Performing Nordic Heritage: Everyday Practices and Institutional Culture [1 ed.] 1409448347, 9781409448341

Table of contents :
Contents
List of Figures
List of Contributors
Series Preface
Series Acknowledgements
Acknowledgements
1 Introduction: Performing Nordic Heritage – Institutional Preservation and Popular Practices • Peter Aronsson and Lizette Gradén
2 Walking Nordic: Performing Space, Place and Identity • Susanne Österlund-Pötzsch
3 ‘Something in the Air’: Performing the North within Norden • Katla Kjartansdóttir and Kristinn Schram
4 A Windmill and a Vikinghjem: The Importance of Visual Icons as Heritage Tropes among Danish-Americans • Hanne Pico Larsen
5 Negotiating Local, National and Nordic Identities through Commemorations • Torbjörn Eng and Ingemar Lindaräng
6 Banal Nordism: Recomposing an Old Song of Peace • Stuart Burch
7 ‘Nordic’ as Border Country Rhetoric: Danish versus German in South Jutland Museums and Memorial Culture • Olav Christensen
8 Performing Nordic Spaces in American Museums: Gift Exchange, Volunteerism and Curatorial Practice • Lizette Gradén
9 The Geopolitics of Distinction: Negotiating Regional Spaces in the Baltic Museums • Eglė Rindzevičiūtė
10 Sweden versus Norden in the Nordiska Museet • Magdalena Hillström
11 Performing the Nordic in Museums: Changing Ideas of Norden and their Political Implications • Peter Aronsson
12 Conclusion: Performing Nordic Spaces in Everyday Life and Museums • Peter Aronsson and Lizette Gradén
Index

Citation preview

Performing Nordic Heritage The performance of heritage takes place in prestigious institutions such as museums and archives, in officially sanctioned spaces such as jubilees and public monuments, but also in more mundane, ephemeral and banal cultural practices, such as naming of phenomena, viewing exhibitions or walking in the countryside. This volume examines the performance of Nordic heritage and the shaping of the very idea of Norden in diverse contexts in North America, the Baltic and the Nordic countries and examines the importance of these places as sites for creating and preserving cultural heritage. Offering rich perspectives on a part of Europe which has not been the centre of discussion in the Anglophone world, this volume will be of value to a wide readership, including cultural historians, museum practitioners, policy-makers and scholars of heritage, ethnology and folkloristics. Peter Aronsson, Linköping University, Sweden Lizette Gradén, Nordic Heritage Museum and University of Washington, USA

THE NORDIC EXPERIENCE Series editor: Jonas Harvard, Programme Manager, Nordic Spaces, Centre for East European and Baltic Studies, Södertörn University, Stockholm. What makes a region unique? Be it Vikings or the welfare state, gender equality or flat-pack furniture, for a long time the Nordic region has had a distinctive profile, visible to inhabitants and outsiders alike. ‘The Nordic Experience’ book series offers a critical narrative of how, during the last 200 years, this well-known part of Europe has demarcated itself from other regions, and how it has been stereotyped by outside observers. Through in-depth and comparative analyses of heritage practices, polar science, transnational media structures, expressions of cultural identity and the distribution of democratic ideals, the five volumes explore the negotiation of which territories, activities, objects, traits or ideals should qualify as Nordic. www.nordicspaces.com www.ashgate.com/thenordicexperience Titles in the series: 1. Performing Nordic Heritage: Everyday Practices and Institutional Culture Edited by Peter Aronsson and Lizette Gradén 2. Science, Geopolitics and Culture in the Polar Region: Norden Beyond Borders Edited by Sverker Sörlin 3. Communicating the North: Media Structures and Images in the Making of the Nordic Region Edited by Jonas Harvard and Peter Stadius 4. Nordic Dance Spaces: Practicing and Imagining a Region Edited by Karen Vedel and Petri Hoppu 5. Models of Democracy in Nordic and Baltic Europe: Political Institutions and Discourse Edited by Nicholas Aylott

Performing Nordic Heritage Everyday Practices and Institutional Culture

Edited by Peter Aronsson Linköping University, Sweden Lizette Gradén Nordic Heritage Museum and University of Washington, USA

First published 2013 by Ashgate Publishing Published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © Peter Aronsson, Lizette Gradén and the contributors 2013 Peter Aronsson and Lizette Gradén have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Aronsson, Peter. Performing Nordic heritage : everyday practices and institutional culture. – (The Nordic experience) 1. Cultural awareness – Scandinavia. 2. Scandinavia – Cultural policy. 3. Cultural property – Scandinavia. 4. Cultural property – Protection – Scandinavia. 5. Scandinavians – Ethnic identity. I. Title II . Series III . Gradén, Lizette. 306’.0948–dc23 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Performing Nordic heritage : everyday practices and institutional culture / edited by Peter Aronsson and Lizette Gradén. p. cm.—(The Nordic experience) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4094-4834-1 (hardcover) 1. National characteristics, Scandinavian. 2. Ethnicity— Social aspects—Scandinavia. 3. Ethnicity—Social aspects—North America. 4. Ethnicity—Social aspects—Baltic States. 5. Scandinavian Americans—Ethnic identity. 6. Scandinavians—Baltic States—Ethnic identity. 7. Historic preservation—Social aspects. 8. Cultural property—Protection—Social aspects. 9. Museums—Social aspects. 10. Popular culture—Social aspects. I. Aronsson, Peter. II . Gradén, Lizette. DL30.P47 2013 305.83’95—dc23 2012023733 ISBN 9781409448341 (hbk) ISBN 9781315599991 (ebk)

Contents List of Figures vii List of Contributors ix Series Preface xiii Series Acknowledgements xv Acknowledgementsxvii 1

Introduction: Performing Nordic Heritage – Institutional Preservation and Popular Practices Peter Aronsson and Lizette Gradén

2

Walking Nordic: Performing Space, Place and Identity Susanne Österlund-Pötzsch

3

‘Something in the Air’: Performing the North within Norden53 Katla Kjartansdóttir and Kristinn Schram

4

A Windmill and a Vikinghjem: The Importance of Visual Icons as Heritage Tropes among Danish-Americans Hanne Pico Larsen

5

1 27

73



Negotiating Local, National and Nordic Identities through Commemorations99 Torbjörn Eng and Ingemar Lindaräng

6

Banal Nordism: Recomposing an Old Song of Peace Stuart Burch

7

‘Nordic’ as Border Country Rhetoric: Danish versus German in South Jutland Museums and Memorial Culture Olav Christensen

163

Performing Nordic Spaces in American Museums: Gift Exchange, Volunteerism and Curatorial Practice Lizette Gradén

189

8

129

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9  The Geopolitics of Distinction: Negotiating Regional Spaces in the Baltic Museums Eglė Rindzevičiūtė 10

Sweden versus Norden in the Nordiska Museet Magdalena Hillström

11

Performing the Nordic in Museums: Changing Ideas of Norden and their Political Implications Peter Aronsson

12

221 247

271

Conclusion: Performing Nordic Spaces in Everyday Life and Museums301 Peter Aronsson and Lizette Gradén

Index315

List of Figures 2.1 2.2

Two girls on skis, Vörå, Finland, 1919 Nordic walkers by the shore

32 38

4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4

The Danish Windmill at Elk Horn, Iowa A little girl looking through the window at the Viking re-enactors in the VikingHjem, Elk Horn, Iowa A view inside the Viking smithy where a Viking is being fitted for battle, Elk Horn, Iowa The Norsemen Brewing Company & the Thirsty Mermaids Brewhaus under construction

80

5.1

Two countries – one future: bicentennial commemoration stamp, Sweden–Finland, 1809–2009

6.1 Saab AB: the 84 mm Carl-Gustaf Multi-purpose Weapon System, product sheet 6.2 Princess Victoria and Prince Daniel 6.3 The Armémuseum, Sweden’s national army museum 6.4 Body Armour from the series ‘HÆRWERK’ by Morten Traavik, the first artist in residence at Norway’s Defence Museum 8.1 A water tower in Lindstrom, Minnesota, reframed in the design of a giant coffee-pot 8.2 Folk-art gallery at the Nordic Heritage Museum in Seattle, Washington 8.3 The Nordic Christmas display at the American Swedish Institute in Minneapolis

85 86 92 105 131 147 148 152 200 203 207

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List of Contributors Peter Aronsson is Professor of Cultural Heritage and Uses of the Past at Linköping University. He is coordinating international comparative research in the projects: ‘National History – Nordic Culture: Negotiating Identity in the Museum’, of which this book is a final output, and an extensive EU-funded project, ‘European National Museums: Identity Politics, the Uses of the Past and the European Citizen’ (EuNaMus). Stuart Burch is a senior lecturer at Nottingham Trent University in the UK where he teaches museum studies, heritage management and public history. Olav Christensen holds a PhD in ethnology from the University of Oslo. Among his fields of research and publications are national identity, museology and youth culture. Torbjörn Eng is Programme Manager at the Riksbankens Jubileumsfond. He holds a PhD in history from Uppsala University and has published widely on the topic of state-building processes in the Baltic Sea region during the early modern era. Lizette Gradén is Chief Curator at the Nordic Heritage Museum in Seattle, Affiliate Associate Professor in Scandinavian Studies at the University of Washington, and former Research Fellow at Konstfack, Stockholm. She holds a PhD in ethnology from Stockholm University and has published extensively on Swedish–American culture. She coordinates the transatlantic comparative project ‘Nordic Spaces in the North and North America: Heritage Preservation in Real and Imagined Nordic Places’, of which this book is a final output. Magdalena Hillström holds a PhD in culture studies from Linköping University (2006). Her research is mainly concentrated on cultural heritage politics, museum history and the formation and development of cultural history museums in Scandinavia. She is currently doing research within the projects ‘National History – Nordic Culture: Negotiating Identity in the Museums’ and ‘The Museum’s Educational Role: Museums, Schools and Popular Education 1930–2010’.

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Katla Kjartansdóttir currently holds a position as a researcher for the Icelandic Centre for Ethnology and Folklore (ICEF) and EDDA – Center of Excellence. She holds an MSc in nationalism studies from Edinburgh University and is a PhD candidate in ethnology. Her research interests are the North, identity, gender, space and place of performance and identity negotiations, such as museums, along with mobility and heritage. She has recently been focusing on the mobility and identity of Icelanders within Europe, particularly in the North. Hanne Pico Larsen is Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Germanic Languages at Columbia University, New York. She received a PhD in Scandinavian studies and folklore from the University of California, Berkeley (2006). She has published extensively on various manifestations of Danishness in the USA, and her current research interests include the New Nordic Cuisine both in Scandinavia and in the realm of American consumer culture, as well as the flexibility of Scandinavianness as an ethnic identity in general.  Ingemar Lindaräng holds a PhD in history from Linköping University. His publications include works on cultural heritage and the uses of history. Susanne Österlund-Pötzsch, PhD, is a researcher in Folkloristics at Åbo Akademi University, Turku, and an archivist at the Archives of Folk Culture, Helsinki. Her research and publications focus on empirical and theoretical work concerning walking practices, Finnish–Swedish ethnicity, performance and heritage. Recent publications include ‘Pedestrian Art: The Tourist Gait as Tactic and Performance’ in Ethnologia Europaea (40:2) and ‘The Ephemeral Act of Walking: Random Reflections on Walking in a Landscape of Memory(loss)’ in Ethnologia Scandinavica 41. Eglė Rindzevičiūtė is Associate Professor at the Gothenburg Research Institute (GRI), the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. She holds a PhD in culture studies from Linköping University and has published extensively on Lithuanian state cultural policy and the history of techno-scientific governance. Among her publications is Constructing Soviet Cultural Policy: Cybernetics and Governance in Lithuania after World War II (Linköping University Press, 2008). Kristinn Schram is Director of the Icelandic Centre for Ethnology and Folklore (ICEF) and a postdoctoral researcher dealing with folkloristic perspectives on transnational performances and the exoticism of the North. Combining audiovisual media with fieldwork, his research centres on the re-appropriation

List of Contributors

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of representations in both media and everyday life. His postdoctoral research position was awarded by the Icelandic Centre for Research and Edda – Center of Excellence. He also teaches folklore at the University of Iceland, ICEF and other academic institutions.

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Series Preface What makes a region unique? Be it Vikings or the welfare state, gender equality or flat-pack furniture, for a long time the Nordic region has had a distinctive profile, visible to inhabitants and outsiders alike. Much like the Mediterranean, the Balkans or even America, it has often been portrayed as something more than a geographical area. Over the last few centuries different groups with various agendas have promoted the idea of a Nordic specificity. Xenophobic nationalists have sought demarcation against otherness. Proponents of borderless brotherhood have rallied for solidarity in times of war. As political alliances and cultural connections between nations and continents continuously change, so do the meanings of labels such as ‘the North’, ‘the Nordic region’ or Norden. The book series ‘The Nordic Experience’ takes on this dynamic between geopolitics and identity. It offers a critical narrative of how, during the last 200 years, stereotypes and definitions of this well-known part of Europe have been established and challenged, reused and circulated in places as diverse as Scotland, Estonia, North America, Antarctica and South Africa. Through in-depth and comparative analyses of heritage practices, polar science, transnational media structures, expressions of cultural identity and the diffusion of democratic ideals, the five volumes explore the negotiation of which territories, activities, objects, traits or ideals should qualify as Nordic. The scope of the series is a testament to the value of studying Norden, just like any region, as an example of the inevitable tensions between the idea of a coherent community rooted in language and history, and the diverse and unsettling catalogue of scattered experiences it consists of. The result is a series of refreshing insights into how a region can become something beyond physical place – a notion distributed in space. Jonas Harvard Programme Manager, Nordic Spaces Centre for East European and Baltic Studies Södertörn University Stockholm

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Series Acknowledgements The research presented in the book series ‘The Nordic Experience’ has been conducted within the framework of the research programme Nordic Spaces, generously funded by a consortium of research agencies. For this research support and for additional grants enabling among other things numerous book workshops, language editing, the purchase of image rights and professional indexing, the volume authors wish to express their deepest gratitude to the following: NordForsk The Estonian Research Council The Finnish Cultural Foundation The Foundation for Baltic and East European Studies The Foundation for Swedish Culture in Finland The Riksbankens Jubileumsfond The Royal Swedish Academy of Letters History and Antiquities The Society of Swedish Literature in Finland The programme was coordinated from the Centre for Baltic and East European Studies at Södertörn University, Stockholm.

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Acknowledgements This book is the result of true teamwork across disciplines. The editors are deeply grateful to the contributors in the Nordic countries and abroad, who accepted our invitation to write chapters for this volume on Performing Nordic Heritage. They responded to our suggestions promptly and with enthusiasm. We also extend appreciation to friends and colleagues who offered advice and expertise throughout the process. To the members of the research projects ‘Nordic Spaces in the North and North America: Heritage Preservation in Real and Imagined Nordic Places’ and ‘National History – Nordic Culture: Negotiating Identity in the Museum’, from which this book benefited, we offer a heartfelt thanks. The authors are indebted to the museums, historical societies, archives and libraries which allowed Ashgate to publish photographs of objects in their collections, as well as to individuals who supplied one-off images and shared their stories in interviews and through fieldwork. The funding we received as part of the ‘Nordic Spaces’ research programme provided time to carry out fieldwork, dig deeper into libraries and archives, arrange workshops and conferences, which in turn has created new networks and provided new career opportunities for younger scholars within and beyond the Nordic countries. For all this we are deeply grateful. Peter Aronsson and Lizette Gradén Gemla and Seattle

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Chapter 1

Introduction: Performing Nordic Heritage – Institutional Preservation and Popular Practices Peter Aronsson and Lizette Gradén

Norden – Model, Misery or the Middle Way? Nordic societies have long accentuated their peaceful history and efficient infrastructure, for both the home audience and the international community. In the last decade, however, darker aspects of the Nordic reality, such as rising support for right-wing neo-Nazi political parties, cutbacks in the welfare state and bribery have often featured in the international media. Whereas the Nordic countries used to provide model alternatives to both totalitarian systems and raw capitalism, the current state of affairs sets the Nordic states – and their Middle Way – as a disturbing example of other possible roads into the twentyfirst century globalized world. This ambivalence is, however, not new. This volume will investigate how images of Norden (as the five Nordic countries are referred to in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden) as a supranational identity have provided, and continue to provide, arenas for negotiating cultural understandings of community in specific public contexts. More specifically, this volume is a series of case studies of how a transnational dimension of identity has become an asset for negotiating collaboration and consensus, rather than feeding conflicts and legitimizing claims on territorial realms. It is important to understand the conditions required for transnational identity to move in this direction, especially since the identities associated with Roman, German, Slav, Turk or Arab affinities can move, and have moved, in either direction. However, we have learned from studying such affinities that the construction of identity always involves the inclusion, but also the exclusion, of certain communities, values and futures. The ways in which these processes of inclusion and exclusion are carried out are significant. What can we learn from the Nordic case?

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Within the historical discourse, values identified as Nordic have ranged from rustic, courageous, heathen and violent to Protestant ethics, secularism, social egalitarianism, individualism, democratic culture and the welfare state. As the study of culture has taught us, such values are shaped in the present and by the effects of previous experiences, formed by action, rituals and institutions. How and with what consequences have Nordic spaces been created in the Nordic countries themselves and outside of them? How do such spaces give shape to cultural heritage, delimit identities and draw boundaries through the recognition of difference? Throughout history, high cultural artefacts, such as museums, archives, monuments and jubilees, as well as more mundane and ephemeral cultural practices, such as naming phenomena, viewing exhibitions or walking in the landscape, have shaped, and have been shaped by, Nordic spaces. From early modern times, Norden has been perceived as a contested cultural, ideological and political resource aimed at legitimizing the military conquest of Scandinavian and Baltic neighbours, among other things. During the early and mid-nineteenth century, the perception of Norden changed as the Nordic countries themselves underwent a transformation towards solidarity and collaboration in the economic, political and cultural spheres. As a result of stronger external threats, Nordic imagination and collaboration expanded in an era marked by nation-building and was expressed in museums, associations and journals. With increased collaboration among European countries, extensive migration and new demands from citizens and markets in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Norden has come to be seen as a cultural entity in which welfare provisions, peace and gender equality go hand in hand with new sensibilities and markets for aesthetics, tourism and heritage, not only in the Nordic countries themselves, but also globally. The latest appraisal of Norden as a model came around 2010 as these countries seemed to be managing the economic crises better than most regions. At the World Economic Forum Meeting held in Davos in 2011, the Nordic Way was presented as a way of reconciling strong state intervention with the market economy while at the same time safeguarding individual rights. Generalized trust does not contradict but instead guarantees a continuing individualization process in a successful neo-liberal economy. The Nordic model was relaunched not as a social democratic heritage, but as a Nordic cultural asset-making economy as ‘strong as Pippi Longstocking’.1 1   Quoted from a media report presented by OECD Secretary-General José Ángel Gurría in January 2011. See also Klas Eklund, Lars Trägårdh and Henrik Berggren, Shared Norms for the New Reality: The Nordic Way / World Economic Forum, Davos 2011 (Stockholm, 2011).

Introduction

3

The exclusion conveyed by ideologies is also an integral part of Norden’s ideologies. They were carried to atrocious extremes by the Nazis and live on today in right-wing extremist circles and in some of the attitudes to non-European migrants in parliamentary political parties in all Nordic countries. Fortunately, the positive aspects of Nordic values currently associated with peaceful solution of conflicts, democracy and welfare tend to overshadow past conflicts and such practices as forced sterilization in the name of science and collective welfare, as well as existing discriminatory practices, export of weapons, and hierarchical and exclusion practices. This gap between perceived Nordic values and current practices calls for further analysis. Real and Imagined Nordic Spaces How do repeated performances of Norden produce the values they represent? To what degree does the concept of Nordic community reflect a shared historic and contemporary reality and to what degree was, and possibly is, it a powerful mythology? What roles do disciplines like history, ethnology, folkloristics and art history play when Norden is created and re-created academically and artistically? How can we balance the net effects of an internationally very high level of social trust, pragmatic and peaceful conflict resolution and opportunity for individuals to fulfil their life choices? To what degree is positive imagery used to hide the exercise of power and also discrimination in the Nordic countries? When the Nordic Society was established in the twentieth century, it claimed that ‘co-operation not only serves the Nordic countries, but also serves the interest of peace and justice throughout the whole world’, promoting Norden as a peaceful place.2 Stricter immigration laws in Finland and Denmark, financial mismanagement in Iceland, the export of weapons from Sweden and tragic criminal acts such as the 2011 murders at Utøya in Norway are not part of the imagery performed, but are decidedly a part of contemporary Nordic reality. The tension between perception and practice has created concern about what circumstances can turn an ideology of community into a weapon, as well as ambivalence towards parts of the Nordic heritage, especially the belligerent aspects of Viking culture and early modern expansionism associated with Sweden’s Age of Greatness, participation in imperial endeavour, and the slave trade. The latter is a significant part of Danish history.

2  http://www.norden.se/Om-oss/Foreningen-Nordens-verksamhet/In-English. Accessed 12 February 2012.

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Only seventy years ago, the presentation of conquest was still part of a common racist rhetoric at the opening of the Museum of Antiquity in Stockholm in 1943: The preserved skeletal material shows us Stone Age Swedes as fairly similar to the core of the present population ... The Scandinavian peninsula is the area where the Nordic race has been best preserved ... the core of the current Swedish people can apparently with high probability lead their ancestry in an unbroken lineage back to the sixth or seventh millennium BC, perhaps all the way to the ‘dark and mysterious age’ of the first hunters of reindeer 10,000 years ago.3

Examples of similar modes of historicizing and essentializing the Nordic in the service of nationalism can be quoted from any of these countries and are in obvious tension with later versions of Nordic values that depict Norden as the Middle Way, halfway between totalitarian systems and unbridled capitalism. What role does heritage-making play in preserving or altering Norden and its collective values? The aim of this volume is therefore to scrutinize the creation of Nordic heritage as a performative action. By bringing together studies within the disciplines of culture studies, history and folkloristics, we hope to show how Nordic spaces emerge from a tension between the institutional and the vernacular, at the intersection of the global and the local. As we believe that humans create meaning and choose actions in complex ways that are linked over time and across space, we use an interdisciplinary approach to map these processes. When performing culture and heritage, individuals, groups and institutions move beyond disciplines. Therefore, we researchers also need a wider approach to identify and understand the power of culture. That means that heritage is approached not merely as remnants or as conscious uses of the past, but as a particular cultural practice about cultural practice. The title of the book emphasizes, on the one hand, heritage as performance and, on the other, that stringing together or repeating such performances plays a role in shaping society and identity. Following this introduction, we will introduce and discuss the concepts of heritage and Norden, and performance and performativity, as vital for the making of history. The chapters in the book will probe facets of these realities by looking first at more everyday practices, media representations, practices of commemoration and the more institutionalized investments museums represent. Various types of scenes and themes for creating Nordic spaces will 3   Sigurd Curman, Birger Nerman and Dagmar Selling (eds), Tiotusen år i Sverige (Stockholm, 1945), p. 80.

Introduction

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be brought together in order to make robust and nuanced conclusions possible. In a field full of utopias, lucid speech acts and everyday practices, this broad approach needs both historical perspectives and contemporary ethnographic analyses; hence the collaboration of several disciplines to make this effort viable and enable us to answer questions in innovative and revealing ways. Within this framework, the selection of articles deals with the performance of Nordic heritage, but it may also be understood as individual and collective performative acts. Hence the conceptual tools for this endeavour must be presented, and we will start with the concept of Norden, the Nordic region and Nordic spaces that frame the object of our research. The Nordic Countries and Nordic Spaces What does space as an analytical concept add to our understanding of the Nordic experience? That Denmark, Iceland, Finland, Norway and Sweden are today called the Nordic countries, and Denmark, Norway and Sweden are called Scandinavia is a result of repeated performances – a collective performative space. As historians Bo Stråth and Øystein Sørensen have pointed out, the idea of nations and states in northern Europe has interacted with the idea of a shared Scandinavian culture.4 According to them, from the Roman consul Publius Cornelius Tacitus’ (ad c.55–117) Germania onwards, the Nordic peoples have been recognized from the outside both as part of a shared culture and as divided into tribes/nations. The dynamic between a Scandinavian cultural community and the changing borders of national states has been partly due to past events; institutions and folklore have been selected, interpreted and used as productive agents in politics and heritage. This kind of tension is primarily evident not only in early modern battles for hegemony, but also in the cultural skirmish between the Nordic empires of Denmark and Sweden that followed the lasting peace. Both states started to institutionalize cultural heritage by setting up committees, educating state historians and launching investigations on archaeological sites, by collecting witness statements from priests and the general public, and by reinterpreting the classical authors of antiquity. The struggle between the two countries focused on such issues as determining the most ancient home for the Goths, pinpointing the sites of glorious deeds, locating names identified in both classical literature

4   Bo Stråth and Øystein Sørensen (eds), The Cultural Construction of Norden (Oslo, 1997).

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and the Icelandic sagas, and determining the territory of the state or region issuing a narrative of sovereignty.5 For a time, Sweden had the upper hand over Denmark, with victories in 1658 and 1676 legitimizing its desire for a grander role on the European scene. Suecia Antiqua et Hodierna marks the high tide of this representation of Sweden: every image in it is larger than life and better than reality, thus offering scope for expectations of even greater victories over the Russians east of the Baltic Sea. The scenario rapidly changed with the Great Northern War and the Russian victory in the early eighteenth century. The historical rhetoric quickly grew obsolete and a new layer of more utilitarian investigations in the Linnean tradition was superimposed over it, relegating the Gothic dimension to a more ornamental and nostalgic function.6 Another example was a result of the Napoleonic Wars, which transformed the Nordic state system once again when Russia took over the old Swedish province of Finland, and Sweden in turn formed a union with the Norwegian mainland, formerly Danish territory. The shock created broader interest in cultural heritage as founded in the way of life of the seemingly unchanging peasant culture. A more democratic, enduring and peaceful view of cultural heritage was then added to the glorious memories of past battles. When we look at Sweden’s performances in museums and exhibitions, the country simultaneously highlights its Great Power status and its powerful peace, perhaps best illustrated by the museum of the magnificent warship Vasa, which sank in 1628 (fortunately), without having used its lethal weapons even once. This ship is a prime example of an object leading a second life as heritage, showcased in its own museum in Stockholm. More importantly, the Nordic dimension turned out to be useful in this new context, too. With the region caught between Russia in the east and a growing Germany in the south, a new drive to recognize a common Nordic legacy was gaining ground. This was more prominent in Sweden and Denmark, since Finland, Norway and Iceland created their own national identities and hence had a more ambivalent attitude towards the idea of a common Nordic culture. Adding to this traditional family are the Baltic states which, in fear of

  J.W. Burrow, A History of Histories. Epics, Chronicles, Romances and Inquiries from Herodotus and Thucydides to the Twentieth Century (London, 2007); Patrik Hall, Den svenskaste historien. Nationalism i Sverige under sex sekler (Stockholm, 2000); Anthony D. Smith, Nationalism and Modernism: A Critical Survey of Recent Theories of Nations and Nationalism (London, 1998); Ingmar Stenroth, Sveriges rötter. En nations födelse (Stockholm, 2005). 6   Mattias Legnér, Fäderneslandets rätta beskrivning. mötet mellan antikvarisk forskning och ekonomisk nyttokult i 1700–talets Sverige (Helsinki, 2004). 5

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a revisionist Russia, turned to the Nordic community and sought to be part of the family. The Swedish minority struggling for recognition in Finland and the Åland Islands testifies to the utility of the transnational potential also developing in some other regions, such as Öresund, Nordkalotten, Mittnorden and Sønderjylland. This pattern of a long-standing repertoire of a shared Nordic culture brought to attention and revitalized by external threats illustrates an enduring trajectory from the nineteenth century. The territorial borders of Norden have been subject to change despite the persistent idea that they are examples of stable and homogenous nationstates. The current map was finalized to the east in 1918 with the creation of Finland, which was once part of Sweden, along with the Swedish-speaking island territory of the autonomous Åland Islands. In the North Atlantic is Iceland, which once belonged to Norway and later to Denmark, but has been an independent state since 1944. Moreover, there are the Faroe Islands and Greenland, which remain autonomous territories under Denmark. Hence, five states and three autonomous territories constitute the Nordic region in the eyes of the Nordic Council. In addition there are territories once within the cultural and political realm of the Scandinavian countries, including the historically contested Schleswig-Holstein, the Orkney Islands, the Shetland Islands and the Baltic states. Some of them, like Estonia, have recently been knocking on the Nordic door politically. Sapmí, the transnational Sami region spanning Finland, Sweden and Norway, adds further complexity to the perception of Norden as a territorial region. Especially in Scotland but also in other parts of the United Kingdom, a strong cultural and historical affinity with Norden has been part of identity politics. A travesty of such affinities led to horrific outcomes when the Germanic and Aryan ideologies were exploited by Nazi Germany to motivate military aggression and genocide.7 After the diaspora of Nordic emigrants to the United States, Nordic spaces have been set up in some of the small towns and urban neighbourhoods where immigrants settled. The overarching concept of Norden and Nordic has been less relevant to the makers and preservers of heritage in the United States. In the hands of immigrants and their descendants, institutional usage most often breaks down into more specific categories based on identification with particular places. Identity politics and heritage-making performed in families, groups and communities relate to concepts such as Scandinavian, Swedish–Finnish, Danish,

7   Catharina Raudvere, Anders Andrén and Kristina Jennbert (eds), Myter om det nordiska: mellan romantik och politik (Lund, 2001).

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Norwegian, Icelandic, Swedish and particular provinces. (In the Englishspeaking world, Scandinavia sometimes refers to all the Nordic countries.8) The North outside Norden reaches beyond territorial boundaries to include numerous cultural and educational networks. These include Nordic, Scandinavian and ethnic societies and encompass, but are not limited to, churches, schools, universities and museums. Today, many of these physical places and institutions re-create themselves as centres and museums and temporary exhibits. Such spaces also materialize in situations of grief, as in the commemoration at Scandinavia House in New York and the Nordic Heritage Museum of the victims murdered in Oslo communities where Nordic spaces emerge performatively and to varying degrees, such as on Utøya in 2011.9 Making a Scandinavian State or Nordic Culture The idea of a Scandinavian state in the Nordic countries and its diaspora has a precedent in the Kalmar Union (1389–1523) and in the ferocious battles for hegemony around the Baltic Sea in the seventeenth century.10 In the nineteenth century, however, this past was evoked in both an idealistic and a power-politics context. The expansion of a unified Germany and a modernizing Russia gave impetus to a Scandinavian movement carried by intellectuals and students across Norden. Political disillusion hampered the political construction of Norden after 1864. The threat of an expansionist Germany in southern Denmark could not trigger enough support in the Swedish parliament when the time came to demonstrate the will to defend Denmark’s southern border. This did not mean,   For more in-depth studies of the American ethnic towns in which heritage-making is based on the identity of settlers from the Nordic countries, see Lizette Gradén, On Parade: Making Heritage in Lindsborg, Kansas (Uppsala, 2003); Lizette Gradén, ‘Swedish Communities’, in Simon Bronner (ed.), Encyclopedia of American Folklife (New York, 2006), pp. 1200–1205; Anders Linde-Laursen, ‘Främmande Böjningsformer av det Danska. Marknadsföring och Nationell Identitet i Solvang, Kalifornien’, in Gunnar Alsmark (ed.), Skjorta eller själ? Kulturella identiteter i tid och rum (Lund, 1997), pp. 174–198; Hanne Pico Larsen, ‘Solvang, CA: “The Danish Capital of America”: A Little Bit of Denmark, Disney, or Something Else?’ PhD dissertation (Berkeley, 2006). Odd S. Lovoll, Norwegians on the Prairie: Ethnicity and the Development of the Country Town (St Paul, 2006). 9   Based on Lizette Gradén’s fieldnotes from the vigil at the Nordic Heritage Museum 22 July 2011, as well as email invitations sent out by the American Scandinavian Foundation. 10   Harald Gustafsson, Nordens historia: En europeisk region under 1200 år (Lund, 1997); Peter Aronsson, ‘Nations, Provinces and Regions: A Scandinavian Perspective’, in Identities: Nations, Provinces and Regions (Norwich, 1999). 8

Introduction

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however, that the idea of a cultural community disappeared. It continued to be manifest in the way in which heritage was constructed, civil society mobilized and problems solved. The eventually peaceful dissolution of the union between Norway and Sweden in 1905 proved to be only a minor setback in that culture of collaboration and, indeed, the very lack of military action supports the case argued here and the viability of such collaboration over the long term.11 East of the Baltic Sea, the Russian Empire in the eighteenth century made the multicultural provinces describe themselves as western Russian or northern European. Since the twelfth century German elites living in the area had used the term ‘Baltic’ to distinguish themselves from other Germans and other language groups. Baltic or Balto-Slavic languages were crucial to national movements and opposition to the German and Russian elites forming new institutions and heritage in the late nineteenth century. With the creation of independent states after the First World War, and again after 1989, the Baltic label became an important asset to be used together with Norden and Europe in defence against the mighty Russian neighbour. In international military strategic thinking after the Cold War, this was such an important dimension that Norden was somewhat swallowed up by the strategic Baltic area.12 Expanding from this territorial definition, we suggest in this volume that in the twentieth century the Nordic countries reached beyond territorial boundaries to include numerous cultural and educational networks.13 Among these are the Nordic Council founded in 1952, the Nordic Council of Ministers founded in 1971 and the Nordic Cultural Foundation founded in 1966, as well as a number of museums, rituals and scholarly institutions, including Nordic conferences, professional networks and sister cities in Nordic, Baltic and American cities. As heritage is made in the present with recourse to the past and an imagined trajectory into the future, there is space for new initiatives in both the cultural   Carl Jonas Ludvig Almqvist, Om Skandinavismens utförbarhet: Föredrag, hållet i det Skandinaviska Sällskapet den 4 Februarii 1846 (Copenhagen, 1846); Peter Aronsson, ‘1905 – unionsupplösning att glömma eller att stoltsera med?’, in Torbjörn Nilsson and Øystein Sørensen (eds), Goda grannar eller morska motståndare? Sverige och Norge från 1814 till idag (Stockholm, 2005); Ruth Hemstad, Fra Indian summer til nordisk vinter. Skandinavisk samarbeid, skandinavisme og unionsøpplosningen (Oslo, 2008). 12   Norbert Götz maps in Jenny Björkman, Björn Fjæstad and Jonas Harvard (eds), Ett nordiskt rum. Historiska och framtida gemenskaper från Baltikum till Barents hav (Stockholm, 2011). 13   Lizette Gradén and Hanne Pico Larsen, ‘Nordic Spaces in the North and North America: Heritage Preservation in Real and Imagined Nordic Places’, Arv (2009): 7–10; Lizette Gradén, ‘Performing a Present from the Past: The Värmland Heritage Gift, Materializing Emotions and Cultural Connectivity’, Ethnologia Europaea: Journal of European Ethnology, 40/2, (2010): pp. 29–46. 11

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sphere and high politics. These initiatives have recourse to a cultural reservoir, but follow the tide of strategic politics and the fate of alternative communities. The idea of Nordic culture becoming a political entity was damaged by events in 1864 and 1905 and later weakened by competition from NATO and the EU. The latest call for reinvigorating the idea was made in 2010. Gunnar Wetterberg used the Nordic Council as a platform when he called for discussion on a Scandinavian federal state to better promote Nordic values on the international scene. He suggested that a new Nordic union formed along these lines would be the tenth largest economy in the world and would therefore have a more significant say in issues ranging from climate change to equal opportunity.14 The Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation (Riksbankens Jubileumsfond) which finances research programmes (including the projects behind this book) took this opportunity to poll the Swedish public. The result, presented both in a thematic yearbook and at seminars, shows strong public support for formally expanding the Nordic region to the Baltic states, as well as substantial support for the political project suggested by Wetterberg. There are reasons to believe that it is still Sweden and Denmark that most warmly advocate Nordic political unity, while the nation-states liberated out of recent unions are cooler towards the idea, although the financial crises being experienced in Iceland and the southern European economies might change this equation.15 In the field of cultural studies, strong Nordic affinities can be mapped. In the nineteenth century, learned societies and practical collaboration among museum founders created a Nordic collaborative market which is visible in the names of collections such as the Scandinavian Ethnographic Collection and the Nordic Museum founded by Artur Hazelius.16 Nordic cooperation within history, ethnology and folklore stretches back to 1905, when the first Nordic historical conference was held in Lund, and the Folklore Fellows Communications series was inaugurated to further intercollegiate research exchange. Further, the Norden Association was established in 1919 to stimulate cultural cooperation among the Nordic countries and has since established cultural houses in Iceland, the Faroe Islands, Greenland, Norway, the Åland Islands and Finland.17

  Gunnar Wetterberg, Förbundsstaten Norden (Stockholm, 2010).   Björkman, Fjæstad and Harvard, Ett nordiskt rum; Lars Kjetil Köber, ‘Verre enn unionen med Sverige’ – om bruken av unionsbegrepet og historiske sammenligninger med unionen med Sverige i EEC/EF/EU-debattene 1961–1994 (Oslo, 2005). 16   Magdalena Hillström, ‘Contested Boundaries: Nation, People and Cultural History Museums in Sweden and Norway 1862–1909’, Culture Unbound: Journal of Current Cultural Research, 2 (2010): 583–607. 17   Gradén and Larsen, ‘Nordic Spaces’, pp. 8–9. 14 15

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Parallel to these movements in the Nordic countries, similar cultural organizations and educational institutions have emerged in the United States. The Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Studies, established in 1911, is one example, with close connections to the numerous departments of Scandinavian studies at universities and specifically at colleges established by immigrants from the Scandinavian countries. Among the cultural organizations, Föreningen Norden (the Nordic Society), established in Minneapolis in 1871, is an early example. Although the Nordic Society held its last meetings in the 1980s, it was instrumental in supporting the establishment of Svenskarnas Dag in 1934 and other Swedish–American activities that remain part of contemporary community life in the area.18 Despite trends such as increased social and religious diversity and individualism, the Nordic countries are often depicted today as nation-states protective of their nature and marked by simplicity, social egalitarianism, Protestant ethics and democratic culture with ancient roots – images that describe Nordic communities in the United States as well. Promoting the Nordic heritage seems to be on the rise in response to globalization, increased migration and an expansive European Union. As we will show in this volume, the concept of the Nordic countries as a coherent region thrives on similar events and activities taking place in various forms on institutional, ritual and more mundane levels. Museums and other institutions are engaging in the makeover of the Nordic countries in various ways, bringing into being the features they choose to enact. Examples include temporary exhibitions that highlight Nordic food, traditions and rituals, celebrations of Nordens Dag (23 March), and other more ordinary, yet performative, activities. In the United States, the Nordic countries are granted a second life as heritage. Scandinavian or Nordic heritage is created as culturally coherent, forged into the idea of a transnational region which appears greater than the sum of its parts and more visible as an actor on the global financial and political stage. The museums in the Nordic countries, the Baltic states and the United States play an active role in creating Nordic heritage, as museums are, by definition, performative.19 They create what they enact and are hence an important link between individual action, emotion, donation, institutionalized collective imagery and the representations that provide a necessary backdrop for political action. These images of the Nordic countries are often referred to as Norden. As such, they have created space for a certain flexibility and integration within the Nordic 18   William C. Beyer, ‘Brothers Whether Dancing or Dying: Minneapolis’s Norden Society, 1871-188’, in Philip Anderson and Dag Blanck (eds), Swedes in the Twin Cities: Immigrant Life and Minnesota’s Urban Frontiers (Minneapolis, 2001), pp. 124–136. 19  Ibid.

