and

Global Trade and Cultural Encounters

151

higher spatiality, the largest hall in the building, where the exhibition ‘The Magic Box – Shipping, Shopping and the Global Consumer’ has been staged. In both ‘Tea Time’ and ‘The Magic Box’, shipping and trade are linked with processes of globalization. In the space where the two exhibitions meet, two ship models are set up in the room. The models are made to the same scale, but the ship Disco (1788) looks like a miniature beside the Maersk Mc-Kinney Møller (2013). The eighteenth-century sailing ship is positioned just behind the stern of the larger ship, as if the twenty-first-century vessel has just overtaken the older vessel. The museum comments on the arrangement: Two Ships from Two Ages – Two Models in the Same Scale More than 200 years of maritime technology and trade with China. From the wooden ships of the 18th century, to today’s container ships of steel. From luxury goods in boxes, barrels and balls to consumer goods in standard containers.

The contrast between eighteenth-century sailing ships and twenty-firstcentury container ships can also be experienced when visitors walk from the narrow space where the colonial era is described into the large, high and airy hall where global shipping and consumer culture are depicted. The eighteenth-century storyscape is characterized by cramped space and the material presence of goods of different colours, shapes and surfaces that one can touch. The storyscape of the 2010s is spacious, bare and sparsely furnished with showcases and props, and the merchandise is stacked behind glass panes – everything is hard, shiny and sterile. Whereas ‘Tea Time’ describes how the Danish nation, or rather the Danish–Norwegian Empire, spread across the world as a colonial power, the narrative about the 2010s begins with the quote: ‘I am neither Athenian nor Greek. I am a citizen of the world. (Attributed to Diogenes of Sinope, Greek philosopher, ca 412–323 bc)’ The introductory text states that: Almost every day when you get up at dawn, you will dress yourself in seafaring. And almost every day at dinner you will eat a bit of seaborne trade. A lot of our food and our clothes are brought to Denmark by sea in carefully packed containers. The trade at sea makes you a global consumer.

As in the exhibition ‘Shipping & Shopping’, the theme for the spatial design of ‘The Magic Box’ is the container. The shiny grey surfaces of the walls and floor are painted with bright yellow stripes, which form rectangles that indicate the size and shape of a container. The lines and rectangles recur in a long and narrow construction made of yellow metal bars and light grey plastic walls that create a semblance of containers stacked in a

152

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

row. The structure generates two levels and the bars and plastic walls frame a number of small rooms. Two staircases lead up to the second floor, where visitors can walk on a small portion of a lattice floor. In front of the construction, there is a real container with the word ‘MÆRSK’ written on the side. The inside of the container is furnished like a grocery store. There is a shopping cart filled with groceries packed in plastic bags on the second floor, in a position in which it can be seen above the Mærsk container. Spotlights highlight the cart and the bags are gleaming pink. The position and the spotlights mark the shopping cart as an important object in the storyscape and the glowing colours create an aura around it. An object that is made salient in this way conveys symbolic suggestions (Kress and van Leeuwen 2005: 105–6) and the shopping cart filled with plastic bags serves as a symbol of shopping. The storyscape ‘The Magic Box’ has three different sound loops. One of the soundtracks can be heard almost everywhere inside and outside the container-shaped spaces; I experience it as ever-present loops of persistent, pulsating tones that produce something in between noise and melody. The sound creates an stressful pulse in the storyscape, which comprises a number of parallel narratives conveyed through various semiotic resources. One storyline can be read in a number of quotes that are written in yellow letters on the walls and floor, framed by the container-shaped rectangles. For example: Instead of warriors or workers, we are more than ever before CONSUMERS (Frank Trentmann, 2016) I shop Therefore I am (Barbara Kruger, 1990)

What the quotes have in common is that they emphasize consumption rather than trade and the modern human is defined as a consumer. In other sections, framed by the yellow lines, facts are cited, for example: ‘Danish ship owners operate more than 1,700 ships throughout the world’ and ‘More than 17,000,000 containers circulate the globe’. The combined message is that huge amounts of goods and commodities are shipped and consumed all over the world. Next to the model of the large container ship, the Danish shipping company Mærsk Line is described. At another position in the storyscape, it is stated that the museum has ‘adopted’ two containers belonging to Mærsk Line with the intention of following their global journeys, investigating the

Global Trade and Cultural Encounters

153

goods they transport and telling stories about the people with whom the containers come into contact along the way. Beside the text, one can see Mærsk Line’s logo and it is noted that the project is being conducted in collaboration with the shipping company. In the exhibition, Mærsk Line is depicted as a success story and as a big winner in the consumption culture. The storyscapes ‘Tea Time’ and ‘The Magic Box’ together convey that in the eighteenth century the nation of Denmark(–Norway) was an empire and in the 2010s it is instead the Danish shipping company that rules the world. A storyline that can be followed in the room consists of a series of colour photographs of families in different parts of the world. Women, men, children, adults and elderly people pose with the foods they consume and visitors can see what they eat and how much money they spend on food in a week. The large pictures are distributed within the construction of metal bars on both floors and establish the presence of people with diverse features and cultural attributes – in other words, a multicultural depiction of humanity as a consumer of food. The photo series also shows that even though most of us do not have direct contact with shipping and the maritime world, we are all affected by the trade that shipping makes possible. On the second floor of the metal construction, visitors are only allowed to walk in a small section separated by a metre-high fence from a large, almost empty area that one may not enter. Like the entire construction, the upper floor is long and narrow. At the far end, there are some pallets of goods and a couple of piles of shopping baskets. Parallel to the area where visitors can walk, a long empty path leads to the other end of the constructed room. The shopping cart filled with groceries is at the far end. The spatial arrangement can be interpreted as a chain of consumption, with the goods entering on the pallets at one end and continuing through the long passage to the other end, where they are packed into plastic bags by the consumer. The placement of the props in relation to the created spatiality is what stages this narrative. An additional layer of meaning is added to the scene by the ever-present nerve-racking sound. From this position, visitors can also see a couple of full bags on the floor next to the shopping cart, which convey that the consumer has bought ‘too much’. The arrangement shows an overfilled shopping cart and, as I view it, my ears assailed by the stressful sound, I interpret it as a depiction of overconsumption. Three films, framed by the outlines of a food bag, a large wheel and a ship’s propeller respectively, are shown in the exhibition room. The moving pictures framed by the image of a propeller are screened on four walls, two on the upper floor and two on the bottom floor, in a secluded area in which the words ‘Danish shipping world wide’ is written on the floor. The propeller-shaped film shows, among other things, scenes of ships travelling

154

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

at sea, scenes on board, views of bridges and other ships, and sometimes a close-up of a person hoisting a Danish flag. The large propeller frame continuously revolves at a slow pace, while some sequences of the film are shown in fast motion. People run unnaturally fast and the ship rushes over the water. This generates a contradiction between the calmly rotating propeller and the implied rush in the moving pictures. Along with the moving pictures, the tones of the sound loop constantly fill the soundscape and influence the experience of watching the scenes in the film. But suddenly the vibrating tones go silent for half a second and a deep, dull, rumbling vibration passes through the room. At the same moment, the propeller-shaped film disappears and, a second later, moving images are screened on the entire wall, showing scenes that vibrate in tandem with the rumbling sound. Ships, bridges and people quiver and flicker as if the whole world is being shaken by an earthquake. When the rumbling stops, the propeller shape appears again. The first thing that can be seen is the man hoisting the Danish flag. Things are back to normal and life can go on as if nothing has happened. I base my interpretation of this arrangement on the fact that the sound that fills the exhibition space affects me very much. The stress I experience as a result of the sound recurs upon viewing the fast-motion sequences of the moving pictures. And when I finally see the scenes that shake and quiver in tandem with the rumble, I imagine a breakdown where everything collapses. The installation can be interpreted as a comment on the extensive transportation network and the constant consumption, which amounts to overconsumption. The message conveyed is that it is too much and ultimately everything will fall apart and collapse. In ‘The Magic Box’, certain narratives are conveyed through means traditionally used in exhibitions at cultural history museums. These narratives contain no criticism of the large shipping companies, extensive trade or the human being defined as a consumer. But in the design of the storyscape, in films and in the sound loop, one can detect another perspective on shipping and shopping. The museum does not openly criticize our modern society of consumption in words. Quite the opposite. But in the design of the room and the persistent tones that penetrate the storyscape, the message that ‘shipping and shopping’ create a stress that could destroy humanity can be discerned.