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sphere through both military and peaceful means. Even when not formalized and institutionalized, these Nordic spaces provide a frame for negotiating belonging and the values associated with the Nordic in several territorial settings. An underprivileged emigrant or a provincial schoolteacher might simultaneously connect to regional institutions that support a national image and also reach out to Nordic community when visiting, donating or participating in the making of heritage. Such actors are thereby using, promoting and connecting several Nordic spaces in one move. Making Heritage in the Present out of Selected Pasts We approach heritage not merely as remnants of the past, but as a particular cultural practice that uses the past to produce heritage in the present. We agree with folklorist Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett when she argues that heritage includes a meta-cultural relationship with cultural practices, which, by definition, also changes cultural practitioners’ view of their culture. As such, heritage can be understood as ‘culture named and projected into the past, and simultaneously, the past congealed into culture’.20 Heritage is produced, contained and referred to a specific use of the past whereby it is transformed to a distinguished heritage in need of protection and special care to produce legitimacy and arguments for certain actions to be taken. Ultimately, it is a question of whose cultural practices are being acknowledged as heritage and by whom.21 In the 1990s and early 2000s there was a growing literature on the concept of cultural heritage, and many scholars took the perspective that heritage is built from components selected in the present but grounded in the past.22 Viewed as such, heritage both comprises aspects of the past and emerges as a tool in negotiating future history.23 Groups and individuals are constantly a part of the past, sometimes used to legitimize or glorify the present and at other times to criticize it. These re-imaginations tend to take concrete form in physical structures such as museums, parks, and buildings, in ritualized and festive events such as jubilees that temporarily change or enhance physical environments, or   J.L. Comoroff and J. Comoroff, Ethnicity, Inc. (Chicago, 2009), p. 10; cf. Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Destination Culture: Museums, Tourism and Heritage (Berkeley, 1998), pp. 149–151. 21   Peter Aronsson, Historiebruk - att använda det förflutna (Lund, 2004). 22   Peter Aronsson (ed.), Makten över minnet. Historiekultur i förändring (Lund, 2000); Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Destination Culture, p. 7; Pertti Anttonen (ed.), Folklore, Heritage Politics and Ethnic Diversity: A Festschrift for Barbro Klein (Botkyrka, 2000). 23   Lizette Gradén, On Parade, pp. 19–22. 20

Introduction

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in more ephemeral re-imaginations such as music, song, dance or a combination of these.24 Of these, museum institutions and ritualized events may implicitly express the identification of a particular group (family, ethnic group, nation, transnational entity) with highly valued skills and talents and the articulation of a group heritage. The cultural heritage of a group – be it ethnic or transnational, such as Norden and its diaspora – is shaped in processes of selection, through which the past is granted significant symbolic value. Within the history discourse, this process is often referred to as the uses of the past.25 Through these processes, actors indicate to themselves and others that certain heritages ought to be preserved for the future, while others should be ignored or forgotten. This includes encompassing and using values associated with Norden: closeness to nature, belonging, equality, peace – used both for inclusion and explication and for exclusion and obfuscation. That remembering and suppressing are two integral parts of heritage-making is a tenet that the history and folkloristic discourses share. The producers of Norden or the North, in the Nordic countries themselves and beyond their territorial borders, all engage in such heritagemaking. There is tension in the United States, as well as in Europe, over the interests federal and governmental powers serve in shaping group affiliation using heritage. Museums and ritualized events, such as jubilees and calendar celebrations, often figure in such debates. At the federally-funded Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC, and the government-funded museums of cultural history in Europe, major displays and performances seek to preserve and promote highly valued aspects of cultural heritage as conceived by museum curators, public folklorists and historians – a practice that has been criticized by outside folklorists.26 Nonprofit organizations such as history associations, folk-life associations, and festival and jubilee organizers also play important roles here when, as mentioned earlier, their productions become models for how cultural heritage ought to be organized and performed. With more emphasis at the institutional level on volunteer effort and community participation, such heritage-building might be seen as a tool of integration whereby a well-established group suggests ways in   Ibid, p. 19.   David Lowenthal, Possessed by the Past: The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History (New York, 1996), pp. 41–60; Peter Aronsson, ‘Uses of the Past; Nordic Historical Cultures in a Comparative Perspective’, Culture Unbound: Journal of Current Cultural Research, 2 (2010): 553–563. 26   David E Whisnant, All That is Native & Fine: The Politics of Culture in an American Region (Chapel Hill, 1983), pp. 181–253; Robert Cantwell, Ethnomimesis: Folklife and the Representation of Culture (Chapel Hill, 1993); Gradén, On Parade. 24 25

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which less established groups can make themselves more visible in a society. At the same time, heritage-making can be seen as ways in which long-established groups, such as those identified as Nordic, set the norms for how such visibility is achieved in Europe and the United States. Abiding by the purpose of this volume, we will analyse how people interpret Norden or the Nordic countries when they collaboratively, and often as volunteers, produce Nordic heritage within and beyond governmental institutions. As this analysis will show, different groups within the Nordic countries, in the United States and in the Baltic states construe Nordic heritage differently and invest it with different values. These heritages are created in the present with recourse to major and very specific experiences in the past, such as oppressive rule and emigration. When looking closely at the sustenance of heritage, heritage could be said to refer to collective cultural practices carried out at several levels in a manner that shapes culture and phenomena such as the family, ethnicity and the nationstate.27 Building on these collectives, we can also see heritage in the context of transnational and global entities such as the European Union and UNESCO. Cultural practice in Norden plays a part in the making of heritage on the European and global levels, but is formulated as specifically Nordic and practised by individuals and institutions within a system of interacting identifications. Heritage creates meaning in everyday life, but has also emerged as a possible route for the Nordic countries and their partners abroad to create a Nordic space on the map of world finance and politics. The transnational brand projected internationally acts as a sort of regulatory institution that provides the Nordic countries with a symbolic system of values and aesthetic distinctions. Institutions and popular practice are active participants in the development, management and streamlining of Norden and are therefore also capable of changing it. Taking the view of heritage as phenomena selected and highlighted in the present with recourse to the past and en route to the future, museums, jubilees and even individual actions become performative: they create what they enact in events that are eventually linked together historically. Based on this view, heritage is obviously recognized as a creation when the past is performed in institutional settings. But we also consider the operative practices of these institutions. These practices include curatorial procedures and ways of attracting the public, but also marketing and branding aspects. Moreover, we include the Nordic heritage as created by individual heritage practices in public and private settings, and shed light on the ways in which these play along with or challenge institutional 27   Valdimar Hafstein, ‘Culture by Heritage Squared’, in Arv: Yearbook of Nordic Folklore (2009): 11–25.

Introduction

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heritage-making. As scholars, we do not stand outside these performances: our presentations at conferences, journals and in this book are inevitably part of this process. When, why and to whom does a Nordic past become a possible or even necessary road to the future? On what scenes and with what themes is the Nordic heritage framed, performed and recognized?28 Spaces of Nordic Heritage To understand the process whereby a region is created, concepts of space and place are important. According to Anssi Paasi, the materialization of space into place requires a combined elaboration where social imagination becomes objectified. This includes a spatial conceptualization that receives a name, and symbols and representations to carry the meaning. For a region to pass the test of history, it must also have institutions for regulation, memory and language to stabilize and realize the potential of the image. When this reality is accepted internally and recognized externally in a system of competing bodies, the process has moved from the experience of a community to the institutionalization of a territory connected to that performance.29 The role of knowledge production in reinforcing some territorial dynamics and concealing others is crucial. History, as the science of political hegemony, has actively covered up regions other than the current state, while ethnology has culturalized and domesticated cultural variations, and social science has instrumentalized them as administrative tools.30 This approach to territory and spatial imagination offers at least four advantages. First, it does not draw sharp lines between place, region and nation, but rather shows the similarity of the cultural processes involved in the creation of heritage and hence could be utilized to understand dynamics, interaction and change among these levels. Second, it considers the making of cultures, symbols and practices representing spatial imagery and the production of heritage central to understanding the role of this creation. Third, it encompasses elements of both the power of tradition and contingency to make room for history understood   For the idea of Norden as a concept framing cultural performances, see Stuart Burch, ‘Norden, Reframed,’ Culture Unbound: Journal of Current Cultural Research, 2 (2010): 565–581. 29   Anssi Paasi, ‘The Institutionalization of Regions: A Theoretical Framework for Understanding the Emergence of Regions and the Constitution of Regional Identity’, Fennia 164/1 (1986): 105–146. 30   Peter Aronsson, ‘The Nature of States and Regions: Reflections on Territory in Swedish Historiography’, in Finn-Einar Eliassen, Jörgen Mikkelsen and Björn Poulsen (eds), Regional Integration in Early Modern Scandinavia (Odense, 2001), pp. 14–40. 28

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in a non-determinist mode, better reflecting the dramatic history of change so readily denied or ordered by cultural heritage itself. Fourth, the interplay between different conceptualizations of related regions might be investigated within this framework. These abstract processes must, however, be anchored in practices. Scenes and themes need to be performed; their interaction and consequences must be mapped and discussed. Michel de Certeau stressed that shaping place is concrete, localized and material. In this book the Nordic places are cities, towns and parishes in the Nordic countries, as well their counterparts in the United States, where emigrants from the Nordic countries once settled. These places also include the museums, collections and objects that appear in the various articles of this book. In this line of thought, on the other hand, space signifies not the objective raw material of three-dimensional natural or mathematical space that can be calculated, but all the images, memories and processes of change that continuously flow through this place and thus also change it. Space is, hence, a practised place – something we may say is created performatively and in interaction with both people and objects. In other words, space is place put into practice – it is all about action. When we say that Nordic, Scandinavian or national spaces are created performatively, also outside the Nordic countries themselves, this could be grounded in de Certeau’s thoughts about practised places – thus Nordic spaces, which also challenge the territorial boundaries of a place. This line of thought is related to the ideas behind places of memory, lieux de mémoire. A place of memory is both a physical and an imaginary entity, sometimes more of the latter then the former.31 The positive role of the Swedish occupation of Estonia in the seventeenth century is a case in point. A statue of Gustav II Adolf erected outside the Swedish university in Tartu in 1992 represents homage to the founder, but it also signals anti-Russian sentiment and appreciation for the rule of law in the Swedish empire, in contrast to the recent experience of Soviet occupation. In contemporary Sweden, Gustav II Adolf is instead a symbol of militarism and expansionism to be kept in check. The use of similar symbols does, however, connect the countries, universities and network, creating one addition to Nordic spaces. An important thought when discussing Nordic spaces, both established and emerging, is how they relate to heritage. In the last couple of decades Norden,   Pierre Nora (ed.), Rethinking France: Les Lieux de Mémoire (Chicago and London, 2001); Etienne François and Hagen Schulze (eds), Deutsche Erinnerungsorte (Munich, 2001); Peter Aronsson, ‘National Cultural Heritage – Nordic Cultural Memory: Negotiating Politics, Identity and Knowledge’, in Bernd Henningsen, Henriette Kliemann-Geisinger and Stefan Troebst (eds), Transnationale Erinnerungsorte: Nord- und Südeuropeische Perspektiven (Berlin, 2009), pp. 71–90. 31

Introduction

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the North and Nordicness have emerged as a matter of voluntary association, and heritage-making has become its crucial building-block. However, keeping in mind that Norden and Nordicness can be conditional, we explore the issue of who finds the Nordic heritage a hindrance and who considers it an asset. This process of selection leads us to the concepts of performance and performativity. The Performance and Performativity of Nordic Heritage When put in the perspective of migration, performance plays a role in the emergence of a Norden located in northern Europe but spatialized and expanding eastward and westward. Current territorial boundaries define where Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Finland or Denmark respectively begin and end, as do their respective as laws and legislation. That nation-states are made concrete by territorial boundaries, laws and legislation does not, however, explain the content of values and images associated with Norden or the longterm relationship between the geographical Nordic region and Nordic spaces beyond these borders. Since the time of the great emigration from the Nordic countries to North America between 1846 and 1951, cultural performances such as museums, collections, rituals and other forms of communication have been the bread and butter of Nordic experience. Therefore, the perspective of performance has proven fruitful in our attempts to identify Nordic spaces and analyse how they emerge. Performance has been described as ‘an aesthetically marked and heightened mode of communication, framed in a special way and put on display for an audience’.32 However, what a performance actually consists of can be defined very broadly, as evidenced by performance theorist Richard Schechner, who points out that any behaviour, event, action or object can be studied ‘as’ performance.33 The point is that, all social ‘acts’ – whether or not designed and framed as performance – can be seen and analysed as performance, as Schechner and Goffman have both highlighted. People can be seen taking on different roles as they move through various stages of their lives, and the same applies to the institutions and objects that surround us. Of special relevance to the studies in this volume is identifying performances of Norden in situations ranging from everyday social life and vernacular practices   Richard Bauman (ed.), ‘Performance’, in Folklore, Cultural Performances and Popular Entertainments: Communications-Centered Handbook (New York, 1992), p. 41. 33   Richard Schechner, Performance Studies: An Introduction, 2nd edn (New York and London, 2006), pp. 2, 40; Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (London, [1959] 1990). 32

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of culture to institutionalized heritage and its interaction with communitybuilding in local, institutional and political spaces. In what sense is Nordicness expressed in our quotidian practices? A further concern relates to the use of performance modes as rhetoric and persuasion.34 Performances in which we are both participants and audience can act as an effective tool for bolstering group identity. Whereas examples of naming associations and shaping institutions or setting up public displays of national identity are easy to come by, examples of ostentatious public performances of Nordic identity are scarcer, and often found in more mundane forms such as the way in which maps and landscapes are outlined or the way in which neighbouring countries are normally treated with silence, or even omitted entirely from a purportedly historically correct narrative. Ostentatious and public Nordicness is, however, not completely absent in recent years. Jubilees in 1876, 1914, 2005 and 2009 celebrating the absence of war between the Nordic countries are events where it could and did flourish.35 In the case of material culture, we find public displays with complex narratives in which the regional, national and supranational come together. Museums and exhibitions are fundamentally theatrical, and it is exactly the performative dimension and the ways in which museum and heritage objects are made to perform that is the theme of this volume.36 In attempting to expand the concept of Norden, we aim to increase understanding of how transnational communities are shaped. That is how the ‘North’ or Norden reaches beyond territorial boundaries. More specifically, we intend to identify and explore the role of performance in the reshaping of Nordic life, past and present. By focusing on different performances of heritage across territorial borders and over time, we move the performative aspect of several Nordic spaces to the forefront, thereby highlighting both the institutionalized performance and the embodied experience of making Nordic spaces. The Politics of Nordic Heritage In its most general sense, the term ‘heritage’ refers to something in the past that has influenced what is now present, whereas the most restricted use of the concept is reserved for highly institutionalized power in the hands of a political administration for formal protection and preservation. In addition, there is 34   See respectively Goffman, The Presentation and Kenneth Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1950). 35   Aronsson, ‘1905’ and Lindaräng and Eng, Chapter 5 in this volume. 36  Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Destination Culture, p. 3.

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heritage as a meta-cultural activity – a culture about culture which takes the view that both tangible and intangible heritage is selected, named and framed in the present but has recourse to the past. In this book, we move back and forth between these usages, because doing so allows us not only to trace the relationship between the past, present and future, but also to identify a range of actors on the heritage stage. When Saab AB, for instance, continues to export the Carl-Gustaf, recoilless rifle the company engages in a number of performative acts. It refers back to the Carl-Gustaf guns elevated to Swedish heritage by the Second World War, to the Army Museum in Stockholm, but also to the symbolic power of royalty. Uses of the past include processes whereby parts of the culture of history are deliberately activated to form definite opinions and action-oriented totalities, but would hardly be recognized as heritage, such as the marketing of weapons or the promotion of eco-friendly food. These actions are framed by ideas of Nordic values that mitigate violent realities and by a set of natural values that enhance, for instance, the meaning and consequence of an organic potato by Nordic branding. The capacity to form a historical consciousness, an understanding of why we are at this position in history and where we ought to direct our actions, entails exploring the links between the past, present and future which steer the uses of history and are established and reproduced in its use. In this book we will show to what extent ideas of Norden have been, and still are, part of such a historical consciousness performed by various heritage actions. The concept of the historical categories ‘space of experiences’ and ‘horizon of expectations’ fits well into this framework. Knowledge and descriptions of the past create opportunities as well as limitations for certain assumptions about the future. The hopes and fears created by current images of the future influence the way in which the relationship between memory and that which is forgotten is organized in the spaces of experience. The uses of history inhere in the dynamic process that links the spaces of experience and the horizon of expectations in a specific situation.37 Does the Nordic heritage call for gender equality, democratic culture, and a sustainable and eco-friendly future? Or is this heritage a smokescreen for selfish free-riders on a late-colonial world stage that is coming ever closer to a radical collapse? The creation and re-creation of cultural heritage out of traces from the past is a specific use of the past whereby only useful items, taken out of the rich culture of history, are being institutionalized and performed as part of a space of 37   Peter Aronsson, ‘The Old Cultural Regionalism – and the New’, in Bill Lancaster, Diana Newton and Natasha Vall (eds), An Agenda for Regional History (Newcastle, 2007), pp. 251–270.

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experience. The logic is determined by the horizon of expectations of the people in control of the institutions charged with assigning, protecting and interpreting the past as heritage. This process is not confined to historical time. It is one mode of dealing with issues of decay, meaning and power that must be managed by all societies, and archaeology has recently focused more attention on it.38 For the purposes of this volume, however, it is sufficient to note the strong mutual mobilization around whether what was conceptualized as a Nordic heritage in the seventeenth century has been instrumental in creating a repository of cultural ideas of Norden. About this Book The following ten contributed chapters present original and innovative multidisciplinary research conducted by scholars within the ‘Nordic Spaces’ project. They range chronologically from the eighteenth century to contemporary museum-makers, thematically from acts of performing popular practices and organized international commemoration to museum creation and the culture of high art. and spatially from the Baltic states to the United States. Performances range from acts of everyday life to political rhetoric, from mundane imagery to highly institutionalized acts recognized as the guardians of heritage proper. These essays do not represent a random collection, but rather a careful selection of scenes and themes used more or less deliberately to argue for the dynamic character of performance as creating heritage in Nordic spaces. Such performances have consequences far beyond preservation and nostalgia. They present a new understanding of heritage at play in the making of community, values and changing conceptions of what Norden was, is and ought to be. The relevance of heritage needs to be retrieved again and again due to its capacity to negotiate conflicts on borders and to influence contemporary politics. The three organizing principles of this book are 1) to facilitate an understanding of the particular performances and scenes in which Norden is re-presented and perceived; 2) to uncover situations and institutions where Nordic heritage is recognized and spatialized to negotiate identity and change; and 3) to challenge conceptions of Norden by studying the making of Nordic spaces both in and beyond the territorial borders of the Nordic nation-states. We take an interest in where Norden begins and ends and how boundaries are created and delimited at various times in history. Attention is given to the long-term relationship between ‘geographical Norden’, the Nordic spaces around   Richard Bradley, The Past in Prehistoric Societies (London, 2002).

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the Baltic Sea, and the Nordic diaspora in the United States. Thus, Performing Nordic Heritage opens with alternative nationalisms and internationalisms and their interplay with power struggles among the Nordic and Scandinavian countries and, later, address Norden as a force in negotiation with other political communities, such as NATO and the EU. An aspect of special relevance is to discern in what ways performances of Norden are part of ordinary social life. The everyday practice of today’s apparently benign Nordicness makes it hard to define clearly. It is an endemic construct with seemingly only positive connotations. Nordism seems most at ease when associated with leisure activities like viewing Nordic art in national museums in Scandinavia, practising Nordic walking in the city or elsewhere, or enjoying the nostalgia of a Viking home and a Danish-style windmill in Iowa in the American Midwest. However, even the tranquillity of these seemingly trivial activities threatens to be disturbed as soon as one tries to define what is and what is not Nordic. In Chapter 2. ‘Walking Nordic: Performing Space, Place and Identity’, Susanne Österlund-Pötzsch investigates how popular outdoor practices such as walking and making pilgrimages map out Nordic spaces and how this seemingly mundane activity of movement on foot creatively interacts with place and touches upon existential questions and identity issues. Katla Kjartansdóttír and Kristinn Schram investigate in ‘“Something in the Air”: Performing the North within Norden’ (Chapter 3) how Icelanders living in Copenhagen perform the North and their Icelandic identity in a Danish context. How do young Icelanders handle the ambivalence of residing in the former occupying power? Moving from the Danish context to the Danish-American, Hanne Pico Larsen in ‘A Windmill and a Vikinghjem: The Importance of Visual Icons as Heritage Tropes among Danish-Americans’ (Chapter 4) asks how Danish heritage is maintained when references to the Old Country fade over time. She takes a particular interest in cases in which local entrepreneurs, on behalf of the larger Danish community, create visual tropes in seeking to maintain a Danish identity. From a focus on everyday activities where individual actors take centre stage, the book shifts from civic performances to those that exist in the intersection of civic society and institutions, where they are firmer in form but yet not institutionalized into a more stable structure of power. The selection of jubilees highlighting relationships between the Nordic countries is an explicit example of performative heritage. This becomes explicit in border regions of Scandinavia as well. In Chapter 5, ‘Negotiating Local, National and Nordic Identities through Commemorations’, Ingmar Lindaräng and Torbjörn Eng investigate

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why the individual states and other organizations in Norden dedicate financial and human resources to commemorating certain cultural events and individuals while more or less neglecting others. It is an open question who takes the initiative for such events and how they are performed within a set repertoire for commemorative rituals and performances. In Chapter 6, ‘Banal Nordism: Recomposing an Old Song of Peace’, Stuart Burch asks why forests, elks, sex, design and technology are all stereotypes associated with Norden, whereas lethal military equipment and its use are not. Based on a series of media reports, everyday practices and other performances, he calls into question the banalities of the North and the consequences they have for all the entrepreneurs implicated in its construction and continuance. This topic is further expanded in Olav Christensen’s analysis of visual tropes and commemorations along the Jutland borders. In ‘“Nordic” as Border Country Rhetoric: Danish versus German in South Jutland Museums and Memorial Culture’ (Chapter 7) he takes an interest in how enduring enmity towards Germany and perhaps also towards the new ‘intruders’, alien asylum seekers, force the Nordic community to negotiate the old Germanic notions of Norden. Based on the idea that museums worldwide simultaneously perform transnational and local heritage through their practices and displays, and acknowledging the increased pressure on museums to find new ways of engaging with communities, Lizette Gradén in ‘Performing Nordic Spaces in American Museums: Gift Exchange, Volunteerism and Curatorial Practice’ focuses on the past and present roles played by volunteer participation and the making of donations in materializing and spatializing emotional relationships with the Old Countries overseas, Scandinavia and Norden. As we have seen, performance is an efficient way of communicating ideas and values. Therefore, it is hardly surprising that performance, in the form of museums and public display events, has often been used as mortar in the process of building and consolidating nations. After the disruption of the Napoleonic Wars, national museums were created all over Europe and have since then been home to the most prestigious representations of national identity communicated both domestically and internationally. Looking to the east of the Nordic countries with a focus on how Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian national spaces are situated in the transnational regional formations, Eglė Rindzevičiūtė, in ‘The Geopolitics of Distinction: Negotiating Regional Spaces in the Baltic Museums’, (Chapter 9) investigates how national distinction is performed in relation to supranational territories through dramatic historical changes. In Scandinavia several of the early museums were explicitly labelled Nordic. This practice is investigated by Magdalena Hillström in ‘Sweden versus Norden in the Nordiska Museet’ (Chapter 10). What roles did the idea of a

Introduction

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Scandinavian or Nordic community play when the Nordiska museet (Nordic Museum) was established and expanded in the late nineteenth century? How have this particular museum’s institutional history and multifaceted national and Scandinavian roots affected the museum’s performance of self, practices and rhetoric in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries? Expanding on this idea in ‘Performing the Nordic in Museums: Changing Ideas of Norden and their Political Implications’ (Chapter 11), Peter Aronsson maps the early establishment and varying emphasis on a Nordic aspect in museums in classical Norden. He goes on to investigate how these museums treat some of the often conflict-ridden Nordic interactions in their national exhibitions. Together, these contributions add up to an innovative answer to questions, to paraphrase Nietzsche in 1874, on the possible advantages and disadvantages of the making of the Nordic heritage.39 Bibliography Almqvist, Carl Jonas Ludvig, Om Skandinavismens utförbarhet. Föredrag, hållet i det Skandinaviska Sällskapet den 4 Februarii 1846 (Copenhagen, 1846). Anttonen, Pertti (ed.), Folklore, Heritage Politics and Ethnic Diversity: A festschrift for Barbro Klein (Botkyrka: Multicultural Centre, 2000). Aronsson, Peter, ‘Nations, Provinces and Regions: A Scandinavian Perspective’, in Identities: Nations, Provinces and Regions (Norwich: University of East Anglia, 1999). Aronsson, Peter (ed.), Makten över minnet. Historiekultur i förändring (Lund: Studentlitteratur, 2000). Aronsson, Peter, ‘The Nature of States and Regions. Reflections on Territory in Swedish Historiography’, in Finn-Einar Eliassen, Jörgen Mikkelsen and Björn Poulsen (eds), Regional Integration in Early Modern Scandinavia (Odense: Odense University Press, 2001), pp. 14–40. Aronsson, Peter, Historiebruk – att använda det förflutna (Lund: Studentlitteratur, 2004). Aronsson, Peter, ‘1905 – unionsupplösning att glömma eller att stoltsera med?’, in Torbjörn Nilsson and Øystein Sørensen (eds), Goda grannar eller morska motståndare? Sverige och Norge från 1814 till idag (Stockholm: Carlsson, 2005), pp. 216–248.

39   Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life (Indianapolis, 1980).

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Aronsson, Peter, ‘The Old Cultural Regionalism – and the New’, in Bill Lancaster, Diana Newton and Natasha Vall (eds), An Agenda for Regional History (Newcastle: Northumbria University Press, 2007), pp. 251–270. Aronsson, Peter, ‘National Cultural Heritage – Nordic Cultural Memory: Negotiating Politics, Identity and Knowledge’, in Bernd Henningsen, Henriette Kliemann-Geisinger, Stefan Troebst (eds), Transnationale Erinnerungsorte: Nord- und Südeuropeische Perspektiven (Berlin: Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, 2009), pp. 71–90. Aronsson, Peter, ‘Uses of the Past; Nordic Historical Cultures in a Comparative Perspective’, Culture Unbound: Journal of Current Cultural Research, 2 (2010): 553–563. Bauman, Richard (ed.), ‘Performance’, in Folklore, Cultural Performances and Popular Entertainments: Communications-Centered Handbook (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 41–49. Beyer, William C., ‘Brothers Whether Dancing or Dying: Minneapolis’s Norden Society, 1871-188’, in Philip Anderson and Dag Blanck (eds), Swedes in the Twin Cities: Immigrant Life and Minnesota’s Urban Frontiers. (Minneapolis, 2001), pp. 124–136. Björkman, Jenny, Björn Fjæstad and Jonas Harvard (eds), Ett nordiskt rum. Historiska och framtida gemenskaper från Baltikum till Barents hav (Gothenburg: Makadam, 2011). Bradley, Richard, The Past in Prehistoric Societies (London: Routledge, 2002). Burch, Stuart, ‘Norden, Reframed’, Culture Unbound: Journal of Current Cultural Research, 2 (2010): 565–581. Burke, Kenneth, A Rhetoric of Motives (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1950). Burrow, J.W., A History of Histories. Epics, Chronicles, Romances and Inquiries from Herodotus and Thucydides to the Twentieth Century (London: Allen Lane, 2007). Cantwell, Robert, Ethnomimesis: Folklife and the Representation of Culture (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press 1993). Comoroff, J.L. and J. Comoroff, Ethnicity, Inc. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), Curman, Sigurd, Birger Nerman and Dagmar Selling (eds), Tiotusen år i Sverige (Stockholm, 1945). Eklund, Klas, Lars Trägårdh and Berggren Henrik, Shared Norms for the New Reality: The Nordic Way / World Economic Forum, Davos 2011 (Stockholm: Global utmaning, 2011). François, Etienne and Hagen Schulze (eds), Deutsche Erinnerungsorte (Munich: C.H. Beck Verlag, 2001).

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Goffman, Erving, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (London: Penguin, [1959] 1990). Gradén, Lizette, On Parade: Making Heritage in Lindsborg, Kansas (Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 2003). Gradén, Lizette and Simon Bronner, ‘Swedish Communities’, in Simon Bronner (ed.), Encyclopedia of American Folklife (New York: M.E. Sharpe Press, 2006), pp. 1200–1205. Gradén, Lizette and Hanne Pico Larsen, ‘Nordic Spaces in the North and North America: Heritage Preservation in Real and Imagined Nordic Places’, Arv: Nordic Yearbook of Folklore (Uppsala, 2009), pp. 5–9. Gradén, Lizette, ‘Performing a Present from the Past: The Värmland Heritage Gift, Materializing Emotions and Cultural Connectivity’, Ethnologia Europaea: Journal of European Ethnology, 40/2 (2010): 29–46. Gustafsson, Harald, Nordens historia: En europeisk region under 1200 år (Lund: Studentlitteratur, 1997). Hafstein, Validmar, ‘Culture by Heritage Squared’, Arv: Yearbook of Nordic Folklore (Uppsala, 2009), pp. 11–25. Hall, Patrik, Den svenskaste historien. Nationalism i Sverige under sex sekler (Stockholm: Carlsson, 2000). Hemstad, Ruth, Fra Indian summer til nordisk vinter. Skandinavisk samarbeid, skandinavisme og unionsøpplosningen (Oslo: Akademisk Publisering, 2008). Hillström, Magdalena, ‘Contested Boundaries: Nation, People and Cultural History Museums in Sweden and Norway 1862–1909’, Culture Unbound: Journal of Current Cultural Research, 2 (2010): 583–607. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara, Destination Culture: Museums, Heritage and Tourism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998). Köber, Lars Kjetil, ‘Verre enn unionen med Sverige’ – om bruken av unionsbegrepet og historiske sammenligninger med unionen med Sverige i EEC/EF/EUdebattene 1961–1994 (Oslo: Voksenåsen AS, 2005). Larsen, Hanne Pico, ‘Solvang, CA: “The Danish Capital of America”: A Little Bit of Denmark, Disney, or Something Else?’ Phd dissertation (Berkeley: University of California, 2006). Legnér, Mattias, Fäderneslandets rätta beskrivning. mötet mellan antikvarisk forskning och ekonomisk nyttokult i 1700-talets Sverige (Helsinki: Svenska litteratursällskapet i Finland, 2004) Linde-Laursen, Anders, ‘Främmande Böjningsformer av det Danska. Marknadsföring och Nationell Identitet i Solvang, Kalifornien’, in Gunnar Alsmark (ed.), Skjorta eller själ? Kulturella identiteter i tid och rum (Lund: Studentlitteratur, 1997), pp. 174–198.

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Lovoll, Odd S., Norwegians on the Prairie: Ethnicity and the Development of the Country Town (St Paul: Minnesota Historical Press, 2006). Lowenthal, David, Possessed by the Past: The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History (New York: Free Press, 1996). Nietzsche, Friedrich, On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1980). Nora, Pierre (ed.), Rethinking France: Les Lieux de Mémoire (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2001). Paasi, Anssi, ’The Institutionalization of Regions: A Theoretical Framework for Understanding the Emergence of Regions and the Constitution of Regional Identity’, Fennia 164/1 (1986): 105–146. Raudvere, Catharina, Anders Andrén and Kristina Jennbert (eds), Myter om det nordiska: mellan romantik och politik (Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2001). Schechner, Richard, Performance Studies: An Introduction, 2nd edn (New York and London: Routledge. 2006). Smith, Anthony D., Nationalism and Modernism: A Critical Survey of Recent Theories of Nations and Nationalism (London: Routledge, 1998). Stenroth, Ingmar, Sveriges rötter. En nations födelse (Stockholm: Atlantis, 2005). Stråth, Bo and Øystein Sørensen (eds), The Cultural Construction of Norden (Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, 1997). Wetterberg, Gunnar, Förbundsstaten Norden (Stockholm: Föreningen Norden, 2010). Whisnant, David E., All That is Native & Fine: The Politics of Culture in an American Region (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press 1983), pp. 181–253.

Chapter 2

Walking Nordic: Performing Space, Place and Identity Susanne Österlund-Pötzsch Pfaffländ: From the sterile cleanliness of Volvenhaagen to the orthopaedic footpaths of Birkenstockholm, this sub-arctic wonderland provides a smorgasboard of Nordic delights. Take a fauna and sauna safari through its pristine pine forests or if ‘clubbing’ is more your scene then head to the seal colonies of Cløbberländ. In a land of 24-hour sunshine the days in this ice-encrusted country will somehow feel longer.1

Anyone actually tempted to spend an upcoming holiday on a sauna safari in Pfaffländ will, alas, be severely disappointed as this depicted paradise of the outdoors and sensible footwear only exists in the Jetlag Travel Guide series of spoof guidebooks. However, the fake names notwithstanding, it is very likely the reader immediately decoded the text as a parody of an unnamed Scandinavian country. The image of orthopaedic trekking through pristine pine forests draws upon well-known stereotypes connected with the Nordic region – but is there, in fact, any relation between these images and actual regional practices and, if so, in what ways are everyday bodily expressions linked to performances of place identity? In this chapter I will investigate some examples of popular outdoor practices such as the Finnish innovation of walking with poles known as ‘Nordic Walking’, as well as the rekindled wave of pilgrimage in the Nordic countries during recent decades. In order to discern some of the ways in which walking practices might be connected with the performance of a national as well as a possible supranational, that is to say Nordic, sense of identity, I will start out by briefly tracing present-day outdoor habits to practices and ideas that developed along, and in conjunction with, emerging national identities in the Nordic countries with special reference to the process in Finland.

1   Santo Cilauro, Tom Gleisner and Rob Sitch, Phaic Tăn: Sunstroke on a Shoestring (San Francisco, 2006).

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‘Let us be Finns’ – Constructing Nations in the North The Nordic countries, like most of Europe, faced a complex political situation in the early 1800s. The Napoleonic Wars brought about substantial changes with long-lasting consequences. In the war of 1808–1809, Sweden lost the eastern part of its kingdom, present-day Finland, to Russia, and Finland thus became an autonomous part of the Russian Empire. A few years later, in 1814, the Kingdom of Denmark–Norway was defeated and was forced to cede Norway to Sweden. Consequently, there was a pressing need for the Nordic countries to redefine themselves – a process much influenced and spurred on by the general movement of nationalism in the development towards modern nation-states in Europe. In this, a patriotic form of Romanticism provided both means and a source of inspiration. For the Nordic countries, the central Romantic concepts of nature and folk culture emerged as important cornerstones for constructing national identity and demonstrating what was ‘unique’ about their nations. These influences were expressed in the cultural and political climate, but also in concrete endeavours such as expeditions to document folklore. Already in the late eighteenth century, the erudite society Aurorasällskapet [the Aurora Society] in the Finnish university town of Turku had – in the spirit of Enlightenment ideals – encouraged the publication of topographical accounts as a means to advance and disseminate information about Finland. Increasingly, these descriptions came to include information on local dialects, folklore and folkways.2 The much-quoted statement attributed to the Turku Romantic A.I. Arwidsson, ‘Swedes we are no longer, Russians we do not want to become – therefore, let us become Finns’, summed up a budding notion in Finnish intellectual circles of the early nineteenth century. However, the key question following this credo was inevitably, what does it mean to be Finnish? Corresponding debates and the quest to establish a positive national image were central issues in all of the Scandinavian countries at the time. Whereas Sweden and Denmark could fall back upon a long history of continuity and past glory, the process in Norway and Finland consisted of constructing new nations.3 Despite different points of departure, similar building-blocks were used in all of the Nordic countries: language, history, the local landscapes and folk culture in the form of fairy tales, folk songs, folk music, traditional costumes and dances. These elements became important tools in consolidating the nations in rhetoric as well as in actual performances. Themes that would awake associations 2   Susanne Österlund-Pötzsch and Carola Ekrem, Swedish Folklore Studies in Finland 1828–1918 (Helsinki, 2008), pp. 14–15. 3   See Øystein Sørensen and Bo Stråth (eds), ‘Introduction’, in The Cultural Construction of Norden (Oslo, 1997).

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to a rich cultural heritage and a glorious past were, naturally, especially favoured. For example, in Sweden, Norway and Denmark the Icelandic sagas and the Vikings were popularized both by the pan-Scandinavian movement as well as by nationalistic movements in the individual countries.4 In Finland’s case, a special challenge was the lack of a national literature in the Finnish language. Instead, folk poetry became Finland’s claim to be acknowledged as a Kulturvolk. Little wonder, then, that expeditions to collect ancient folk poetry in remote areas of the country came to be regarded as acts of patriotism. Few epitomized this ideal better than Finland’s own master collector Elias Lönnrot. Elias Lönnrot, a medical student, undertook his first longer expedition on foot in the summer of 1828. The 130-kilometre-long journey traversed the provinces of Savonia and Karelia. In his travelogue Lönnrot described the incentive behind the journey as a wish to ‘see more of my own country, get to know its language in its various dialects, but above all to collect samples of its remarkable and beautiful folk poetry’.5 During his first journey Lönnrot gathered more than 6,000 verses of folk poems and charms. After several longer as well as shorter expeditions, Lönnrot had accumulated a large archive of folklore notations. It was this vast material, gathered from many different Finnishspeaking regions, which Lönnrot drew upon for his compilation of the Kalevala – the Finnish national epic. The Kalevala (first version published in 1835) soon became a Finnish national symbol and exerted great influence on the output of new ‘national’ music, art, architecture and literature.6 Many of the most prominent Scandinavian folklore collectors likewise demonstrated considerable physical endurance when it came to carrying out long expeditions on foot. The good friends Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe, inspired by the Grimm brothers, pioneered the publication of Norwegian fairy tales with their Norske folkeeventyr (1841–1844). Both were keen hikers and traversed much of the Norwegian countryside collecting folklore.7 The   These themes, the Vikings in particular, were later made problematic through their attractiveness to (neo)Nazism and aggressive strands of nationalism. For present-day uses of the Viking theme, see Hanne Pico Larsen, Chapter 4 in this volume, and Katla Kjartansdóttír and Kristinn Schram, Chapter 3 in this volume. 5   Pekka Laaksonen, ‘Elias Lönnrot. En vandringsman i runornas land’, in [Elias Lönnrot] R. Knapas (ed.), Vandraren. Reseberättelser från Karelen 1828–1842 (Stockholm, 2002), pp. 16–17. 6   Ibid., p. 20; Lauri Honko (ed.), ‘Upptäckten av folkdiktning och nationell identitet i Finland’, in Folklore och nationsbyggande i Norden (Åbo, 1980), p. 43; see also W.R. Mead, ‘Kalevala and the Rise of Finnish Nationality’, Folklore, 73/4 (1962): 217–229; Jouko Hautala, Finnish Folklore Research 1828–1918 (Helsinki, 1969). 7   Olav Bø, ‘Romantikk, tradisjon og nasjonalkultur’, in Lauri Honko (ed.), Folklore och nationsbyggande i Norden (Åbo, 1980), p. 79. 4

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passionate Danish folklore collector Evald Tang Kristensen accumulated his vast and unique material collection predominantly by frequent expeditions on foot that often lasted many weeks at a time. In Sweden, Artur Hazelius, the founder of the world’s first outdoor museum, Skansen, took several extensive walking trips in his mission to explore the Swedish countryside and its different provinces.8 Especially among students, it became next to de rigueur to take summertime walking expeditions in order to collect folklore, study the flora and fauna, visit famous geographical or historical sites, or otherwise advance one’s knowledge about the fatherland. Towards the end of the century, a new wave of Kalevalaromanticism blossomed in Finland. Many architects, writers and artists, such as the painter Akseli Gallén-Kallela and the composer Jean Sibelius, made pilgrimages in Lönnrot’s footsteps to Karelia – the province that had become recognized as the cradle of Finnish culture, much in the way Dalecarlia (Dalarna) became the archetypical Swedish landscape. The general purpose of these expeditions was to experience and gain artistic inspiration from the Karelian nature and culture.9 This inspiration was subsequently expressed in literature, paintings, symphonies and architecture during what has become known as the Golden Age of Finnish art. Increasingly, the landscape as such emerged as a source of national pride and patriotic fervour. The Nordic emphasis on the importance of nature, as well as the connection made between nature and culture, can be found long before the nineteenth century.10 However, parallel to, and in conjunction with, the political process of defining the national, this relationship was now accentuated and affirmed, not least in visual art, music and literature.11 The wave of cultural expressions greatly contributed to the establishment and reconfirmation of the image of the iconic Nordic landscapes. As a result, the act of walking in nature came to be perceived as a means of experiencing the national landscape and, moreover, as a way to demonstrate patriotism. 8   Bjarne Stoklund, ‘Between Scenography and Science: Early Folk Museums and their Pioneers’, Ethnologia Europaea, 33/1 (2004): 24; see also Sten Rentzhog, Open Air Museums: The History and Future of a Visionary Idea (Öresund, 2007). 9   Honko, ’Upptäckten av folkdikten’, pp. 43–44. 10   Bernd Henningsen, ‘The Swedish Construction of Nordic Identity’, in Ø. Sørensen and B. Stråth (eds), The Cultural Construction of Norden (Oslo, 1997), p. 114. 11   See, for example, Anssi Paasi, ‘Finnish Landscape as Social Practice’, in M. Jones and K.R. Olwig (eds), Nordic Landscapes: Region and Belonging on the Northern Edge of Europe (Minneapolis, 2008), p. 522; Hugo Palmsköld, ‘Ett uppsökande av det gamla. Fornnordiska motiv i svensk 1800-talskonst’, in C. Raudvere, A. Andrén and K. Jennbert (eds), Hedendomen i historiens spegel. Bilder av det förkristna Norden (Lund, 2005), pp. 83–96.

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The Outdoors as a Way of Life The centrality of nature in the Nordic Romantic nationalism not only engendered a new way of looking upon nature and landscape, but also established the use of nature, through various outdoor practices, as a Nordic ‘national characteristic’.12 Thanks to the influence of continental fashions and conventions, an interest in exercise as a part of a healthy life was already noticeable among the Nordic upper classes in the eighteenth century. The most popular form of what could generously be labelled ‘exercise’ was the sociable walk or promenade. The social aspect was also very important in the growing trend of health spa tourism, where leisurely strolls were part of the prescribed treatment.13 A number of spas centred on thermal springs were established in the Nordic countries, the oldest being Medevi (1678) in Sweden. The growing interest in bodily regimes and health promotion led the way for organized exercise. In the early nineteenth century the gymnastics movement quickly gained ground in Denmark and soon also in Sweden. In Norway and Finland its introduction was somewhat slower, but it eventually gained an enthusiastic following.14 Nevertheless, it was outdoor sports and related forms of exercise that were to become instrumental in the consolidation processes of the Nordic nations. For Norway and Finland especially, sport has been recognized as a crucial component of national self-definition.15 The importance of sport for the Nordic nations has two different facets: the level of competitive sport with its accompanying collective rituals and the dimension of everyday popular outdoor activities. The defining stages of nation-building for the Nordic countries from 1880 to the First World War (1914–1918) coincided with the spread of organized sport and outdoor movements and with the dramatic societal changes brought on by rapid industrialization, urbanization and an extensive migration. Upper- and middle-class practices and the Romantic idealization of nature now developed

  Cf. Tove Nedrelid, ‘Use of Nature as a Norwegian Characteristic’, Ethnologia Scandinavica, 21 (1991): 28, 32–33. 13   Antero Heikkinen, Terveyden ja ilon tähden. Herrasväki liikkeellä Suomessa 1700–ja 1800–luvuilla (Helsinki, 1991). See also Gudrun M. König, Eine Kulturgeschichte des Spazierganges. Spuren einer bürgerlichen Praktik 1780–1850 (Vienna, 1996). 14   Henrik Meinander, Lik martallen som rågfältet. Hundra år finlandssvensk gymnastik ([Ekenäs] 1996), pp. 11–12. 15   Henrik Meinander, ‘Prologue: Nordic History, Society and Sport’, in H. Meinander and J.A. Mangan (eds), The Nordic World: Sport in Society (London and Portland, 1998), p. 5. 12

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Figure 2.1

Performing Nordic Heritage

Two girls on skis, Vörå, Finland, 1919

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into mass movements.16 Outdoor forms of exercise were intrinsically linked to the mobilization behind the national project. Organized exercise activities were seen as a way of shaping and educating the youth. Another important aspect was the attempt to foster a population prepared and fit to defend its country.17 However, the effort to promote education and a healthy lifestyle among the people also had a broader ambition that could be described as the vision of ‘a sound population in a sound nation’. The Nordic tradition of outdoor life that developed around the turn of the nineteenth century was, to a significant extent, a direct result of accelerated urbanization and industrialization. Outdoor activities became a way of reconnecting with nature, of enacting the ideals of Romanticism and of instilling ‘sound’ standards into a population with sudden access to free time and means for consumption.18 The Right of Public Access A salient present-day example of when outdoor practices and national discourses meet is in the usage of allemansrätten, the Right of Public Access or, literarily, ‘the right of every man’. Allemansrätten is not a law proper, but a tradition based on several different laws concerning matters such as access to water and nature protection.19

16   Klas Sandell and Sverker Sörlin, ‘Naturen som fostrare. Friluftsliv och ideologi i svenskt 1900-tal’, Historisk Tidskrift 114 (1994): 4–43; Matti Goksøyr, ‘The Popular Sounding Board: Nationalism, “the People” and Sport in Norway in the Inter-war Years’, in Meinander and Mangan, The Nordic World. 17   See Sandell and Sörlin, ‘Naturen som fostrare’; Jørn Hansen, ‘Politics and Gymnastics in a Frontier Area Post-1848’, in Meinander and Mangan, The Nordic World; Erkki Vasara, ‘Maintaining Military Capability: The Finnish Home Guard, European Fashion and Sport for War’, in Meinander and Mangan, The Nordic World. 18   Lars Aronsson, ‘Rörlighet och naturturism’, in K. Sandell and S. Sörlin (eds), Friluftshistoria. Från ‘härdande friluftslif ’ till ekoturism och miljöpedagogik (Stockholm, 2000), p. 208; Hans Gelter, ‘Friluftsliv: The Scandinavian Philosophy of Outdoor Life’, Canadian Journal of Environmental Education, 5 (2005): 79, 81; Orvar Löfgren ‘Människan i naturen’, in J. Frykman and O. Löfgren, Den kultiverade människan (Malmö, 1979), p. 68. 19   All of the Nordic countries, apart from Denmark, have an extended Right of Public Access. The concept is interpreted slightly differently in the individual countries, with the traditions of Sweden and Finland being the most similar to each other. Allemansrätten is a cornerstone for access to outdoor life and is often referred to as one of things that sets Nordic outdoor life and use of nature apart from the rest of the world, despite the fact that similar traditional rights exist in many other countries as well.

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When the Right of Public Access is introduced in official descriptions, the theme of heritage is prominent. Allemansrätten is described as a cultural heritage and a national symbol both for the Nordic region at large and for the individual Nordic countries. For example, the home page of the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency explains that the tradition can be traced to provincial laws and customs established during the Middle Ages and asserts that ‘we [Swedes] tend to regard the Right to Public Access as part of our cultural heritage, sometimes even as a national symbol’.20 On the Åland Islands, where the Right of Public Access is slightly more restricted than in Sweden and Finland, the local environmental authorities embrace the idea of an ancient Nordic tradition: ‘In the Nordic countries we have since time immemorial maintained the right to move freely in forests, lands and over water’.21 A similar statement is made by the Norwegian Directorate for Nature Management: ‘It is important for us to have contact with nature. Access to woods, fields, mountains, rivers, lakes and sherries [sic], irrespective of who owns them, is an ancient, unwritten right in Norway’.22 The Right of Public Access is frequently described as something particularly Nordic. In a publication from 1997 the Nordic Council concisely states that, ‘Allemansrätten is a Nordic concept’.23 On the website of Finland’s environmental administration, allemansrätten is singled out as unique for the Nordic countries and something which is linked to a distinctive ‘Nordic’ cultural characteristic of craving unrestricted movement in nature versus other European countries where this tradition is, presumably, not so strong: The Right of Public Access is most comprehensive in the Nordic countries. For us it is an important part of our culture to be able to move freely in nature and to pick berries and mushrooms. In other EU-countries this right is much more limited and the content varies. … The European Union does not try to standardize the right to public access in the EU-countries since it in each country is based on local conditions and part of the country’s cultural history.24 20   ‘Vi betraktar ofta allemansrätten som ett kulturarv, och ibland till och med som en nationalsymbol’: Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, http://www.naturvardsverket.se, accessed 13 January 2010. 21   ‘I Norden har vi sedan urminnes tider haft rätt att röra oss fritt i skog, mark och över vatten’: Åland Parliament, http://www.regeringen.ax, accessed 30 January 2011. 22   Allemanretten_eng 2007-pdf, Norwegian Directorate for Nature Management, http://www.dirnat.no, accessed 31 March 2011. 23   Nordiska ministerrådet, Allemansrätten i Norden (Copenhagen, 1997), p. 5. 24   ‘Jokamiehenoikeudet ovat laajimmat Pohjoismaissa, joissa vapaa liikkuminen luonnossa marjastaen ja sienestäen on tärkeä osa kulttuuria. EU-maissa oikeudet ovat huomattavasti rajatummat ja oikeuksien sisältö vaihtelee. … Euroopan unionilla ei ole pyrkimyksiä yhdenmukaistaa EU-maiden jokamiehenoikeuksia, koska ne ovat kussakin

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The fact that people are allowed to move around freely in the countryside has resulted in fewer marked trails for the public in the Nordic countries than in many other nations where walking is a popular pastime, such as Great Britain and Germany. In this way, allemansrätten might, quite paradoxically, keep a group of potential nature walkers who would be more comfortable following a marked trail from going for longer forest walks. Nonetheless, the Right of Public Access can be said to encourage special patterns of movement, such as the possibility of picking berries and mushrooms, which seems to be a practice that all Nordic countries pride themselves in as being typical of their nation. While walking around in nature purely for the enjoyment of it might still be frowned upon in some places, combining the walking with fishing or picking berries is conceived of as ‘doing something sensible with one’s time’.25 Albeit that the custom is still widespread and popular in the Nordic countries, berry-picking has shown indications of declining of late, whereas there has been an increase in walking purely for the sake of walking.26 Nordic Walking Above any other sport, cross-country skiing has been labelled as ‘Nordic’. However, when it comes to spare-time pursuits, walking in nature is frequently named, if not the most popular, certainly one of the most popular leisure-time activities in the Nordic countries.27 Perhaps it should come as no surprise that these two activities were, at least in certain aspects, merged in a recent Finnish sport innovation. Walking with poles, known by the international name of ‘Nordic Walking’, is today regarded as a national form of exercise in Finland and approximately every fifth Finn is reported to practise this activity. Finnish cross-country ski athletes had previously used ski poles for summer fitness training, but it was not until the late 1980s that the idea took hold that walking with poles could make a suitable form of exercise for the general public. maassa kiinteä osa maan kulttuurihistoriaa ja perustuvat paikallisiin olosuhteisiin’: Finland’s Environmental Administration, http://www.ymparisto.fi, accessed 31 March 2011. 25   Nedrelid, ‘Use of Nature as a Norwegian Characteristic’, p. 25. 26   Lars Emmelin, Peter Fredman and Klas Sandell, Planering och förvaltning för friluftsliv. En forskningsöversikt (2005), http://www.naturvardsverket.se/Documents/ publikationer/620-5468-6.pdf, p. 58; Eija Pouta, Tuija Sievänen and Marjo Neuvonen, ‘Recreational Wild Berry Picking in Finland – Reflection of a Rural Lifestyle’, Society and Natural Resources, 19/4 (2006): 285–304. 27   Cf. Aronsson, ‘Rörlighet och naturturism’, pp. 214–215; Norman McIntyre, ‘Internationella tendenser’, in Sandell and Sörlin, Friluftshistoria, p. 242.

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Power walking was one of the big fitness trends of the 1980s, and there was a great interest in further developing walking for fitness. Studies were carried out at the Vierumäki Sport Institute in Southern Finland on how to make walking with poles more efficient. In the mid-1990s the Finnish outdoor organization Suomen Latu started cooperating with the sports equipment manufacturer Exel Oyj in developing pole walking. Together with students of the Vierumäki Institute it was discovered that making the ‘walking poles’ shorter than poles for skiing significantly raised the efficiency of the activity. Moreover, the walking poles were equipped with a soft rubber tip suitable for asphalt and similar surfaces. In 1997, Exel began to manufacture poles specifically for walking and launched the international term ‘Nordic Walking’. Nordic Walking was not an immediate hit. The consensus among the general public was that using poles for walking rather than skiing looked ridiculous; furthermore, the media made fun of the new form of exercise, and sports equipment retailers and sports fairs had doubts about the marketability of the product. Nevertheless, the number of people exercising through walking with poles increased steadily. The outdoor organization Suomen Latu actively worked to promote Nordic Walking by, for example, arranging walking events led by instructors. Eventually, the attention Nordic Walking received in the media was not as a ludicrous sport fad but as a successful innovation. Nordic Walking was promptly launched abroad. By 1998 the first walking poles had been sold in Sweden and Switzerland. The new concept was marketed especially to other Nordic countries’ outdoor associations, with tangible results. In 2000, only three years after the term Nordic Walking had been launched, the International Nordic Walking Association (INWA, from 2009 The International Nordic Walking Federation) was founded in Finland with the support of the company Exel Oyj. The purpose of the INWA is to sell, develop, protect and teach the principles of Nordic Walking. Great importance is placed on ensuring that the correct technique – and equipment – is used. To promote this aim, the association has created a system of certified INWA instructors and coaches.28 In 2000 the Exel Corporation was presented with the Innovation of the Year award in Finland for successfully launching a new form of exercise. Part   Apart from the INWA, there are a number of other international Nordic Walking associations, both European- and North American-based. Walking with poles as a fitness activity had in fact already been introduced in the United States before the Nordic Walking boom. In the mid-1980s the American ski instructor Tom Rutlin developed a pole-walking technique he referred to as ‘exerstriding’. After the term ‘Nordic Walking’ gained acceptance as a generic concept, Rutlin started calling his version of pole walking the ‘Exerstride Method Nordic Walking’. 28

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of the explanation for the international success of Nordic Walking is that the activity corresponded to market demands. At a time when obesity had become a serious public health concern and an increasing number of people were leading sedentary lives, Nordic Walking was introduced as a non-threatening method for novice exercisers to get in shape. One of the major advantages of Nordic Walking is that it can be adapted to individual levels of fitness and carries a low risk of injury. The aspects of health and fitness promotion inherent in Nordic Walking have been described in a number of scientific studies and articles. While these types of report are not normally read by the average walker, they constitute more or less compulsory reference material for those promoting the activity. According to consumption researchers Elizabeth Shove and Mika Pantzar, the international success of Nordic Walking constitutes a prime example of when the interests of the consumer and the producer meet.29 The consumer is, in other words, part of the innovation process, and Nordic Walking can be regarded as a folk movement in more ways than one. In Nordic Walking, a well-established practice is combined with a component claimed to raise the efficiency of the activity. This is obviously a clever marketing strategy on the part of manufacturers of walking poles, but it also corresponds to a general trend towards the specialization and sportification of outdoor life.30 Nordic Walking is walking with the added ingredient of specialized equipment but also carries the prescription of proper technique and the need, at least initially, for expert guidance. The underlying message is clear: simply knowing how to walk is not enough. Nordic Walking has met with the most enthusiasm in countries where outdoor life is considered part of a national lifestyle. Besides the Nordic countries, Nordic Walking has gained particular popularity in northern and central Europe, especially in German-speaking countries. This pattern seems to correspond to two different traditions connected with walking – a general ‘Northern’ culture of walking that favours brisk walking, alone or with a walking partner, preferably in nature or along park pathways or exercise trails, versus a general ‘Southern’ flâneur-esque tradition of leisurely social walking in urban environments.31   Elizabeth Shove and Mika Pantzar, ‘Consumers, Producers and Practices: Understanding the Invention and Reinvention of Nordic Walking’, Journal of Consumer Culture, 1 (2005): 62. 30   Sandell and Sörlin, Friluftshistoria, pp. 204–205; Ingemar Ahlström, ‘Utomhus i konsumtionssamhället’, in Sandell and Sörlin, Friluftshistoria, p. 180; Emmelin, Fredman and Sandell, Planering och förvaltning för friluftsliv, p. 15. 31   See, for example, Giovanna Del Negro, The Passeggiata and Popular Culture in an Italian Town: Folklore and the Performance of Modernity (Montreal and Kingston, 2004). See 29

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Figure 2.2

Performing Nordic Heritage

Nordic walkers by the shore

The typical Nordic walker is not found in city centres. However, it is not particularly usual to take the walking poles along for a walk in ‘wild’ nature either. The most typical settings for the Nordic walk are along country roads or along the gravelled park paths and the networks of walking trails characteristic of Nordic suburbia.32 Nevertheless, the aspect of nature has retained a significant role in the marketing of the activity internationally. Promotional pictures of Nordic walkers tend to be set in scenic landscapes with little visible habitation. The concept of ‘fresh air’ is frequently employed to characterize Nordic Walking in direct marketing as well as by private advocates. In their book Schlank und Fit mit Nordic Walking (Slim and Fit with Nordic Walking), the German Nordic Walking instructors Ulrich Pramann and Bernd Schäufle claim that brisk pole walking in nature helps to develop a sensitivity for one’s own body and to find a balance between body and soul – which subsequently will develop a new also Annick Sjögren, ‘Allemansrätt i själen’, in E. Johansson (ed.), Mångnatur. Friluftsliv och natursyn i det mångkulturella samhället (Tumba, 2006). 32   Cf. Tage Wiklund, Det tillgjorda landskapet (Gothenburg, 1995).

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vivacity.33 It is not only the exercise that is described as health-promoting in Nordic Walking – spending time outdoors is portrayed as an equally healing factor. The perceived spiritual effect of the activity is underlined by many of its proponents.34 The message disseminated in most instructional guides on Nordic Walking is explicit: adding poles to walking not only burns more calories – it induces serenity and well-being. Nordic: The Brand Nordic Walking is clearly associated with nature and with a healthy body and mind. But to what extent does the term ‘Nordic’ help to promote this image? At least in a European context, Nordic countries seem to be commonly perceived as particularly nature-loving (an image, one might add, much endorsed by the Nordic countries themselves). ‘Nordic is outdoors. Nordic is nature. Absolutely,’ states instructor Frank van Eeckhout at the Nordic Fitness Center in Brussels in answer to the question of what Belgians perceive as ‘Nordic’. Eva Johansson, Nordic Walking instructor at the Swedish Friskis & Svettis Gym in Brussels concurs: ‘Outdoor activities are not paid much attention to here in Belgium and many Belgians do not know how to prepare in terms of clothing and shoes for an outdoor activity. Scandinavians have a closer relationship with nature and view it differently. We both are and are perceived as outdoor people.’35 Jens Werner, Nordic Walking instructor in Bad Kreuznach in Germany, notes that Scandinavia, as well as Canada, are both considered meccas for outdoor sports. ‘Scandinavia is generally associated with a love for nature and environment-friendliness,’ he adds.36 A common association for Nordic Walking is winter sports, especially during the early years of Nordic Walking when it was widely conceived of as ‘skiing without skis’. Exel’s marketing manager confirms that in choosing the name ‘Nordic Walking’ the company deliberately wanted to create identification with an established image. The target was to create a new market for the training 33   Ulrich Pramann and Bernd Schäufle, Schlank und Fit mit Nordic Walking (Munich: Südwest Verlag, 2006). 34   See, for example, Malin Svensson, Nordic Walking (Los Angeles, 2009). 35   ‘… utomhusaktiviteter agnas ingen storre uppmarksamhet har i Belgien och de flesta belgare vet inte hur de ska forbereda sig (klader, skor mm) for en utomhusaktivitet. Skandinaver har ett narmare forhallande till naturen och ser den pa ett annat satt. Vi bade ar och uppfattas som friluftsmanniskor’, interview, Brussels, 28 April 2010. 36   ‘Generell gilt Skandinavien – neben Kanada – als das Mekka der Outdoorsportarten. Die Liebe zur Natur und die Naturfreundlichkeit steht hierzulande ebenfalls sprichwörtlich für Skandinavien’: interview, Bad Kreuznach, 22 November 2010.

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method in central Europe. She explains: ‘Scandinavian style was a trend at that time. The name refers both to Scandinavia and also to Nordic skiing, as Nordic Walking can be compared to Nordic skiing classic style.’37 Consequently, by using the adjective ‘Nordic’ it was possible to build on an existing ‘brand’ and tap into a set of stereotypes and values. Exel Oyj has elaborated on the concept by introducing Nordic Fitness Sports, which, in addition to Nordic Walking includes Nordic Fitness Skiing, Nordic Blading and Nordic Snowshoeing. A further development is to not only market the activity and the equipment, but also the actual places as a part of Nordic Fitness. The concept of a Nordic Fitness Sport Park was registered in 2003. The chain of Nordic Fitness Sport Parks, which offer scenic trails for Nordic Walking for different levels of fitness, can be found in Finland, Germany, the Czech Republic, Austria, the Netherlands and Italy. Accordingly, having a ‘Nordic’ park in Italy is, in this connection, no contradiction, since it is the activity that makes it Nordic. Similarly, the Nordic Fitness Center in Brussels defines itself as Nordic because of the range of outdoor activities it offers. Other examples in which ‘Nordic’ has been employed for its brand value is in various types of ‘Nordic design’ products and in the New Nordic Cuisine movement, perhaps most famously exemplified by the celebrated Danish restaurant noma. The name noma is an abbreviation of nordisk mad (‘Nordic food’) regardless of the fact that the main fare on offer at the restaurant is of Danish origin.38 The brand ‘Nordic’ aims to evoke associations with nature, freshness, health, simplicity (in the sense of naturalness), honesty and authenticity, as well as being simultaneously ecological and high-tech. In the examples above, the brand ‘Nordic’ has consequently been chosen above the national alternatives of, for example, ‘Danish food’ and ‘Finnish walking’. Attempts to connect with perceived common Nordic values are also discernible in the naming of certain cultural institutions, such as the Nordiska museet (Stockholm) and the Nordic Heritage Museum (Seattle).39 Pilgrimage: New and Old Walking Traditions It is worth noting that even though the ‘Nordic’ in Nordic Walking is decisively underscored internationally, the activity is simply called pole walking in the   Email interview with Marja-Leena Koskinen, Marketing Manager, Exel, 5 May 2010.   Hanne Pico Larsen, ‘Performing Tasty Heritage: Danish Cuisine and Playful Nostalgia at Restaurant noma’, Ethnologia Europaea, 40/2 (2010): 90–102. 39   See Magdalena Hillström, Chapter 10 in this volume, and Lizette Gradén, Chapter 8 in this volume. 37 38

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Nordic region – sauvakävely in Finnish, stavgång/stavgang in the Scandinavian languages and kepikõnd in Estonian. In the Nordic countries, the marketing and promoting of Nordic Walking has focused on introducing it as an ‘ordinary activity for ordinary people’ and on underlining the benefits involved in adding the poles to normal walking.40 In other words, the launch of Nordic Walking entailed introducing an element to an already existing practice, rather than pioneering a completely new activity and behavioural pattern. Finnish studies have shown that the majority of Nordic walkers in Finland were already ardent walkers prior to picking up their walking poles.41 A walking-related phenomenon that builds on tradition in a different way is the recent upsurge of interest in pilgrimage. The growing popularity of pilgrimage in the Nordic countries is part of a global trend, but also retains some regional characteristics. In the present-day Nordic context, the term ‘pilgrimage’ covers a range of different walking practices. There are traditional pilgrimages consisting of a solitary walker or small group of pilgrims walking long distances to a famous religious site, but shorter group walks led by the local parish parson may also be referred to as a pilgrimage. Some of the arranged group pilgrimages have a marked emphasis on meditation and spiritual reflection whereas others place more importance on the social aspects of community and sharing experiences. The two most important Nordic pilgrimage sites in the Middle Ages, Nidaros Cathedral (in present-day Trondheim) in Norway and the Birgittine abbey in Vadstena in Sweden, are nowadays both homes to active pilgrim centres that organize, promote and provide information about pilgrimage. In addition, organized pilgrimage activities have been established in Finland and Denmark. In 2010 the Saint Olav pilgrimage to Nidaros was accorded the status of a Council of Europe Cultural Route. The Council of Europe homepage describes the route as follows: The pilgrim ways through Scandinavia are a network of routes through Denmark, Sweden and Norway, many of them the remnants of historic routes leading to Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim where Saint Olav lies buried. Since the 1990s, the ways have been improved and signposted, in order to set out a variety of walks through the spectacular landscape of Scandinavia.42

  Shove and Pantzar, ‘Consumers, Producers and Practices’, p. 50.   Katja Oksanen-Särelä and Päivi Timonen, ‘Diversification of Practice: The Case of Nordic Walking’, in M. Pantzar and E. Shove (eds), Manufacturing Leisure (Helsinki, 2005), p. 212. 42   Council of Europe, ‘The Route of Saint Olav Ways’, http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/ cultureheritage/culture/routes/Olav_en.asp, accessed 28 March 2011. 40 41

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This description with its remarks about a common Scandinavian historical heritage and ‘spectacular landscape’ could easily have been taken from a tourist brochure. Indeed, besides the religious aspects, increasing pilgrim tourism is a contributing impetus for developing the Scandinavian pilgrimage routes. The potential of increased pilgrim tourism is subtly hinted at in the Norwegian press release (3 June 2010) announcing the Council of Europe’s recognition of the Saint Olav ways as a European heritage route: It is now settled that the pilgrim roads through Denmark, Sweden and Norway, under the name Saint Olav ways, will have the status of European route of culture. This will be very important for the Nordic pilgrimage cooperation. When the pilgrim roads to Santiago de Compostela, as the first one, received the status of European route of culture in 1987, the number of pilgrims increased from twothree thousand to over a hundred thousand pilgrims a year. The Saint Olav ways will now be directly connected to the road to Santiago and all the great European pilgrimage routes.43

Scandinavian routes that have been officially approved as belonging to the Nidaros pilgrimage network are marked with a special patented symbol – a Saint Olav logo that brands the route as ‘authentic’. In Sweden there is also a similar patented symbol for marking other pilgrimage routes, especially ones related to the Saint Bridget pilgrimage to Vadstena. The common Nordic interest in developing the Scandinavian pilgrimage network is primarily expressed in cooperation between the different pilgrim centres through yearly conferences, joint pilgrimages and projects. As a sign of the pan-Nordic importance there is even a special Nordic pilgrimage flag with the Nordic colours. However, not only the Nordic pilgrim centres but, increasingly, also many dioceses, parishes, museums, hiking associations, local pilgrimage and heritage societies, as well as tourist entrepreneurs, are involved in expanding the Scandinavian pilgrimage routes. Building on allemansrätten, cultural– historical landscapes as well as large areas of unpopulated nature, the various pilgrim projects offer walking and heritage tourism with a spiritual dimension for pilgrims near and far. Parishes in all of the Nordic countries arrange both shorter and longer pilgrimages as a communal activity: a number of parishes even have their own pilgrim pastors. Pilgrimages present alternatives to traditional church services and attract many participants that might not otherwise be regular church43   ‘Pilegrimsvegene til Nidaros får status som Europeisk kulturveg’, http://www. pilgrim.info/artikkel.aspx?id=4096057, accessed 28 March 2011.

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goers. Today, several religious educational institutions offer courses in becoming a pilgrim guide. The present-day popularity of pilgrimage is often seen as connected with a growing interest in spirituality and ecological questions. These interests go beyond traditional religiosity, and a large number of participants in pilgrimages are in fact agnostics or non-believers. Tomas Wettermark, pilgrim pastor at the pilgrim centre in Vadstena, interprets the current broad appeal of pilgrimage as an answer to general late-modern concerns in that people do not want to be told what to do, but want experiences. He observes that many of those who visit the Vadstena pilgrim centre might even hold a negative opinion about the Church: On the other hand, [our visitors] say that they do believe, or that they are searching, but they want to do in their own way and, preferably, they want to do it in nature – that’s where one experiences the presence of God in some way. … This whole thing about being outdoors and walking, and that you get by with rather simple means. You have a small backpack with an extra sweater and an extra pair of socks. Really very simple. And this appeals to people tremendously.44

The pilgrim pastor Fjalar Lundell of the Swedish-speaking pilgrim centre in Sibbo, Finland, has long experience in Nordic pilgrimage work and sees the accentuation of the practices of a slower pace and reflection as characteristic of the Nordic pilgrimage culture. He describes, as does pastor Tomas Wettermark, the pilgrimage profile in the Nordic countries, despite certain national differences, as having a common basis and considers that the positive attitude to outdoor life in general has influenced the proliferation of pilgrimage activities.45 An often-observed trend in contemporary Western pilgrimage is the attention given to the road rather than to the goal and the arrival.46 This tendency is prominent in the case of Nordic pilgrimage and is in line with the Protestant tradition of not recognizing certain objects and places as more spiritually charged than others, but rather seeing God as omnipresent.47 The pilgrim pastors in Vadstena and in Sibbo both emphasize that present-day Nordic pilgrimage actively avoids the image of pilgrimage as an achievement, which was often a   Fieldwork interview with T.W., 13 June 2011.   Fieldwork interviews with F.L., 11 November 2009, and T.W., 13 June 2011. 46   See, for example, Simon Coleman and John Eade (eds), Reframing Pilgrimage: Cultures in Motion (London, 2005). 47   See, for example, Arne Bugge Amundsen, ‘Naturvandring eller indre reise? Moderne norske pilegrimer i ideologisk dobbeltlys’, in A. Eriksen, J. Garnert and T. Selberg (eds), Historien in på livet. Diskussioner om kulturarv och minnespolitik (Lund, 2002), p. 164. Also fieldwork interviews with F.L. and T.W. 44 45

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prominent aspect of mediaeval pilgrimage, and instead attach great importance to the process of walking. Walking in nature is often described by representatives of the Protestant Church as instrumental for a deepened spiritual experience. The comments of Sweden’s first pilgrim parson Hans-Erik Lindström on the Church of Sweden homepage seem to sit well with the tradition of Nordic outdoor ideals: In nature people let go of much of what goes on between walls and ceilings and floors, where one is closed in. One feels a greater degree of freedom. Then one will more easily open up to both exterior and internal impulses. The beauty, not least for us Scandinavians [nordbor], also contributes.48

Hans-Erik Lindström’s ‘seven keywords’ of pilgrimage (freedom, simplicity, slow pace, peacefulness, light-heartedness, sharing and spirituality) that lie at the foundation of the pilgrimage work at the Vadstena pilgrim centre have generally been embraced and promoted by the other Nordic pilgrim centres as well. The Solitary and Athletic Roamers of the Forest? The ideal of the slowed-pace Nordic pilgrimages notwithstanding, a more common perception of the typical Nordic hiker, including the Nordic pilgrim, seems to be one of speed and capacity for walking. This image is particularly associated with the Norwegians, for whom the concept of ‘going on a hike’ [gå på tur] has become part of the national self-definition. The co-workers at the Finland-Swedish pilgrim centre in Sibbo did not find it surprising that the new Nordic wave of interest in pilgrimage started in Norway with its strong tradition of long-distance walking. One of the pilgrim pastors remarked: It is absolutely impossible to have a pilgrimage with Norwegian participants. They will just run off. You don’t know where they have gone, while you yourself are huffing and puffing behind them. I have tried to keep up with them but it is a real effort.

However, in the context of European pilgrimage it seems that this reputation does not only cover Norwegians. Interviewed Finnish pilgrims who walked the Camino de Santiago testify that Scandinavians in general are often singled out 48   Svenska kyrkan (Church of Sweden), ‘Pilgrim i dag’, emphasis added, http://www. svenskakyrkan.se/default.aspx?id=643800, accessed 29 March 2011.

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as fast walkers. One young female Santiago pilgrim from Helsinki answered the question about what characterizes pilgrims from the Nordic countries by saying: Well, they are always in a rush. And they are great walkers. And that’s what people from other countries said too. That the Finns and [other Scandinavians] were great walkers. Yes, that’s how it was. … Even Scandinavians who were not particularly sporty walked quickly. Some people from other countries also did, but then they were the sporty kind.