Concluding Remarks Stories about shipping and seafaring almost always involve the two interrelated themes of global trade and cultural encounters. Therefore, the

Global Trade and Cultural Encounters

155

narratives can describe and discuss both global exchanges of goods and services and exchanges of traditions and ideas. One storyline could involve exploring how people and cultures throughout history have met and influenced each other in the port cities. This, however, is a topic to which the six Nordic national maritime museums pay very little attention in their narratives, except for the exhibition ‘The Voyagers’ at MM-Sw. This exhibition also encourages processes of discursive broadening (Roppola 2012: 216) by asking questions that may make visitors think about their own perspective on the world and their assumptions about other people. In other words, the exhibition ‘The Voyagers’ may inspire visitors to think critically about their own worldviews and the images they have of the world. Except for this exhibition, the investigated museums mainly focus on descriptions of global trade and how nations and continents are tied together by exchanges of goods, often without critical reflections. Cultural encounters and exchanges are sometimes discussed, but mostly they are not mentioned at all. There are no discussions of whether and how other cultures have influenced the Nordic way of life, except for the story in ‘The Voyagers’ about Chinese artefacts and design becoming fashionable among wealthy people in Sweden. The museums describe the hierarchical structures created by the European colonization of the world from the perspective of Western peoples and countries. Some visitors could probably experience some kind of resonance (Roppola 2012: 4) with a couple of the storyscapes in a feeling of coalescence with the voyage, the sounds and colours of a foreign world, the thrill of trade, the crowded space in the ship’s cargo hold or ‘the total collapse’ of contemporary consumer culture – all from the point of view of the rich and privileged, not the slave, the worker or the ordinary sailor. But even though the narratives are not depicted from the perspective of the poor, the images of the world that are staged include and describe the circumstances that these people lived in and admit that it was a rough and unfair world in which many people suffered. An underlying message that can be discerned is that views of the world can change; it is implied that today we adhere to another worldview and it is therefore no longer considered right to colonize, exploit and enslave ‘Other’ peoples and cultures. Just as ‘The Voyagers’ at MM-Sw is the only exhibition that actually deals with cultural encounters, the exhibition ‘The Magic Box’ at M/S-Dk is the only narrative that critically reflects on the consumer culture of today, notwithstanding some dry remarks in the Norwegian exhibition ‘Norway Is the Sea’ about fish being transported back and forth over long distances before ending up on the dinner plate. This is a subject that is deeply enmeshed with the themes investigated in the next chapter, in which I will return to the Norwegian museum’s comments on shipping.

Chapter 9

A World without Borders but with High Walls When carrying out the analyses in the previous chapter, I learnt that the maritime museums describe the historical development of shipping, trade and shopping as a global endeavour that binds people and nations together in the creation of a global world without borders. In this chapter, I investigate two other aspects of shipping and globalization that are dealt with in some of the exhibitions. First, it is often stated that shipping is a low-polluting mode of transport that is ‘good for the environment’, but that does not mean that it is without problems and the shipping industry contributes in various ways to the environmental issues and ecological crises we face today. When it comes to pollution, CO2 emissions and climate change, borders cannot prevent the effects from spreading all over the world. Secondly, a completely different meaning of the notion of seafaring and a world without borders comes to mind when a maritime museum describes how refugees cross open waters in overfilled boats with no safety equipment in order to escape weather disasters, war zones or political oppression. In these circumstances, the world is divided into nations and regions that are both literally and figuratively surrounded by strong political borders that often make it difficult and dangerous for people to migrate to safer places. For many people, Earth is a divided world with high, separating walls created and maintained by political ideologies and national and financial interests. The environmental problems associated with shipping and the streams of refugees travelling dangerous routes over open water are two global issues that the maritime museums can participate in discussing from the perspective of shipping and seafaring. The Nordic national maritime museums do this to some extent, as I will analyse and discuss in this chapter.

A World without Borders but with High Walls

157

Shipping and Environmental Problems On the upper floor of MM-Sw, a secluded area has been furnished as a reading corner with bookshelves and sofas. On the wall between two windows, there is a poster with a black and orange image and a text with the heading ‘Shipping and the environment’. The short text gets straight to the point: It is better for the environment to transport goods by ship rather than using trucks and aeroplanes. But shipping still causes serious environmental problems – and these problems are becoming worse as the amount of trade increases in the world. What can we do about this?

With its bright orange colour and exhortative text, the poster is like an exclamation mark in this place that seems to be designed to invite visitors to pause, sit down, look through books or just contemplate for a while. Along one wall, an exhibit about shipping and environmental issues is staged. Texts and images cover four sides of twelve cubes arranged on four vertical poles. In one text with the heading ‘Reduce Speed!’, it is noted that shipping has always been an environmental problem, but things will improve because of new requirements for reduced emissions. It is stated that new hull shapes and more efficient engines reduce power consumption, but at high speeds, shipping remains a threat to the climate. The author of the text has a PhD in environmental systems analysis. Under the heading ‘Customers and Authorities Need to Make Demands!’, it is stated that: To reach our final destination, more than just new technology is needed however; you have to start to take a look at the entire transport chain and to get the final customer to understand the consequences of the need for quick deliveries. Because shipping is an international operation, there will also be a need for a tightening of international regulations so that we will be able to see the results on a broad front.

The text is signed by an environmental manager at a transport company. The ‘regular consumer’ is emphasized as an important cog in the system. It is an identity with which most museum visitors can identify, helping them to see possibilities to change their own behaviours. Another text discusses oil spills and tells visitors that accidents are prevented by international regulations on double hulls, and backup steering and navigation systems. Traffic monitoring has improved and some narrow lanes are unidirectional. But it is also noted that sometimes it is simply a matter of carelessness and

158

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

many emissions are deliberate. ‘Often it is a question of money’. When the vessels’ tanks are flushed, the water is often released into the sea instead of being brought to reception stations in port. A photo shows a bird soaked in oil. The text states that oil leaks from damaged tankers threaten beaches and nature reserves along the Baltic coast. It says that oil spills are just one of the ways in which shipping pollutes the oceans. Littering, toxic paint on the ships and the spreading of alien species via ballast tanks are some of the other threats. The text describes how old ships are dismantled in countries where laws regulating working conditions are less stringent and wages are lower. The museum notes that workers suffer and the problem is well known, but since money can be saved, no changes are made. Overall, the story offers many perspectives, conveyed by voices representing different positions. Some experts argue that technology and regulations will solve everything; others are less optimistic. Thus, the narrative encourages processes of discursive broadening (Roppola 2012: 216) because visitors can read various stakeholders’ arguments, pit them against each other and thereby think critically about what is said. Visitors gain insight into who decides what, as well as how many actors ignore that which has been determined by law. The global shipping industry is considered in relation to eutrophication and climate change. Despite the different perspectives, the museum’s voice is critical and clearly emphasizes that many environmental problems are caused by shipping and that new laws and technologies do not automatically solve all these problems. However, the narrative is placed in a rather inconspicuous position in the room and it is separated from the exhibition ‘Shipping & Shopping’, where it could have served as a comment on the shipping, shopping and consumer theme. The exhibit does not stand out visually and other elements in the reading room may attract visitors’ attention first. The texts are written in very small letters and some of them are placed rather low. The exhibit thus requires museum visitors first to be attentive enough to discover the exhibit and then to bother to read all the texts. Visitors who actually read everything and look at all the pictures probably get the impression that environmental issues are important and something that the museum takes seriously. But when you consider the location of the room and the allocation of space within it, the story shrinks into a parenthesis that many visitors probably never discover. The exhibition ‘Norway Is the Sea’ at MM-No aims to depict the role of a small nation in a large global shipping industry. It is stated that Norway, which contains only a thousandth of the world’s population, accounts for 7 per cent of the world’s shipping today. The emphasis is on describing experience and knowledge and initiating debates about the future. It is

A World without Borders but with High Walls

159

stated that the maritime industry, including the extraction of oil and other offshore ventures, is the foundation of Norway’s increasing wealth. It is also stated that the shipping industry ‘brings goods from around the world to Norwegian consumers’. As I mentioned in the previous chapter, the exhibition concludes that it pays to transport fish to China for filleting and back to the dinner table in Norway, but there is no comment on whether this is a good or a bad thing. Along one of the three walls of the large triangular hall, a narrative about shipping and environmental issues is staged. It is noted that the shipping industry affects the environment and the climate, and visitors are invited to ‘Explore the actions taken to reduce the damage’. One showcase is devoted to oil pollution, how it affects the environment and animals, and what is being done to reduce it. Another showcase tells visitors about ship graveyards. It notes that old ships ‘often end up on a beach in a low cost country’ and contain many substances that are harmful both for the people dismantling the ship and for the environment. But it also states that authorities and institutions decide on new guidelines that force the shipping industry to ‘take responsibility’, for example, by only allowing ships to be sent for scrapping to ‘centres that meet new health and safety standards’. Problems such as air pollution, waste and garbage at sea, and the spread of alien species via ballast water are discussed, but it is also noted that: ‘Considering how much is moved by sea and how far, shipping comes out better than road transport’. The story ends with the conclusion that shipping has begun ‘accepting its environmental responsibility’ and ‘various actions have been taken to improve energy use, operational efficiency and international regulations’. It is also stated that ‘smart technology’ can solve many problems and make shipping even better in the future. The exhibition ‘Norway Is the Sea’ is an optimistic narrative in which the museum conveys the message that modern society is ruled by the laws of profit, but the development of new technology can and will solve the environmental problems that sea transport causes: What is good for the environment is good for the pocket. Highly eco-friendly ships cost more than traditional ones, but this is offset by reduced running costs. Over the lifetime of the ship the owners can save 25%, while also saving the environment from enormous emissions.