Several of the Finnish pilgrims I interviewed were experienced hikers who had previously gone on longer camping trips in Scandinavia. All of them felt that walking the sometimes quite busy pilgrim route to Santiago was a very different experience from hiking in Nordic nature. For example, one interviewee described the two walking experiences as complete opposites: If you compare it [the Camino de Santiago] with walking here in Finland or in Sweden I would in some ways perceive it as night and day. Here in Finland you go hiking in order to not meet people [laughs], to be in the forest, to take it easy, easy and peaceful, have your backpack, live in your tent, drink the water from the lake. To be there in the mountains or in the forest, the less people, the better it is. It is like you are your own master. You have everything you need with you, food and clothes and home, the tent. You are your own master, you can decide everything for yourself.49

The Nordic propensity to seek out the remoteness of unpopulated nature has been explained both as having developed out of bourgeois pastimes and as the result of a prevailing pre-industrialized, or even pre-agrarian, mentality.50 Recent urbanization is a likely reason for the lingering strong attachment to the countryside among the urban population, not least in Finland, believes one of the investigators for a project on mapping walking routes for the city of Turku: Most town-dwellers here [in Finland] are new arrivals. There are not many generations of town-dwellers: if they are born [in a town] then their parents are born in the countryside, and they will have summer cottages out of town. So most urban people in Finland are as a matter of fact rather rural. And that’s why they enjoy walking in the forest and go hiking away from the urban scenes, if you can   Anonymous interviewee, pilgrims and walkers (2008–2011).  Wiklund, Det tillgjorda landskapet, p. 68; Björn Tordsson, ‘Rötter i “barbari” och “romantic”’, in Sandell and Sörlin, Friluftshistoria; Löfgren, ‘Människan i naturen’, p. 66. 49 50

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put it that way. I am certain that it has a strong connection with people’s other identity, before they settled in town.51

The Swedish ethnologist Orvar Löfgren has described the Scandinavian image of nature as ‘compensatory’ – nature and outdoor life offer a contrast and a relief from working life, demands and artificiality. From early childhood, this originally urban middle-class view is taught through cultural habits, popular culture and institutions. Nature is seen to represent leisure, freedom and nonartificiality or, in other words, naturalness. At the same time, outdoor life has inevitably become part of a growing leisure industry.52 Today, a significant part of the population in the Nordic countries has its roots elsewhere. Considering the strong emphasis on spending time in nature in Nordic culture, it is not surprising that outdoor life has been explored as a way of integrating immigrants into their new home countries. Despite their good intentions, these projects have been criticized for not involving immigrants at the planning level and for adopting a patronizing attitude of teaching the ‘correct’ way of interacting with nature. Another serious critique concerns the tendency of viewing immigrants as a homogenous group and not acknowledging that there are also considerable differences among the Nordic ‘non-immigrant’ population with regard to knowledge about, access to and interest in nature and outdoor activities.53 However, it has also been pointed out that outdoor activities may constitute a particularly useful meeting space in this context. Nature can offer a neutral arena for different groups and, moreover, introduce the documented health benefits connected with outdoor life.54 Comparisons of attitudes to nature within the ‘outdoors’ integration projects have often centred around cultural differences in behaviour patterns and expectations: While the traditional Nordic perception of nature is as a space for solitude, sports and nature study, the tradition among many immigrant groups has been to see nature as a space for socializing.55 The institutionalized love of nature in the Nordic countries may seem innocuous but, driven to its extreme, the implications of the ‘sound mind in a sound body’ dogma may quickly pick up less benign connotations of elitism,   Fieldwork interview with H.E., 22 February 2009.   Löfgren, ‘Människan i naturen’, pp. 66–71. 53   Emil Plisch, ‘Naturliga möten’, in Johansson, Mångnatur. 54   Pernilla Ouis, ‘Grusade förhoppningar. Friluftsliv som integration i Arrie’, in H. Dahm, E. Lisberg Jensen and P. Ouis, Man lär sig genom att vara där. Utvärdering av studiefrämjandets projekt Mångfald och Integration 2007–2009 (Lund, 2010), p. 189. 55   Ella Johansson, ‘Om meningen med att gå en sväng. En introduktion till tema och innehåll’, in Johansson, Mångnatur, pp. 9–10; Ouis, ‘Grusade förhoppningar’, p. 180. 51 52

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xenophobia and a division between ‘us’ and ‘them’. A truly multicultural Nordic society, on the other hand, will need to accept different uses of nature and see them as enriching rather than threatening.56 Conclusion Nordic Walking and pilgrimage are seemingly very different types of walking phenomena. However, the recent success and spread of both in the Nordic region build on established popular practices. In other words, a pre-understanding of, and a willingness to, embrace the activities already existed. Nordic Walking and pilgrimage fit into a tradition of outdoor life. Idealization of nature is a key aspect in both activities, and in both cases nature is linked to ideas of health, whether physical or spiritual. Nature has, arguably to a greater degree than in many other nations, become a central element in expressions of nationalism in Nordic countries.57 The themes of nature and outdoor activities have evolved into a central mythology and common Nordic stereotype.58 Part and parcel of this paradigm are ideals and ideas concerning health, soundness and (national) identity. In this context, a brisk forest walk emerges as a moral imperative. While outdoor life as ideology might deny and hide the contemporary reality of an increasingly plural and multicultural northern Europe, these types of mythologies, as pointed out by outdoor life researcher Björn Tordsson, tend to create their own realities.59 Very few countries can compare with the Nordic countries statistically when it comes to practising outdoor and sporting activities.60 This is supported by studies and surveys that consistently rank outdoor life at the top of popular pastimes.61 Whether this is because people feel a social pressure to rank leisuretime pursuits this way or whether it reflects actual practices is a question for discussion. The survey results do, however, clearly reflect a societal ideal. This ideal is also maintained at an official level – as exemplified in information about   See ibid.   Cf. Orvar Löfgren, ‘Parkvandringer’, in K. Hastrup (ed.), Den nordiske verden 1 (Copenhagen, 1992), p. 150. 58   See Sandell and Sörlin, ‘Naturen som fostrare’; Tordsson, ‘Rötter i “barbari” och “romantik”’; Paasi, ‘Finnish Landscape as Social Practice’. 59   Tordsson, ‘Rötter i “barbari” och “romantik”’, p. 57. 60   Seppo Hentilä, ‘Jaloon uskomme urheiluun’, in A. Heikkinen et al. (eds), Suomi uskoi urheiluun. Suomen urheilun ja liikunnan historia (Helsinki, 1992), p. 14. 61   Nedrelid, ‘Use of Nature as a Norwegian Characteristic’, p. 24; Aronsson, ‘Rörlighet och naturturism’, p. 214. 56 57

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allemansrätten by governmental institutions, where outdoor life is described as a cultural heritage of great significance and, moreover, something of intrinsic importance to the national identities of the Nordic countries. Besides the more or less compulsory references to allemansrätten, previous studies have singled out simplicity and everydayness as typical for Nordic outdoor life. The widespread popular foundation (folklighet) of outdoor life has also been described as characteristic.62 Yet another aspect of the Nordicness of outdoor life is sensory experience. Walking through a landscape gives tangibility to the sense of place. The special features of a particular landscape, the flora and fauna, the changing seasons and weather conditions – such as snow and autumn colours, the darkness of winter and long twilight hours of summer nights – are all instrumental in shaping the experience of the walk. First-hand experiences and accounts of particular types of Nordic landscapes tend to reconfirm their iconic position and act as a reminder of their ‘Nordic’ quality. The nature walk is a Nordic stereotype and ideal, but also a common practice that is part of many people’s lifestyle and self-image – the awareness of which simultaneously brings out the ritual and performative aspect of everyday patterns of movement. In situations where these practices are highlighted – for example, in rhetoric and when contrasted with cultural practices elsewhere – they are frequently framed specifically as Nordic. Precisely because of their mundaneness, popular patterns of movement have an integral role in the processes of creating, negotiating and performing Nordic identities. Bibliography Interviews Fieldwork material, quoted interviews (in the author’s possession) Anonymous interviews, pilgrims and walkers (2008–2011). Fjalar Lundell, pilgrim parson, Sibbo (11 November 2009). Frank van Eeckhout, Nordic Walking instructor, Brussels (12 August 2010). Håkan Eklund, initiator of walking route project, Turku (22 February 2009). Tomas Wettermark, pilgrim parson, Vadstena (13 June 2011).

  Emmelin, Fredman and Sandell, Planering och förvaltning för friluftsliv, p. 12.

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Email interviews Eva Johansson, Nordic Walking instructor, Brussels (28 April 2010). Jens Werner, Nordic Walking instructor, Bad Kreuznach (22 November 2010). Marja-Leena Koskinen, Marketing Manager, Exel (5 May 2010). Secondary Sources Ahlström, Ingemar, ‘Utomhus i konsumtionssamhället’, in K. Sandell and S. Sörlin (eds), Friluftshistoria. Från ‘härdande friluftslif ’ till ekoturism och miljöpedagogik (Stockholm: Carlsson bokförlag, 2000). Amundsen, Arne Bugge, ‘Naturvandring eller indre reise? Moderne norske pilegrimer i ideologisk dobbeltlys’, in A. Eriksen, J. Garnert and T. Selberg (eds), Historien in på livet. Diskussioner om kulturarv och minnespolitik (Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2002). Aronsson, Lars, ‘Rörlighet och naturturism’, in K. Sandell and S. Sörlin (eds), Friluftshistoria. Från ‘härdande friluftslif ’ till ekoturism och miljöpedagogik (Stockholm: Carlsson bokförlag, 2000). Bø, Olav, ‘Romantikk, tradisjon og nasjonalkultur’, in L. Honko (ed.), Folklore och nationsbyggande i Norden (Åbo: Nordiska institutet för folkdiktning, 1980). Cilauro, Santo, Tom Gleisner and Rob Stich, Phaic Tăn: Sunstroke on a Shoestring (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2006). Coleman, Simon and John Eade (eds), Reframing Pilgrimage: Cultures in Motion (London: Routledge, 2005). Del Negro, Giovanna, The Passeggiata and Popular Culture in an Italian Town: Folklore and the Performance of Modernity, (Montreal and Kingston: McGillQueen’s University Press, 2004). Emmelin, Lars, Peter Fredman and Klas Sandell, Planering och förvaltning för friluftsliv. En forskningsöversikt (2005), http://www.naturvardsverket.se/ Documents/publikationer/620-5468-6.pdf. Gelter, Hans, ‘Friluftsliv: The Scandinavian Philosophy of Outdoor life’, Canadian Journal of Environmental Education, 5 (2005): 77–92. Goksøyr, Matti, ‘The Popular Sounding Board: Nationalism, “the People” and Sport in Norway in the Inter-war Years’, in H. Meinander and J.A. Mangan (eds), The Nordic World: Sport in Society (London and Portland: Frank Cass, 1998). Hansen, Jørn, ‘Politics and Gymnastics in a Frontier Area Post-1848’, in H. Meinander and J.A. Mangan (eds), The Nordic World: Sport in Society (London and Portland, Frank Cass, 1998).

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Hautala, Jouko, Finnish Folklore Research 1828–1918 (Helsinki: Societas Scientiarum Fennica, 1969). Heikkinen, Antero, Terveyden ja ilon tähden. Herrasväki liikkeellä Suomessa 1700–ja 1800–luvuilla (Helsinki: Societas Historica Finlandiae, 1991). Henningsen, Bernd, ‘The Swedish Construction of Nordic Identity’, in Ø. Sørensen and B. Stråth (eds), The Cultural Construction of Norden (Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, 1997). Hentilä, Seppo, ‘Jaloon uskomme urheiluun’, in A. Heikkinen et al. (eds), Suomi uskoi urheiluun. Suomen urheilun ja liikunnan historia (Helsinki: VAPKkustannus, 1992). Honko, Lauri (ed.), ‘Upptäckten av folkdiktning och nationell identitet i Finland’, in Folklore och nationsbyggande i Norden (Åbo: Nordiska institutet för folkdiktning, 1980). Johansson, Ella (ed.), ‘Om meningen med att gå en sväng. En introduktion till tema och innehåll’, in Mångnatur. Friluftsliv och natursyn i det mångkulturella samhället (Tumba: Mångkulturellt centrum, 2006). König, Gudrun M., Eine Kulturgeschichte des Spazierganges. Spuren einer bürgerlichen Praktik 1780–1850 (Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 1996). Laaksonen, Pekka, ‘Elias Lönnrot. En vandringsman i runornas land’, in [Elias Lönnrot] R. Knapas (ed.), Vandraren. Reseberättelser från Karelen 1828–1842 (Stockholm: Atlantis, 2002). Larsen, Hanne Pico, ‘Performing Tasty Heritage: Danish Cuisine and Playful Nostalgia at Restaurant noma’, Ethnologia Europaea, 40/2 (2010): 90–102. Löfgren, Orvar, ‘Människan i naturen’, in J. Frykman and O. Löfgren, Den kultiverade människan (Malmö: Gleerups förlag, 1979). Löfgren, Orvar, ‘Parkvandringer’, in K. Hastrup (ed.), Den nordiske verden 1 (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1992). McIntyre, Norman, ‘Internationella tendenser’, in K. Sandell and S. Sörlin (eds), Friluftshistoria. Från ‘härdande friluftslif ’ till ekoturism och miljöpedagogik (Stockholm: Carlsson bokförlag, 2000). Mead, W.R., ‘Kalevala and the Rise of Finnish Nationality’, Folklore, 73/4 (1962): 217–229. Meinander, Henrik, Lik martallen som rågfältet. Hundra år finlandssvensk gymnastik ([Ekenäs]: Finlands Svenska Gymnastikförbund, 1996). Meinander, Henrik, ‘Prologue. Nordic History, Society and Sport’, in H. Meinander and J.A. Mangan (eds), The Nordic World: Sport in Society (London and Portland, Frank Cass, 1998). Nedrelid, Tove, ‘Use of Nature as a Norwegian Characteristic’, Ethnologia Scandinavica, 21 (1991): 19–33.

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Nordiska ministerrådet, Allemansrätten i Norden (Copenhagen: Nordisk ministerråd, 1997). Oksanen-Särelä, Katja and Päivi Timonen, ‘Diversification of Practice: The Case of Nordic Walking’, in M. Pantzar and E. Shove (eds), Manufacturing Leisure (Helsinki: National Consumer Research Centre, 2005). Österlund-Pötzsch, Susanne and Carola Ekrem, Swedish Folklore Studies in Finland 1828–1918 (Helsinki: Societas Scientarum Fennica, 2008). Ouis, Pernilla, ‘Grusade förhoppningar. Friluftsliv som integration i Arrie’, in H. Dahm, E. Lisberg Jensen and P. Ouis, Man lär sig genom att vara där. Utvärdering av studiefrämjandets projekt Mångfald och Integration 2007–2009 (Lund: Studiefrämjandet MittSkåne, 2010). Paasi, Anssi, ‘Finnish Landscape as Social Practice’, in M. Jones and K.R. Olwig (eds), Nordic Landscapes: Region and Belonging on the Northern Edge of Europe (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008). Palmsköld, Hugo, ‘Ett uppsökande av det gamla. Fornnordiska motiv i svensk 1800-talskonst’, in C. Raudvere, A. Andrén and K. Jennbert (eds), Hedendomen i historiens spegel. Bilder av det förkristna Norden (Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2005). Plisch, Emil, ‘Naturliga möten’, in E. Johansson (ed.), Mångnatur. Friluftsliv och natursyn i det mångkulturella samhället (Tumba: Mångkulturellt centrum, 2006). Pouta, Eija, Tuija Sievänen and Marjo Neuvonen, ‘Recreational Wild Berry Picking in Finland – Reflection of a Rural Lifestyle’, Society and Natural Resources, 19/4 (2006): 285–304. Pramann, Ulrich and Bernd Schäufle, Schlank und fit mit Nordic Walking (Munich: Südwest Verlag, 2006). Rentzhog, Sten, Open Air Museums: The History and Future of a Visionary Idea (Östersund: Jamtli Förlag, 2007). Sandell, Klas, ‘Landskapets tillgänglighet’, in K. Sandell and S. Sörlin (eds), Friluftshistoria. Från ‘härdande friluftslif ’ till ekoturism och miljöpedagogik (Stockholm: Carlsson bokförlag, 2000). Sandell, Klas and Sverker Sörlin, ‘Naturen som fostrare. Friluftsliv och ideologi i svenskt 1900-tal’, Historisk Tidskrift, 114 (1994): 4–43. Sandell, Klas and Sverker Sörlin (eds), Friluftshistoria. Från ‘härdande friluftslif ’ till ekoturism och miljöpedagogik (Stockholm: Carlsson bokförlag, 2000). Shove, Elizabeth and Mika Pantzar, ‘Consumers, Producers and Practices: Understanding the Invention and Reinvention of Nordic Walking’, Journal of Consumer Culture, 1 (2005): 43–64.

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Sjögren, Annick, ‘Allemansrätt i själen’, in E. Johansson (ed.), Mångnatur. Friluftsliv och natursyn i det mångkulturella samhället (Tumba: Mångkulturellt centrum 2006). Sørensen, Øystein and Bo Stråth (eds), ‘Introduction’, in The Cultural Construction of Norden (Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, 1997). Sörlin, Sverker, Naturkontraktet. Om naturumgängets idéhistoria (Stockholm: Carlssons bokförlag, 1991). Stoklund, Bjarne, ‘Between Scenography and Science: Early Folk Museums and their Pioneers’, Ethnologia Europaea, 33/1 (2004): 21–36. Svensson, Malin, Nordic Walking (Los Angeles: Human Kinetics, 2009). Tordsson, Björn, ‘Rötter i “barbari” och “romantik”’, in K. Sandell and S. Sörlin (eds), Friluftshistoria. Från ‘härdande friluftslif ’ till ekoturism och miljöpedagogik (Stockholm: Carlsson bokförlag, 2000). Vasara, Erkki, ‘Maintaining Military Capability: The Finnish Home Guard, European Fashion and Sport for War’, in H. Meinander and J.A. Mangan (eds), The Nordic World: Sport in Society (London and Portland: Frank Cass, 1998). Wiklund, Tage, Det tillgjorda landskapet (Gothenburg: Bokförlaget Korpen, 1995). Internet Sources Åland Parliament, http://www.regeringen.ax, accessed 30 January 2011. Council of Europe, ‘Route of Saint Olav Ways’, http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/ cultureheritage/culture/routes/Olav_en.asp. Accessed 28 March 2011. Finland’s Environmental Administration, http://www.ymparisto.fi, accessed 31 March 2011. Norwegian Directorate for Nature Management, http://www.dirnat.no, accessed 31 March 2011. ‘Pilegrimsleden til Nidaros får status som Europeisk kulturveg’, http://www. pilgrim.info/artikkel.aspx?id=4096057, accessed 28 March 2011. Svenska kyrkan (Church of Sweden), ‘Pilgrim i dag’, http://www.svenskakyrkan. se/default.aspx?id=643800, accessed 29 March 2011. Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, http://www.naturvardsverket.se, accessed 13 January 2010.

Chapter 3

‘Something in the Air’: Performing the North within Norden Katla Kjartansdóttir and Kristinn Schram

Negotiations of power among and within the Nordic countries often appear as sequences of official dialogue and relatively civil conflicts. From this image it is often difficult to discern the experiences of people in the midst of such transnational interaction and the significance of identity within it. Through our research we have explored how national origin, heritage and national identities play a significant part in the everyday power relationships of folk groups and individuals. We have examined how individuals negotiate and perform their identities and images within these relations. Specifically, we have illustrated how obscure heritage and exotic images of ‘the North’ have played a considerable part in the everyday life of Icelanders abroad – not least in the time of global expansion and booming Icelandic business ventures around 2000–2008, known as the ‘Icelandic raid’ (íslenska útrásin).1 Our continuing research has, in addition, demonstrated that a form of ‘borealism’, an exoticism of the North, is still significant in times of economic difficulty and insecurity.2 How Icelanders, in this case, perform their self-identities or seek equal footing in their host   See Katla Kjartansdóttir, ‘Mótmælastrengur í þjóðarbrjóstinu’, in Helga Lára Þorsteinsdóttir and Sigurjón Baldur Hafsteinsson (eds), Ritið, 10/1 (2010): 105–121; Katla Kjartansdóttir, ‘Remote, Rough and Romantic: Contemporary Images of Iceland in Visual, Oral and Textual Narrations’, in Sverrir Jakobsson (ed.), Images of the North: Histories – Identities – Ideas (Amsterdam, 2009), pp. 271–280; Kristinn Schram, ‘Að innbyrða útrásina’ in Gunnar Þór Jóhannesson and Helga Björnsdóttir (eds), Rannsóknir í Félagsvísindum, X (Reykjavík, 2009); Kristinn Schram, ‘Performing the North’, in A.B. Amundsen (ed.), ARV Nordic Yearbook of Folklore 65 (2009): 50–71; Kristinn Schram, ‘The Wild Wild North’, in Sverrir Jakobsson (ed.), Images of the North, pp. 249–260; Kristinn Schram, ‘Borealism: Folkloristic Perspectives on Transnational Performances and the Exoticism of the North’, PhD thesis (Edinburgh, 2010). 2   See Katla Kjartansdóttir, ‘The New Viking Wave’, in S. Ísleifsson (ed.), Iceland and Images of the North (Quebec, 2011), pp. 461–480; Kristinn Schram, ‘Obscurity as Heritage: The Þorrablót Revisited’, in Helga Ólafs and Hulda Proppé (eds), Rannsóknir í félagsvísundum, XI (Reykjavík, 2010), accessed from http://skemman.is/handle/1946/6841; Kristinn 1

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cultures depends on the different folkloric dynamics in each performative space within their new ‘homes’. In this chapter we analyse these dynamics through our most recent fieldwork among Icelanders in Copenhagen. Their experiences, viewpoints and narratives cast light on the performance of the North within Norden: the particular identity negotiations of those who come from a perceived northern fringe within the host culture of a Nordic centre. In this light we will explore how cultural agency is performed and images reappropriated in what could be described as an obscure, ironic and crypto-colonial cultural context. The Field: Ironic Identities, ‘Exotic’ Food Heritage and Calendar Customs Although this chapter deals specifically with our fieldwork in Copenhagen in 2011, we have been researching expatriate Icelanders since 2004. Conducting qualitative interviews and participant observation in many of those European cities where Icelanders have had a significant presence, we sought answers to questions such as the following: What significance does nationality play among expatriates? Do individuals nurture language skills, traditions and habits, and, if so, how? How do they adapt to new environments? How are they received? What influence does their experience abroad have on their identities and does a national identity play a role in their everyday lives in new ‘host communities’? As the research has progressed, and having reviewed our findings, we have increasingly focused on how Icelanders abroad, as a folk group, practise and perform their national identities, as well as appropriate the images that are projected onto them. While remaining relatively obscure to most of the world, Icelanders abroad have encountered a significant media backdrop of their cultural and economic adventures and misadventures. These include film, art and music, but also coverage of aggressive Icelandic business ventures and the disastrous collapse of an overgrown Icelandic banking sector. Research among people in the midst of these processes and performances, such as bankers, artists and students abroad, has offered insights into the experience and folklore involved in these developments and the images attached to them. Ironic performances of folk culture, and seemingly archaic food traditions, are an integral part of this. Throughout our fieldwork, participants often stressed the humorous element of surprise and even shock that can be induced by subjecting guests to so-called Thorri food (þorramatur), which traditionally designates the food reserves of the bleakest winter month, Thorri (þorri). These ironic food performances Schram, ‘Banking on Borealism: Eating, Smelling, and Performing the North’, in S. Ísleifsson (ed.), Iceland and Images of the North, pp. 305–327.

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were, for example, part of a series of corporate banquets during which Icelandic bankers would attempt to penetrate markets such as in London, Helsinki and Copenhagen. Quasi-traditional midwinter feasts, the Thorrablotes (þorrablót), would then become spaces to which prospective clients and employees could be drawn. Often they were ironically presented with kitsch Viking paraphernalia and traditional Icelandic food and schnapps, having already been plied with continental hors d’oeuvres and fine wine. A former leading CEO of one the major Icelandic banks explained that their Thorrablotes were a way of capitalizing on the sensational elements of ethnic difference. The authenticity of the Thorrablote tradition was in fact secondary to the attention-grabbing aspects the banquets contain. He himself put this in more colourful terms: ‘If it is a part of the ancient culture all the better. It can just as well be applied to the business world. You need people to look at you. Then you can start doing business.’3 Exoticizing representations such as this is not confined to the corporate world, as many examples demonstrate. For instance, a student in Helsinki, attempting to integrate into Finnish society, expressed her desire to put locals off balance with the traditional food: a curiosity from an ‘island way out in the ocean,’ she says laughingly, ‘where the natives eat shark and sheep’s heads’.4 Another example is a computer specialist living in the UK, who stressed the exoticness of traditional Icelandic food, as well as its wholesomeness, when he gained access to an exclusive hill-walking society. In what he refers to as an ‘old tradition’5 of his, he presented traditional Thorri food to his mountaineering friends. He also made a point of telling them tall tales about how one should eat shark with brennivín (Icelandic schnapps) and then completely exaggerating the shark meat’s production process. A corresponding example was presented by Icelanders who studied in Dublin in the 1980s. Soon after their arrival they were formally invited to host a cultural event and asked by people within the university to bring ‘something traditional from Iceland’. The result was an impromptu Thorrablote attended by about a dozen Irishmen and two Icelanders where the former were introduced to such Icelandic food as dried cod and cured shark. ‘It was received remarkably well’, our participant says and continues, ‘They understood that this was just oldfashioned traditional food [laughs] and ate it with an open mind.’6 The laughter, in brackets, represents the situational context of the interview. While it might seem out of place, it does point to a humorous incongruity: the central irony     5   6   3 4

Interview with Bjarni Ármannsson, London, 1 March 2007. Interview with Anonymous, Edinburgh, 21 June 2006. Interview with Anonymous, Edinburgh, 23 June 2006. Interview with Anonymous, Reykjavik, 22 February 2007.

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of an exaggerated tradition. Further questioning and his elaboration cast much light on this practice of irony: Of course, the shark astounded them and the hardest would maybe eat it. And people got to know each other a little bit … The men were astounded by the shark and asked what on earth this was. But of course one capitalized on this sort of eccentricity [here he used the English word], the absurdity of it, and blew it so out of proportion that the men really didn’t get a chance to add to it. Kristinn Schram: Why does one do that? I just did it. I enjoyed it. I said [deadpan tone] this is shark and usually it’s buried and sometimes they pissed on it in the old days. Then you would go into the biology of it: that there was ammonia breaking down and there was a certain cultivation going on. And … I took it to the deep end. You know. And the men thought this was fantastically strange – and fun.7

In what can be seen as an act of pre-emptive irony, the Icelanders deprecated and exoticized the food and its preparation to the extent that they left no room for ridicule from the dinner guests. Interesting is the explicit statement of ‘capitalizing’ on ‘eccentricity’ and the use of the English term rather than the Icelandic. While he matter-of-factly explains that he did this because he enjoyed it, further questioning cast light on these underlying motives. He refers to this event as a Thorrablote and the food as Thorri food. As the fieldwork reveals, the heritage status of the so-called Thorri food and the Thorrablot is, unlike more banal traditions such as Sunday roasts or birthday celebrations, essential to its practice and performance. Yet the origin, authenticity and particular components of the tradition take second place to effect. The obscurity of the tradition at home, and more so abroad, provides the space necessary to perform and adapt the tradition both to the respective contexts and the underlying strategies and tactics. These performances can therefore be seen as a part of the intricate communal processes of identity negotiation embedded in culturally specific contexts and sensory experiences. The ethnography among Icelanders abroad revealed that they bring their own sense of self and place into these spaces of performance within their host countries. Turning the representations of eccentric northern nature-folk to their own ends, these individuals have re-appropriated exoticized vernacular practices abroad as a tactic to gain access and influence within the  Ibid.

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strategies of new localities. But what that entails is no less interesting: through their playful exaggerations, these Icelanders have to some extent distanced themselves from the authenticity that might be associated with these practises. In effect, they have negotiated ironic identities, applying differentiation not to build walls, but to open doors. Yet the range of the irony and the way in which the informants continue to live out these identities and images vary greatly. For some, these performances are brief, and often comical, attempts at culture transfer that only confirm how ‘out of place’ the performance of folklore can be outside the context of the folk group it ‘belonged to’. For others, the narratives left behind from such transnational encounters remain a testimony of more successful attempts at gaining acceptance and stature through the cunning appropriation of whatever obscure traditional elements they could gather. There is also a great gulf between the level of irony and the difference in motives between the tactical presentation of exotic folklore in private settings and the premeditated commodification of obscure heritage as part of overarching business strategies. Yet these performances share an ironic distancing towards an ‘ethnic background’: an identity represented but simultaneously negated. But after these categories have been corroded, what is left other than the commodity, the comedy and the futility that Kierkegaard described as ‘absolute negativity’? Or can one build an identity on irony, having abandoned authenticity? In some cases, participants have gone so deep into their host culture that little more than a memory remains of their former practice of tradition. Conversely, for many, the ironicized folklore continues to be a lived phenomenological reality. In that sense, identities can be to some extent ironic and yet viable – the folklore obscure but nonetheless enduring. Our research has therefore suggested that ironic performance may indeed corrode the strategies of boundary-making and marginalization by tactically reappropriating them. Embedded in the everyday life of expatriates and pitted against a backdrop of historical imagery and media representations, folklore is not only a differentiating cultural form, but also a practice through which one may gain access to, and equal footing within, the perceived host cultures. Not only do emergent media images play on the exoticism of the North, but many Icelanders have themselves become active participants in portraying this perceived northern eccentricity through performances of tradition, ‘primitive’ origins and seemingly archaic food traditions. However, unlike the disembodied media images of ‘the other’, these performances can in fact be seen as a step in the intricate communal processes of identity negotiation embedded in culturally specific contexts and spaces of performance.

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Within a global economic crisis, in which Iceland grabbed the world’s attention as a choking ‘canary in the coal mine’, it must be pointed out that these performances go well beyond imagological identity negotiations. They in fact play a significant role in affecting people’s objective circumstances: their associations, status, and social, cultural and economic power. If these playful and ironic performances of identity and tradition are indeed an integral part of Icelandic business ventures, their effects were, in some ways, colossal. In addition to a crashed banking system, Iceland has seen revolt, if not revolution, in the streets, the downfall of a long-standing neo-liberal government and the election of a centre-left administration, the completion of a harsh programme imposed by the IMF and an ominous and extended international dispute over the payment of crushing foreign deposit guarantees that have fallen on the Icelandic state. Within these highly structured contexts of global capitalism, it might well be said that these ironic images and performances have proved an unpredictable force, both corroding and confirming inequalities of power. Icelandic Spaces of Performance in Copenhagen After the Crash we took a special interest in the impact, if any, of Icelandic business ventures and economic calamities on the identities and images of Icelanders in Copenhagen. To this end, we conducted qualitative interviews with a wide range of Icelanders in their homes or places of work. They deserve our deepest thanks for their participation and hospitality. As an added benefit, we got to hear the viewpoints of Danish spouses of some of our Icelandic participants. Iceland’s history as a former dependency of the Danish Crown was also especially relevant in this leg of our research, not least because of its effect on the social and cultural status of Icelanders in Copenhagen. When Icelandic economic expansion reached its pinnacle in 2007, Icelandic tourism, whether for business or leisure, was a significant and visible phenomenon in Copenhagen. However, only a year after the banking crash, Icelandic tourism in Denmark was down by almost two-thirds. Nevertheless, there are still numerous Icelanders living in Copenhagen. According to the Icelandic Treasury, roughly 8,000 Icelanders were living in Denmark in 2011, of which 3,200 were employed and about 1,000 were students. It is difficult to discover whether and, if so, where and how these individuals form communities and perform identities. Yet, one may locate spaces of performance that can be described as sites whose boundaries are imagined yet significant; where membership is varyingly rigid or fluid; in which discourses, traditions and power dynamics are negotiated and their meaning contested.

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Within vernacular or institutionalized spaces (such as the Jónshús cultural centre, meetings of the Icelandic Association or the Icelandic Congregation in Copenhagen, and Nordatlantens Brygge), Icelanders in Copenhagen congregate to perform, for example, food traditions and calendar customs. By using and nurturing such common traditions, folk groups both strengthen and redefine their communal identity. Many of our participants mentioned the practice of such traditions as an important part of their connection ‘home’, especially those who are bringing up their children abroad. The majority of our participants thought it important to eat Icelandic food occasionally, and some of them put a great deal of effort into procuring it. Icelandic fish was commonly mentioned in this connection, and many complained about the quality of fish in Copenhagen. One family of five said that they always ask visitors from Iceland, relatives and friends to bring them frozen Icelandic fish from Keflavik airport. The importance of Icelandic food and traditions was also mentioned in relation to Christmas. Many of our participants said that they could scarcely contemplate their Christmas without ‘the traditional Icelandic’ green Ora beans and red cabbage. Many also mentioned the importance of simply ‘going home’ for Christmas to get ‘the real Icelandic Christmas feeling’. Some, however, have increasingly blended Icelandic and Danish Christmas traditions, in relation to both food and other customs. The traditional Danish julefrokost was mentioned in particular, along with the Danish julekalander for children. Some of the parents, however, mentioned how important they feel it is to pass on certain traditions to their children, especially traditions from their own childhood. Other calendar customs and traditions were also mentioned, such as the Icelandic Day of Independence on 17 June, but the Icelandic Association in Denmark usually organizes a family festival then, with ‘traditional’ Icelandic hot dogs, flags and bouncy castles. One mother of three said that she always tries to go with her children to these festivals ‘just to meet other Icelanders and get this Icelandic feeling – you know’.8 This same participant also mentioned the importance of sustaining the language by reading Icelandic books to her children, and both parents always try to speak Icelandic with them in the home. However, she also mentioned the importance of adapting well to Danish society – for instance, by learning the language and trying to fit in. To our mutual amusement she adds, ‘We even try to talk in weeks like the Danes.’

  Interview with Anonymous, Copenhagen, 13 August 2011.

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Approaching the Performance of Identity in Everyday Life It is perhaps in this ‘adaptation’ and other vigorous transnational interrelations that the most robust identity and power negotiations take place. The performance of heritage in that context can also be characterized as increasingly obscure and fluid. Theories that describe the formation of identity as fluid social processes pose a challenge to the theoretical validity of such terms as national identity. Removing the constancy of identity turns it into a potentially porous concept, not least with increasing globalization, commodification and, in the European context, transnational institutionalization.9 Scholars such as Roger D. Abrahams have long speculated that with the movement of people and the marketing of identity, the term may become superfluous: ‘Identity will simply not hold up as a container of meaning under the condition of the post-industrial world in which people move or are moved at a moment’s notice.’10 Other scholars have even suggested that while non-academics may be preoccupied with issues of identity, that is no reason for analysts to accept even the existence of identity. Brubaker and Cooper are among them and warn especially against the reification of identity politics. Furthermore, they are unimpressed by reformulations of identity as multiple, fragmented and fluid. In place of an unclear term such as identity, they suggest that analysts should alternatively use concepts such as identification, self-understanding and commonality, or connectedness or ‘groupness’.11 Warranted as they are, these criticisms may be addressed from both a phenomenological and an empirical perspective. The dangers of ‘folklorizing’ and facilitating dualistic power relationships by accepting and validating identities are certainly very real. But by failing to acknowledge the way in which people articulate and structure collective images of themselves as belonging to a group would be to discard our knowledge of phenomenological experience. Another error is the presupposition that a fluid identity is somehow weaker or less meaningful than a constant one. The place of narrative and everyday verbal and sensory activity as an empowering force also should not be overlooked. The study of folk narrative and performance in transnational communication can indeed shed light on the enduring aspect of identity. While identity is a   See, for example, Roger Abrahams, ‘Narratives of Location and Dislocation’, in P. Anttonen (ed.), Folklore, Heritage Politics and Ethnic Diversity: A Festschrift for Barbro Klein (Botkyrka, 2000), pp. 15–20; Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London, 1983); Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford, 1983); Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1870 (Cambridge, 1991). 10   Abrahams, ‘Narratives of Location and Dislocation’. 11   R. Brubaker and F. Cooper. ‘Beyond Identity’, Theory and Society, 29/5 (2000): 1–47. 9

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problematic, multifaceted and fluid construction, it is still a lived reality, negotiated within a given locality and between different actors. It is not only constructed vertically (from top to bottom) but also horizontally. Folkloric perspectives of performance can do much to illuminate this horizontal movement in identity formation. As in prior work, this stage of our research has shown that national identities and images are both experienced and performed to varying degrees by members of the folk group ‘Icelanders in Copenhagen’. For most of them, this phenomenological reality is a component in the balance of power that is negotiated in both official and everyday circumstances. To fully comprehend transcultural performances of this kind, the imbalance of power must be confronted in both analysis and research models. A prolific model of the power relationships in vernacular practices can be found in Michel de Certeau’s monumental work The Practice of Everyday Life. There, he examines the problem of studying everyday life, which, according to de Certeau, lies in its tactical position, evading a strategy of authority. He separates these power relationships into strategy and tactics. The former is defined as the power relationships possible when a subject of power and authority can be separated in a given environment, such as a supervisor within a workplace. The latter – tactics – refers to a subject that is without spatial or institutional locality, such as a passerby or a vagrant, and therefore fragmentarily ‘insinuates oneself into “the other’s” place’.12 While all have their sets of limitations within society’s structure, many attempt to bend and counter the written and unwritten rules they are subject to. A simple example of this may be found in the act of taking a shortcut through private property. To take the ‘garden route’ (garðaleið)’, as it is widely known in Iceland, involves the individual countering the urban strategy of a public road system and tactically insinuating oneself into the other’s place. Through such tactics, individuals acquire a sense of agency and power within societal and cultural strategies. Individuals within expatriate groups may also apply such tactical behaviour within a host society in which their agency has been restricted for a variety of reasons. This may include utilizing relationships and ‘taking shortcuts’ through bureaucratic formalities. One may even take licence from one’s own outsider status. Some of our participants, for example, described the act of ‘playing the Icelander’ as a way of licensing unconventional or otherwise illicit behaviour. In what was often described as a somewhat rigorously structured Danish civil society, some would capitalize on their outsider status and ‘play the nationality card’, as one of our participants put it. The following narrative describes how an Icelander literally   Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley, 1984), p. xix.

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takes ‘the garden route’ to the considerable discomfort of his more adapted co-expatriate. The latter described this act, with some irritation, as ‘playing the Icelander’: I can give you example of one of my Icelandic friends who lives here. We were driving together, it was his car. We were driving together and he wanted to show me a house that was being built just outside town. Then when we got there it was like a row of private houses and a small path between to get to the backyard. When he got out of the car, he was just going to walk over private property. I was really thrown by this and felt very uncomfortable. But he just [waving hands; soft voice]: ‘Come on, come on’. The neighbours were already in the yard, watching, and cried out [deep and firm tones]: ‘What’s this, what are you doing here?’ But my friend just started playing the Icelander. Playing the card. But I just couldn’t. I said: ‘Come on, let’s go.’ This just wasn’t right.13

Many of our participants agreed that impulsiveness and disorganization were part of an Icelander’s image in Denmark – that Icelanders were considered on the whole as ‘marvellously spontaneous, impulsive and sometimes a bit mad’, as one of our participants put it. He described how ‘they’ (the Danes) saw ‘us’ (Icelanders) as exotic and how he sometimes used his nationality to explain behaviour that Danes were unaccustomed to. ‘They are so much more organized then us’, he says, ‘and feel the need to have meetings about everything. Even if they’re throwing a dinner party they’ll have a meeting about it.’14 Another participant who shared this opinion described the discomfort Icelanders can cause in Denmark. ‘We Icelanders just show up in the communal garden, and then there are more and more. Beer is brought forth and all of a sudden we’ve got a fine party vibe going. The Danes might even be a bit jealous of this.’15 Conversely, a Danish participant in her thirties, who has an Icelandic partner, stated that visiting people without being invited was practically an Icelandic tradition but was considered bad manners in Denmark.16 ‘Playing the Icelander’: Icelandic Identities before and after the Crash Participants in our research were somewhat hesitant when it came to assessing whether and, if so, how views towards Icelanders had changed after the     15   16   13 14

Interview with Anonymous, Copenhagen, 4 August 2011. Interview with Anonymous, Copenhagen, 2 August 2011. Interview with Anonymous, Copenhagen, 4 August 2011. Interview with Anonymous, Copenhagen, 10 August 2011.

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banking crash. Many offered narratives that illustrated how Iceland’s economic misadventures were often brought to bear in larger or more specific contexts. One participant narrated his experience from working as a craftsman in Copenhagen shortly after the Icelandic banking collapse of 2008. Whereas he had suffered a few wisecracks, his Swedish colleagues were ‘hit much harder’17 with sarcastic humour. Although these Danish and Swedish individuals might have enjoyed a more dyadic or joking relationship, our participant understood their leniency towards him as ‘not kicking a man who was already down’. He also noted that both Denmark and Sweden had their own economic difficulties to deal with and that these increasingly overshadowed those of Iceland. The same participant, however, explained how, shortly after the crash, he had felt a great deal of shame because of his nationality in relation to the hubris of Icelandic business. Yet his narrative describes a curious transformation of this shame into renewed national pride: I was walking around here in shame. I felt total shame. I was wearing a Zo-On [Icelandic sportswear brand] and it had this map of Iceland on it. I was a bit selfconscious and worried that someone would notice and shout harsh words at me. That is how I felt to begin with. But it was only for a short while because then I decided it wasn’t the fault of the whole nation. Rather just politics and politicians. And then I decided to get a tattoo with the outlines of Iceland, but I haven’t done it yet. At first I was going to put it on my back, but then I wanted to have it on my wrist so that everybody I shook hands with could see it.18

It is interesting to see how clearly recent socioeconomic events affect this individual’s reflexive identity. What is also interesting is the visual representation of national identity: walking in the city marked, at first involuntarily, by geographical outlines on one’s clothing, and then considering deliberately and permanently setting it on to a most intimate yet social part of oneself: one’s wrist. This everyday presentation of identity may seem like a knee-jerk reaction to, and reappropriation of, societal projections. But this premeditated, and almost defiant, performance is only possible after an internal recalibration of self and national identity. In this case, national identity is renegotiated through a politically selective thought process. The politicization, or reverse politicization, of national identity, could indeed be seen in many of our participants’ narratives. The need to clear oneself of any connection to irresponsible pre-Crash behaviour, such as wastefulness, hubris, financial risk-taking, or being ‘so 2007’,  Ibid.  Ibid.

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is understandable. But acquiring distance from national images is nothing new. Prior to the Crash, expressions of ironic national identity, and their humorous reappropriations, were also tangible. Indeed, in many heritage performances we have documented, tensions and stereotypes related to national images were often carefully managed. This was particularly true of food culture. The negation of identity may also be sensed in the cosmopolitan irony expressed by welltravelled Icelanders who might put little value or effort into nurturing Icelandic language or heritage practices. This ironic cosmopolitanism was perhaps most common among artists or professionals with an international profile. But, paradoxically, these same individuals sometimes felt the most compelled to exoticize themselves. Our most recent interviews suggest that this dynamic persists. One of our recent participants is a prolific musical artist who regularly deals with perhaps clichéd media questions on the relationship between musical creativity and the Icelandic nature: This is perhaps the default question when one is being interviewed, and people are very often looking for an answer to the question: ‘Why does this sort of music come from Iceland? Is it because there is such beautiful nature there?’ Or something like this: ‘Is it the power of the nature, the fire and the ice that affects the music?’ These sorts of questions are very common and perhaps it is because reporters always need something like this to focus on. Some easy myth or a cliché, that is easy. And it is very hard to fight this. But my music has very little to do with nature and Icelandic nature in any concrete way. But of course these things always affect you as an artist, your roots and the landscape around you. The nature of your home country and your surroundings – it is of course very important so you cannot deny it totally. I think it is a bit like when you listen to Kraftwerk, Neu or Can and then you start thinking about large highways, factories, steel and so on and that is the sort of the image, some sort of mechanical industrial soil that these bands originate from. But that is of course not what all of these German bands are dealing with in their music. Of course not. But there is this image. And I think it is very understandable that Icelandic music has, in the same way, some sort of nature image. Just like when you listen to Serge Gainsbourg you get this Gauloises-and-coffee-house atmosphere. But this is of course just an image and very superficial. But sometimes that’s just OK if people don’t want to go any deeper than that. I don’t let it get on my nerves.19

The alleged connection between Icelandic nature and artistic creativity is a recurring theme. A case in point is the artist Björk Guðmundsdóttir, who relates emphatically to Icelandic nature and its protection in her lyrics, music videos and   Interview with Anonymous, Copenhagen, 7 August 2011.

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interviews. However cosmopolitan she may otherwise be, Björk engages with the theme of nature and creativity, a theme that has already permeated Icelandic national identity and the global marketing of Icelandic art and products. But what is very interesting here is how the artist quoted above has come to terms with the exoticism and in turn relates it to how he experiences other national images of music and musical artists. He therefore engages with, but at the same time retains an ironic distance towards, the images. Borealism and Crypto-colonialism These narratives of impulsiveness, disorganization, lack of structure and melding with a wild and creative nature can be described as part of more general exoticism of inhabitants of the North. To describe this we use the term ‘borealism’. Originating in the Latin word borealis (the North), it is an appropriation of Edward Said’s term ‘orientalism’, which refers to the ontological and epistemological distinction between East and West.20 His study, like aspects of our own, reveals the assumptions and power relations involved in cross-cultural and colonial relations. The image of one’s ethnicity or regional background plays a significant role in the negotiation of power in transnational encounters. So making sense of the images of the North in general, or Icelanders in particular, is in many ways a study of relations between the centres and the margins of power. This is clearly experienced in the ‘foreigner’s/expatriate’s negotiations of power within a host country. Whether in the acquisition of access to, or status within, new communities or in the corporate acquisition of markets, cross-national power relations reveal the fluctuating agency and appropriation that is the experience of people from the margins of regional power bases or the ‘fringes of the North’. The term ‘borealism’ therefore has a post-colonial perspective that calls for some elaboration. In many ways, the nature and history of Icelandic–Danish relations are unclear and controversial. A former dependency of the Danish Crown, Iceland gained autonomy in 1918 and full independence in 1944, but its former position and treatment within the Danish Kingdom is obscure in modern times. While Iceland’s ‘post-colonial condition’ can only be a modest counterpart to the gross appropriation of many former colonies in terms of culture, identity and wealth, its historical and contemporary exoticism and marginalization is considerable. How this affects identities and transnational encounters should therefore not be underestimated.   Edward Said, Orientalism (New York, 1978).

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Post-colonial perspectives could therefore be helpful in examining Danish– Icelandic relations, and yet they have attracted little interest in this context. Conversely, many international scholars have recently begun to apply postcolonial perspectives on nations that would not normally be classified as colonies. An example of this is the work of Michael Herzfeld who, in the course of studying countries such as Greece and Thailand, coined the term ‘cryptocolonies’ to describe independent nations that in effect form ‘buffer zones between the colonized lands and those as yet untamed’ and are then ‘articulated in the ironic guise of aggressively national culture fashioned to suit foreign models’.21 Researching Iceland and Icelanders from this perspective offers many possibilities and calls for historical analysis. Contemporary sources, such as our ethnography among Icelanders in Copenhagen, readily indicate the effects and ripples of obscure post-colonial aspects in people’s day-to-day lives. An Icelander in Copenhagen: Crypto-colonial Liminality In view of the historical and contemporary ties between Iceland and Denmark, some might expect the Danish people to have a degree of general knowledge about Iceland. Our participants almost universally expressed their surprise that this was not the case. Exceptions were the relatively well-known musicians and artists who are known internationally. Media coverage of Icelandic banking and the Crash had been considerable, but other coverage was quite limited. Some expressed the opinion that Iceland was not adequately covered in the school system either. Consequently, Icelanders often provoked curiosity and interest. Many of our participants considered this an asset. The Crash provoked sympathy, but also what was described as patronization and negativity. In the following narrative one can detect a liminal condition in which the speaker is unsure how to interpret everyday communication. When the Crash is mentioned in conversations, things can get a bit negative. And if you are a bit paranoid you can of course interpret things the worst way, especially in relation to how people say things or if they say ‘Aha’ in a certain way [laughs]. But that would be paranoia. If you are just cool about it you don’t have to interpret anything as being negative in the way people act. But this is in many   Michael Herzfeld, ‘The Absent Presence: Discourses of Crypto-colonialism’, South Atlantic Quarterly, 101/4 (2002): 899–926. See also Y. Hamilakis, ‘Decolonizing Greek Archaeology: Indigenous Archaeologies, Modernist Archaeology, and the Post-Colonial Critique’, in D. Damaskos and D. Plantzos (eds), A Singular Antiquity (Athens, 2008), pp. 237–284. 21

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ways a strange relationship, you know, between Icelanders and the Danes because of their colonial history. And sometimes you can feel some sort of patronizing. There is always something in the air.22

Like this participant, many others related how an uneasy colonial history was intertwined with the Crash. One participant, for example, told the story of his arrival in Copenhagen, just months before the fall of the Icelandic banks. He had planned to transfer his funds from Icelandic currency to Danish. When he finally arrived, the exchange rate of the Icelandic króna was less than favourable, so he sought other means: I just thought it was so expensive to convert the Icelandic króna into Danish and I thought things would change. So I wanted to get a loan since I didn’t have any job yet. So I went into a Danish bank and asked the lady there for a loan and showed her my Icelandic bank account. But she just looks at me and asks why I don’t just transfer all my money into the Danish bank because the whole thing was about to crash. But I was just going like: ‘No, no, no, things will get better soon.’ I even wrote a letter to my parents about this incident and how rude this woman was. I found this letter the other day and I just laughed because just a week after they got this letter everything went down. But then I was just going like: ‘How rude and envious of her.’ I was really shocked by this behaviour but today I want to give her flowers.23

Now that European countries face their own financial difficulties the Icelandic situation becomes less extraordinary. Nevertheless Danish–Icelandic narratives of these developments do persist. Furthermore, they are tainted with an obscure colonial history that seems to be unspoken and only vaguely expressed. The tensions emanating from these obscurities can be sensed in our participants’ narratives of Danish–Icelandic encounters at a cultural event – the Icelandic Association’s annual Thorrablote. This traditional Icelandic midwinter feast was being held for the first time since the Crash in collaboration with the WestNordic cultural institution, Nordatlantens Brygge. The centre’s charter involves introducing the culture of Iceland, the Faroe Islands and Greenland to its guests. The Thorrablote in question was therefore an opportunity not only for Icelanders to gather together, but also to introduce Icelandic food traditions to Danish guests. The food was labelled both in Icelandic and Danish and the host was to cater to both nationalities. Although the Thorrablote was considered a

  Interview with Anonymous, Copenhagen, 7 August 2011.   Interview with Anonymous, Copenhagen, 10 August 2011.

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success, opinions varied as to how equally the host divided his attention. One of the event’s organizers explained: There was this one table there, some sort of Danish food club, that every month would randomly draw out a country and then cook food from that particular country. But then they had a bit of a problem after drawing Iceland because nobody knew what Icelandic food actually was. But then they saw this advertisement in the paper and decided to come and take part in this Thorrablote instead of cooking themselves. And they tried everything. They didn’t finish everything but they tried, at least. But there was some misunderstanding. We had this host and he mainly spoke in Icelandic and then there was some joking going on that obviously had to do with Denmark but was not negative in any way. But that was somehow misunderstood. And that was a shame. There was a long speech but when he was going to translate it, it was much shorter and he just said that he was speaking well of the Danes. But then just ‘Ha ha ha!’ all the Icelanders started laughing. But they [the Danes] misunderstood that.24

In the aftermath, the Danish spouse of an Icelandic participant, also present at the Thorrablote, was repeatedly questioned as to whether the Danes had really been welcome there. This narrative therefore illustrates the tensions evoked from national irony and liminal crypto-colonial discourses. Conclusions ‘Icelanders abroad’ are, of course, a diverse group of people with different experiences, views and expressions of their identity. But through our fieldwork among Icelanders in Copenhagen, one may pick out many common threads that connect our participants as a folk group. They may put variable emphasis on their connection with ‘home’ and their national identity, but most, to some extent, associate and converse with other Icelanders and engage in heritage practices such as food and festival traditions. This was most common among child-rearing participants who expressed tensions about raising children abroad. These involved weighing their children’s successful integration against a desire to nurture their ‘mother-tongue’ and ‘Icelandicness’ – options which many saw as mutually exclusive. On the other hand, a few participants expressed a more cosmopolitan identity and put little, if any, emphasis on language or heritage practices.  

24

Interview with Anonymous, Copenhagen, 10 August 2011.

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Much was brought to light with regard to the position of Icelanders as expatriates within Copenhagen. External views of them seemed to be largely characterized by obscurity, but also by a degree of tolerance and empathy. Our participants were widely of the opinion that general knowledge of Iceland was at a bare minimum in Denmark, but that they were met with mostly positive curiosity when their nationality was brought to the fore. Obscure post-colonial or crypto-colonial discourses were also evident and were put into relation with not only the countries’ intertwined histories, but also Iceland’s economic expansion and ensuing economic difficulties. These events did not seem to have had a significant negative impact on the image of Icelanders in Copenhagen, although they were sometimes subjected to gallows humour in the wake of the Crash. The borealistic external image of Icelanders, on the other hand, seems to thrive still. This continues to benefit and placate artists in Denmark as they reappropriate media interest in their national background. The same can be said for Icelanders who, in their everyday life, come across familiar images of the North such as impulsiveness, lack of structure and bonding with ‘wild nature’. The North within Norden is therefore at first glance a set of exoticized spaces of performance of a liminal and, to some extent, marginalized folk group or groups. Beyond these images, a number of dynamics present themselves, one of which is the crypto-colonialism expressed in obscure folklore and liminal everyday communication. Within this context, individuals perform with a variety of tactics. While some seek shelter in expatriate communities and heritage practices, others attempt to open doors to host communities. This route may involve a level of cosmopolitanism and irony, but it is also highly performative and often involves obscure heritage practices. These performances of the North are nevertheless carried out in a social and cultural context in which our participants must inhabit the ‘other’s place’ and engage with ‘something in the air’. Bibliography Interviews Anonymous, interview by Katla Kjartansdóttir and Kristinn Schram, Edinburgh, 21 June 2006. Audiovisual data archived at the Icelandic Centre for Ethnology and Folklore. Anonymous, interview by Katla Kjartansdóttir and Kristinn Schram, Edinburgh, 23 June 2006. Audiovisual data archived at the Icelandic Centre for Ethnology and Folklore.

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Anonymous, interview by Katla Kjartansdóttir and Kristinn Schram, Copenhagen, 2 August 2011. Audiovisual data archived at the Icelandic Centre for Ethnology and Folklore. Anonymous, interview by Katla Kjartansdóttir and Kristinn Schram, Copenhagen, 4 August 2011. Audiovisual data archived at the Icelandic Centre for Ethnology and Folklore. Anonymous, interview by Katla Kjartansdóttir and Kristinn Schram, Copenhagen, 7 August 2011. Audiovisual data archived at the Icelandic Centre for Ethnology and Folklore. Anonymous, interview by Katla Kjartansdóttir and Kristinn Schram, Copenhagen, 10 August 2011. Audiovisual data archived at the Icelandic Centre for Ethnology and Folklore. Anonymous, interview by Katla Kjartansdóttir and Kristinn Schram, Copenhagen, 13 August 2011. Audiovisual data archived at the Icelandic Centre for Ethnology and Folklore. Anonymous, interview by Kristinn Schram, Reykjavik, 22 February 2007. Audiovisual data archived at the Icelandic Centre for Ethnology and Folklore. Ármannsson, Bjarni, interview by Kristinn Schram, London, 1 March 2007. Audiovisual data archived at the Icelandic Centre for Ethnology and Folklore. Secondary Sources Abrahams, Roger, ‘Narratives of Location and Dislocation’, in P. Anttonen (ed.), Folklore, Heritage Politics and Ethnic Diversity: A Festschrift for Barbro Klein (Botkyrka: Multicultural Centre, 2000). Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983). Brubaker, R. and F. Cooper, ‘Beyond Identity’, Theory and Society, 29/5 (2000): 1–47. de Certeau, Michel, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984). Gellner, Ernest, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983). Hamilakis, Y., ‘Decolonizing Greek Archaeology: Indigenous Archaeologies, Modernist Archaeology, and the Post-Colonial Critique’ in D. Damaskos and D. Plantzos (eds), A Singular Antiquity (Athens: The Benaki Museum, 2008). Herzfeld, Michael, ‘The Absent Presence: Discourses of Crypto-colonialism’, South Atlantic Quarterly, 101/4 (2002): 899–926.

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Hobsbawm, Eric, Nations and Nationalism since 1870 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). Kjartansdóttir, Katla, ‘Remote, Rough and Romantic: Contemporary Images of Iceland in Visual, Oral and Textual Narrations’, in Sverrir Jakobsson (ed.), Images of the North Histories – Identities - Ideas (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2009). Kjartansdóttir, Katla, ‘Mótmælastrengur í þjóðarbrjóstinu’, in Helga Lára Þorsteinsdóttir and Sigurjón Baldur Hafsteinsson (eds), Ritið, 10/1 (2010):105–121. Kjartansdóttir, Katla, ‘The New Viking Wave’, in S. Ísleifsson (ed.), Iceland and Images of the North (Québec: Presses de l’Université Québec/Reykjavik Academy, 2011). Said, Edward, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon, 1978). Schram, Kristinn, ‘Að innbyrða útrásina’, in Gunnar Þór Jóhannesson and Helga Björnsdóttir (eds), Rannsóknir í Félagsvísindum, X (Reykjavík: Félagsvísindastofnun Háskóla Íslands, 2009). Schram, Kristinn, ‘Performing the North’, in A.B. Amundsen (ed.), ARV Nordic Yearbook of Folklore 65 (2009): 50–71. Schram, Kristinn, ‘The Wild Wild North’, in Sverrir Jakobsson (ed.), Images of the North: Histories – Identities - Ideas (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2009). Schram, Kristinn, ‘Borealism: Folkloristic Perspectives on Transnational Performances and the Exoticism of the North’, PhD thesis (Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh, 2010). Schram, Kristinn, ‘Obscurity as Heritage: The Þorrablót Revisited’, in Helga Ólafs and Hulda Proppé (eds), Rannsóknir í félagsvísundum, XI (Reykjavík: Félagsvísindastofnun Háskóla Íslands, 2010). Accessed from http:// skemman.is/handle/1946/6841. Schram, Kristinn, ‘Banking on Borealism: Eating, Smelling, and Performing the North’, in S. Ísleifsson (ed.), Iceland and Images of the North (Québec: Presses de l’Université Québec/Reykjavik Academy, 2011).

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Chapter 4

A Windmill and a Vikinghjem: The Importance of Visual Icons as Heritage Tropes among Danish-Americans Hanne Pico Larsen This is no load of junk. This is a Danish Windmill and it’s going to Elk Horn, Iowa! Anonymous truck driver1

In this chapter we are transported to the American heartland and take the exit leading to Elk Horn, Iowa. Here, Danish-American cultural heritage is on display in two fixed structures: a windmill imported from Denmark and a more vernacular Vikinghjem (Viking home).2 Elk Horn represents an American themed place, and the makers of its DanishAmerican master-narrative constitute a mixed bag of financial backers and cultural brokers. What happens when the references to the distant fatherland fade over time, and when local entrepreneurs, on behalf of the larger Danish community, try to maintain the reference and thereby reinvigorate Danish identity, both within the local community and the larger Danish-American diaspora within the United States, but also within the state of Iowa, known for its ‘drive-through history’?3 The example begs the question: ‘How long does a homeland remain vibrant or when does it dissipate?’4 The Danish Windmill in Elk Horn was dismantled in Denmark, shipped to the United States and reassembled brick by brick. For many years the windmill not only boosted pride and energy in the community, but also reminded the inhabitants of their Danish background and shared heritage. It also attracted   Warren Jacobsen and Judy Sutcliffe, Velkommen to the Danish Windmill Elk Horn, Iowa (Des Moines, 1977). 2   The Danish name will hereafter be treated as the English-language expression it has become in Elk Horn. 3   Mira Engler, ‘Drive-Thru History: Theme Towns in Iowa’, in Robert F. Sayre (ed.), Take the Next Exit: New Views of the Iowa Landscape. (Ames, 2000), pp. 255–276. 4   Michael P. Conzen, ‘Culture Regions, Homelands, and Ethnic Archipelagos in the United States: Methodological Considerations’, Journal of Cultural Geography, 13 (1993): 23. 1

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tourists. Although the town is also home to The Danish Immigrant Museum and the Family History and Genealogy Center, some of the townspeople wanted more visible proof of their Danish roots. They joined forces and erected a wooden house, which was named the VikingHjem. This Viking structure, situated next to the windmill, was made of boards and barn sidings from two old barns, and was researched and constructed primarily by an out-of-town Viking re-enactor. Although this new addition to the town lacks the windmill’s history and journey from Denmark, it does try to replicate vernacular Viking architecture.5 In its balancing act between being a signifier of a cherished heritage, themed spaces and consumer culture, the controversial VikingHjem seems to materialize a cogent observation: ‘“If you build it, they will come” is good for Hollywood (or Iowa), but bad social theory.’6 This chapter discusses questions about what kind of heritage is performed, what constitutes authenticity and the need for visual markers when heritage is put on display. The VikingHjem serves as an example of how far a community is prepared to go in order to claim an identity, as well as how heritage is often simplified when performed for tourists. This dialogue is not situated in the realm of more official institutions and agencies of heritage preservation, such as museums and archives. Instead, it plays out in the centre of vernacular- and economy-driven culture, where the curators and consumers are ordinary people with personal concerns regarding cultural authenticity, who often strive to create and/or enjoy an enhanced image of the culture in question. Elk Horn, Iowa: A Danish Place Between 1840 and 1914 large numbers of Danish immigrants arrived in the United States. As a result of the 1862 Homestead Act, many headed for the Midwest in order to obtain cheap land for farming, and large numbers settled in south-western Iowa in the late 1860s.7 Elk Horn was founded in 1868 and neighbouring Kimballton was established around 1883. The two small towns are known as the ‘Danish Villages’. Danish culture was practised, Danish language was spoken, and unanimity reigned until problems within the Church divided

  By vernacular I allude to ‘nonacademic building type’ as defined by Jon Harold Brunvand. See Jon Harold Brunvand, American Folklore: An Introduction (New York. 1998), p. 524. 6   Thomas F. Gieryn, ‘A Space for Place in Sociology’, Annual Review of Sociology, 26 (2000): 466. 7   Jette Mackintosh, ‘“Little Denmark” on the Prairie: A Study of the Towns Elk Horn and Kimballton in Iowa’, Journal of American Ethnic History, 7 (1988): 46–68. 5

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the Danish immigrant population.8 A small faction went westward to California where they established yet another Danish settlement, Solvang.9 These three examples of communities formed by Danish immigrants and referring back to Denmark and Danish heritage can be labelled Danish places. They each have a unique geographical location that has physicality (buildings, nature, people), but they ‘are doubly constructed: most are built or in some way physically carved out. They are also interpreted, narrated, perceived, felt, understood and imagined.’10 All three of these Danish settlements have their own visual markers of Danishness. In Solvang it is fake storks nesting on fake thatched roofs, while plenty of fake windmills turn their fake sails. Elk Horn has a Danish Windmill, and neighbouring Kimballton proudly displays a replica of a displaced Little Mermaid.11 People within these communities compete as to who is the most genuinely Danish. Elsewhere, I have described this phenomenon as ‘heritage envy’, alluding to the existence of hierarchies among immigrant groups of the same ethnic background. ‘Heritage envy’ refers to an emotional construct which often leads to the irrational question about who is more authentically ethnic than the others. Different parameters can be applied within these unspoken competitions: the importance of practising heritage, the ability to speak the mother tongue, being able to trace ancestry directly to the Old Country, or at least to early settlers, and so forth. I argue that the importance of making cultural heritage visible plays an increasingly dominant role in the issue of superlative national origin.12 A good example of ‘heritage envy’, as played out between the Danish communities of the Midwest and California, is the issue of windmills. Whereas Solvang displays an amazing number of small-scale replicas of Danish windmills, Elk Horn has a real one. What makes it real to DanishAmericans in both Elk Horn and beyond is that it comes from Denmark.13   For a detailed account of the history of the early settlers in Iowa as well as the dispute within the Church, see Mackintosh, ‘“Little Denmark” on the Prairie’, pp. 28–59. 9   Hanne Pico Larsen, ‘Solvang, CA: “The Danish Capital of America”: A Little Bit of Denmark, Disney, or Something Else?’, PhD dissertation (Berkeley, 2006). 10   Gieryn, ‘A Space for Place in Sociology,’ p. 465. For a discussion of Nordic spaces in general, see also Aronsson and Gradén, Chapter 1 in this volume. 11   The Little Mermaid in Kimballton has her own biography, which unfortunately cannot be covered within the confines of this chapter. See, for example, Peter L. Petersen, ‘A Windmill and a Mermaid,’ The World and I ( July 1989), pp. 644–655; and Judy Sutcliffe and Kimballton Progressive Danes, The Little Mermaid and the Story of Kimballton in Iowa’s ‘Danishland’ (Holstein, 1978). 12   Hanne Pico Larsen, ‘Danish Maids and Visual Matters: Celebrating Heritage in Solvang, California,’ in Arv: Nordic Yearbook of Folklore, 64 (Uppsala, 2009): 93–109. 13   Trine Tybjerg Holm, ‘“What’s Danish? Danish is Home …” – Om, Danskhed, Identitet Og Tilhørsforhold Hos Danskamerikanere i Iowa og Californien Anno 1999’, 8

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Those in Solvang are merely American replicas. As I will speculate later, it is also important that the windmill was imported and reassembled by the locals, as this demonstrates a committed, close-knit community. ‘American Plus’ immigrants (that is, Americans who adopt an additional, beneficial heritage – American plus something else)14 often show off their heritage for themselves and others, frequently resulting in entire ethnically themed environments. Solvang in California is a case in point. With great success, the community has been able to carve out its own themed heritage niche within the highly thematized Californian landscape. Solvang also represents a very American town15 despite its claimed Danishness. By cashing in on its ‘American Plus’ identity, the town has strengthened its own identity and ties to the ‘Old Country’ and is often referred to as the ‘Danish Capital of America’.16 This in fact only stirs and intensifies ‘heritage envy’ among Danish-Americans outside California. The Danish villages in Iowa have to be seen within their own context, namely as part of the landscape of the Midwest, specifically that of Iowa, which is known for a multitude of themed towns. Mira Engler takes a road trip through history in Iowa and argues that, due to economic hardship in the state, small-town Iowa desperately tries to cater to tourists in order to survive. Engler observes that ‘[t]own images, either connected to, or detached from, reality, are encroaching on the Iowa landscape and the Iowa mind’.17 She categorizes the themed communities into four groups: ‘Old World, Frontier America, Old Town, and Agrarian America’.18 Elk Horn fits into the ethnic heritage experience of Old World: Reminiscent of the homeland of the state’s European immigrants, the Old World represents Iowa’s most vivid ancestral memory, and the ethnic heritage theme attempts to reconnect to European roots.19

However, ethnically themed destinations within the American context do not constitute an isolated phenomenon.20 Other towns with Scandinavian MA thesis (Odense, 2000). 14   Susanne Österlund-Pötzsch, American Plus. Etnisk Identitet Hos Finlandssvenska Ättlingar i Nordamerika (Helsinki, 2003). 15   The city has the recognizable grid street plan, American chain retailers and tract houses. 16   Larsen, ‘Solvang, CA: “The Danish Capital of America”’. 17   Engler, ‘Drive-Thru History’, p. 257. 18   Ibid., p. 259. 19   Ibid., p. 260. 20   Steven D. Hoelscher and Richard. C. Ostergreen, ‘Old European Homelands in the American Middle West’, Journal of Cultural Geography, 13 (1993): 87–106.

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and northern European themes are the Swiss New Glarus in Wisconsin, Swedish Lindsborg in Kansas and Bavarian Leavenworth in Washington State. Norwegians have also grafted their heritage on to American landscapes in various ways.21 Such ‘other-directed’ places are intended to appeal to outsiders and, as such, they are exoticized, visualized versions of themselves.22 This does not necessarily mean that there is no internal logic, and indeed it is precisely the interplay between insider experience and outsider expectation that makes it playful. The ‘Danishness’, ‘Swedishness’ or ‘Norwegianness’ of these heritagethemed towns in America does not always chime with the ‘Danishness’, ‘Swedishness’ or ‘Norwegianness’ that is found in the Nordic countries. Very often the ‘ness’ of these places seems to refuse the infusion of contemporary Scandinavian culture – for instance, the different versions of Danishness in the United States and Denmark move at different paces.23 Ethnicity paraded, exaggerated and made synthetic for tourist consumption has been labelled ‘ersatz ethnicity’ by geographer Michael P. Conzen.24 ‘Ersatz ethnicity’ refers to landscapes where ethnic identity was about to be lost and efforts were therefore mobilized to secure ethnicity and ‘… reverse the trend by reinventing the sign and symbols of the presence’.25 A register of ethnic symbols is built up and drawn upon so many times that it becomes almost a stereotypical, caricatured culture of immigrants – more Danish than Denmark.26 I will be arguing that even overtly visualized heritage directed towards cashing in on tourism also becomes another component of the different forms of ‘symbolic ethnicity’.27 In his seminal 21   See, for example, Steven D. Hoelscher, Heritage on Stage: The Invention of Ethnic Place in America’s Little Switzerland (Madison, 1998); Lizette Gradén, On Parade: Making Heritage in Lindsborg, Kansas (Uppsala, 2003); Ted Price and J. Miller, Miracle Town: Creating America’s Bavarian Village in Leavenworth, Washington (Vancouver, 1997); Jon Gjerde and Carlton Chester Qualey, Norwegians in Minnesota (St Paul, 2002); Odd S. Lovoll, Norwegians on the Prairie: Ethnicity and the Development of the Country Town (St Paul, 2006). 22   Steven D. Hoelscher, ‘Tourism, Ethnic Memory and the Other-Directed Places, Ecumene, 5 (1998): 369–398. 23   Anders Linde-Laursen, ‘Främmande Böjningsformer av det Danska. Marknadsföring och Nationell Identitet i Sovlang, Kalifornien’, in Gunnar Alsmark (ed.), Skjorta Eller Själ Kulturella Identiteter i Tid och Rum (Lund, 1997), pp. 174–198. 24   Michael P. Conzen, ‘Ethnicity on the Land’, in Michael P. Cozen (ed.), The Making of the American Landscape (London and New York, 1990), pp. 221–248. 25   Ibid., p. 256. 26   Barbro Klein, ‘More Swedish Than Sweden, More Iranian Than in Iran: Folk Culture and World Migration’, in Upholders of Culture, Past and Present (Gothenburg, 2000), pp. 67–80. 27   Elsewhere I have discussed visualization of culture with regard to people. This is, of course, even more problematic and often overdetermined. See Larsen, ‘Danish Maids and Visual Matters’, pp. 93–109.

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work, Herbert J. Gans has shown how third, fourth and even later generations of immigrants resort to the use of ethnic symbols when celebrating their cultural heritage. ‘Symbolic ethnicity’ is often visible, easily felt, expressed and shared, and it seldom conflicts with other aspects of life.28 Finally, Danishness, both as an inner emotional state and as an outer expression captured in single objects that are then taken as a national symbol of Denmark, can also be linked to Victor Turner’s concept of ‘exegetical meaning’.29 According to Turner, a symbol is ‘a blaze or landmark, something that connects the unknown with the known’.30 In his writings on symbols, it becomes obvious that what he considers the most important feature of symbols is their ability to condense meaning, or a single symbol’s ability to have a wide variety of meanings: ‘many things and actions are represented in a single formation ... a dominant symbol is a unification of disparate signification ... interconnected by virtue of their common possession of analogous qualities or by association in fact or thought’.31 One symbol can thus have multiple meanings, as is often the case with Danish tropes and the feeling of Danishness. The issue of national symbols becomes a subject of dispute when people within the same groups have to agree on what exactly are the right symbols of their heritage. Is an old windmill more representative of the Danish past then a VikingHjem? Why do place-names, in an often forgotten language, referring back to the Old Country always seem so popular in immigrant communities?32 In Solvang, California, a Ferris wheel was voted down twice when townspeople were asked to decide about this amusing addition to the themed town, even though the structure was a replica of an old Danish Ferris wheel and it bore a Danish name. The Ferris wheel was not considered to be a worthy trope of Danish culture.33 The fine line between real patina and constructed tourist appeal is a complex issue. In Elk Horn, as in many other small towns in America, residents struggle with the issue of remaining true to themselves but are still:

28   Herbert J. Gans, ‘Symbolic Ethnicity: The Future of Ethnic Groups and Cultures in America’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2 (1979): 1–20. 29   Victor Turner, The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual (Ithaca, 1967). 30   Ibid., p. 48. 31   Ibid., p. 28. 32   Yi-Fu Tuan, ‘Language and the Making of Place: A Narrative-Description Approach’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 81 (1991): 684–693. 33   Hanne Pico Larsen, ‘A Ferris Wheel on a Parking Lot: Heritage, Tourism, and the Authenticity of Place in Solvang, California’, in Britta Timm Knudsen and Anne Marit Waade (eds), Travel, Tourism, Places: Reinvesting Authenticity (Leeds, 2010), pp. 93–106.