The exhibit about shipping and the environment staged at MM-No takes up a large portion of the exhibition room. The texts are positioned in such a way that I do not have to struggle to read them. In other words, this exhibit undoubtedly reaches more visitors than the narratives arranged on

160

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

cubes at MM-Sw, but even though this narrative covers many different issues, the message is much less critical than at MM-Sw and it does not invite processes of discursive broadening (Roppola 2012: 216). The message is that ‘New Technology’ will solve everything.

Refugees and Migrants Crossing the Oceans Migration and the Dream of a Better Life MM-Fi’s permanent exhibition ‘The North Star and the Southern Cross’ tells visitors about Finns throughout history who have migrated to other parts of the world. This migration is described in terms of a ‘dream of a new beginning’ that drives people to ‘move far from home’. The museum also makes comparisons with contemporary situations, both in Finland and in the rest of the world: Hundreds of thousands of people try to reach the countries of the European Union from Asia and Africa, both legally and illegally. There is also significant migration within Europe, but now only around 12,000 people leave Finland to live abroad each year.

A couple of films are shown on a small monitor. One shows how Finnish migrants arrive at Ellis Island in 1906 and then move on to New York. The other shows people arriving in Sicily in 2006. The text states that the news film shows how 650 immigrants are received after illegally making their way to Italy in a small boat. The large, thematically structured exhibition describes several different aspects of migration, but does not explain that some of these people are actually fleeing for their lives and are risking their lives by doing so. Nor does the exhibition explain why people migrate or why some migrants are legal while others are considered illegal. The streams of migrants are connected to the idea of ‘the dream of a new beginning’; escape, disaster, conflict, war and political and ideological conflicts are not considered or discussed, either in relation to the Finns’ emigration or in the descriptions of migrating people from other parts of the world. The fact that the Finnish people have periodically experienced hard times as a result of bad harvests and wars is thoroughly described in other parts of the exhibition, but it is not linked to the migration. Even so, MM-Fi is the only one of the six Nordic national museums that talks about its nation’s own population in terms of seafaring and migration.

A World without Borders but with High Walls

161

Escape At Nav-Sw, the exhibition ‘Escape’ is introduced with the statement that people flee from their homes for many different reasons, such as environmental disasters, poverty and conflict. It is also noted that the road to safety is often dangerous and the journey is usually characterized by great uncertainty. It is explained that Nav-Sw’s collections contain objects and photographs that are connected to people’s escape and ‘Here we show some of them along with personal stories and drawings from some of those who at some point in their lives have fled from somewhere’ (my translation).1 The exhibition is staged in a small, separate room, but the narrative begins in the hallway, where a yellow inflatable boat, empty of air, lies on a pallet. A text by the boat explains that a man used the boat to flee from the Soviet Union in 1984. He managed to get to a location south of the island of Gotland before running out of fuel. After a few hours, he was rescued by a Swedish fishing boat. Other texts describe three different historical events that have caused people to flee from their homes: the Second World War, the Cold War and the Yugoslav Wars. Under the heading ‘Refugees Today’, texts tell visitors about the present-day refugee flows from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and central Africa. They explain that nowadays the legal refugee routes are closed and airlines and other transport companies may only carry refugees with visas or those who are known to have the right to asylum: All that remain are the illegal routes. Families sell everything they own to pay large sums of money to smugglers to smuggle them into Europe. The two main refugee routes are by boat: Libya–Italy and Turkey–Greece. The human smugglers pack people into ships in poor condition or overcrowded small inflatables and send them out to sea. (My translation)2

In the middle of the exhibition room, there is a showcase containing a pile of life jackets. Next to a wall, a wooden boat is placed in front of a large photo of a body of water, with the horizon in the distance. The walls in the hallway and the exhibition room are grey and the large photo is in greyscale, so the saturated colours of the exhibited life jackets shine in the otherwise entirely grey environment. When I take a closer look at the life jackets in the showcase, I realize that they look more like a heap of toys left on the beach. A text informs me that people fleeing across the Mediterranean use everything from real life jackets to water toys that do not provide any safety at all. Some only have inflatable armbands; others have nothing. The exhibited artefacts do not just look like toys; several of them actually are toys.

162

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

I Save Lives The exhibition ‘I Save Lives’ at MM-Sw is staged in a round gallery on the upper floor of the entrance tower. In the line of sight through the open doorway, there is a segment of white wall bearing the name of the exhibition, a short text and a circular slideshow of photographs taken during rescue operations. The narrative is introduced under the heading ‘Thousands of People Escape across the Mediterranean Sea’. The first thing I saw when I looked through the doorway into the exhibition room was a photo of a white-gloved hand reaching down toward a brown hand. The background was saturated blue and the photograph seemed to be overexposed, which made the motif look somewhat unnatural. It is an image that conveys a symbolic message – the helping hand that reaches down from above. It was a coincidence that my first glimpse of this exhibition happened to be of this particular scene, which soon disappears behind other pictures, but when I walked further into the exhibition, I found four white ‘armchairs’ in the shape of two pairs of hands positioned in the middle of the room. It is not far-fetched to associate the hand-shaped seats with the picture in the slideshow of the hand reaching toward a person in need of help. On two wall segments opposite the chairs, images of four life-size persons stood looking straight at those passing through the room and those who decided to sit for a while on one of the seats. There was a woman and a man on each wall. They were filmed standing still, moving their arms, shifting their weight and blinking, as if they were actually standing there in front of me and as if they really met my gaze when I looked at them. The two pairs of people represent the Swedish Coast Guard and the Swedish Sea Rescue Society.3 The exhibition narrative is told in their voices and they describe their experiences of rescue operations in the Mediterranean Sea. Visitors can listen to them using headphones while sitting in a ‘handchair’ or read the texts in folders. They describe the rescue work as hard, both mentally and physically. Many people are rescued, but many die and the dead bodies must be taken care of. People are scared, exhausted and sometimes apathetic. Kids scream. Kenneth from the Coast Guard talks about a situation in which an infant had drowned aboard a boat filled with water. These narratives give visitors the opportunity to experience processes of social resonance (Roppola 2012: 157) with the rescue crew and their experiences. Visitors can also share in the feeling of doing a good deed and the relief of being able to save many people, despite bad conditions: ‘That night we came to the rescue of these 94 people and brought them to a safe harbor and it felt very good considering the weather’.

A World without Borders but with High Walls

163

The designed storyscape revolves around the personal testimonies of the four individuals, who can be perceived as almost physically present. Together with descriptions of the Swedish Coast Guard and the Swedish Sea Rescue Society, they are the main focus of the exhibition and every visitor who enters the room will see them. Models of the Coast Guard’s and the Rescue Society’s boats are exhibited in showcases, in addition to a colourful life jacket and a couple of cuddly toys in life jackets that have been used ‘in order to approach children and adults in pedagogical ways’. The exhibition ‘I Save Lives’ is a tribute to the Swedish Coast Guard, the Swedish Sea Rescue Society and, above all, to the people involved in the rescue work. The two most obvious messages staged in the storyscape are that ‘We’ help people in need and that it feels good to save someone’s life. Visitors who explore the storyscape more thoroughly, however, may discover another layer of meanings. One can watch a number of films on small monitors that show scenes from rescue operations. I found some scenes that were very dramatic. One of the films shows people in the water, people on a cliff with waves breaking over it, and scenes on board the rescue boat. I can see a man trying to save a child by performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation. A moment later, he covers the lifeless little body with a shirt; the child is dead. In another film, a young man tells of an episode in which he participated in rescuing a number of people who had landed on a steep cliff. The camera zooms in on the narrator, who, step by step, in a soft voice, describes the episode as if he were reliving it. He emphasizes how utterly vulnerable and exhausted these people were, especially considering that they had brought infants with them on these dangerous journeys. He points out that nobody would put his or her own child in such danger unless it was absolutely necessary. These films also describe the situation from the perspective of the rescue workers, but their role is toned down and the focus of the films is on the dramatic situations. In these films, the visitors can also see the people struggling for their lives and thereby comprehend the severity of the situation. Maybe they can even imagine what it would be like to really be there, standing on a cliff in the dark, with cold water breaking over them. This encourages processes of social resonance (Roppola 2012: 157) with the refugees. But this part of the story is not written in large letters on the walls, for everyone who walks through the room to see. These scenes only reach those visitors who take the time to go around to the segments on the back of the wall – devoted to the narrative about the Swedish Sea Rescue Society – and press the buttons to start the films.

164

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

The exhibition ‘I Save Lives’ is orientated ‘around’ the rescue workers and the visitors, creating a collective ‘Us’, and it is orientated ‘toward’ the people in need (following Ahmed 2006: 115), who are depicted as ‘the Others’. ‘We’ stand together and feel sympathy for ‘the Others’ ’ suffering; ‘We’ are ‘calm’ and ‘reasonable’ in the encounter with ‘chaos’, ‘fear’ and ‘panic’. In addition, the symbolism of the ‘white helping hand’ creates a hierarchal order, whereby help seems to come from ‘above’. Bernadette Lynch argues that museums tend to regard migrants ‘only as passive, suffering victims and objects of pity, eroding their dignity, self-determination, and active agency’; this results in a ‘stereotype of the perpetual “victim”’ and the museum’s work being talked about as humanitarianism and often seen as a work of rescue (Lynch 2017: 233). Lynch refers to a newspaper article by Jeremy Seabrook, in which he states that the ‘doctrine of “humanitarianism” is not as benign as you might think’: Humanitarianism is what the west uniquely practises, bringing its kindness and goodwill to dark places of the world, where savagery and barbarism still rule (or have reappeared) at the heart of ‘primitive’ or regressive cultures.4

There are many layers of meanings in the exhibition ‘I Save Lives’. I cannot help but see the ‘helping hand from above’ as the dominating message in the room, while the more nuanced narratives are a bit harder to detect.