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… eager to alleviate the pain of desertion by youngsters, by industry, and by retailers; to repopulate the empty stores on Main Street; to overcome a sense of placelessness and geographical anonymity; and to regain a sense of worth and pride.34

The Danish Windmill On 4 February 1976 just before noon, a precious load reached Elk Horn, Iowa, on two big trucks. The treasure had travelled all the way from Denmark, via New York. This transatlantic odyssey had been anything but smooth, and not everybody understood its inherent value to the recipient Danes in the Midwest. According to legend: Shortly after starting the trip the driver’s CB radio spoke up: ‘Say there, westbound International Transport, where are you going with that load of junk?’ To which the driver replied, ‘Watch your tongue there, my friend. This is no load of junk. This is a Danish Windmill and it’s going to Elk Horn, Iowa!’35

The arrival of the Danish Windmill in Elk Horn, Iowa, was a culmination of a dream, namely to erect a real Danish windmill in the landscape of Iowa – commemorating the Danish heritage of the settlers of Elk Horn, as well as the bicentennial of the American nation. Although the mill was still incomplete, the dedication ceremonies were held on Memorial Day in 1976. It was not until March of the following year that the wings had finally been put in place on the impossible dream,36 and the mill was ready to grind grain.37 The old windmill came from Nørre Snede in Denmark. Although there are a few dissonances in the source material supporting the history of the mill, it originated in Denmark somewhere between 1848 and 1865. Fire had damaged the windmill even before it was moved to the United States to launch a second career as a visual marker of Danish culture and as a tourist destination.38 It was the entrepreneurial spirit of Elk Horn farmer Harvey Sornson that fostered the idea of adopting and transporting the windmill from Denmark, an idea later backed by the community as a whole. All the way from idea to reality, on the journey from Denmark to America, and from being an unassembled   Engler, ‘Drive-Thru History’, p. 255.   Jacobsen and Sutcliffe, Velkommen to the Danish Windmill. 36   Ibid., ‘Putting wings on the impossible dream’ is a caption from the back cover of the booklet. 37   Peter L. Petersen. ‘A Windmill and a Mermaid’. 38   Jacobsen and Sutcliffe, Velkommen to the Danish Windmill. 34 35

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Figure 4.1 The Danish Windmill at Elk Horn, Iowa. Photograph by the author, 2011

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pile of ‘junk’ to becoming an actual windmill once again, this was a private grassroots initiative and enterprise. And therein, as I shall return to later, lies the authenticity and importance of the Danish Windmill of Elk Horn. In 1975 Harvey Sornson visited his ancestral homeland. He was fond of windmills and hatched the idea of bringing one to Iowa to represent the Danish community of Elk Horn. His idea quickly became reality: the entire project was carried out between 1975 and 1977. More than $100,000 was raised, the mill was found, purchased, dismantled, moved to America and then rebuilt by approximately 300 volunteers.39 It was a dream come true for many of the people involved in the project, and yet the reference to a pile of junk rather than a windmill was evoked more than once: As curious townspeople gathered to examine what they had purchased, some openly speculated whether anything could be built out of all that ‘junk.’ ‘There is nothing rotten left in Denmark,’ one quipped. ‘They sent it all here!’40

The allusion here is to ‘Something is rotten in the State of Denmark,’ a famous line from Shakespeare’s play about the young prince Hamlet.41 The reference, however, is not to the evil things afoot, as in the play, but instead quite literally describes the quality of the wood. The windmill is no longer grinding grain, but it still stands tall as a strong and visible marker in the Iowa landscape, as the much-loved icon of Elk Horn and of Danishness in general. It houses a visitors’ centre, a gift shop and a small museum recounting the story of the windmill’s former Danish life, its journey to the United States, and its reassembly on the prairie. The operation is run by the Danish Mill Corporation. Old windmills are not a particularly Danish architectural feature. In fact, they were to be found in many corners of the world before they came to Denmark during the Middle Ages.42 There are a few other windmills to be found in contemporary Iowa as well. In the Dutch town of Pella, miniature windmills are scattered throughout the town,43 and Orange City has a replica of another

 Ibid.   Petersen, ‘A Windmill and a Mermaid’, p. 647. 41   The words were spoken by the character Marcellus in Act 1, scene 4: ‘Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.’ William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (New York, 1998), p. 27. 42   For an extensive history of Danish Mills see Anna Marie Lebech-Sørensen, Vindmøller og Vandmøller i Danmark, 2 vols (Ringe, 2001). 43   Engler, ‘Drive-Thru History,’ pp. 255–276. 39 40

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old Dutch windmill, the Vogel Mill.44 The windmill might be a trope intended to communicate Danishness, but it sometimes comes across instead as merely foreign and exotic and thereby as an instance of the stereotypical American tendency to confuse one European country with another. ‘Dutch and Danish both start with d,’ as one informant once reminded me.45 That the windmill is a cherished trope for the Danes has to do with the fact that it evokes the good old days before industrialization. The defeat of Denmark by the German Confederation in the Battle of Dybbøl (April 1864) in the Second Schleswig War is also important. Denmark lost large parts of its land to neighbouring Germany – an historical event which had a great impact on Danish history and identity.46 On the battlefield of Dybbøl stood a windmill, and this particular mill has served as the prototype for all Danish windmills and has become a national symbol. The strong symbolic value captured in this particular architectural structure, pointing to Danishness and patriotism, is still a popular trope for Danes both inside and outside Denmark.47 One of the Danes welcoming the Danish Windmill (or the pieces of it) to Elk Horn, was eightyseven-year-old Peder K. Pedersen: He had come to America when he was 21 years old, and had never seen his original homeland again. He brushed a little ocean salt from one of the old mill’s timbers and put his finger to his lips. The tears welled in his eyes as he tasted the distant sea.48

The VikingHjem The Viking is another well-known marker of Danishness – an image shared, of course, with the other Nordic countries. Reference to the proud Danish Vikings who discovered America is often evoked in early literature about Danish settlement in America.49 Currently, Vikings and their archaeological remnants are used in material promoting tourism, as well as in contemporary Danish 44   ‘The Old Mill – Vogel Windmill – Orange City, Iowa’, http://www.iowabeautiful. com/northwest-iowa-tourism/649-old-mill-vogel-windmill-orange-city-iowa.html, accessed 29 January 2012. 45   Larsen, ‘Solvang, CA: “The Danish Capital of America”’, p. 234. 46   Peter Gundelach, Hans Raun Iversen and Margit Warburg, I Hjertet af Danmark: Institutioner og Mentaliteter (Copenhagen, 2008). 47   Inge Adriansen, Nationale Symboler i det Danske Rige, 1830–2000, 2 vols (Copenhagen, 2003). 48   Jacobsen and Sutcliffe, Velkommen to the Danish Windmill, pp. 12–13. 49   Peter Sørensen Vig, Danske i Amerika (Minneapolis, 1907).

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museum displays.50 The use (and misuse) of Viking imagery serves well both for commercial purposes and for upholding a strong Danish national identity, and it is therefore hardly surprising that the Danish settlement in Iowa decided to expand on the Viking past. The story of the VikingHjem in Elk Horn, which was erected on land belonging to the property of the Danish Windmill starting in 2006, is not as well documented as the story about the windmill, but it is no less interesting.51 Viking-in-charge, John Chadwell of the Skjaldborg edu-tainers, recalls that the project was born out of wishful thinking on the part of some of the out-oftown Viking re-enactors, who had been gathering for events in Elk Horn since about 1995. For each re-enactment they brought their own tents and hauled all their equipment. They harboured a dream of a permanent structure for shelter and storage and a venue for gatherings and Viking edu-tainment activities for tourists, and ‘then it became a serious discussion, then it became a proposal, then it became a hole in the ground, then it became a house, and so, here we are’.52 In promotional material to prospective donors to the VikingHjem, the vision of the additional Viking theme is clearly stated by the Danish Mill Corporation’s board of directors: After careful consideration, the current board of directors is seeking contributions to build a VikingHjem (Viking Home) on the southeastern portion of the Mill’s property in Elk Horn. We have been entertained for several years with Viking re-enactments sponsored by the Danish Mill. It has long been the dream of these Vikings from around the United States, that Elk Horn should have a VikingHjem where they can come together and do their re-enactments on a regular basis. By providing a Longhouse we can add another attraction, and also provide an educational and historical experience. We would have even more school tours and tourists visiting to get a glimpse of the Viking Age. (As we Scandinavians already know, it was a Viking who discovered America and not Columbus). The Viking theme would work well with the increased interest in Vikings through movies, television, and video games, and would certainly help in our marketing of Elk Horn. It would all fit together in promoting the Danish Villages with the

  See, for example, Martin Djupdræt, Billeder af Vikingen (Copenhagen, 1998), and ‘En Viking Bluecheese m.v.’, 14 October 2010, http://martinsmuseumsblog.wordpress. com/2010/10/14/en-viking-bluecheese-m-v, accessed 29 January 2012. See also Sumarliði Ísleifsson and Daniel Chartier (eds), Iceland and Images of the North (Quebec, 2010). 51   The construction project is documented by the Skjaldborg group; see for example, http://www.skjaldborgedu-tainment.com, accessed 29 January 2012. 52   Interview with Viking re-enactor, John Chadwell, Elk Horn, 28 May 2011. 50

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The entrepreneurial spirit surrounding this project is similar to the one at play when the Danish Windmill became reality. Due to lack of funding, the ambition of building a longhouse was downscaled and instead it became a ‘980 AD smithy home’.54 Money for the VikingHjem came from local donors. The timber used for the structure was collected from nearby sites where two barns had been razed and the wood was then re-erected as the VikingHjem. The turf roof, on the other hand, is the latest technology in green roofs. Volunteers also helped construct the new addition to the community. One of the out-of-towner Vikings mentioned in the letter above was in charge of the project. Almost singlehandedly he undertook the research, design, and most of the manual labour at no cost to the Danish Mill Corporation which approved the VikingHjem, but gave no guidelines, rules or restrictions in terms of the building’s authenticity.55 Old wood, new roof and a rather vernacular design may indicate that an accurate reconstruction of a VikingHjem or a tenth-century Viking smithy was not the actual goal. Very little archaeological evidence about Viking smithies exists. In general, there is considerable regional variation in building styles, and the general assumption regarding crafts requiring fire is that they were usually practised on the outskirts of the rural farm and often outdoors due to the fear of fire. Viking smithies in the shape of a farmhouse are not often found.56 However, remains of a smithy from c.980 AD can be found at the Viking site at L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland. Here, the smithy was placed across the river from the rest of the settlement. It was tiny, open at the front, with turf walls and roof.57 The VikingHjem in Elk Horn should therefore be seen as a compromise. A VikingHjem was needed, and one of the crafts that volunteer Vikings in the area master is the art of smithing. Building a house in which several crafts can be demonstrated – for instance, weaving, cooking, or carving – also shifts the focus from raiding and warfare to that of Viking handicrafts and trade, which 53   Danish Mill Corporation, untitled letter (not dated, approximately 2006–2007). See Appendix 1. 54   Interview with Lisa Steen Riggs, manager of the Danish Windmill and VikingHjem, Elk Horn, 28 May 2011. 55   Interview with John Chadwell, 28 May 2011; interview with Lisa Steen Riggs, 28 May 2011. 56   John Ljungkvist, ‘Handicrafts’, in Stefan Brink and Niel Price (eds), The Viking World (London and New York, 2008), pp. 186–192. 57   See ‘The Way Station at L’Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland’, Vikings in America, ed. D.L. Ashliman, http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/vinland.html, accessed 29 January 2012.

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may prove more suitable for edu-tainment.58 At the Elk Horn smithy, however, the smith demonstrates to the public how to forge weapons and battle armour as well. Another example of the compromises made regarding the VikingHjem is that the original design was later reduced in height; the beams were shortened so as not to reduce the windmill’s visibility.59

Figure 4.2

A little girl looking through the window at the Viking re-enactors in the VikingHjem, Elk Horn, Iowa. Photograph by the author, 2011

The Viking-re-enactors visit every so often, but due to the economic downturn in recent years the VikingHjem looks desolate next to the windmill. There are not enough staff to keep the doors open for the public. Several signs with explanatory texts regarding the Viking past have been drafted, but funds for installation are lacking.60 The dream about a lively, homely, working smithy is still there, and little by little the Viking re-enactors are improving the VikingHjem. The project continues as a work in progress and depends solely on volunteer labour.61   Interview with John Chadwell, 28 May 2011.  Ibid. 60   Interview with Lisa Steen Riggs, 28 May 2011. 61   Interview with John Chadwell, 28 May 2011. 58 59

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Figure 4.3

A view inside the Viking smithy where a Viking is being fitted for battle, Elk Horn, Iowa. Photograph by the author, 2011

Authenticity and Entrepreneurship Tourism is the third largest industry in Iowa, and where attractions used to be geographical and natural features, focus has now shifted to that of themed environments.62 As is the case with many other themed communities, layman definitions of authenticity are hard to pin down. It is easy to get caught in the semiotics of tourism when trying to take advantage of heritage as attraction, and it is not easy to decide who holds the authority over what is authentic and what is just ‘wannabe’.63 Themed communities such as Elk Horn would like to appeal to visitors, but at the same time there is a clear sense of angst over appearing too themed and too fake.64 Contrary to academic polemics about the quest for authenticity and other cultural criticism, the authenticity of many layman heritage reconstructions and inventions in small-town America is not only rooted in history. The importance   Engler, ‘Drive-Thru History,’ pp. 255–276.   Klein, ‘More Swedish Than Sweden’, pp. 67–80. 64   See, for example, Larsen, ‘A Ferris Wheel on a Parking Lot,’ pp. 93–106. 62 63

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of the visual representation and the efforts to create a ‘feel’ of the place referred back to are equally important. Authenticity at a grassroots level, as in Elk Horn, exists in the eyes of the beholder, and compromises might be necessary. A report describing progress of the work on the VikingHjem issued by the Windmill Corporation says: Though there will be modern materials used in much of it, not much of them will be evident. The overall design is meant to hide the modern parts and lend itself more to the Old World atmosphere, giving it a ‘museum piece’ feel that can stand alone and tell a story. The best part though, is that our VikingHjem will be alive with activity, and will be an interactive experience for its visitors.65

It is important to note here that even though the Windmill Corporation on occasion calls itself a museum, it is not following rules and regulations issued by the American Association of Museums (AAM). On the other hand, The Danish Immigrant Museum next door is seeking AAM accreditation and needs to comply with the association’s guidelines.66 This, of course, is also part of the local debate over authenticity, as many volunteers are knowledgeable about the work of both operations – the windmill and the museum. In projects concerning heritage renewal or preservation, the assumption is that heritage is given a ‘second life’ and thus becomes a representation of a representation. Even if heritage is presented as something old, it is a new production and it does provide a ‘second life’ to otherwise dying cultural locations.67 Old barns and defunct windmills are cases in point. When such heritage projects are analysed, the three dimensions of time, place, and expression are generally mapped and described, but often part of the equation is missing, namely that of the driving force or motive. What is the underlying impetus? As is so obvious in Iowa, economic gain is a major driving force behind cultural displays, which are often labelled as part of the growing ‘experience economy’.68 Ethnicity for sale is arguably in danger of becoming ‘Ethnicity Inc’.69 I would like to point to a complexity which goes beyond mere cashing in on heritage and

  Danish Mill Corporation, VikingHjem Report (not dated, approximately 2006–2007). See Appendix 2. 66   Interview with John Mark Nielsen, Elk Horn, 28 May 2011. 67   Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Destination Culture: Tourism, Museums, and Heritage (Berkeley, 1998). 68   B. Joseph Pine and James H. Gilmore, The Experience Economy: Work is Theater & Every Business a Stage (Cambridge, MA, 1999). 69   John L. Comeroff and Jean Comeroff, Ethnicity, Inc. (Chicago, 2009). 65

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look at why private-initiative heritage projects are being undertaken, and why doing them is so important to the heritage-makers. In Elk Horn the old Danish windmill and the new VikingHjem were both granted a ‘second life’ as heritage sites. They were both dismantled and rebuilt. A Danish windmill was reborn as the Danish Windmill in a foreign country, while two decrepit local barns gave life to a VikingHjem nearby. Both are structures with no practical function per se: the windmill does not grind grain, and the VikingHjem does not house any Vikings. However, both structures are important for the experience economy, and the vernacular engagement provides new sources of legitimacy and authenticity. Most important is what the two structures have in common: the entrepreneurial spirit of the community, standing behind ready, willing and able to gather money, volunteer time, labour and commitment. This is all in accordance with a general pattern of the theming of a small town: Generally, small-town theming in Iowa has been instigated by an individual or a civic group and is then realized by the entire community in an effort to regain identity and economic stability.70

In the promotional material for the VikingHjem, issued by the Danish Mill Corporation’s board of directors, it is exactly that volunteer spirit which is addressed and nurtured: A lot has happened in the 30 years since the Danish Windmill was brought to America and rebuilt by community volunteers. Many of you have served on the Mill board, have volunteered, and have been loyal customers and supporters over the years. You have known the trials, successes, and all the hard work that went into bringing an 1848 Danish Windmill from the old country. You have watched the thousands of tourists from all over the world come to Elk Horn to experience the Danish Windmill. You witnessed first hand the impossible dream of Harvey Sornson come true. As Harvey always said, ‘who would have thought it?’71

It is the pride in making something happen – being willing to take the risk and fight for dreams for the future that make use of the past, which is the important factor. Prior to the VikingHjem, Elk Horn had collaborated and fought for the Danish Windmill and the Danish Immigrant Museum, and when the community needed a new swimming pool, the locals of Elk Horn made that   Engler, ‘Drive-Thru History,’ p. 259.   Danish Mill Corporation, untitled letter (not dated, approximately 2006–2007). See Appendix 1. 70 71

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happen themselves. It is pride in endurance, combined with a conservative outlook and philosophy that ‘we do it, and we do it our way’.72 Dare-devilish entrepreneurial business with a wink and a nod to the past also matters to the people in Elk Horn, as accomplishments which reinforce a sense of being. The underlying reference to the hardworking immigrant mentality also adds to the community feel and identity: We have all enjoyed seeing Elk Horn come alive. Because of the Windmill we have seen established business grow and new businesses thrive due to tourism. You saw how we all came together to entice the Danish Immigrant Museum to locate here in Elk Horn over Minneapolis-St. Paul. It would be easy to sit back and watch the fruits of our labor from the past and just enjoy it all. But now, we are ready to embark on a new project.73

Local initiatives such as the VikingHjem are without doubt well-meaning efforts made by a small group of people, but meant for the benefit of the entire community. When the draw of the Danish Windmill faded, the board of the Windmill Corporation cast about to find new ways of envisioning the past, mainly for a tourist population. Their new attraction and the interpretation of the Danish past might not suit the tastes of all the town’s inhabitants. The nature of private entrepreneurial practice often conflicts with the larger community due to a failure of communication. As a consequence, local initiative-takers might, despite their good intentions, end up forcing their private vision on the community and thereby excluding others. In contrast to the Danish Immigrant Museum which has a board of twenty-five directors, mainly people from out of town, the Danish Windmill has a much smaller and local board of directors. The Windmill Corporation behind both the Danish Windmill and the VikingHjem is 100 per cent made up of Elk Horn inhabitants, and the manager is a daughter of the community. The two institutions work together in promoting the community, and although the museum might be considered somewhat less of a local enterprise, it is still viewed with pride.74 No matter what, the invitation to share, with the beneficial side effect of raising revenue for the community, is important to emphasize. Even if making money is crucial for Elk Horn, that does not necessarily rule out a genuinely

  Interview with John Mark Nielsen, 28 May 2011.   Danish Mill Corporation, untitled letter (not dated, approximately 2006–2007). See Appendix 1. 74   Interview with John Mark Nielsen, 28 May 2011. 72 73

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extended invitation for others to join in and share the immigrant history of the town.75 In his essay ‘Collectivity by Culture Squared: Cultural Heritage in Nordic Spaces’, Valdimar Tr. Hafstein argues that cultural heritage usually points ‘beyond itself to a culture it claims to represent, heritage is a culture of culture – it is culture squared’.76 In addition, according to Hafstein: Heritage practices also refer themselves to the social field: they invoke a collective subject such as family, community, ethnicity, or nation. Such heritage practices are performative: they bring into being what they enact. Thus heritage practices perform both culture and collectives – they give them substance and reality. In so doing, they also configure particular spaces as privileged zones of contact between the past and the present and as metonyms of the collective – as heritage sites, that is, be they museum collections, festival, dances, costumes, or foods. In brief, heritage is collectivity by culture squared.77

In this case, the collectivity and culture exist on multiple levels. The collectivity is in both the small-town community culture and the Danish heritage. In addition, the collectivity reaches beyond the town: tourists visit, Viking reenactors from all over America gather in Elk Horn, one of them even helps to build the VikingHjem, and, when the windmill was reconstructed, a visit was paid by a prominent Danish-American residing in New York. He was from a Danish family of mill-builders and took a special interest in the project.78 It is important to point out that collective legacies, even within small communities like Elk Horn, are always subject to conflict as different people have different priorities and ways of interpreting, for example, a common past.79 In their references to Denmark, the Danish Windmill and the VikingHjem create a virtual image of a place, where memory, dreams, ancestry and the entire past come to dwell for the town’s Danish-American citizens. In Elk Horn, the memory of Denmark is neatly embedded in the two physical structures, which 75   For a discussion regarding the similar process of how an engagement with one’s cultural roots often co-exists and becomes intertwined with an invitation for others to join in and enjoy in the case of ethnic cookbooks, see Hanne Pico Larsen and Susanne ÖsterlundPötzsch, ‘“Ubuntu in Your Heart”: Ethnicity, Innovation and Playful Nostalgia in Three “New Cuisines” by Chef Marcus Samuelsson’, in Food, Culture & Society (forthcoming). 76   Valdimar Tr. Hafstein, ‘Collectivity by Culture Squared: Cultural Heritage in Nordic Spaces’, in Arv: Nordic Yearbook of Folklore, 64 (Uppsala, 2009): 11. 77  Ibid. 78   Jacobsen and Sutcliffe, Velkommen to the Danish Windmill. 79   David Lowenthal, Possessed by the Past: The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History (New York, 1996).

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have been made possible through joint community efforts. Even though the VikingHjem, in particular, might be viewed by outsiders as terribly anachronistic and out of place, it may represent Danish heritage for local people. It is a place to store Viking paraphernalia, a place to share with tourists, but also a place where the town can store its collective memory and celebrate a common heritage and a very distant past. Conclusion with an Open Ending Just off Interstate 80 in Iowa is the small Danish community, Elk Horn. Danish heritage, captured in a Danish windmill and a VikingHjem, welcomes visitors at the entrance to the town. The Danish place that emerges is a mixture of commercial concerns, individual identities, entrepreneurial agendas and a general feeling of community heritage. What makes places like Elk Horn and Kimballton in Iowa, and Solvang in California, Danish places, even if situated far outside of the borders of Denmark, is the fact that they have been ‘interpreted, narrated, perceived, felt, understood and imagined’80 in the context of Danish-American immigrants. The complex process of re-creating Elk Horn as a heritage site exists largely because of the local inhabitants’ various opinions and agendas. I have argued that the representation of Danishness in these places is increased or boosted by visual markers. Moreover, as my study demonstrates, what carries a powerful sense of authenticity for some might be discarded as inauthentic by others, and even referred to as ‘a load of junk’.81 Therefore, compromises might be sought when it comes to new structures with reference to Denmark, such as the VikingHjem. The driving force is to do something good for the town, and the project becomes more important as an identity-confirming construction in its own right than as an authentic reference to a Viking past. The emotional attachments to these structures are therefore as important as the actual structures. The Danish Windmill and the VikingHjem in Elk Horn were team efforts which demonstrate the importance of popular initiative. I have shown how this kind of popular initiative is problematic as it is often heavily influenced by powerful local voices or an entrepreneur’s private agenda. However, ‘contrary to modernist arguments about authenticity, these places are where authentic experiences of modern life now occur, places where people meet, make friends and deal with their sense of alienation’82 of different   Gieryn, ‘A Space for Place in Sociology’, p. 465.   Jacobsen and Sutcliffe, Velkommen to the Danish Windmill. 82   Sarah Chaplin and Eric Holding, ‘Consuming Architecture’, Architectural Design (1998): 8. 80 81

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kinds. Locals volunteer time and money, tourists visit, and Vikings from afar come to gather. References to the distant fatherland may continue to fade over time, but local forces continue to maintain their ties to the past and come up with new initiatives. There is seemingly no end to the entrepreneurial spirit and the demands of consumer culture in small-town America. Elk Horn is now watching while new projects, with more or less obvious references to Denmark, take shape: The ‘Norsemen Brewing Company & the Thirsty Mermaids Brewhaus’ is under construction, and a biking trail connecting Elk Horn and Kimballton, still in the planning stages, has been named after the Little Mermaid. Yet another local entrepreneur is expanding his private business of alternative and renewable energy with a reference to contemporary environment-friendly Denmark.

Figure 4.4 The Norsemen Brewing Company & the Thirsty Mermaids Brewhaus under construction. Photograph by the author, 2011

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Appendix 1 Danish Mill Corporation, untitled letter

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Appendix 2 Danish Mill Corporation, VikingHjem Report

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Bibliography Interviews Fieldwork material, quoted interviews (in the author’s possession) Interview with John Chadwell, Elk Horn, IA, 28 May 2011. In the author’s possession. Interview with John Mark Nielsen, Elk Horn, IA, 28 May 2011. In the author’s possession. Interview with Lisa Steen Riggs, Elk Horn, IA, 28 May 2011. In the author’s possession. Manuscript Sources Danish Mill Corporation, untitled letter (not dated, approximately 2006–2007). See Appendix 1. Danish Mill Corporation, VikingHjem Report (not dated, approximately 2006–2007) See Appendix 2. Note: Both letters have been estimated to around 2006–2007 by Lisa Steen Riggs, the manager of the Danish Windmill, and the author of the letters. The letters were widely circulated in Elk Horn and to the alumni list of the Danish Windmill (correspondence with the author 17 November 2011). Secondary Sources Adriansen, Inge, Nationale Symboler i det Danske Rige, 1830–2000, 2 vols (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanums forlag, 2003). Brunvand, Jon Harold, American Folklore: An Introduction (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1998). Chaplin, Sarah and Eric Holding, ‘Consuming Architecture’, Architectural Design, 131 (1998): 7–9. Comoroff, John L. and Jean Comeroff, Ethnicity, Inc. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009). Conzen, Michael P., ‘Ethnicity on the Land’, in Michael P. Conzen (ed.), The Making of the American Landscape (London and New York: Routledge, 1990), pp. 221–248. Conzen, Michael P., ‘Culture Regions, Homelands, and Ethnic Archipelagos in the United States: Methodological Considerations’, Journal of Cultural Geography, 13 (1993):13–29.

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Djupdræt, Martin, Billeder af Vikingen (Copenhagen: Skoletjenesten, 1998). Engler, Mira, ‘Drive-Thru History: Theme Towns in Iowa’, in Robert F. Sayre (ed.), Take the Next Exit: New Views of the Iowa Landscape (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 2000), pp. 255–276. Gans, Herbert J., ‘Symbolic Ethnicity: The Future of Ethnic Groups and Cultures in America’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2 (1979): 1–20. Gieryn, Thomas F., ‘A Space for Place in Sociology’, Annual Review of Sociology 26 (2000): 463–496. Gjerde, Jon and Carlton Chester Qualey, Norwegians in Minnesota (St Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2002). Gradén, Lizette, On Parade: Making Heritage in Lindsborg, Kansas (Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 2003). Gundelach, Peter, Hans Raun Iversen and Margit Warburg, I Hjertet af Danmark: Institutioner og Mentaliteter (Copenhagen: Hans Reitzels Forlag, 2008). Hafstein, Valdimar Tr., ‘Collectivity by Culture Squared: Cultural Heritage in Nordic Spaces’, Arv: Nordic Yearbook of Folklore, 64 (2009): 11–21. Hoelscher, Steven D., Heritage on Stage: The Invention of Ethnic Place in America’s Little Switzerland (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1998). Hoelscher, Steven D., ‘Tourism, Ethnic Memory and the Other-Directed Place’, Ecumene, 5 (1998): 369–398. Hoelscher, Steven D. and Robert C. Ostergreen, ‘Old European Homelands in the American Middle West’, Journal of Cultural Geography, 13 (1993): 87–106. Holm, Trine Tybjerg, ‘“What’s Danish? Danish Is Home...” – Om, Danskhed, Identitet Og Tilhørsforhold Hos Danskamerikanere i Iowa og Californien Anno 1999’, MA thesis (Odense: Syddansk Universitet, 2000). Ísleifsson, Sumarliði and Daniel Chartier (eds), Iceland and Images of the North (Quebec: Presses de l’Université Québec, 2010). Jacobsen, Warren and Judy Sutcliffe, Velkommen to the Danish Windmill, Elk Horn, Iowa (Des Moines: Garner Printing, 1977). Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara, Destination Culture: Tourism, Museums, and Heritage (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998). Klein, Barbro, ‘More Swedish Than Sweden, More Iranian Than in Iran: Folk Culture and World Migration’, in B. Sundin (ed.), Upholders of Culture, Past and Present (Gothenburg: Chalmers Medialab, 2000), pp. 67–80. Larsen, Hanne Pico, ‘Solvang, CA: “The Danish Capital of America”: A Little Bit of Denmark, Disney, or Something Else?’, PhD dissertation (Berkeley, University of California, 2006).

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Larsen, Hanne Pico, ‘Danish Maids and Visual Matters: Celebrating Heritage in Solvang, California’, in Arv: Nordic Yearbook of Folklore, 64 (2009): 93–109. Larsen, Hanne Pico, ‘A Ferris Wheel on a Parking Lot: Heritage, Tourism, and the Authenticity of Place in Solvang, California’, in Britta Timm Knudsen and Anne Marit Waade (eds), Travel, Tourism, Places: Reinvesting Authenticity (Leeds: Leeds Metropolitan University, 2010), pp. 93–106. Larsen, Hanne Pico and Susanne Österlund-Pötzsch, ‘“Ubuntu in Your Heart”: Ethnicity, Innovation and Playful Nostalgia in Three “New Cuisines” by Chef Marcus Samuelsson’, in Food, Culture & Society (forthcoming). Lebech-Sørensen, Anna Marie, Vindmøller og Vandmøller i Danmark, 2 vols (Ringe: Skib Forlag, 2001). Linde-Laursen, Anders, ‘Främmande Böjningsformer av det Danska. Marknadsföring och Nationell Identitet i Sovlang, Kalifornien’, in Gunnar Alsmark (ed.), Skjorta Eller Själ Kulturella Identiteter i Tid och Rum (Lund: Studentlitteratur, 1997), pp. 174–198. Ljungkvist, John, ‘Handicrafts’, in Stefan Brink and Niel Price (eds), The Viking World (London and New York: Routledge, 2008), pp. 186–192. Lovoll, Odd S., Norwegians on the Prairie: Ethnicity and the Development of the Country Town (St Paul: Minnesota Historical Press, 2006). Lowenthal, David, Possessed by the Past: The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History (New York: Free Press, 1996). Mackintosh, Jette, ‘“Little Denmark” on the Prairie: A Study of the Towns Elk Horn and Kimballton in Iowa’, Journal of American Ethnic History, 7 (1988): 46–68. Österlund-Pötzsch, Susanne, American Plus: Etnisk Identitet Hos Finlandssvenska Ättlingar i Nordamerika (Helsinki: Svenska Litteratursällskapet i Finland, 2003). Petersen, Peter L., ‘A Windmill and a Mermaid’, The World and I ( July 1989), pp. 644–655. Pine, B. Joseph and James H. Gilmore, The Experience Economy: Work is Theater & Every Business a Stage (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1999). Price, Ted and J. Miller, Miracle Town: Creating America’s Bavarian Village in Leavenworth, Washington (Vancouver: Price & Rodgers, 1997). Shakespeare, William, The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (New York: Signet Classics, 1998). Sutcliffe, Judy and Kimballton Progressive Danes, The Little Mermaid and the Story of Kimballton in Iowa’s ‘Danishland’ (Holstein: Bye & Bye, Inc., 1978).

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Tuan, Yi-Fu, ‘Language and the Making of Place: A Narrative-Description Approach’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 81 (1991): 684–693. Turner, Victor, The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1967). Vig, Peter Sørensen, Danske i Amerika (Minneapolis: C. Rasmussen Publications,1907). Internet Sources ‘En Viking Bluecheese m.v.’, 14 October 2010, http://martinsmuseumsblog. wordpress.com/2010/10/14/en-viking-bluecheese-m-v, accessed 29 January 2012. Skjaldborg Vikings, http://www.skjaldborgedu-tainment.com, accessed 29 January 2012. ‘The Old Mill – Vogel Windmill – Orange City, Iowa’, The Vogel Mill, Iowa: http://www.iowabeautiful.com/northwest-iowa-tourism/649-old-millvogel-windmill-orange-city-iowa.html, accessed 29 January 2012. ‘The Way Station at L’Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland’, Vikings in America, ed. D.L. Ashliman, http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/vinland.html, accessed 29 January 2012.

Chapter 5

Negotiating Local, National and Nordic Identities through Commemorations Torbjörn Eng and Ingemar Lindaräng

In 2011 the ‘Nansen–Amundsen Year’ was celebrated in Norway to mark the 150th year since Fridtjof Nansen was born and the century since Roald Amundsen reached the South Pole. In the commemoration, organized and financed by the Norwegian government, Nansen and Amundsen were celebrated not only as bold explorers, but also as national icons who were brave, strong and hardened by the rough climate, all attributes that are central elements of Norwegian identity.1 When Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg honoured Amundsen in a ceremony at the South Pole in December 2011 he stressed how much the polar explorer’s heroic achievement contributed to creating Norway’s new national identity.2 This celebration echoes a multitude of events staged throughout Western societies over the last several decades, during which commemorations have increased in popularity. The French historian Pierre Nora goes so far as to say that we have been afflicted with ‘commemorative bulimia’.3 In this study we will examine how national and transnational identities or transnational community figure in such celebrations. The former speak to the whole nation, are financially supported by the government and are intended to strengthen national identities, while the latter involve more than one country and hence enact ideas of transnational community. In a brief overview of commemorations in the Nordic region in recent years, two different categories emerge: those of cultural figures and those of historical events. As many facts about jubilees are available only on web pages created at   Nansen-Amundsen-året 2011, http://www.nansenamudsen.no/no, accessed 28 October 2011. 2  Aftonbladet, http://www.aftonbladet.se/senastenytt/ttnyheter/utrikes/article1407 5896.ab, accessed 14 December 2011. 3   Pierre Nora, Realms of Memory –Rethinking the French Past (New York, 1996), Vol. 1, p. XVII. For discussions on commemorations see also J.R. Gillis (ed.), Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity (Princeton, 1994). 1

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the time of the jubilee, many citations in this chapter therefore refer to Internet sources which, in some cases, are no longer accessible. The commemorations are as follows: 1997 The Kalmar Union (Denmark, Sweden and Norway) of 1397 1999 The Danish Constitution of 1849 2003 Saint Birgitta of Sweden, born in 1303 2004 Johan Ludvig Runeberg, born in 1804 2005 Hans Christian, Andersen, born in 1805; the dissolution of the Swedish– Norwegian Union in 1905; Dag Hammarskjöld, born in 1905 2006 Henrik Ibsen, born in 1806 2007 Carl von Linnaeus, born in 1707; Edvard Grieg, died in 1907; Astrid Lindgren, born in 1907 2008 The Treaty of Roskilde between Denmark and Sweden in 1658 2009 The separation of Sweden and Finland in 1809; Knut Hamsun, born in 1859 2010 Birger Jarl, born in 1210; Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, died in 1910 2011 Fridtjof Nansen, born in 1861; Roald Amundsen reaching the South Pole in 1911; Jussi Björling, born in 1911; Dag Hammarskjöld, died in 1961 2012 August Strindberg, died in 1912; Raoul Wallenberg, born in 1912 In this overview, the category of cultural figures dominates, but both categories are tied to territorial identities, be they local, regional, national, Nordic, European or global. To arrive at a more profound understanding of how commemorations affect identity formation, we must investigate several questions. Who initiates commemorations and why? How are they organized and financed? What are their major objectives? Who are their target groups? Why do states and other organizations spend resources on certain jubilees or commemorations, while more or less ignoring others? Probing such questions will reveal a great deal about how and why specific parts of the past are articulated and performed as cultural heritage in the genre of commemoration. Commemorating Historical Events In 1997 it was the 600th anniversary of the founding of a three-state union between Denmark, Norway and Sweden in the Swedish city of Kalmar close to the Danish border. Queen Margareta of Denmark became ruler of three Nordic

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countries, and the union lasted until 1523, when Sweden broke out. From the nineteenth century onwards, the Kalmar Union has been seen as a symbol for close Nordic cooperation. Ten members representing all the political parties in the Swedish parliament proposed that a commemoration of ‘The Kalmar Union: 600 years’ should be arranged in Kalmar in 1997. The bill submitted to the Swedish Parliament in 1994 underlines that ‘The municipality of Kalmar wants to use history as a tool into the future with openings towards the Nordic region, Baltic region and Europe. It also wants to create belief and optimism in the future’.4 Although the initiative was primarily taken at the local and national levels, the commemoration included several Nordic elements. The creation of a sculpture to commemorate the Union, with Queen Margareta as a central figure, was a core element. Sculptors from all the Nordic countries took part in the competition to design the monument. Its inauguration was a major Nordic event, drawing leaders from all five Nordic countries.5 Other events that included all the Nordic countries were radio and television broadcasts.6 In such ways, the commemoration of the Kalmar Union had local, national and transnational (Nordic) dimensions. A few years after the commemoration of the Kalmar Union, Denmark celebrated the 150th anniversary of its constitution on 5 June 1849, a date which also marks the Danish National Day. Naturally, this jubilee, unlike the commemoration of the Kalmar Union, had only national dimensions. The Danish historian Anette Warring has studied how Danish Constitution Day was commemorated in 1949 compared with 1999. In 1949 the celebration was organized by the state which wanted to emphasize the importance of the anniversary to the Danish population. The impact of this commemoration was, according to Warring, weak, unlike the event in 1999, when ordinary people took part in organizing the commemoration and creating celebratory events. This process was more democratic and interactive and resulted in events that offered something for all ages, ranging from debates to festivals and lectures, focused on what it means to be ‘Danish’ – what Danish identity is. ‘The Danish constitution is not only a collection of paragraphs. It is a story about who we are

  Motion till Riksdagen 1994/95: Kr282, ‘Kalmarunionens 600-årsjubileum’.   Kalmar Lexikon, ‘Unionsmonumentet’, http://www.kalmarlexikon.se/index.php/u/ unionsmonumentet.html, accessed 30 October 2011. 6   The National Museum of Denmark produced an exhibition also displayed in Kalmar, Finland and Norway. See Ingemar Lindaräng, Några perspektiv på jubileumsfiranden med anledning av Märkesåret 1809, Historisk tidskrift för Finland (2010), pp. 174–186. 4 5

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and how we want to live in our country,’ was how Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, the Danish Prime Minister, put it.7 Some celebrations of historical events in the Nordic countries are closely connected to national identities in ways that require careful diplomacy so as not to offend neighbouring countries. A case in point was the centennial of the dissolution of the Swedish–Norwegiandish union celebrated in 2005, which was preceded by many debates in Norway on whether the commemoration should be called a ‘jubilee’. The organizers of the commemoration wanted to avoid offending Sweden, which ‘lost’ Norway in the historical drama, so they chose the neutral name ‘Centennial celebration of the peaceful dissolution of the union between Norway and Sweden’ as the official label. The aim of the committee was not to strengthen but to moderate national identities, so it decided that the use of national flags and the national anthem should be minimized out of respect for Sweden.8 The Norwegian Foreign Minister Jan H. Petersen warned about national chauvinism: ‘We will not play on our national self-confidence.’ But Valgerd Svarstad, Minister of Culture, responded ‘I want to emphasize that, even if it is called a “marking”, it will be a festival anyway.’ Laila Freivalds, Swedish Secretary for Foreign Affairs, later replied: ‘It is Norway who celebrates and we who remember.’9 Even though Norwegian chauvinism was toned down, this jubilee involved more than a million citizens celebrating throughout the country and the framing of the commemoration was very much national. The government created a special organization called ‘Centennial Anniversary Norway 2005’ which was responsible for planning and carrying out events in connection with the jubilee. The organization received substantial financial support, in total NOK 248 million – NOK 178 million from the state budget and the rest from nongovernmental sources. More than 10,000 cultural activities, from dancing and theatre to exhibitions and seminars, took place all over the country. It hardly needs saying that few, if any, citizens could have missed what was going on in 2005.10   Annette Warring, Historie, magt og identitet (Aarhus, 2004), pp. 184, 202, 212.   Brottveit Aagedal, ‘Kunsten å jubilere’, Nytt Norsk Tidskrift, 23/2 (2006): 124. 9  Hundreårsmarkeringen, http://www.hundrearsmarkeringen.no/11.html, accessed 30 October 2011. 10   Torbjörn Eng, Prosjekt 1905: Svensk-norske relationer i 200 år, Evalueringsrapport. Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (2008), p. 24. Available at http://www.rj.se/svenska/var_ organisation/samarbeten/nordiska_samarbeten, accessed 30 November 2011. The major turning-point in Norwegian history, however, is the birth of the modern state in 1814, to be celebrated in 2014. The union with Sweden was mostly considered doomed to be dissolved 7 8

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The Swedish contribution to this commemoration was understandably quite modest, and the government granted only SEK 8 million for the jubilee. It was not just the scale but also the focus that distinguished the two celebrations: if the Norwegian frame was clearly national, with a few nods to bilateralism, the Swedish one was the opposite. Swedish rules for receiving financial support stipulated that the project should have partners in a neighbouring country, with most financial support going to bilateral historical exhibitions, giving Swedish efforts a bilateral dimension that was missing in most of the Norwegian projects.11 An exception worth noting is the cooperation between various Norwegian organizations and the Swedish foundation Riksbankens Jubileumsfond which together financed a joint bilateral research project on Swedish–Norwegian relations over the past 200 years.12 Three years after Sweden commemorated the centennial of its ‘loss’ of Norway came the commemoration of the 350th anniversary of the Treaty of Roskilde between Denmark and Sweden, signed in 1658. This peace treaty was very harsh to Denmark, which had to cede considerable parts of its territory to Sweden. Nonetheless, the Danish commemoration of the event was weightier than its Swedish counterpart. In Denmark, an exhibition in Roskilde was inaugurated by the Danish Crown Prince Frederik and the Danish minister of culture. In contrast, no one from the Swedish royal family attended the event, and Sweden was represented only by its ambassador to Denmark. Nor did the anniversary receive much attention in Sweden apart from a few regional celebrations in the provinces of Skåne and Blekinge, part of the territory ceded to Sweden through the 1658 peace treaty. When two members of the Swedish parliament asked the prime minister why no national commemoration had been arranged, he replied that a national commemoration would have been inopportune given that ‘relations between Denmark and Sweden never had been as intense as now’.13 His answer implies that a national commemoration in Sweden could have jeopardized good relations with Denmark, as it nearly had a century earlier in the Swedish celebration of the same event. In 1908, the 250th anniversary of the Treaty of Roskilde, the mood in Sweden understandably coloured its commemoration. This national celebration came hard on the heels of the dissolution of the Swedish– sooner or later. Cf. Peter Aronsson, ‘1905 – unionsupplösning att glömma eller att stoltsera med?’, in T. Nilsson and Ø. Sørensen (eds), Goda grannar eller morska motståndare? Sverige och Norge från 1814 till idag (Stockholm, 2005), pp. 216–248. 11  Eng, Prosjekt 1905, p. 24. 12   For an evaluation of this project, see ibid. 13   Riksdagens protokoll, 2007/08:917, 12 March 2007.