Concluding Remarks Throughout the time that I have worked with this project, I have encountered exhibitions in several different kinds of museums that, in one way or another, describe and discuss the contemporary situation in the Mediterranean Sea. During the second half of the 2010s, wars and conflicts have forced large numbers of people to flee their homes and the media have been filled with images and reports of people trying to cross the Mediterranean in overfilled, substandard vessels. In several of these exhibitions, I have found a staged scene with a small boat and a couple of life jackets, as in the exhibition ‘Escape’, discussed above. The combination of a small boat and a heap of life jackets became, in the 2010s, a symbol of refugees trying to cross dangerous waters. It is likely that this occurred first and foremost because of the dramatic events taking place in the Mediterranean during these years, but the narratives told at the museums show that it is not a singular and unique situation – it has happened

A World without Borders but with High Walls

165

many times before, in many other places, and most certainly will happen again and again. The six Nordic national maritime museums deal with questions of shipping and migration very differently. The Finnish museum is the only one that links its own population’s migration to other parts of the world throughout history with the streams of refugees coming to Europe today, even though the descriptions are a bit vague and do not really clarify the difference between ‘the dream of a new life’ and having to flee to survive. The two Swedish museums both describe how ‘the Others’ escape from war and oppression, but there is a big difference in the perspectives chosen for the narratives. Nav-Sw lets the refugees tell visitors about their experiences, while the narrative staged at MM-Sw focuses on the rescue workers. Neither museum touches on the subject of Swedes migrating to other parts of the world. The Danish, Norwegian and Icelandic museums do not discuss shipping and migration at all, even though many people from these countries, as well as from Sweden, emigrated to America during the nineteenth century, often driven by bad harvests and starvation, though there were also people who fled from religious oppression or just had a ‘dream of a better life’. In the case of the Icelandic museum, this can be explained by the fact that the museum is dedicated to the history of fishing. At the other museums, it is rather a question of choosing which parts of maritime history to talk about in the narrative and which to leave out. It is often conveyed that shipping is considered to be a low-polluting mode of transport and thus good for the environment, but also that the shipping industry causes many environmental problems all over the world. In this chapter, I have analysed a couple of exhibitions that discuss the damage to the environment caused by the shipping industry. This issue is closely linked to, or rather inseparable from, the theme ‘shipping and shopping’ that was discussed in the previous chapter. The combination of ‘shipping, shopping and the modern consumer’ and ‘shipping and the environment’ has several consequences that affect everyone and everything in everyday life nowadays. It is a part of the foundation of the modern global world – but we also know that this way of life threatens the stability and resilience of the Earth system. The planet has its boundaries, so to speak.5 The maritime museums have the potential to participate in discussions about this. I understand the exhibition ‘The Magic Box’ at M/S-Dk as a critical comment on modern consumption culture, despite the staging leaving much of the interpretation to the visitor. It is even less clear, however, whether the critical comment connects the implied ‘overconsumption’ to the environmental issues, but one can read that meaning into the

166

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

story. The connection between shipping, shopping and the environment can also be discerned here and there in other exhibitions, but it is not made explicit and discussed. Shipping, shopping, the modern consumer and the environmental problems are also relevant to the issue of people having to leave their homes due to extreme weather, droughts and floods caused by climate change. This connection is made at the Museum of World Culture in Gothenburg, Sweden, in an exhibit about refugees in the Mediterranean Sea called ‘Crossroads’. On the museum’s website, the concept of the Anthropocene is used to explain the current situation on Earth: The Anthropocene is a name given to a new geological epoch. This means that humans are changing the entire global climate and its ecosystems. . . . The burning of fossil fuels, overuse, mass consumption and extinction of species have affected the Earth’s balance and ability to regenerate. One could use many grave words to describe how a small percentage of the world’s richest population have exploited the world around them in the past hundred years: irresponsibility, arrogance, greed and egoism.6

On the website, the museum also makes a connection between migration and climate change: Both physically and mentally, people have become increasingly mobile; computers and mobile phones have made the world constantly available without delay. Many people say that we live in the age of mobility. But politics is still organized around national borders, leading to conflicts over who is allowed to be mobile – to what is described as a refugee crisis. Another profound problem is that modern mobility is basically dependent on fossil energy sources and thus is an inherent part of the climate crisis. There are many links between migration and climate change. More people will probably need to move as the changes in the climate become more evident.7 (My translation)

In this chapter, I have concluded that migration patterns and streams of refugees are described to some extent in a couple of exhibitions at the six Nordic national maritime museums, but are not discussed in relation to environmental problems and the ‘shipping and shopping consumer culture’. As demonstrated by the Museum of World Culture, these issues are all intertwined with each other and the maritime museums could engage in much more discussion about them than they do today. If they did so, the maritime museums could make an important contribution to the understanding of these issues.

A World without Borders but with High Walls

167

Notes 1. ‘Vägen till säkerhet är ofta farlig och resan sker vanligtvis i stor ovisshet. I Marinmuseums samlingar finns föremål och fotografier som hör samman med människors flykt. Här visar vi några av dem tillsammans med personliga berättelser och teckningar från några av de som någon gång har flytt’. 2. ‘Återstår gör endast de illegala vägarna. Familjer säljer allt de äger för att betala smugglare stora summor pengar för att smugglas in i Europa. De två största flyktingvägarna är med båt Libyen – Italien och Turkiet – Grekland. Människosmugglarna packar fartyg i dåligt skick eller små gummibåtar överfulla med människor och sänder ut dem till havs’. 3. The Sea Rescue Society is run solely by volunteers and financed by membership fees and donations. It receives no government funding. Along the Swedish coasts and on major lakes, rescue services are always available around the clock, thanks to 2,200 volunteer crew members. Retrieved 21 August 2019 from https://www.sjoraddning.se/information-english. 4. Retrieved 21 August 2019 from https://www.theguardian.com/comment isfree/2014/sep/08/doctrine-humanitarianism-not-benign. 5. An international group of scientists have identified nine processes that regulate the Earth system. They argue that humanity can continue to thrive and develop as long as we keep within these planetary boundaries, but if we cross them, the risk of generating large-scale abrupt or irreversible environmental changes increases. Retrieved 20 September 2019 from https://www.stock holmresilience.org/research/planetary-boundaries.html. 6. Retrieved 21 August from http://www.varldskulturmuseerna.se/en/varlds kulturmuseet/ongoing-exhibitions/crossroads/about-the-exhibition/whatis-anthropocene/(2019-08-21). 7. Retrieved 21 August 2019 from http://www.varldskulturmuseerna.se/varlds kulturmuseet/aktuella-utstallningar/korsvagar/mer-om-utstallningen/hurhanger-migration-och-klimatforandringar-ihop.

Conclusion

How Maritime Museums (re)Present the World I first tried out the method of analysis based on the concepts of ‘the museum in the landscape’ and ‘the landscape in the museum’ in a pilot study of M/S-Dk. One conclusion I drew from that, which I have also stated in this book, was that the architecture framing the Danish maritime museum places visitors at an oblique angle in relation to the museum and the maritime reality. I then argued that visitors are positioned ‘out of line’ (Ahmed 2006: 22) with the museum. The maritime world is staged as ‘another universe’ and one can perceive a message that the sailor can be queer (Bünz 2016). This study, carried out using the first iteration of the method that I have described and used in Part I of this book, gave rise to questions of whether these messages are also conveyed in the exhibitions or whether deeper analyses of the designed storyscapes would paint another picture of the sailor and the seafaring world. Put another way, I was wondering whether the staff of the museum had chosen to work ‘in line’ with the architecture and the overall message of the institution when designing the exhibitions or whether deep analyses would unveil other meanings. In this book, I have used the method to analyse five other museums and further develop the analysis of the Danish museum, and have carried out detailed analyses of the exhibitions staged at the six museums. Briefly put, in a somewhat simplified form, the results of the analyses can be summarized as follows: there are many examples of the exhibitions at the six museums being staged completely ‘in line’ with the overall message conveyed by the institutions. This is more obvious, however, at some of the museums and more subtle at others. There are also cases of the exhibition design being ‘out of line’ with the architecture, as I will explain further below.

How Maritime Museums (re)Present the World

169

National Myths and Identities The six national maritime museums in the five Nordic countries stage very different stories about the nation, the people of the nation and the relationships between humanity, the ocean and the forces of nature. Four of the museums (to varying degrees) stage an idealized male identity, while the other two convey a more complex image of humanity.

Sweden: A Land-Based Eternal Nation The analyses of the two Swedish maritime museums in terms of ‘the museum in the landscape’ and ‘the landscape in the museum’ show that neither museum really engages with the oceans and the maritime world. Sweden is staged as a powerful land-based nation with a strong navy, and the idealized male identity around which both museums revolve is that of the king, who, at Nav-Sw, is also linked to ancient Greek athletes and the Norse warrior god Odin. This identity is staged as superior to ‘everyone else’, including the museum visitors. At MM-Sw, the ordinary sailor is explicitly positioned as someone that maritime history is not orientated ‘around’ (following Ahmed 2006: 115). Sweden is the kingdom and the strong male ruler. Sweden is not the seafarer and not the maritime world and one can discern a story about an independent nation that stands strong, both historically and today. In some of the exhibitions, however, the design of the storyscapes does not follow the lines of the architecture. In this, I see a tension between the exhibition design and the spatial properties that frame the museum’s exhibition spaces. The depictions of the world staged in some of the exhibitions also provide multifaceted descriptions of cultural encounters, global conflicts and the Swedish nation’s relationships with other nations and pacts. These narratives describe the people, rich and poor, and do not discuss the king. There are several cases in which the museum staff does not work ‘in line’ with the overall message of the institutions and in these narratives visitors are not positioned in an inferior position in relation to a male ruler, but are rather invited to participate and empathize with people in the stories. The narratives, however, are never really told from the perspective of the maritime community.

170

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

Norway: A Nation that Conquers the Oceans MM-No is closely linked to, and partly intertwined with, two other maritime museums that share the common theme of the male explorer and the exploration of the world. This idealized masculinity is not staged as a superior ruler; instead, he is depicted as a man of the people, as an equal. The museum describes Norway as a small nation that makes a big impression on the world and the people of Norway are described as seafaring men and women, children and adults, rich and poor, civilian and military. But there are no stories about land folk. The scenes staged in the exhibition halls utilize the architectural properties of the building to stage meanings that are completely ‘in line’ with the overall message of the museum – that Norway is the ocean and seafaring – and the architecture and exhibition design invite everyone to participate in a journey through time and space. One can also discern the message that the exploration of the world belongs to history. Today, it is the oil industry that is the focus and it is stated that ‘The Norwegian-controlled fleet is among the largest in the world in several of these niche markets’ and ‘Norwegian offshore shipping expertise is in demand all over the world’. Between the lines of these narratives, one can discern another story about a nation in which the fishing industry was once of great importance. But the fishing industry is never really discussed and thus it is not included in the Norwegian national maritime narrative.

Finland: A Nation and a People that Strive Together with the Ocean The Maritime Centre Vellamo, which houses MM-Fi, stages the forces of the ocean as much larger and more powerful than human beings. Museum visitors can literally feel their own smallness when they stand beside the building, walk up to the roof terrace and explore the Boat Hall in the inner landscape. The country depicted by MM-Fi is not a seafaring nation, but shipping is nevertheless described as vital for the wellbeing of the Finnish people. The world is described as a part of Finland and Finland is described as a part of the world. The Finnish people strive for survival together with the ocean and the national symbol that is emphasized is the icebreaker – the vessel that opens up the shipping lanes during harsh winters. The museum notes that today Finland has stockpiles that would last a couple of months in case of an interruption in shipping, but they would not last forever. The Finnish people are depicted as men, women, sea folk and land folk and they are described as being involved in mutual dependencies

How Maritime Museums (re)Present the World

171

and relationships, though the narrative voice maintains a neutral distance between visitors and the people in the narratives.

Iceland: The Nation Is the Fishing – the Fishing Is the Nation MM-Ic is devoted to the history of the fishing industry. In Iceland’s national narrative, the country is fishing and it is the male fisherman’s idealized and to some extent romanticized masculinity that is staged, even if the newly opened, renovated museum also conveys that fishermen can be women. One can discern that Iceland is a part of the world and that the world is a part of Iceland, but it is not explicitly discussed in the narratives. The old permanent exhibition conveyed a somewhat different image of the Icelandic people than the new one. The old story depicted a nation of settlers that, throughout history, depended on both what the land could provide and the resources from the sea. People strived in a barren landscape, working on land and at sea to survive, and over time built the prosperous nation of today. The new exhibition focuses instead on the relationship between human beings and the ocean’s resources, and the fish is staged as the main character of the story. Both narratives describe the ocean as a resource rather than a means of transport and the focus of the Icelandic maritime narrative is the (sometimes romanticized) relationship between humanity and the forces of nature.

Denmark: Where Is the Nation in all This? M/S-Dk literally stages a disorientating, ‘queering’ storyscape in which visitors can explore the realm of the maritime community and at the same time ponder general questions about being a human being in a world that you cannot always control and feel safe in. The narratives depict seafarers’ experiences of ocean voyages and visitors are given the opportunity to explore their own feelings and perhaps imagine a journey into the essence of being human. The historical Denmark is described as an empire that expanded across the world through colonization and trade, but this depiction is toned down in a narrative in which the focus is on trade and the materiality of the merchandise. It is as if the museum acknowledges this history, but does not want to make a big deal of it. The Danish people of today are portrayed as deeply intertwined with people all over the globe through

172

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

networks of trade and consumption, and the empire of today is instead the enormous Danish shipping company Mærsk Line. The overall impression that M/S-Dk gives is that it does not so much deal with the history of the nation as with the life and practical realities of the maritime community. This community is depicted as a realm where families and friends are entangled in mutual dependencies and relationships on land, at sea, in foreign ports and in the world. But the maritime community is not really connected to ‘us’; it is something ‘other than us’, a world in which we can explore fear, grief, troubles and dread.

What Do the Maritime Museums Talk (or Not Talk) About? As so few critical studies have thus far been carried out on maritime museums, a further aim of this book has been to find and define characteristics of the narratives staged at maritime museums and it is to this that the second part of the book is largely devoted. I have found many interesting nuances, contradictions, surprises and new questions and, perhaps most importantly, have come to a new understanding of the maritime museums, the problems they have to deal with and their potentials. Throughout the thematic chapters, I have initiated discussions about what the museums talk about and what they could, or maybe even should, participate in discussions about. I now wish to sum up my conclusions about what the museums do and do not talk about or deal with and I also wish to comment on what I think they could or even should do. (1) Women are included in some of the narratives at the six Nordic national maritime museums – but there are big differences between the museums, which are closely linked to the fact that those museums that do not really include women only describe the part of the maritime world that concerns ships and life at sea, the sphere of men, and leave out the intricate relationships with communities and institutions on land, which, throughout history, have been the sphere of women. (2) The ‘white Western man’ is the identity that dominates in the narratives and multicultural aspects of the maritime community are rarely discussed. Peoples and cultures that the Western sailors encounter in foreign ports are often described as ‘exotic’ and sometimes one can discern a colonial gaze. (3) The notion that the sailor can be queer can only be found in narratives relating to the myths about seafarers. The male sexual being whose desire can be directed toward both men and women is mentioned in one

How Maritime Museums (re)Present the World

173

exhibition, but this statement never leaves the world of the myth; the ‘real’ sailor is unanimously depicted as heterosexual. (4) It is interesting, though, that the depictions of the ‘white Western heterosexual man’ are often unusually nuanced. The museums do not follow tradition by describing a hard and tough sailor (Creighton and Norling 1996: vii), nor do they romanticize or stereotype (Nilson 2014: 490) the seafaring people (except for the temporary exhibition/art installation ‘Sex & the Sea’ that has been shown at three of the museums). Instead, they convey the image of a man who can be weak, sad and afraid and who can cry with relief when the storm eases. It is sometimes emphasized that he misses the woman he loves, longs for his children and worries about them, writes letter to his parents and cherishes the letters they write to him. The maritime museums have the potential, alongside depictions of prolonged separation, worry about loved ones and experiences of life-threatening danger, to stage complex portrayals of a masculinity that is not tough and strong – and several of the six Nordic national maritime museums actually do this. (5) The fact that a seaman today can be a woman can be discerned by attentive visitors at all the museums except M/S-Dk, where the seafarers are all men, without exception. But the topic of women working aboard ships is explicitly discussed only at the Norwegian and Finnish museums. The Finnish narrative also mentions that these women often are exposed to sexual harassment. In the aftermath of the #MeToo movement, the maritime museums could push these issues to the fore and better describe the situation for women working at sea. (6) The maritime museums’ narratives comprise many descriptions of the relationship between human beings and the forces of nature. The museums have the potential to invite visitors to experience and think critically about this relationship – which several, but not all, of the Nordic national maritime museums do. (7) The maritime museums talk, to some extent, about shipping and environmental issues. Sometimes shipping is discussed in relation to shopping and consumer culture, and a couple of the museums tell visitors about refugees travelling dangerous routes in unseaworthy boats, but I have not found a single example of a connection being made between environmental crises caused by the ‘shipping and shopping’ and the fact that people have to flee from their homes as a result of ecological crises or climate change. These are closely related issues that the maritime museums could potentially describe and discuss, but do not.1 Given the present situation, with research telling us that we must take immediate measures to stop

174

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

temperatures from increasing too much, the maritime museums ought to take their share of the responsibility by communicating and explaining such issues from the ‘shipping and shopping’ point of view.