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Norwegian union in 1905, and Swedish disappointment over Norway’s exit from the union had created a nationalistic atmosphere which showed its face in the character of the commemoration. In both Stockholm and the province of Skåne, triumphal celebrations of the Swedish victory over Denmark were staged, with military parades and religious services in the churches. The most chauvinistic event took place in front of the Nordiska Museum in Stockholm, where a copy of a statue of Charles X Gustavus, the victorious king during the war against Denmark, was inaugurated.14 This nationalist ceremony in the presence of the king, the royal family and the court not only displayed a lack of tact towards Denmark, but also made a clear distance from Nordic cooperation in that it was staged in front of the very museum that celebrated Nordic togetherness. Skipping forward a century, we can examine yet another occasion when two Nordic states had to find their own ways of commemorating a war in the distant past: the bicentennial of Sweden’s loss of Finland to Russia in 1809. The national organizations in Sweden and Finland responsible for framing the bicentennial commemoration carefully avoided concepts like jubilee and celebration. Instead, they settled on the neutral title ‘Year 1809’ (in Swedish Märkesåret 1809 and in Finnish Merkkivuosi 1809).15 The events in 1809 are important for Finnish state history: the Finnish war was waged; the Diet of Borgå (Poorvo) was convened; the central government was established; the Treaty of Fredrikshamn (Hamina) was signed; and, most important, the autonomous Finnish Grand Duchy was created. All these events aided the foundation of the Finnish state and were crucial steps toward independence a hundred years later. For Sweden, the war meant losing onethird of its territory to Russia. This loss was central to redefining the national self-image in the years that followed. From then on, Sweden had to create a national identity within a more limited territory. Prior to the peace treaty in Fredrikshamn in September, when Sweden had to cede Finland to Russia, the old absolute regime was dethroned and replaced by a constitutional monarchy in March, at least partly because of the severe setbacks in the Finnish war. Following this event, a new and more liberal constitution was launched somewhat hastily in June. The official bicentennial commemoration of ‘Year 1809’ was organized by national committees or delegations which differed in many ways. The Finnish committee was chaired by Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen, whereas its Swedish 14   Skånsk frihet, http://www.skanskfrihet.org/historia/firande.htm, accessed 30 October 2011; Aronsson, ‘1905’, pp. 223–224. 15   Merkkivuosi 1809, http://www.1809.fi/etusivu/fi.html, accessed 25 November 2011.

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Figure 5.1

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Two countries – one future: bicentennial commemoration stamp, Sweden–Finland, 1809–2009. Published with permission from Posten AB

counterpart was chaired by Secretary for Foreign Affairs Carl Bildt.16 While this imbalance can partly be explained by Secretary Bildt’s personal interest in history, it also marked how different the two nations’ attitudes towards the anniversary were. For Finland, celebration of the bicentennial meant much more, not least to Finnish identity, whereas in Sweden one could hear critical voices asking why yet another defeat should be celebrated only four years after the centennial of the dissolution of the union with Norway. Consequently, the two states had quite different agendas for the commemoration. Finland paid much attention to historical events that were crucial to the Finnish nation-building process during the nineteenth century, such as the bicentennials of the Diet of Borgå (Porvoo) and the Council of State in Åbo (Turku), but Sweden chose a broader point of departure, focusing on Swedish–Finnish affinities both in the past and the present.17 The Finnish agenda was clearly underlined by the official motto chosen for ‘Year 1809’, namely ‘Building the Nation’ (in Swedish Nationen växer fram and in Finnish Kansakuntaa Rakentamaan). The official logo depicting Finland between Sweden and Russia hammered home the motto. As Prime Minister Matti

16   Rebecka Weidmo Uvell (ed.), Två länder – en framtid: märkesåret 1809 (Stockholm, 2010), pp. 5–6. 17   Merkkivuosi 1809, http://www.1809.fi/merkkivuosi_1809/en.jsp; Märkesåret 1809, http://www.markesaret1809.se, accessed 1 December 2011.

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Vanhanen put it, ‘The logo with its strongly profiled map symbolizes the rise of a civilized European nation between two countries and two worlds’.18 By contrast, the official Swedish logo, with its two balloons decorated with the Swedish and Finnish flags, points to the Swedish priorities. The main objective of the Swedish commemoration was to strengthen the ties between Finland and Sweden. This was to be achieved by increasing public knowledge of the two countries’ history – Finland was a fully integrated part of the Swedish realm for more than six centuries prior to 1809 – and common values. In addition, tangible proposals for cooperation in different sectors of society should be realized. The centre of gravity should be future-oriented.19 The different emphasis was also mirrored in the composition of the two delegations. The Finnish delegation consisted mostly of politicians, state officials, historians and political scientists, whereas the Swedish organization also included individuals representing other institutions, such as funding organizations, the Church of Sweden, the confederation of Swedish enterprises and culture organizations.20 Expanding public knowledge about the events of 1809 was a great concern for both states. Many Swedish events during ‘Year 1809’ focused on the two countries’ long and common history, especially the events of 1809, knowledge of which seemed to have faded over recent decades. In his keynote address at the official inauguration of the Swedish Märkesåret 1809 in the Swedish parliament in January 2009, Horace Engdahl, member and former permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, expressed this very clearly. He referred to 1809 as one of the most important and fateful moments in Swedish history. Yet, he pointed out, many Swedes seem to know little or nothing about what happened that year. Swedes have, to a larger extent than Finns, suffered from a collective loss of memory. Therefore we need a marking year, he argued.21 Both countries were keen to increase knowledge about Swedish–Finnish ties among the young, so Swedish high schools and some secondary schools organized a thematic day about Finland, and corresponding activities were arranged in Finland. In both countries, Swedish and Finnish historians gave lectures in many locations, reaching an audience beyond the academic world.22   Merkkivuosi 1809, http://www.1809.fi/merkkivuosi_1809/tiedotteet/en.jsp?oid= 3024&byear=2007, accessed 25 November 2011. 19   Weidmo Uvell, Två länder, p. 5. 20   Ibid., p. 80. 21  Riksdagen, http://www.riksdagen.se/templates/R_page_17983.aspx, accessed 1 December 2011; Weidmo Uvell, Två länder, pp. 8–11. 22   Märkesåret 1809, http://www.markesaret1809.se/endagiskolan, accessed 1 December 2011. 18

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The budget for the Swedish official commemoration was SEK 15 million, of which SEK 11.5 million came from the government and the rest from private sponsors.23 The Finnish budget was fairly similar, €1.5 million,24 but both sums are meagre compared to the cost of Norway’s centennial commemoration in 2005. Even though the Finnish agenda for ‘Year 1809’ had a more national framing than Sweden’s, the two delegations cooperated closely. They jointly organized bilateral events, of which the most important was the meeting of the Finnish and Swedish governments in the Finnish city Hämeenlinna (Tavastehus). The two governments, who met in Finland because the Finnish constitution does not permit the government to convene abroad, discussed such issues as climate, environment, infrastructure, research and education, as well as identifying several fields for future cooperation.25 However, most of the bilateral events were organized and run not by the states, but by the Swedish–Finnish Cultural Foundation which, as early as 2001, had tried unsuccessfully to attract the two governments’ attention to the coming anniversary. In 2006 when the Finnish government finally decided to found a national delegation for the commemoration, focused on Finnish nationbuilding, the Cultural Foundation launched a project with a clear bilateral focus. Its ‘Project 1809 – The New Finland, the New Sweden’ was to be managed in cooperation with the Hanaholmen (Hanasaari) Swedish–Finnish Cultural Centre. The total budget was approximately €1 million, with the Finnish part of the Foundation as the main sponsor. One of the project’s main goals was to support bilateral cooperation in such important fields as culture, economy, education and research. The other was to increase public consciousness of Finland’s and Sweden’s common history and cultural heritage, especially among the young, whose support for bilateral cooperation could not be taken for granted.26 Commemorating Cultural Figures In 2003 the patron saint of Sweden and Europe, St Birgitta of Vadstena, was commemorated 700 years after her birth. Such commemoration was a long time coming: in Lutheran Sweden the Catholic Church and its saints were long   Weidmo Uvell, Två länder, p. 5.   Susanna Tommila and Henry Rask (eds), Projekt 1809 – Det nya Finland, det nya Sverige (Hanaholmen: Hanaholmen kulturcentrum för Sverige och Finland, 2010), pp. 3–10. 25   A Swedish one-krona coin was coined in Finland to mark the close affinity between the two countries. See Weidmo Uvell, Två länder, p. 3. 26   Tommila and Rask, Projekt 1809, pp. 3–10. 23

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viewed with suspicion, and not until 1923 was St Birgitta officially celebrated for the first time. This initiative was launched by the Lutheran Church, which had become more ecumenical-minded, and also by the feminist movement, which regarded St Birgitta as an ideal. In 1973 the sixth centennial of St Birgitta’s death, the Lutheran and Catholic Churches organized joint celebrations both in Sweden and abroad, including a scientific symposium in Rome and an ecumenical service led by Pope Paul VI. In 1996, as the 2003 anniversary approached, a committee with members from several non-governmental organizations (NGOs) was formed in Vadstena, where the Birgittine order had been founded. Their aim was to organize a commemoration not only in Vadstena and the rest of Sweden, but also in other European countries. The committee for the celebration applied for SEK 12 million in financial support from the state and was disappointed when it received only SEK 750,000. Even the local government in Vadstena was not particularly interested in the jubilee. However, all that changed virtually overnight in 1999 when Pope John Paul II proclaimed St Birgitta one of Europe’s patron saints. Suddenly there was great international interest in St Birgitta and the celebration, and the Swedish government, as well as the county and local governments of Vadstena, increased financial support. The celebration started in the Vatican, led by Pope John Paul II, cardinals and bishops, with representatives of royal families and other Nordic heads of state, and the diplomatic corps in Rome, present. At the climax of the festival in Vadstena, the king and queen of Sweden, representatives of the Swedish government and the Vatican, and the presidents of Finland, Estonia and Latvia participated in the celebration. In Sweden as a whole, public interest in St Birgitta was fanned by secular forces such as the feminist movement, which saw her as a radical example to identify with. The celebrations also attracted a great deal of media interest: they received substantial press coverage, and the crowning event in Vadstena was covered by a live television broadcast.27 St Birgitta is the only cultural figure considered in this overview who has been officially celebrated in more than one Nordic state, as she is closely identified with Finland. The Birgittine order was founded in 1385, and the convent in Nådendal (Naantali) was built in the mid-fifteenth century, so the order can trace its history from the Middle Ages down to 1986, when a new convent was built in Turku (Åbo) and beyond. The Finnish jubilee committee, comprising representatives of various state organizations, the University of Helsinki and the 27   Ingemar Lindaräng, Helgonbruk i moderniseringstider, bruket av Birgitta- och Olavstraditionerna i samband med minnesfiranden i Sverige och Norge 1891–2005 (Linköping, 2007), pp. 73–76, 99–103, 120–121, 135–140.

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Lutheran Church, mounted a celebration in which thousands took part, and hundreds of events took place in various parts of the country.28 A ‘popular’ book about St Birgitta was published in Finnish, an official stamp with her picture was made, and ‘St Birgitta wine’ was produced. The Finnish national museum in Helsinki organized an open St Birgitta seminar that attracted hundreds of participants. During the seminar, feminist interpretations of the Birgittine order were stressed, and this powerful mediaeval woman was held up as a good role model for present-day young women. Some participants called the mediaeval Birgittine convent in Nådendal ‘the first school for Finnish women’ and said that ‘St Birgitta specially speaks to the women of today’.29 Why were these comprehensive commemorations of a Catholic saint organized in two Protestant countries? For one thing, standing reminders of Sweden’s and Finland’s common history exist in both countries, in the form of both ruins of mediaeval Birgittine convents and active Birgittine convents. For another, St Birgitta had attained international repute as a result of being proclaimed one of Europe’s patron saints, and feminist movements in both countries regard her as an early precursor of feminism. The commemoration attracted secular populations as well, thus extending its reach to another target population. That states close to the Nordic region felt an association with St Birgitta is evidenced by the fact that the presidents of Estonia and Latvia took part in the official celebrations. Both of these Lutheran Baltic republics were part of the Swedish Baltic Sea Empire from the late sixteenth to the early eighteenth century, and, since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, they have clearly demonstrated an historical and cultural affinity with Sweden and the Nordic region.30 For instance, in 1994 the 400th anniversary of the birth of the Swedish King Gustavus II Adolphus was commemorated in Estonia (but not in Sweden) by a postage stamp. Moreover, there is still an active Birgittine convent in Pirita, close to the Estonian capital, Tallinn: beside the modern Birgittine convent stand the ruins of the order’s fifteenth-century convent, materializing the memory of the Swedish saint.31   Eva Ahl-Waris, Historiebruk kring Nådendal (Vadstena, 2010), p. 257.   Ibid., pp. 258–259. 30   Pärtel Piirimäe, ‘Baltiska provinser eller en del av Norden?’, in J. Björkman, B. Fjaestad and J. Harvard (eds), Ett Nordiskt rum. Historiska och framtida gemenskaper från Baltikum till Barents hav (Stockholm, 2011), pp. 111–113. 31   Birgittasystrarna i Pirita Tallinn Estland, http://www.osss.ee/index.se.htm, accessed 4 December 2011. Birgittine convents have also recently opened in Denmark and Norway; see Birgittasöndagen, http://www.varfru.org/_forsamling/predikan/061008_bjorn.html, accessed 7 December 2011. 28 29

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Dag Hammarskjöld has long been viewed at home in Sweden and abroad as a symbol of a country that promotes peace. His work for the United Nations during a conflict-ridden era when nuclear war was a real threat to the world and his tragic death in a plane crash while on a peace mission in Africa have drawn many people to his life story. His book Vägmärken (Markings), published posthumously, further deepened the interest in him both at home and abroad. In Sweden, the 2005 celebration of the centennial of his birth was organized partly by NGOs and partly by the Swedish government, which supported the anniversary with SEK 20 million.32 The government’s aim was ‘to honour the memory of Dag Hammarskjöld and to increase the knowledge about him and his commitment for the United Nation’.33 The Swedish government organized conferences on global security and international seminars and also produced an exhibition about Dag Hammarskjöld which was sent to all the Swedish embassies worldwide. NGOs and churches performed many celebrations; for instance, in Jönköping, a monument was raised and the local Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation organized a youth conference, ‘The Dag Hammarskjöld International Youth Peace Assembly’. A Dag Hammarskjöld route between Abisko and Nikkaluokta in the high mountains in the northern part of Sweden, where he loved to walk, was inaugurated by the archbishop, and a guidebook with quotations from Vägmärken was published.34 The government arranged a memorial ceremony at Hammarskjöld’s farm Backåkra, in the province of Skåne, with Prime Minister Göran Persson as speaker, and representatives from many embassies present.35 Commemorations were also organized in Uppsala and Jönköping – cities tightly tied to the memory of Dag Hammarskjöld. In Jönköping, his birthplace, there was a concert in the memory of ‘one of the most important leaders in our time and a good example’.36 In Uppsala, where he grew up and studied, the local government arranged exhibitions, concerts and church activities to honour the UN secretary-general with the aim ‘to work for strengthening Uppsala´s position

  Sveriges Radio, http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=83&artikel =4701498, accessed 20 October 2011. 33   Dag Hammarskjöld, http://www.dh100.se.index.html, accessed 21 October 2011. 34  Ibid. 35   Kulturhistorien.se, ‘Dag Hammarskjölds Backåkra’, http://kulturhistorien.se/kultur arven/203/dag-hammarskjoelds-backakra, accessed 22 October 2011. 36   Jönköpings Konsert och Kongress, http://www.programbolaget.nu, accessed 20 October 2011. 32

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as a peace city’.37 The government and Sweden’s UN federation arranged many events aimed at stimulating young people’s interest in Dag Hammarskjöld.38 Whereas the Swedish jubilee on the centennial of Dag Hammarsköld’s birth was a national event, the 2011 commemoration to mark the fifty years since his tragic death was a more local affair. There was a memorial concert and a forum for the international diplomatic core in Stockholm, but most arrangements – art exhibits, plays, lectures and concerts, among other events – took place in Uppsala and Jönköping. This solemn occasion was also marked by similar events in other countries, adding a transnational element.39 In 2007 there were two important commemorations, this time focusing on Carl von Linnaeus (Linné in Swedish) and Astrid Lindgren. Linnaeus, ‘Mr Flower Power’, as he was referred to in the official brochure, was born in 1707 in the southern Swedish province of Småland. Commemorations of Linnaeus have a long history going back to 1807, and he has been celebrated in many places in Sweden, the Nordic region and beyond.40 The Linnaeus tercentenary anniversary in 2007 was organized by a national committee which received SEK 31 million from the government and SEK 23 million from private sources.41 Many events were organized all over Sweden and abroad. One goal of the Swedish commemoration was to stimulate young people to ‘walk in the footsteps of Linnaeus’, so a magazine entitled Ung forskning i Linnés anda (Youth Research in the Spirit of Linnaeus) was distributed widely. In this magazine, chair of the national committee, County Governor and former Minister of Defence Anders Björk, made a resounding appeal for Swedish renewal: ‘It is time for Sweden to take back the position as a leading country in innovations. We shall again demonstrate that Sweden is an industrial great power, that nine million people can! And that can be done in the spirit of Linnaeus!’42 The legacy of Linneaus is not only a local or national concern, as he is renowned as an international scientist in many countries, not least in Great Britain and the Netherlands, where his nationality has been downplayed. In Sweden, Linnaeus was ‘nationalized’ long after his death in 1772, which is why   Uppsala Kommun, http://www.uppsala.se, accessed 15 October 2011.   Svenska FN-förbundet, http://www.fn.se, accessed 16 October 2011. 39   Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation, http://www.dhf.uu.se/hammarskjold/1961-2011, accessed 4 February 2012. 40   Peter Aronsson, Att minnas Carl von Linné, in L.-O. Larsson (ed.), Linné, en småländsk resa (Stockholm, 2006). 41   Rapport Linné 2007, ‘Carl von Linnés 300-års jubileum’, p. 44, available from http://www.linnaeus.se, accessed 25 October 2011. 42   Ung forskning i Linnés anda. Linné 2007, p. 22, available from http://www. podiummedia.se, accessed 30 October 2011. 37

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so much of his property could be transferred to England in the late eighteenth century.43 Another renowned person commemorated in 2007 was Astrid Lindgren, the world-famous author – like Linneaus, also from the province of Småland – and the two celebrations were in the position of competing for the public’s attention. Astrid Lindgren grew up in the small town of Vimmerby, where the local government was the main financial and organizational support for the commemoration. The local authorities were so proud of Lindgren’s qualities that the phrase ‘Responsibility, Courage, and Imagination’ became the motto for all jubilee activities in the municipality.44 The Astrid Lindgren jubilee aimed at reaching young people, not only in Sweden but worldwide. In connection with the jubilee, for example, funds were raised to build up a village for poor orphan children in the Central African Republic.45 In the celebrations of both Carl von Linnaeus and Astrid Lindgren the aim was not only to honour them, but also to do something good for the future in their names. A few years later, in 2010, it was time for another identity-producing celebration. This time the object was a character from early Middle Ages, namely Birger Jarl. The eighth centennial commemoration of Birger Magnusson Jarl’s birth in 1210 was primarily a regional initiative. Various organizations, such as universities, museums and tourist organizations, mainly from the provinces of Östergötland and Västergötland (the political centre of mediaeval Sweden) and, to some extent, also from Stockholm and Lund, constituted a committee responsible for the commemoration. The committee was very clear about the importance of this commemoration: ‘Without Birger Jarl Sweden had not been Sweden and Stockholm had not been Stockholm. The aim of the commemoration is to increase knowledge about the Swedish state-building and nation-building processes during early Middle Ages.’ Birger Jarl ‘was one of the most important Swedish statesmen ever’. The committee noted that interest in Birger Jarl and his period had increased after the St Birgitta jubilee and the popular films about Arn Magnusson, a fictitious knight from the century prior to Birger Jarl’s.46

 Aronsson, Att minnas Carl von Linné; Torkel Jansson, Minorities and Majorities in Time and Space – Examples from the Balto-Scandinavian Area during the Last 200 Years (Stockholm, 1997). 44   Vimmerby kommun, Översiktsplan 2007; L. Jonsson (ed.), Astrid Lindgrens världar i Vimmerby. En studie om kulturarv och samhällsliv (Lund, 2010). 45  Astridlindgren.se, http://www.astridlindgren.se, accessed 30 October 2011. 46   Birger Jarl, ‘Makten – Myten – Människan’, http://www.birgerjarl2010.se, accessed 20 October 2011. 43

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Let us also consider a recent jubilee virtually passed over in Sweden, though celebrated in other countries. The 2011 centennial of Jussi Björling’s birth attracted little attention in Sweden, even though this world-famous Swedish tenor was one of the twentieth-century Swedish cultural figures most renowned abroad. The Jussi Björling Society applied unsuccessfully for SEK 1.5 million to the Swedish Arts Council, and other applications to the government were also rejected.47 The lukewarm interest in Sweden for commemorating Björling is surprising, considering his international stature: he has been characterized as the world’s most prominent tenor ever, and the centennial of his birth was commemorated in 2011 in both Britain and the United States.48 One important commemoration in 2012 is the centennial of the death of a giant in Swedish literature. August Strindberg who, one could say, virtually invented modern Swedish, is one of Sweden’s most widely read and translated writers. It is said that a Strindberg play is performed at least once a week somewhere in the world. In that respect, he is not far behind the Norwegian author Henrik Ibsen in international stature, but the Swedish government was long reluctant to support the commemoration. At the end of 2010 the government finally decided to grant SEK 200,000 to support the Strindberg Museum in Stockholm.49 ‘That we are not giving more money has to do with our priorities,’ said Erik Kristow, political adviser to Minister of Culture Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth.50 According to the Strindberg Society’s interpretation of this niggardly financing, the Strindberg jubilee is not a national priority, compared to the Ibsen jubilee, which received NOK 42 million in state support.51 However, the Strindberg jubilee has recently been promised local support from the city of Stockholm, where politicians hope that it will help to highlight Stockholm as a cultural city.52 Nevertheless, funding for the Strindberg commemoration is dwarfed by the jubilee of the 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm, which received SEK 14.5 million from the city. If all funding sources are considered, the Olympic jubilee’s total budget is at least SEK 50 million, whereas the total 47   DN.se Kultur, ‘Svagt intresse för Björling-jubileum’, http://www.dn.se/kultur-noje/ nyheter/svagt-intresse-for-bjorling-jubileum, accessed 30 November 2011. 48  Ibid. 49  Regeringskansliet, ‘August Strindberg 2012’, http://www.regeringen.se/sb/ d/12628/a/158306, accessed 30 October 2011. 50   Nordstjernan, ‘Strindberg 2012 – Too Little and Too Late?’, http://www. nordstjernan.com/news/viewpoints/3047, accessed 30 November 2011. 51   Svenska Dagbladet Kultur. Staten nobbar Strindberg, http://www.svd.se/kultur/ staten-nobbar-strindberg_3812991.svd, accessed 15 January, 2012. 52   DN.se Kultur, ‘Strindberg firas av staden’, http://www.dn.se/kultur-noje/nyheter/ strindberg-firas-av-staden, accessed 20 December 2011.

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budget for the Strindberg jubilee is SEK 3 million. This sum is also to cover the costs of commemorating another important centennial, the birth of Raoul Wallenberg, but these look to be minimal.53 At the time of writing, Raoul Wallenberg seems to be more celebrated abroad than at home. The commemoration of this Swedish diplomat, who saved tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews from the Holocaust and then disappeared into the hands of the Soviets, began, 17 January, in Budapest. The Swedish prime minister gave a lecture on Wallenberg at a Budapest university, and the Swedish Institute put together an exhibition which will travel further to New York, Washington, Moscow, Tel Aviv, Berlin, Toronto and Winnipeg. Hungary also arranged other events, including a conference on human rights and a commemoration in a synagogue, for later in the year. In Stockholm, the centennial was marked on 27 January, the international Holocaust Memorial Day, when former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan addressed a gathering in Raoul Wallenberg Square. The commemoration continued at the nearby Wallenberg monument in the presence of representatives from the national and local governments, foreign ambassadors and Holocaust survivors. The travelling exhibit gives the Swedish commemoration a transnational aspect, but the Swedish programme is quite limited in comparison to the commemorations scheduled in Budapest and several other cities abroad.54 As a transition to commemorations in other Nordic countries, let us consider the case of Johan Ludvig Runeberg. The bicentennial of his birth was widely celebrated in Finland in 2004 but ignored in Sweden, although both countries claim him as part of their national heritage. In the Finnish jubilee, he was referred to as ‘The Poet of Finnish Identity’, ‘The National Poet of Finland’ and ‘Author of the Finnish National Anthem’.55 A national entertainment committee for the jubilee was founded in 2002 and received €170,000 from the Ministry of Education, €105,000 from the Swedish Cultural Foundation, €10,000 from the Finnish Cultural Foundation and €3,000 from each so-called Runeberg rural and urban district. The Society for Swedish Literature in Finland (SLS) played a key role in the jubilee, both by receiving and distributing grants from the Ministry of Education and by publishing books and mounting exhibitions.56

  Svenska Dagbladet, 29 November 2011, p. 6.   Dagens Nyheter, 21 January 2012, Kultur, p. 4. 55   Nordens skönhet var hans sång, Nationella festkommittén för J.L. Runebergs 200-årsjubileum (Uusimaa, 2004), p. 3. 56   J.L. Runeberg 200 år, Nationella festkommitténs rapport. Nationella festkommittén för J.L. Runebergs 200-årsjubileum, pp. 63–68, available from http://www.runeberg.net, accessed 2 November 2011; Agneta Rahikainen, Rapport över Svenska litteratursällskapets 53

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The official commission to the committee was ‘the whole country, the whole year, both languages’,57 so the jubilee had both a national and a local character. The committee was to promote coordination and cooperation between local projects and to make the young generation a major target group. The objective was to inspire them to understand Finland and Finnish identity through reading Runeberg in both the Swedish and the Finnish languages.58 In connection with the jubilee, new translations from Swedish to Finnish of Runeberg’s most prominent books were published. In Sweden, the jubilee passed in silence, although Runeberg was widely read until the mid-twentieth century, and his poetry was part of the school curricula. Runeberg has the unique distinction of being hailed as the national poet of two countries,59 so one would expect this bicentennial to be very interesting from a bilateral perspective. However, there was no official commemoration in Sweden, which seems odd, given that he is as much or more a part of the common Swedish–Finnish cultural heritage as St Birgitta is. One can only speculate about the reasons for the lack of interest in commemorating Runeberg in Sweden, but one obvious explanation is the lack of a cultural infrastructure. There are, to our knowledge, no Runeberg societies or other groups in Sweden that could lobby the government to support a jubilee. That said, one must bear in mind that Runeberg’s contemporaries Esaias Tegnér and Erik Gustav Geijer, both renowned Swedish writers, were not commemorated either. All of these writers have been almost forgotten by younger generations, unlike those born before mid-century, who learnt to recite Runeberg in school. In Sweden’s heritage-making process, only a very limited selection of pre-modern cultural figures are performed as heritage in contemporary society. In Denmark, however, the 2005 bicentennial celebration of Hans Christian Andersen’s birth was both a national and an international event, which aimed to ‘create a wider knowledge and a deeper understanding of the author, not only in Denmark but in the whole world’. The celebration adopted the slogan ‘Join the worldwide celebration’ intended to ‘show known and unknown sides of the world-known storyteller for a public of all ages’. For this purpose, the organizers jubileumsprojekt 2000–2004 med anledning av Johan Ludvig Runebergs 200-års jubileum, pp. 74–75. 57   J.L. Runeberg 200 år, Nationella festkommitténs rapport, p. 75. 58   Ibid., p. 3. 59   Torkel Jansson, ’Inwieweit haben sich Schweden und Finnland nach 1809 verloren?’, in Jan Hecker-Stampehl, Bernd Henningsen, Anna-Maija Mertens and Stephan Michael Schröder (eds), 1809 und die Folgen. Finnland zwischen Schweden, Russland und Deutschland (Berlin, 2011), pp. 116–117; see also Torkel Jansson, Rikssprängningen som kom av sig. Sveriges och Finlands gemensamma adertonhundratal (Stockholm, 2009).

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received as much as DKR 231 million – 65 per cent from the government and other official organizations and the rest from private funds.60 The commemoration’s international reach was impressive. The Danish royal family took part in the celebrations in Denmark and abroad, and celebrities such as the Brazilian soccer star Pelé and the Australian sports star Cathy Freeman were appointed ambassadors for Denmark and H.C. Andersen. The celebration was launched in April 2005 by a television programme which was broadcast worldwide to a potential audience of 1.5 billion people. In one stroke, this event both raised Andersen’s profile in the international community and promoted tourism to Denmark, thus meeting two of the jubilee’s goals. In presenting a figure important for Danish identity as important for the whole world and to all ages, the Andersen commemoration transcended national and Nordic frames.61 The jubilee committee was particularly keen to encourage children and young people in schools in Denmark and other countries to learn more about H.C. Andersen, a goal that it supported in several ways. A book about the storyteller was written and given to all Danish students in class 6, and 77,000 copies were sent as gifts to students in other countries. Teachers in Danish schools received special education about H.C. Andersen and methods of presenting his work.62 The commemoration of H.C. Andersen was not conflict-free, as exemplified in the tension between the centre and the periphery. Many of the major events took place in Copenhagen, and even the tourist organization Visit Denmark focused on the capital, stating that ‘[i]n Asia Copenhagen is as interesting as Paris’. But in Odense, where H.C. Andersen was born, people thought that they had been sidestepped and that Copenhagen got more than its share of the limelight.63 In Norway, two giants in Norwegian cultural history were recently celebrated: Henrik Ibsen in 2006 and Edvard Grieg in 2007. As in the H.C. Andersen jubilee, the Ibsen and Grieg committees hoped to reach not just Norway but the whole world. Just as H.C. Andersen was utilized to brand Denmark abroad, so were Ibsen and Grieg for Norway. The intent to heighten Norway’s international profile was certainly evident during the Ibsen year, when some 8,200 events took

  Hans Christian Andersen 2005, http:/www.hca2005.dk, accessed 10 November 2011. 61  Ibid. 62   Hans Christian Andersen 2005, ‘Evaluering’, http://www.hca2005evaluering.sdk. dk, accessed 10 November 2011. 63  Sydsvenskan, http://www.sydsvenskan.se/sverige/article97004, accessed 15 November 2011. 60

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place in 83 countries, among them Germany, Italy, Russia, Great Britain, the United States, Japan, China, Bangladesh and the Nordic countries.64 This demonstrated to the Norwegian people something they had not been aware of: Henrik Ibsen is the most prominent name in Norwegian culture, well known all around the world. In theatres all over the world Shakespeare is his only competitor. It is a paramount national responsibility to cultivate this interest in Ibsen and, while preserving our Ibsen heritage, to encourage its innovative, international, critical and creative stewardship.65

The centennial of Edvard Grieg’s death was commemorated the following year, just fourteen years after the jubilee celebrating the 150th anniversary of his birth. ‘The 100th year commemoration of Edvard Grieg´s death is an occasion to revitalize and renew the Grieg heritage’, the jubilee programme makes clear. The amount of governmental funding for commemorating cultural figures is one measure of how important the character is for the national identity. When Henrik Ibsen was celebrated in 2006, government support amounted to NOK 42 million, so members of the Grieg committee were appalled when they learned that their jubilee would receive only NOK 2.5 million. ‘This is shameful! Music will come in a bad position!’ thundered committee member Ketil Bjørnstad.66 However, after the jubilee, little was said about shortage of resources. The committee finally received a total sum of NOK 14 million, which included financial support from the municipality of Bergen, where Grieg was born, as well as regional support and private funding.67 Like the Ibsen commemoration, the Grieg jubilee was aimed at both the home public and an audience far beyond the Norwegian borders. The committee clearly regarded reaching an audience beyond the Nordic countries as a token of real international impact. Thanks in part to its activities, many events took place in France, Romania, England, Germany, America and Japan, among other countries. It was not only Grieg as composer the committee wanted to highlight during the commemoration. ‘One of the aims was to raise a debate about Grieg,’ said the committee, adding that we ‘should not worship him uncritically, but approach his work with an active, critical mind – not just Grieg, but our cultural   Lars Roar Langslet, Ibsenåret i tilbakeblikk, p. 4 , available from http://www.ibsen. net, accessed 2 November 2011. 65   Ibid., p. 5. 66   NRK, ‘Grieg I skyggen av Ibsen’, 5 May 2006, http://www.nrk.no/nyheter/ kultur/5655649.html, accessed 12 November 2011. 67   Grieg 2007, ‘100årsmarkeringen for Edvard Griegs död’, http://www.grieg07.no, accessed 14 November 2011. 64

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heritage in general’. One of the most important aims was to shake the general perception of Grieg, so that people would no longer pass him off as a national tourist icon, but have a more active relationship to the Grieg heritage.68 In 2009 Norway had to walk a fine line in commemorating the 150th anniversary of Knut Hamsun’s birth. Hamsun won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1920, and although his literary work is still valued, his memory is blackened by his Nazi connections during the Second World War. He not only sent his Nobel Prize medal to Goebbels as a gift in 1943, but also met Hitler on several occasions in Berchtesgaden and supported the occupying German forces in Norway. In 2009, however, this fairly recent history was ignored. The municipalities of Grimstad, Hamarøy and Lom, together with the Hamsun Society, took the initiative in arranging the commemoration. The Ministry of Culture and Church Affairs endorsed the initiative and charged the National Library with organizing the celebration. The focus was to be on Knut Hamsun as an internationally renowned author, and the anniversary was to be celebrated all over Norway. The goal was clear: Norwegian schools, academic groups, organizations, municipalities, counties and other parties wishing to contribute to the dissemination of information about Hamsun´s life and works will initiate and implement activities independently, as well as collaborate on a variety of events.69

After the commemoration, the National Library reported to the Minister of Culture that more than 1,200 events had been arranged all over Norway and that there had also been celebrations in more than 30 countries.70 A year later, it was time for the next Norwegian author to be commemorated, in the centennial of Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson’s death. Citing the French critic, Oslo’s Aftenposten called this run of celebrations ‘commemorative bulimia’: Next after Hamsun 2009 is Bjørnson 2010. It has been a routine every year to celebrate a new writer, sometimes even more than one. Over the last five years Ibsen, Wergeland, Welhaven, Hauge have been celebrated. Some … have also commemorated Per Sivle and Rasmus Løland. Now the machinery will start again.