Notes 1. This has, for example, been described as ‘slow violence’(Nixon 2013): ‘The violence wrought by climate change, toxic drift, deforestation, oil spills, and the environmental aftermath of war takes place gradually and often invisibly. . . . it is so readily ignored by a hard-charging capitalism, exacerbates the vulnerability of ecosystems and of people who are poor, disempowered, and often involuntarily displaced, while fueling social conflicts that arise from desperation as life-sustaining conditions erode’ Retreived August 2019 from https://naturecritical.wordpress.com/2012/09/21/second-meeting-readingrob-nixons-slow-violence-and-the-environmentalism-of-the-poor-25-sept ember-2012/.

References Ahmed, Sara. 2006. Queer Phenomenology. Orientations, Objects, Others. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Anderson, Benedict. [1983] 2016. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. New York: Verso. Austin, Tricia. 2012. ‘Scales of Narrativity’, in Suzanne MacLeod, Laura Hourston Hanks and Jonathan Hale (eds), Museum Making. Narratives, Architectures, Exhibitions. London: Routledge, pp. 107–18. Bünz, Annika. 2015. Upplevelser av Förhistorier. Analyser av Svenska Arkeologiska Museiutställningar [Experiences of Prehistories. Analyses of Swedish Archaeological Museum Exhibitions]. GOTARC Series B, no. 66. Göteborg: Institutionen för historiska studier, Göteborgs universitet. ———. 2016. ‘Museet i landskapet och landskapet i museet. En studie av relationer mellan arkitektur, maritimt museum och omgivande miljö’ [The Museum in the Landscape and the Landscape in the Museum. A Study of Relationships between Architecture, Maritime Museum and Surrounding Environment], in Nordisk Museologi no. 1, pp. 52–68. ———. 2018a. ‘Gamla föremål, nya frågor’ [Old Artefacts, New Questions], in Annika Bünz (ed.), Galjonsfigurens många öden och äventyr. Studier av berättande–, minnes– och kunskapspraktiker [The Life and Adventures of the Figurehead. Studies of Practices of Narrative, Memory and Knowledge]. Lund: Nordic Academic Press, pp. 13–41. ———. 2018b. ‘Allas vår sjöman. En studie av hur karaktären sjöman framställs i maritima museers berättelser’ [Our Sailors. A Study of How the Sailor is Portrayed in Maritime Museum Narratives], in RIG Kulturhistorisk tidskrift no. 1, pp. 19–38. ———. 2018c. ‘Berättelser om galjonsbilder och galjonsbilder i berättelser’ [Narratives about Figureheads and Figureheads in Narratives], in Annika Bünz (ed.), Galjonsfigurens många öden och äventyr. Studier av berättande–, minnes– och kunskapspraktiker [The Life and Adventures of the Figurehead. Studies of Practices of Narrative, Memory and Knowledge]. Lund: Nordic Academic Press, pp. 97–148. Coates, Nigel. 2012. Narrative Architecture. West Sussex: Wiley. Creighton, Margaret S., and Lisa Norling (eds). 1996. Iron Men, Wooden Women. Gender and Seafaring in the Atlantic World 1700–1920. London: The Johns Hopkins Press. den Oudsten, Frank. 2012. ‘The Poetry of Place’ in Herman Kossman, Suzanne Mulder and Frank den Oudsten (eds), Narrative Spaces. On the Art of Exhibiting. Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, pp. 5–45. Duncan, Carol, and Alan Wallach. 2004. ‘The Universal Survey Museum’, in Bettina Messias Carbonell (ed.), Museum Studies, an Anthology of Context. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, pp. 51–70.

176

References

Falk, H. John, and Lynn D. Dierking. 2000. Learning from Museums. Visitor Experiences and the Making of Meaning. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press. Fanon, Frantz. [1952/1967] 2021. Black Skin, White Masks. London: Penguin Classics Färnström, Maud. 1993. ‘Två Karlskronaprofiler: Törnström och Chapman’ [Two Karlskrona Profiles: Törnström and Chapman], in Årsbok för Marinmusei Vänner [Yearbook for the Friends of the Maritime Museum]. Fleming, David. 2005. ‘Creative Space’, in Suzanne MacLeod (ed.), Reshaping Museum Space: Architecture, Design, Exhibitions. London: Routledge, 53–61. Fram – the Polar Exploration Museum. https://frammuseum.no/. Giebelhausen, Michaela (ed.). 2003. The Architecture of the Museum: Symbolic Structures, Urban Contexts. Manchester: Manchester University Press. ———. 2006. ‘The Architecture Is the Museum’, in Janet Marstine (ed.), New Museum Theory and Practice: An Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 41–63. ———. 2011. ‘Museum Architecture. A Brief History’, in Sharon Macdonald (ed.), A Companion to Museum Studies. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 223–44. Grosz, Elizabeth. 2001. Architecture from the Outside. Essays on Virtual and Real Space. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Hall, Stuart. 1992. ‘The West and the Rest: Discourse and Power’, in Stuart Hall and Bram Gieben (eds), Formations of Modernity. Cambridge: Polity, pp. 275–320. Hanks, Laura Hourston, Jonathan Hale and Suzanne MacLeod. 2012. ‘Introduction: Museum Making. The Place of Narrative’, in Suzanne MacLeod, Laura Hourston Hanks and Jonathan Hale (eds), Museum Making. Narratives, Architecture, Exhibitions. London: Routledge, pp. xix–xxiii. Heidegger, Martin. 2008. Basic Writings. Key Selections from Being and Time (1929) to The Task of Thinking (1964). London: Harper Perennial Modern Thought. Hennes, Tom. 2010. ‘Exhibition from a Perspective of Encounter’, Curator 53(1): 21–33. Hicks, Robert D. 2001. ‘What Is a Maritime Museum?’, Museum Management and Curatorship, 19.2, pp. 150–74. Hoffman, Hans Wolfgang. 2016. Museum Buildings: Construction and Design Manual. Munich: DETAIL. Hooper-Greenhill, Eilean. 2000. Museums and the Interpretation of Visual Culture. New York: Routledge. Hvattum, Mari. 2015. Hva er Arkitektur [What Is Architecture?]. Oslo: Universitetsförlaget. Ingemann, Bruno. 2012. Present on Site. Transforming Exhibitions and Museums. Lejre: Visual Memory Press. Johnson, Mark. 2008. The Meaning of the Body, Aesthetics of Human Understanding. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Kjær, Sarah Holst. 2016. ‘The Performative Museum. Designing a Total Experience’, in Jonas Frykman and Maja Povrzanović (eds), Sensitive Objects. Affect and Material Culture. Lund: Nordic Academic Press, pp. 237–55. Kress, Gunther. 2010. Multimodality, a Social Semiotic Approach to Contemporary Communication. London: Routledge. Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. 1999. Philosophy in the Flesh. The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought. New York: Basic Books. Leffler, Phyllis. 2004. ‘Peopling the Portholes: National Identity and Maritime Museums in the U.S. and U.K.’, The Public Historian, vol. 26, no. 4, pp. 23–48.

References

177

Levitt, Peggy. 2015. Artifacts and Allegiances. How Museums Put the Nation and the World on Display. Oakland: University of California Press. Lidchi, Henrietta. 1997. ‘The Poetics and the Politics of Exhibiting Other Cultures’, in Stuart Hall (ed.), Representation. Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. London: Sage, pp. 151–222. Lynch, Bernadette. 2017. ‘Migrants, Museums and Tackling the Legacies of Prejudice’, in Christina Johansson and Pieter Bevelander (eds), Museums in a Time of Migration. Rethinking Museums’ Roles, Representations, Collections, and Collaborations. Lund: Nordic Academic Press, pp. 225–42. MacLeod, Suzanne. 2013. Museum Architecture – A New Biography. London: Routledge. ———. (ed.). 2005. Reshaping Museum Space: Architecture, Design, Exhibitions. London: Routledge. MacLeod, Suzanne, Laura Hourston Hanks and Jonathan Hale (eds). 2012. Museum Making. Narratives, Architectures, Exhibitions. London: Routledge. McClellan, Andrew. 2008. The Art Museum from Boullee to Bilbao. Berkeley: University of California Press. McClintock, Anne. 1995. Imperial Leather. London: Routledge. Moser, Stephanie. 2006. Wondrous Curiosities. Ancient Egypt at the British Museum. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 2010. ‘The Devil Is in the Detail: Museum Displays and the Creation of Knowledge’, Museum Anthropology, vol. 33, issue 1, pp. 22–32. Naredi-Rainer, Paul. 2004. Museum Buildings. A Design Manual. Basel: Birkhauser Verlag AG. Newhouse, Victoria. 2007. Towards a New Museum. New York: Monacelli Press. Nixon, Rob. 2013. Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Norsk Maritimt Museums årbok for 2000 [Norwegian Maritime Museum Yearbook]. Pallasmaa, Juhani. 1996. ‘The Geometry of Feeling: A Look at the Phenomenology of Architecture’, in Kate Nesbitt (ed.), Theorizing a New Agenda for Architecture. An Anthology of Architectural Theory 1965–1995. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, pp. 447–53. ———. 2012. The Eyes of the Skin. Architecture and the Senses. London: Wiley. ———. 2015. ‘Body, Mind, and Imagination: The Mental Essence of Architecture’, in Sarah Robinson and Juhani Pallasmaa (eds), Mind in Architecture. Neuroscience, Embodiment, and the Future of Design. Cambridge: MIT Press, pp. 51–74. Pratt, Mary Louise. 2007. Imperial Eyes. London: Routledge Psarra, Sophia. 2005. ‘Spatial Culture, Way-Finding and the Educational Message: The Impact of Layout on the Spatial, Social and Educational Experiences of Visitors to Museums and Galleries’, in Suzanne MacLeod (ed.), Reshaping Museum Space: Architecture, Design, Exhibitions. London: Routledge, pp. 78–94. ———. 2009. Architecture and Narrative. The Formation of Space and Cultural Meaning. London: Routledge. Roppola, Tiina. 2012. Designing for the Museum Visitor Experience. London: Routledge. Schorch, Philipp. 2013. ‘The Experience of a Museum Space’, Museum Management and Curatorship, 28:2, 193–208. Searing, Helen. 2004. Art Spaces: The Architecture of Four Tates. London: Tate.

178

References

Self, Ronnie. 2014. The Architecture of Art Museums: A Decade of Design: 2000–2010. London: Routledge. Sheridan, Michael. 2017. Louisiana Museum of Modern Art: Landscape and Architecture. Humlebæk: Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. Valand konstbiblioteket. Shirazi, M. Reza. 2014. Towards an Articulated Phenomenological Interpretation of Architecture. Phenomenal Phenomenology. London: Routledge. Tibbles, Anthony. 2012: ‘Hello Sailor! How Maritime Museums Are Addressing the Experience of Gay Seafarers’, International Journal of Heritage Studies, vol. 18, no. 2. S. 160–73. Toon, Richard. 2005. ‘Black Box Science in Black Box Science Centres’, in Suzanne MacLeod (ed.), Reshaping Museum Space: Architecture, Design, Exhibitions. London: Routledge, pp. 26–38. Tzortzi, Kali. 2015. Museum space. Where Architecture Meets Museology. London: Routledge. Taylor & Francis Group. Unwin, Simon. 2007. Doorway. London: Routledge. ———. 2009. Analysing Architecture, 3rd edn. London: Routledge. ———. 2014. Analysing Architecture, 4th edn. London: Routledge. Wallace, Frederick William. [1924] 1937. Wooden Ships and Iron Men: The Story of the Square Rigged Merchant Marine of British North America. Boston, MA: Charles E. Lauriat.

Index Ahmed, Sara, 16, 24–25, 31, 34, 48, 55, 58, 89, 90–91, 107, 115, 133, 138–39, 144, 164, 168–69 Åland Maritime Museum, 21–25 The Ancient Art of Navigation (exhibition at Nav-Sw), 137, 144 approach, 4, 15, 22–23, 30, 33, 36–38–40, 42, 48, 54, 56, 61–63, 65, 77, 82–85 architectural history, 16 At Sea! (exhibition at MM-No), 57–58, 70, 101, 103, 109, 125–26, 129–30, 145, 148 Austin, Tricia, 14, 68, 75, 98 Baltic Sea, 2, 46, 98, 100, 106, 108, 139, 142 Boat Hall (MM-Fi), 61, 67, 170 Boat Hall (MM-No), 52–54 Bohusläns Museum, Sweden, 95 captain, 103, 112, 118, 123, 127 child, 104, 122–24, 126, 136, 140, 149, 153, 163, 170, 173 class, 10, 117, 120, 131, 146 Coast Guard Museum, Finland, 3, 59, 61, 67 coastal community, 8, 104, 114, 122–23 collection, 2, 4, 9, 12, 14, 21–22, 27–28, 36, 43–44, 47–48, 57–58, 64, 119, 133, 161 colonialism, 134, 145–46 colonial, 131, 138, 145, 149, 151, 172 conflict, 8, 96, 103, 107, 109, 136, 140, 160–61, 164, 166, 169 ‘cottage’, 38–39, 56, 68 County Museum of Kalmar, Sweden, 98–99 Creighton, Margaret and Lisa Norling, 113, 117, 173 cultural encounter, 144–45, 147, 155, 169 cultural Influences, 8–9, 124, 155 culture, 5–6, 8, 10, 27, 73, 121, 124, 140–41 consumer, 151, 153, 155, 165, 166, 173 material, 9 non-Western 131, 138, 172 ‘Other’, 155 shopping, 150 Culture Harbour Kronborg, 81–82, 89 Denmark, 1, 5–6, 8, 72–73, 81–82, 102–103, 114–15, 145–46, 151, 153, 171 discovery, 4, 23, 30, 36–38, 53, 61, 63, 83

doorway, 24, 29, 32–33, 37, 39–42, 45, 56, 65, 76–77, 79, 84–85, 162 emigrant, 1 See also migrant entrance, 22–23, 33, 40, 56, 66, 76–77, 85 entry, 22, 32, 63, 77, 83 See also entrance Escape (exhibition at Nav-Sw), 104, 161, 164 ethnicity, 10, 117 exhibition design, 12, 17, 22, 28, 47, 88, 90–91, 114, 135, 147, 150–51, 154, 157, 163, 168–70 See also storyscape exotic, 124, 128, 138–139, 148, 172 explore, 7, 12, 38, 61, 63, 83, 89 explorer, 9, 54–55, 69, 90, 118, 136, 170 father, 95, 104, 123–24, 130 Figurehead Hall (Nav-Sw), 41–45, 69 Finland, 1–4, 8–9, 50–51, 58–59, 114, 135, 160, 170 Fish & Folk – 150 Years of Fisheries (exhibition at MM-Ic), 76–77, 81, 101–102, 124, 171 fisherman, 1, 75, 77–79, 81, 90, 95, 101, 114, 118, 124–25, 143, 171 Fleming, David, 2, 100 focus, 33, 40–43, 58, 67, 87 frame, 4, 11–13, 21, 28, 30, 32, 34, 40, 44–45, 47, 50, 53–54, 57–59, 61, 65, 69, 75, 77, 80, 89, 91, 101, 135, 169 From Poverty to Abundance (exhibition at MM-Ic), 79, 80–81, 95, 101, 124 The Gate to the World (exhibition at M/S-Dk), 104, 122–23, 130–31, 139 gender, 10, 113, 117–18, 120, 127–28, 130 geometries of being, 11, 30 Giebelhausen, Michaela, 11–12, 27–28, 33–34, 48, 51, 57 global, 114, 129, 134–35, 140–41, 144–46, 148, 150–52, 154–56, 158, 165–66, 169 globalization, 139, 145, 150–51, 156 harbour, 1–4, 21–22, 25, 35–37, 51–53, 62, 70, 73–75, 77–79, 81–83, 87, 89–90, 123, 130, 147

180

Helsingør, 5, 8, 72–73, 81–83, 89 heteronormative, 131 heterosexuality 121, 129, 173 The History of Diving (exhibition at Nav-Sw), 45, 108 homosexuality, 121, 129 husband, 104, 123–124, 130 Hvattum, Mari, 11 I Save Lives (exhibition at MM-Sw), 104, 162–164 Iceland, 1, 8–9, 72, 114–15, 124, 143, 145, 171 idealized identity, 169, 170–71 In the Shadow of War (exhibition at M/S-Dk), 110–113 Ingemann, Bruno, 14 intersectionality, 117, 129, 131 iron men, 113, 117–18, 121–22, 130 Karlskrona, 8, 10, 26–27, 34, 36–37, 40, 46, 90 king, 8, 33, 43–44, 48, 99, 118, 137, 144, 169 Kotka, 2–4, 8, 51, 58–59, 61–62, 68, 77, 127 Kress, Gunther, 5, 15, 41, 48, 56, 97, 99, 152 land dweller, 1, 137 landscape External, 2, 4, 7, 11, 14–17, 21–23, 31, 37–38, 45, 51, 53–54, 56, 61, 63, 68, 73–74, 82–84, 89–90, 169 Interior, 2, 4, 7–8, 13, 15–17, 21, 23, 32, 41, 44, 46, 51, 53, 56–57, 63, 65, 68, 73, 77, 79–80, 84, 89, 169–70 Leffler, Phyllis, 1, 10 Levitt, Peggy, 9, 10 life at sea, 2, 6, 8, 116, 118, 120–21, 123–25, 128, 130, 136, 172 life on land, 2, 8, 115–18, 120, 122–23, 125, 130–31 ‘line of sight’, 21, 33, 36, 42, 53, 55, 76, 84, 162 M/S Maritime Museum of Denmark, 5–6, 8, 72–73, 81–91, 96, 102–105, 110–111, 114, 121–122, 128–131, 133–135, 139, 144–146, 150, 155, 165, 168, 171–173 MacLeod, Suzanne, 13–14 The Magic Box – Shipping, Shopping and the Global Consumer (exhibition at M/S-Dk), 129–30, 150–155, 165 Maps & Globes – Old Globes for Young Explorers (exhibition at MM-Sw), 136–137, 144 mariner, 6, 46, 136, 141 maritime art, 10, 33 community, 8, 75, 95–96, 102, 109, 114–117, 119, 120, 125, 134, 144, 169, 171–72 (See also coastal community) cultural heritage, 52

Index

cultural history, 1, 10, 114 culture, 8, 10, 114 environment, 47, 73 history, 15–17, 58–59, 99, 101–2, 113, 117–19, 121, 125, 131, 135, 137, 143, 150, 165, 169 industry, 159 life, 91, 95–96, 102, 109, 146 museum, 1–2, 7–8, 10, 14–15, 17, 21, 31, 47, 54, 95, 96, 99, 118, 130, 139, 156, 165–66, 168, 170, 172–74 narrative, 1, 16, 48, 75, 90, 96, 117–18, 120, 122, 134, 139, 144, 146, 170–71, 173 society, 10, 17 technology 8, 151 world, 91, 153, 168–69, 172 Maritime Centre Vellamo, 2–3, 8, 50–51, 59–71, 81, 170 Maritime Museum of Finland, 2–4, 8, 38, 50, 58–68, 102, 104, 109, 115, 121–22, 127–29, 131, 135, 149, 160–61, 170 Maritime Museum in Stockholm, 8, 26–34, 37, 40, 46–48, 57, 90, 104, 115–16, 125, 128, 134, 136, 144, 146, 148, 150, 155, 157, 160, 162, 165, 169 Maritime Museum & Aquarium, Sweden, 99–100 masculinity, 113, 118, 120–122, 170–71, 173 Memorial Hall (MM-Sw), 29, 33, 57 migrant, 160, 164 See also emigrant military leader, 1, 99 See also naval leader modes of communication, 4–5 mother, 122–23, 125 multicultural, 129–131, 147, 153, 172 multimodal communication, 5 museum architecture, 2, 11, 13, 26–28, 51, 81 museum as a monument, 27– 28, 33, 57 museum as an instrument, 27–28 Museum of Kymenlaakso, Finland 3, 58–59 myth, 6–7, 10, 120–22, 124, 129, 169, 172, 173 mythology, 4, 48 ‘narrative environment’, 68, 75, 90, 98 See also staged scene staged narrative storyscape national, 1–2, 4, 8, 10, 34, 52, 59, 68, 81, 103, 114, 141, 143, 157 narrative, 10, 59, 90, 96, 104, 112, 117–18, 120, 122–24, 128, 131, 134, 144–45, 155, 160, 165, 169–172 identity, 1, 10, 129, 134, 169–172 naval base, 35, 46 city, 35, 46 defence, 28 history, 107

Index

leader, 1, 10 (See also military leader) officer, 109 operations, 108 personnel, 46, 142 154 ship, 109 vessel, 35 Naval City of Karlskrona, 34, 46, 79 The Naval Museum, 8, 10, 26–28, 34–48, 55, 62, 68–69, 104, 107–108, 110, 112, 116, 118, 125, 127, 134, 137, 139, 144, 161, 165, 169 Navigation and World Views (exhibition at M/S-Dk), 102–103, 133, 144 navigation, 24, 102–103, 133–135, 137, 144, 157 norm, 8, 28, 120–21, 128. See also heteronormativity The North Star and the Southern Cross (exhibition at MM-Fi), 61, 102, 104, 109, 121–123, 127, 129–131, 135, 149, 160 Norway Is the Sea (exhibition at MM-No), 57–58, 70, 145, 155, 158–59 Norway, 1, 8–9, 50, 54, 57–58, 69–70, 145, 153, 155, 158–59, 170 The Norwegian Maritime Museum, 8, 38, 50–58, 64, 68–70, 84, 90, 97, 101, 103, 109–10, 115, 125–26, 129, 134, 145, 148, 158–59, 170 Old Port of Kotka, 2–4, 51, 77 Oslo fjord, 51–52, 55, 57, 69 Oslo, 8, 52–53 ‘Other’ 8, 131, 134, 138–39, 141–144, 164–65 Our Sailors (exhibition at M/S–Dk), 6, 121–22, 129 Pallasmaa, Juhani, 7, 11–13, 22–23, 44 phenomenology 21–24 architectural theory, 11 See also queer phenomenology place, 1, 4, 13–14, 21, 46–48, 51, 54, 57–59, 63, 65, 69–70, 77, 79, 83, 85–87, 89, 100, 141, 157 identification of, 4, 11, 14, 62, 84 Psarra, Sophia, 5, 12, 24, 37–38, 54 queer 91, 168, 171–72 queer phenomenology 16, 24, 91, 139, 171 in line with, 8, 24–25, 34, 54–55, 58, 90, 115, 133, 139, 141, 144, 168–70 orientate, 24–25, 31, 48, 54, 58, 89, 91, 107, 139, 164, 169 other than, 31, 47–48, 125, 139, 141, 172 out of line, 16, 90–91, 168 See also phenomenology straightening device, 91 race, 10 Refugee across the Sea (exhibition) 99–101 refugee, 1, 99–101, 104, 156, 160–61, 163–66, 173

181

Reykjavík Maritime Museum, 8, 72–81, 90, 95, 101–2, 114, 118, 123, 143, 145, 171 Reykjavík Old Harbour, 73–75, 77, 89–90 Reykjavík, 73–74 romanticized identity, 121, 123, 125, 129, 171, 173 picture of the world, 128 Roppola, Tiina, 5, 11, 14, 17, 57, 134 broadening, 98, 101–3, 105, 107, 109, 112, 120, 147, 155, 158, 160 resonance, 58, 97, 100–101, 103–4, 107, 109, 112, 155, 162–63 performative space, 14, 134, The Royal Ship Kronan (exhibition), 98–100 sailor, 1, 6, 22, 24, 31–32, 69, 95, 99, 101, 103–106, 108, 109–13, 118, 120–131, 133, 136–137, 139, 155, 168–169, 172–173 seafarer, 1, 4, 7, 10, 21, 25, 31, 66, 91, 102–103, 107–110, 112–116, 118, 120–122, 124–125, 128–131, 134–135, 139, 146–147, 169, 171–173 seafaring, 1, 10, 17, 31, 47–48, 58, 90–91, 102, 114–15, 123, 125–26, 128, 131, 135, 151, 154, 156, 160, 168, 170, 173 semiotic resource, 4–5, 11, 97, 107, 111, 152 Sex & the Sea (exhibition/installation), 128–130, 173 shipowner, 1, 103, 125 See also shipping company shipping civil, 110 commercial, 28, 73, 75, 103, 109, company, 10, 149, 152–54, 172. (See also shipowner) container, 149–50 and the environment, 144, 156–59, 166, 173 history, 57 and migration, 144, 165 narratives about, 51 Shipping & Shopping (exhibition at MM-Sw), 34, 90, 115–16, 125, 150–51, 158 Shipping, 1, 3–4, 31, 34, 48, 67, 69, 75, 90, 95, 101–3, 113, 115–16, 131, 134–35, 144–45, 149–159, 165–66, 170, 172–74 and shopping 129, 150–51, 154, 156, 158, 165–66, 173–74 Shirazi, Reza, 22–24, 38 sphere man’s, 117, 128, 172 masculine, 117, woman’s, 117, 172 staged narrative, 14, 36, 75 See also exhibition design, staged scene, storyscape staged scene, 7, 75, 80, 133, 164 See also staged narrative, narrative environment Stockholm, 8, 26, 28, 30, 118 Storm (exhibition at M/S-Dk), 105–107

182

Storyscape, 5, 7, 22, 34, 45–47, 57–58, 68–69, 79–81, 88–90, 96–97, 101, 107–108, 110–11, 113, 126, 128, 134–37, 140–41, 146–47, 149, 150–55, 163, 168–69, 171 See also exhibition design, staged narrative, narrative environment Submarine Hall (Nav-Sw), 34, 36, 39, 43, 108, 125, 127, 142 submariner, 125, 127 Surface Tension – Cold War in the Baltic Sea 1979–89 (exhibition at MM-Sw), 46, 108–110, 112–113, 125, 139–141 Sweden, 1, 8–9, 26–27, 33, 35, 47–48, 69, 82, 95, 98–99, 107, 118, 137, 139–41, 146, 148–50, 155, 165–66, 169 Tea Time – The First Globalization (exhibition at MM-Sw), 139, 145, 146–151, 153 ‘temple’, 38–40, 67

Index

Thirst (exhibition/installation at M/S–Dk), 96–100 ÞORSKASTRÍÐIN, For Cod’s Sake’ (exhibition at MM-Ic), 143 Torpedoed (exhibition at MM-No), 110–12 tourist, 1, 35, 75, 82 Tzortzi, Kali, 12, 27, 51 Unwin, Simon, 4, 11–12, 22, 24, 27–28, 32–33, 38–42, 45, 56, 62, 64, 68–69, 77, 84–85 The Vasa Museum, Sweden, 118–120, 130 Vasa’s Women. Always Present – Often Invisible (exhibition), 118–119, 130 The Voyagers (exhibition at MM-Sw), 34, 47, 90, 146–149, 155 wife, 95, 103, 123–126 wooden women, 113, 117–18, 123, 130