The newspaper went on to criticize Bjørnson’s work in harsh terms – ‘Most of what Bjørnson wrote was in brief bad literature’ – and decry the fact that the  Ibid.   Nasjonalbiblioteket, ‘Hamsuns liv og verk’, http://www.nb.no/hamsun2009, accessed 8 November 2011. 70  Ibid. 68 69

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Bjørnson jubilee had been allotted as much state funding as the Hamsum jubilee – that is. NOK 7 million.71 Norwegian broadcasting countered this stance when it posed the question ‘Do we need it?’ and answered with a resounding affirmation: ‘He wrote the national anthem. He received the Nobel Prize in literature in 1903. 75.000 people took part in his funeral.’ At the same time, it noted that the Norwegian Bank showed no interest in making a special coin honouring Bjørnson as they had done for the commemorations of Ibsen, Wergeland and Hamsun.72 The government’s position was made clear, however, at the inauguration of the Bjørnson celebration when Minister of Culture Anniken Huitfeldt stressed how important national commemorations are for a nation as young as Norway.73 Conclusions In this survey we have analysed a selection of recent commemorations of historical events and cultural figures to investigate how and why specific parts of the past are articulated and performed, with a specific focus on transnational and Nordic elements. Transnational dimensions are explicit in commemorations of such historical events as the birth of the Kalmar Union, the Treaty of Roskilde, the dissolution of the Swedish–Norwegian Union, and the separation of Sweden and Finland. However, given the declared aims of bilateral or Nordic cooperation in staging commemoration of these events, the dearth of bilateral initiatives is striking. Only a few took place, and the states normally defined their own, often national, agenda for the jubilees. During commemorations of the peaceful dissolution of the Swedish– Norwegian Union in 1905, the bilateral dimension was very limited. Norwegian politicians tried to downplay national manifestations, but the jubilee had a clear national framing. The jubilee’s budget of NOK 250 million was at least an order of magnitude greater than those of many of the jubilees analysed here, and the jubilee’s scope was also impressive: one in five Norwegians took part in one jubilee event or another. The total Swedish budget amounted to a mere SEK 8 million, but its focus was clearly bilateral.   Aftenposten, 1 October 2010.   NRK, ‘Kultur-og-underhållning’, http://www.nrk.no/kultur-og-underholdning/ 1.6931959, accessed 20 November 2011. 73   Nasjonalbiblioteket, ‘Bjørnson’, http://www.nb.no.bjornson, accessed 17 November 2011. 71

72

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Commemorations of the separation between Sweden and Finland in 1809 included more bilateral activities and projects, but most of them were coordinated not by the states, but by other stakeholders. The bilateral element was apparent in the Swedish state’s focus on supporting activities that manifested Swedish– Finnish ties in the past, present and future, while the Finnish state emphasized the importance of nation-building in its jubilee agenda. During the 1997 commemorations of the Kalmar Union, activities were initiated at the local, national and Nordic level, and sometimes competed for the public’s attention. The city of Kalmar used the jubilee for its own purposes – that is, to draw attention to the city in the hope that the jubilee would be profitable, not least through tourism. At the same time, several joint Nordic initiatives demonstrated Nordic togetherness and, for some at least, raised expectations of closer cross-border cooperation and dreams of a new Kalmar Union. However, the Nordic states did not form a joint agenda for the anniversary. The words ‘jubilee’ and ‘celebration’ have been carefully avoided in commemorations of historical events in which one Nordic country gained territory at the cost of another. Maintaining good relations between the countries involved requires avoiding offence, which is why these events must be remembered, not celebrated. This is evident in the 350th anniversary of the peace treaty between Denmark and Sweden in 1658 (Treaty of Roskilde). Sweden, which had gained vast parts of eastern Denmark through this treaty, kept a very low profile during the commemoration. The commemoration of cultural figures presents quite another picture. There is no risk of causing controversies between Nordic countries, since there is generally no explicit political transnational dimension or hidden claims on restitutions; instead, the person to be celebrated is open for universal admiration across borders. Such jubilees often aim to strengthen national identities, especially when governments are involved in them, as evidenced in the H.C. Andersen jubilee. On the historical events front, identity formation was central to the jubilee of the Danish constitution, which the government used to initiate a dialogue on what it means to be Danish. The use of commemoration for national identity formation is especially apparent in Norway, given that celebrating cultural figures is particularly important for a young nation. When national identity is the focus, the government most often gives financial support to a celebration and plays an active role in organizing events. In Sweden, however, the picture is somewhat different, because national references are not as visible as in neighbouring countries. Sweden has been an independent state for so long that there is less need to connect cultural figures to the creation of the nation than in Norway and Finland, where during the Runeberg jubilee in 2004, Johan Ludvig Runeberg was officially designated ‘The

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Poet of Finnish Identity’ and ‘The National Poet of Finland’. The question of why some such figures are celebrated in Sweden, while others are ignored yet celebrated elsewhere, is worth exploring. Figures such as Linnaeus merited highprofile jubilees that received substantial financial support from the government and private funders, whereas others, such as Jussi Björling, were ignored. There are probably many explanations for these discrepancies, but we shall discuss a few possible causes. Some of these differences have to do with a nation’s self-image. Sweden was one of Europe’s Great Powers during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, but after 1809 was relegated to being a third-tier state on the periphery of northern Europe. The economic picture was quite the opposite: from being one of Europe’s poorest countries during the nineteenth century, by the 1960s Sweden had risen to become one of the wealthiest nations in the world.74 Such changes are also reflected in the nation’s self-image. Setting aside its Great Power political and territorial ambitions, Sweden channelled its aims towards becoming a great power by other means. It now wanted to be known for loving peace, solving conflicts, being the world’s conscience, being an industrial and economic power to be reckoned with, and promoting social welfare and equality. This shift in self-image helps to explain why the Carl von Linnaeus and Dag Hammarskjöld jubilees garnered so much more government and private funding than those honouring Astrid Lindgren, Jussi Björling or, at the time of writing, even August Strindberg. On the cultural plane, these latter three are as internationally acclaimed as Linnaeus and Hammarskjöld and could therefore be marshalled to promote Sweden’s image abroad. However, it was seen as more important to promote Sweden as a moral, peace-loving and scientific ‘great power’ than to celebrate its international cultural standing, and to this end Linnaeus and Hammarskjöld are a perfect fit. Some other Nordic countries take a similar tack, especially Norway, as the home of Nobel Peace Prize and negotiator in armed conflicts in various parts of the world. Differences in levels of funding can also be the result of a dearth of the infrastructure capable of lobbying and raising funds for jubilees. That such local and regional actors as literature societies, museums, universities, cultural foundations, and private-interest groups are capable of raising funds and lobbying for government support is crucial. Compared with Denmark, Norway and Finland, Sweden hosts few, if any, cultural foundations that could support

74   Penn World Table Version 7.0, Center for International Comparisons of Production, Income and Prices at the University of Pennsylvania, May 2011, http://pwt.econ.upenn. edu/php_site/pwt70/pwt70_form.php, accessed 4 February 2012.

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and organize national jubilees like those for Strindberg or Björling.75 A different factor is at play when it comes to the Astrid Lindgren anniversary in 2007. One reason why this jubilee was overshadowed by the one for Linnaeus is that the writer has been commemorated on a yearly basis since 2002, when the Swedish government founded an international prize in her name, the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award. In a way, every year is an Astrid Lindgren year, so there was less reason for the government to contribute to the centennial in 2007. Economic motives are as evident as the wish to strengthen national identities. For example, the commemorations of H.C. Andersen, Carl von Linnaeus and Henrik Ibsen clearly demonstrate a deep interest in national branding, and there is no doubt that states use these jubilees for marketing the nation abroad. Reaching a broad international audience can attract potential tourists, for instance, so such jubilees are often aimed at the global arena as much as the national audience. The cultural figures in this overview have been grouped into national categories, but the legacies of many ‘local or national heroes’ also have international claimants, which means a wider stage for the performance of values, but could also challenge ownership and hence create conflicts. In the province of Småland, for instance, Linneaus might be promoted as the most pre-eminent native son, whereas in Great Britain, where he is lauded as an international scientist, his local or even national references are of limited interest. On the opposite end of the scale, a transnational element is sometimes missing even when two nations could assert a claim: the Runeberg jubilee, for instance, was celebrated nationally in Finland, but totally ignored in Sweden. The most multidimensional jubilees were those of Saint Birgitta and Linneaus which were celebrated in local, Swedish, Nordic, European and international contexts. When it comes to commemorating cultural figures, national governments often leave it to local organizations and interest groups such as cities, literary societies or cultural foundations to initiate, plan, organize and carry out jubilees. The existence of an infrastructure capable of lobbying for jubilees and raising funds for them is often crucial for their success and outreach, and in this respect there are pertinent differences between the Nordic countries. The shortage of cultural foundations in Sweden is obvious, especially when compared with Denmark, Finland and Norway, which are rich in cultural infrastructures that can take action to promote jubilees for both cultural personalities and historical events.76 The involvement of local organizations in commemorations depends on the event in question. For organizations that operate in the place where 75   Interview with Mats Wallenius, Director of the Swedish-Finnish Cultural Foundation, by Torbjörn Eng Stockholm, 15 November 2011. 76  Ibid.

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the event happened, location is a weighty factor. One has only to look at the commemorations of ‘Year 1809’ in Sweden and Finland or at the Swedish and Norwegian commemorations of the centennial of the union’s dissolution. In Finland and Sweden, re-enactments of the 1808–1809 battles between Sweden and Russia were very much a way for local organizations to highlight their part in history and activate local memory of the separation between Sweden and Finland. Another instance is the Kalmar Union’s jubilee: for the city of Kalmar, the place where the three-state union came into being seemed to have been as important as the union itself. The differences between the Nordic countries in commitment and attitudes to celebration shows a clear relation to the path taken in nation- and state-making for the different states involved. Starting with the openly transnational celebration, the new modern states of Norway and Finland can take a more decisive national stance whereas Sweden still needs to play it in a lower key because of an imperial history – even when there is no doubt that the strengths among the states have changed dramatically in modern economic terms, making the former ‘big brother’ more equal to its Nordic neighbours. Denmark – although, like Sweden, it has an imperial past – also plays the national card more strongly, having a history of occupation and loss, and reacting to immigration as a strong threat. In all Nordic countries except Sweden, the state is the principal organizer of commemorations connected to nation-building, as shown in Denmark (1849), Finland (1809), Iceland (1918) and Norway (1814 and 1905). In Sweden, however, 1809 marked the end of Gustavian absolutism, rather than the birth of the nation as in Finland, where ironically the Gustavian constitution was preserved until the early twentieth century. Given that 1905 represented another loss of territory, Sweden’s low-key commemoration is also understandable. That the anniversary of Sweden’s 1658 victory over Denmark should be commemorated in 2008 by the country that lost the war is, however, rather remarkable. In all these cases, the Swedish state played a much more reactive than active role. In the lead-up to ‘Centennial celebration of the peaceful dissolution of the union between Norway and Sweden’ and ‘Year 1809’, the Swedish government began planning jubilees after its counterparts in Norway and Finland, making the state more of a follower than a leader. The downplaying and even nationalization of celebrations can be part of a transnational agenda when a relationship is sensitive, as it is in commemoration of war, secession or occupation. By keeping in your own corner, respecting the other, you do not claim hegemony. This is especially important for Sweden which was the major power among the Nordic countries between 1658 and 1905, both in her own view and in that of the outside world. The fact that Sweden after that date was the only country not creating a new state or coming under

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occupation in the Second World War can explain why historical celebration overall receives a very low level of state support. This is part of a celebration of a modernist, rationalist and, for a long time, even anti-historical cultural policy. The other Nordic countries, especially Norway, have for the opposite reasons developed stronger state support. They all resort to cultural figures for major commemorations, especially those suitable for international audiences. Bibliography Interviews Wallenius, Mats, Director of The Swedish-Finnish Cultural Foundation, interview in Stockholm by Torbjörn Eng, 15 November 2011. Manuscript Sources Vimmerby kommun, Översiktsplan 2007. Printed Primary Sources Aftenposten, Oslo, 1 October 2010. Aftonbladet, Stockholm, 14 December 2011. Dagens Nyheter, Stockholm, 27 October 2009, 21 January 2012. Motion till Riksdagen 1994/95: Kr282, Kalmarunionens 600-årsjubileum. Riksdagens protokoll, 2007/08:917, 12 March 2007. Svenska Dagbladet, Stockholm, 29 November 2011. Secondary Sources Aagedahl, Brottveit, ‘Kunsten å jubilere’, Nytt Norsk Tidskrift, 23/2 (2006): 118–132. Ahl-Waris, Eva, Historiebruk kring Nådendal (Vadstena: Societas Santae Birgittae, 2010). Aronsson, Peter, ‘1905 – unionsupplösning att glömma eller att stoltsera med?’, in T. Nilsson and Ø. Sørensen (eds), Goda grannar eller morska motståndare? Sverige och Norge från 1814 till idag (Stockholm, Carlsson Bokförlag, 2005). Aronsson, Peter, ‘Att minnas Carl von Linné’, in L.-O. Larsson (ed.), Linné, en småländsk resa (Stockholm, Prisma, 2006).

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Eng, Torbjörn, Prosjekt 1905: Svensk-norske relationer i 200 år, Evalueringsrapport. Riksbankens Jubileumsfond 2008, available from http://www.rj.se/ svenska/var_organisation/samarbeten/nordiska_samarbeten. Accessed 30 November 2011. Gillis, J.R. (ed.), Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994). Jansson, Torkel, Minorities and Majorities in Time and Space – Examples from the Balto-Scandinavian Area during the Last 200 Years (Stockholm: Kungl. Vitterhets Historie och Antikvitets Akademiens konferensserie, 39, 1997). Jansson, Torkel, Rikssprängningen som kom av sig. Finsk-svenska gemenskaper efter1809 (Stockholm: Atlantis, 2009). Jansson, Torkel, ‘Inwieweit haben sich Schweden und Finnland nach 1809 verloren?’, in Jan Hecker-Stampehl, Bernd Henningsen, Anna-Maija Mertens und Stephan Michael Schröder (eds), 1809 und die Folgen. Finnland zwischen Schweden, Russland und Deutschland (Berlin: BWW Berlin Wissenschaft, 2011). J.L. Runeberg 200 år, Nationella festkommitténs rapport. Nationella festkommittén för J.L. Runebergs 200-årsjubileum, available from http://www.runeberg.net. Accessed 2 November 2011. Jonsson, L. (ed.), Astrid Lindgrens världar i Vimmerby. En studie om kulturarv och samhällsliv (Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2010). Langslet, Lars Roar, Ibsenåret i tillbakeblikk, available from httpp://www.ibsen. net. Accessed 2 November 2011. Lindaräng, Ingemar, Helgonbruk i moderniseringstider: bruket av Birgittaoch Olavstraditionerna i samband med minnesfiranden i Sverige och Norge 1891–2005 (Linköping: University of Linköping, 2007). Lindaräng, Ingemar, ‘Några perspektiv på jubileumsfiranden med anledning av Märkesåret 1809’, Historisk tidskrift för Finland (2010), pp. 174-186. Nora, Pierre, Realms of Memory – Rethinking the French Past, Vol. 1 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996). Nordens skönhet var hans sång, Nationella festkommittén för J.L. Runebergs 200-årsjubileum (Uusimaa Oy, 2004). Piirimäe, Pärtel, ‘Baltiska provinser eller en del av Norden?’, in J. Björkman, B. Fjaestad and J. Harvard (eds), Ett Nordiskt rum. Historiska och framtida gemenskaper från Baltikum till Barents hav (Stockholm: Makadam Förlag, 2011). Rahikainen, Agneta, Rapport över Svenska litteratursällskapets jubileumsprojekt 2000-2004 med anledning av Johan Ludvig Runebergs 200-års jubileum. Rapport Linné 2007, ‘Carl von Linnés 300-års jubileum’, available from http:// www.linnaeus.se. Accessed 25 October 2011.

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Tommila, Susanna and Rask, Henry (eds), Projekt 1809 – Det nya Finland, det nya Sverige (Hanaholmen: Hanaholmen kulturcentrum för Sverige och Finland, 2010). Ung forskning i Linnés anda, Linné 2007, available from http://www. podiummedia.se. Accessed 30 October 2011. Warring, Anette, Historie, magt og identitet (Aarhus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag 2004). Weidmo Uvell, Rebecca (ed.), Två länder – en framtid: märkesåret 1809 (Stockholm: Länsstyrelsen i Stockholms Län, 2010). Internet Sources Aftonbladet, http://www.aftonbladet.se/senastenytt/ttnyheter/utrikes/article 14075896.ab, accessed 14 December 2011. Astridlindgren.se, http://www.astridlindgren.se, accessed 30 October 2011. Birger Jarl, ‘Makten – Myten – Människan’, http://www.birgerjarl2010.se, accessed 20 October 2011. Birgittasystrarna i Pirita Tallinn Estland, http://www.osss.ee/index.se.htm, accessed 4 December 2011. Birgittasöndagen, http://www.varfru.org/_forsamling/predikan/061008_bjorn. html, accessed 7 December 2011. Dag Hammarskjöld, http://www.dh100.se, accessed 21 October 2011. Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation, http://www.dhf.uu.se/hammarskjold/19612011, accessed 4 February 2012. DN.se Kultur, ‘Svagt intresse för Björling-jubileum’, http://www.dn.se/kulturnoje/nyheter/svagt-intresse-for-bjorling-jubileum, accessed 30 November 2011. DN.se Kultur, ‘Strindberg firas av staden’, http://www.dn.se/kultur-noje/ nyheter/strindberg-firas-av-staden, accessed 30 December 2011. Grieg 2007, ‘100-årsmarkeringen for Edvard Griegs död’, http://www.grieg07. no, accessed 14 November 2011. Hans Christian Andersen 2005, ‘Evaluering’, http://www.hca2005evaluering. sdk.dk, accessed 10 November 2011. Hans Christian Andersen 2005, http://www.hca2005.dk, accessed 10 November 2011. Hundreårsmarkeringen, http://www.hundrearsmarkeringen.no, accessed 30 October 2011. Jönköpings Konsert och Kongress, http://www.programbolaget.nu, accessed 20 October 2011.

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Kalmar Lexikon, ‘Unionsmonumentet’, http://www.kalmarlexikon.se/index. php/u/unionsmonumentet.html, accessed 30 October 2011. Kulturhistorien.se, ‘Dag Hammarskjölds Backåkra’, http://kulturhistorien.se/ kulturarven/203/dag-hammarskjoelds_backakra, accessed 22 October 2011. Märkesåret 1809, http://www.markesaret1809.se, accessed 1 December 2011. Merkkivuosi 1809, http://www.1809.fi/etusivu/fi.html, accessed 25 November 2011. Nansen-Amundsen-året 2011, http://www.nansenamundsen.no, accessed 28 October 2011. Nasjonalbiblioteket, ‘Hamsuns liv og verk’, http://www.nb.no/hamsun2009, accessed 8 November 2011. Nasjonalbiblioteket, ‘Bjørnson’, http://www.nb.no.bjornson, accessed 17 November 2011. Nordstjernan, ’Strindberg 2012 – Too Little and Too Late?’, http://www. nordstjernan.com/news/viewpoints/3047, accessed 30 November 2011. NRK, ‘Grieg I skyggen av Ibsen’, 5 May 2006, http://www.nrk.no/nyheter/ kultur/5655649.html, accessed 12 November 2011. NRK, ‘Kultur-og-underhållning’, http://www.nrk.no/kultur-og-underholdning /1.6931959, accessed 20 November 2011. Penn World Table Version 7.0, Center for International Comparisons of Production, Income and Prices at the University of Pennsylvania, May 2011, http://pwt.econ.upenn.edu/php_site/pwt70/pwt70_form.php, accessed 4 February 2012. Regeringskansliet, ‘August Strindberg 2012’, http://www.regeringen.se/sb/ d/12628/a/158306, accessed 30 October 2011. Riksdagen, http://www.riksdagen.se/templates/R_page_17983.aspx, accessed 1 December 2011. Skånsk frihet, http://www.skanskfrihet.org/historia/firande.html, accessed 30 October 2011. Svenska Dagbladet Kultur. Staten nobbar Strindberg, http://www.svd.se/ kultur/staten-nobbar-strindberg_3812991.svd, accessed 15 January, 2012. Svenska FN-förbundet, http://www.fn.se, accessed 16 October, 2011. Sveriges Radio, http://.sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=83&artik el=4701498, accessed 20 October 2011. Sydsvenskan, http://www.sydsvenskan.se/sverige/article97004, accessed 15 November 2011. Uppsala Kommun, http://www.uppsala.se, accessed 15 October 2011.

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Chapter 6

Banal Nordism: Recomposing an Old Song of Peace Stuart Burch

Love and War in the North It’s nine o’clock on Sunday 6 March 2011 and I’ve just been rudely awakened by my clock radio. Bright shafts of Nordic sunlight are trying to trick me into believing that spring has finally reached northern Europe. That season certainly seems to be in full swing elsewhere in the world: the consequences of the ‘Arab Spring’ are the lead story for Sweden’s state broadcaster, P1.1 I must have dozed off during reports of the continuing violence in Libya because I only half-heard what sounded like a far more heart-warming story: a Swedish-designed product being successfully exported to five unnamed countries. In my stupor I thought I heard the phrase ‘svensk granit’ and immediately associated this with Granit – a swish interior design store providing ‘smart solutions for storage in cardboard, plastic and wicker’.2 But a single vowel can make a big difference: this was granat rather than granit. And the design product in question was an 84 mm multipurpose, manportable, reusable recoilless rifle – more generically known as a bazooka. Based on a design dating back over six decades, its manufacturer states proudly that this ‘combat proven’ weapon is ‘in use in more than 40 countries, on every continent’.3 Its success helped lift the business that produces it to number 31 in the list of the world’s top 100 arms-producing companies for 2009.4 A year later,   Cf. Sveriges Radio, ‘Arabisk vår?’, Konflikt, 22 January 2011, http://sverigesradio.se/ sida/artikel.aspx?programid=1300&artikel=4306449, accessed 25 March 2011. 2   Granit, ‘About Granit’, http://www.granit.se/?id=1492, accessed 25 March 2011. 3   Saab AB, ‘Carl-Gustaf M3 Weapon System’, http://www.saabgroup.com/en/ Land/Weapon-Systems/support-weapons/Carl_Gustaf_M3_weapon_system/In-use, accessed 25 March 2011. 4   Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), ‘The SIPRI Top 100 Arms-producing Companies, 2009’, http://www.sipri.org/research/armaments/ production/Top100, accessed 25 March 2011. 1

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Defense News placed it at number 28 based on revenue of $3,397.1 million, 85 per cent of which came from the sale of military equipment.5 That company is Saab AB, the headquarters of which are in the heart of Stockholm. Hence svensk granat or ‘Swedish grenade’. This prompted a thought to take shape in my sleep-addled brain that early March morning: why does the notion of a ‘Swedish grenade’ sound so, well, wrong? The chapter you are reading is a response to this rarely asked question. It was written in Stockholm during the first half of 2011. Drawing on current affairs and contemporary news stories plus a range of earlier scholarly work from a number of disciplines, this essay offers a reflection on the reasons why I find the existence of a ‘Swedish grenade’ to be remarkable and regrettable in equal measure. This is why Sweden and Swedish media constitute the main poles of this Nordic investigation. Moreover, this personal inquiry gains wider significance when set against the prevalent image of Sweden and Norden as the very antithesis of war and conflict. My thoughts are those of a non-Nordic observer – a status that undoubtedly skews my perspective on Sweden and its neighbours. Thus, as an Anglo-Saxon male in my late thirties, when I think of Swedish design my mind turns to the types of things on sale at stores such as Granit or IKEA. And when it comes to technology, a brand like Saab conjures up images of the iconic Saab 900 produced by Saab Automobile throughout the 1980s and 1990s. The abovementioned grenade launcher, however, is made by a different organization: Saab AB, the self-styled ‘Security and Defence Company’. The weapon it produces is, like the Saab 900, an aesthetic object and a market-leader of its type: it is ‘the best there is’.6 Yet, even if it accords with Sweden’s reputation for high-quality design and technological know-how, there are no examples of this weapon on display in the art and design galleries of Sweden’s Nationalmuseum. It can, however, be found among the artefacts of the Armémuseum in Stockholm, even if the model in question is a relic of the past, dating from the late 1940s.7 Its inclusion in the nation’s public collection of military history is entirely fitting given that Saab AB’s recoilless rifle is ultra-Swedish – right down to its name: the 84 mm CarlGustaf Multi-purpose Weapon System (see Figure 6.1).

  Defense News, ‘Defense News Top 100 for 2010’, http://special.defensenews.com/ top-100/charts/rank_2010.php, accessed 12 October 2011. 6   Saab AB, ‘The 84 mm Carl-Gustaf Multi-Purpose Weapon System’, product sheet, 8 pp – Carl-Gustaf – Eng – vol.1, April 2009, p. 2. 7   DigitaltMuseum, ‘8,4 cm granatgevär m/1948’, accession no. AM.125476, http:// www.digitaltmuseum.se, accessed 25 March 2011. 5

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Figure 6.1

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Saab AB: the 84 mm Carl-Gustaf Multi-purpose Weapon System, product sheet. Published with permission from Saab Group

The name ‘Carl Gustaf ’ has attracted considerable attention in recent times, both in Sweden and abroad. But the potency in question has more to do with conquests of a sexual, rather than a military, nature. This is in relation to the past exploits of Carl XVI Gustaf, King of Sweden since 1973. He was born in 1946. So, too, was the rifle that shares his name. Prompted by the publication of a highly controversial biography, his ‘romps in seedy nightclubs owned by shadowy underworld figures’ were reported extensively in late 2010.8 Following the book’s release, the king held a well-attended press conference which he chose to conduct in a forest setting immediately after an elk hunt, still dressed in his hunting attire.9 His appearance in front of the press was as brief as it was unenlightening. He had not read the book and took no questions. Even had he   Harriet Alexander and Marcus Oscarsson, ‘Swedes in Shock at King Carl Gustaf Sex Scandal’, Daily Telegraph, 6 November 2010, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/ europe/sweden/8114740/Swedes-in-shock-at-King-Carl-Gustaf-sex-scandal.html, accessed 25 March 2011. 9   Susanna Vidlund et al., ‘Vi vänder blad och går vidare’, Aftonbladet, 4 November 2010, http://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/article8069975.ab, accessed 25 March 2011. 8

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done so, it is most unlikely that any of the journalists would have asked Carl Gustaf if a Carl-Gustaf was deployed during the hunt. Very little of the elk would have remained if he had. This is because the rifle has been designed to penetrate armoured vehicles – as exemplified by the hole-punched metal plates in the possession of Sweden’s Armémuseum.10 Its effectiveness was recently affirmed by sergeant Alexander D. King of the US army. He recalled one particular occasion in Afghanistan when two marksmen loaded their Carl-Gustaf rifles with highexplosive anti-personnel ammunition, each containing several hundred steel pellets. Up to thirty enemy combatants were killed thanks to this Swedish designed, manufactured and exported ‘meat-grinder’.11 In the first half of 2008 the US government spent a reported $48 million on the Carl-Gustaf system, including weapons and ammunition.12 Forests, elks, sex, design and technology – these all accord with general stereotypes associated with Sweden. The production and sale of lethal military equipment does not. Why is this so? The reason, as this chapter hopes to demonstrate, is because of banal Nordism: a series of commonplace suppositions and, by extension, disassociations about Sweden and its neighbours. It is this set of largely unconscious expectations that caused me to pay heed to a radio broadcast about a ‘Swedish grenade’. In what follows I will explore the banalities of the North and consider the consequences they have for all those entrepreneurs implicated in its construction and continuance. As will become clear, by ‘entrepreneurs’ I include people like me and all the other authors in this Nordic-themed series of books. Banal Nordism Sweden and its northern European neighbours have been likened to a structure built of bricks.13 The bricks represent the nations. They are connected by a diffuse ‘Nordic element’ which functions as a sort of ‘cohesive mortar’. Trying to identify 10   DigitaltMuseum, ‘Genomskjuten plåt, 5,56 mm Carl Gustaf AP’, accession no. AM.038951, http://www.digitaltmuseum.se, accessed 25 March 2011. 11   Christopher Holmbäck, ‘Svenska vapen är deras vardag’, Fokus, 29 October 2009, http://www.fokus.se/2009/10/svenska-vapen-ar-deras-vardag, accessed 25 March 2011. 12   This is according to the London Stock Exchange Aggregated Regulatory News Service (ARNS) in a report dated 1 August 2008 entitled ‘BAE Systems plc Interim Results -6-’ (http://www.lexisnexis.com). At the time, BAE Systems had a 20.5 per cent shareholding in Saab AB. 13   The brick-and-mortar metaphor is derived from Øystein Sørensen and Bo Stråth (eds), The Cultural Construction of Norden (Oslo, 1997), pp. 15, 19 and 22–23.

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the precise nature of this ‘mortar’ is, however, far from straightforward. This is because the formula of this binding agent varies over time and across disciplines. At one moment it is embodied in the figure of the ‘Nordic peasant’.14 At another it is distilled on the canvas of a ‘Nordic painting’.15 The ‘Nordic element’ can, in other words, be equated with a great variety of sometimes mutually exclusive things, including ‘suicide, free sex, angst, darkness, stillness, inwardness, the eradication of poverty, utopian social democracy, etc’.16 Nordic is a contingent category. This means that one should be very wary of joining the misguided band of true believers intent on identifying some sort of Nordic Holy Grail. Instead, a far more fruitful endeavour would be to take up the train of thought prompted by Rogers Brubaker in his study of nationalism. To achieve this, all we need do is to replace the words ‘nation’ and ‘nationalism’ with Norden (a term meaning ‘the North’): We should not ask ‘what is Norden’ but rather: how is Nordenhood as a political and cultural form institutionalised within and among states? How does Norden work as practical category, as classificatory scheme, as cognitive frame? What makes the use of that category by or against states more or less resonant or effective? What makes the Norden-evoking, Norden-invoking efforts of political [plus cultural, financial and academic] entrepreneurs more or less likely to succeed?17

As we shall see, adopting such an approach reveals that the ‘bricks’ of northern Europe can be differently configured by diverse ‘entrepreneurs’ in their various attempts to construct their vision of ‘the North’ (Norden). It is important to note, however, that one thing that these ‘bricks’ do not build is an imperial parliament at the heart of a Nordic empire.18 This is because national concerns always take priority, even when a regional dimension is promoted.19 What Norden does is provide a means for the nations of ‘the North’   Sørensen and Stråth, The Cultural Construction of Norden, p. 1.   Stuart Burch, ‘Norden, Reframed’, Culture Unbound, 2 (2010), pp. 571ff, available at http://www.cultureunbound.ep.liu.se/v2/a33, accessed 25 March 2011. 16   Jan-Erik Lundström, Stranger Than Paradise: Contemporary Scandinavian Photography (New York, 1994), p. 13. 17   Rogers Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe (Cambridge, 1996), p. 16. 18   Sørensen and Stråth, The Cultural Construction of Norden, p. 15. It is telling that the palatial Nordiska museet (Nordic museum) in Stockholm is fundamentally a Swedish (that is, national) institution (but see also Hillström, Chapter 10 in this volume). 19   Thorsten Olesen emphasized the priority of national over Nordic concerns in his contribution to a conference held at Lancaster House, London on 1 April 2011 to launch the 14 15

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to differentiate themselves from ‘Europe’.20 It does not connote a pooling of sovereignty. The Kalmar Union might have unified the kingdoms of Denmark, Norway and Sweden under a common monarch from 1397 until 1523, but all subsequent attempts to bind the region into a political union have failed.21 And even far more modest efforts at cooperation can be abortive – as demonstrated by the squabbles over how to share the Nordic Pavilion at the Venice Biennale.22 It is striking how real-world setbacks such as these never seem to dampen enthusiasm for conjuring up Nordic castles in the air. An instance of this arose in the wake of the so-called Arab Spring of 2011. Sweden’s response to the UN-backed NATO-led action against Libya was hesitant and ambiguous.23 This was in part because Sweden, unlike Denmark and Norway, stands outside NATO. This is a concrete example of the stark national differences in policy and alignment evident across Europe, including Norden. Yet at exactly the same time that this schism re-emerged, the foreign ministers of the five Nordic states signed a ‘Nordic declaration of solidarity’. Should one of their number come under attack ‘the others will, upon request from that country, assist with relevant means’.24 This gulf between rhetoric and reality is characteristic of the myth of Norden. Despite the ‘declaration of solidarity’, it remains the case that the Nordic countries have no formal cooperation when it comes to foreign policy. One senses that the fine words of Norden’s foreign ministers would evaporate if they were put to the test. However, as the President of the Nordic Council, Henrik Dam Kristensen, implied, their real import was symbolic rather than actual.25

book The Nordic Countries: From War to Cold War, 1944–1951, ed. Tony Insall and Patrick Salmon (London, 2011). 20   Sørensen and Stråth, The Cultural Construction of Norden, pp. 22–23. 21   Ibid., p. 23; Björn Hettne, Sverker Sörlin and Uffe Østergård, Den globala nationalismen: nationalstatens historia och framtid (Stockholm, 1998), pp. 285–286. 22   Designed by Sverre Fehn in 1962, it is shared by Finland, Norway and Sweden (Denmark’s pavilion, meanwhile, is immediately next-door). Responsibility for curating the show rotates among the three nations. However, from 2011, the three countries have begun to take it in turns to display their own artists. See Jersti Nipen, ‘Vil endre nordisk samarbeid om Venezia-biennalen’, Aftenposten, 31 August 2010, http://www.aftenposten.no/kul_und/ article3790347.ece, accessed 15 September 2010. 23   Peter Wolodarski, ‘Konsten att vara feg’, Dagens Nyheter, 10 April 2011, p. 4. 24   The agreement was signed in Helsinki on 5 April 2011. See Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland, ‘The Nordic Declaration on Solidarity’, 5 April 2011, http://www.formin. fi/Public/default.aspx?contentid=217312, accessed 11 April 2011. 25   ‘Henrik Dam Kristensen … welcomes the foreign ministers’ declaration of solidarity, describing it as a major and important decision for the Nordic countries, not least symbolically.’

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Norden has long been a ‘projection screen for fantasies’.26 Another instance of this syndrome is an utterly improbable call to establish a ‘United Nordic Federation’ within the next twenty years.27 This will no doubt prove to be as implausible as earlier attempts to unite the region.28 But that doesn’t matter. What motivates such pronouncements is not the likelihood of their success: their simple utterance and dissemination are sufficient. Thus, the impetus for propounding a United States of Norden is threefold: to enliven debate; to attract attention to ‘the North’; and to add more of that ‘cohesive mortar’ to the Nordic idea. Normally Norden continues to hum along unremarkably in the background like a Muzak soundtrack to ‘the North’. Its divergence from flag-waving ‘hot’ nationalism means that it bears some similarity to Michael Billig’s exploration of the banal, day-to-day manifestations of ‘banal nationalism’. For Billig, ‘the metonymic image of banal nationalism is not a flag which is being constantly waved with fervent passion; it is the flag hanging unnoticed on the public building.’29 That this captures perfectly the notion of Norden is clear from a crossword puzzle that appeared in the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter on Wednesday 23 March 2011. Its first clue was accompanied by a photograph of flags fluttering in the breeze and a text that read: ‘Today is Norden’s day! It was founded in a cooperation agreement signed on 23 March 1962 in this city.’30 An impromptu questionnaire sent to fellow authors of this Nordic book series would suggest that many people would have struggled to identify the city in question. Of those who responded, very few had even heard of Norden’s day.31 This is hardly surprising given that the only mention of it in Dagens Nyheter was the first clue of its daily crossword. Despite this lack of coverage, the compiler of the crossword was clearly sufficiently confident to set it as one of the questions. That it was mentioned in this way is revealing. Norden is typically not the main news story but instead a banal backdrop, utilized whenever the media is See Norden Association, ‘All For One, One For All’, 7 April 2011, http://www.norden.org/ en/news-and-events/news/all-for-one-one-for-all, accessed 11 April 2011. 26  Lundström, Stranger than Paradise, p. 13. 27   Gunnar Wetterberg, Förbundsstaten Norden, TemaNord 582, Copenhagen, Nordic Council, 2010. 28   DN.se, ‘Kalmarunion inte på nordisk tapet’, Dagens Nyheter, undated, http://www. dn.se/nyheter/sverige/kalmarunion-inte-pa-nordisk-tapet, accessed 25 March 2011. 29   Michael Billig, Banal Nationalism (London, 1995), p. 7. 30  ‘Kultur’, Dagens Nyheter, 23 March 2011, p. 18. 31   I sent an email to approximately sixty people. The only person to respond with any real knowledge of the day was Peter Stadius, Lecturer in Nordic Studies at the University of Helsinki. He participated in a number of media-reported events, proving that Norden’s Day of 2011 did have a presence, at least in Finland.

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in need of a convenient international contextual framing. Examples of Norden being banally flagged include comparisons of property markets, the cost of dutyfree alcohol and the price of opera tickets.32 Norden is, then, a banal, commonplace and unexceptional ‘truth’ that is unconsciously assimilated, largely ignored and only very occasionally questioned. This can be explained further if we return to Billig’s Banal Nationalism. He argues that we live in a world where the nation is so pervasive that it frequently goes unnoticed. It determines our place in a nationally mediated world. Weather forecasts are excellent instances of banal nationalism. The Norwegian state broadcaster NRK, for example, is much more likely to inform the people of Oslo about the temperatures facing polar bears on the far-off Norwegian island of Svalbard than it is to report on sunshine in nearby Karlstad on the other side of the Swedish border. A weather forecast is thus a banal flagging of the state (which is incidentally why Great Britain’s BBC includes sunshine and showers in the north of Ireland but not the south). Sport is a further instance of this. In addition to the achievements of the national team, the success or failure of our fellow citizens is dissected from sporting contests the world over. The exploits of various foreign soccer teams thus become worthy of the nation’s attention if they happen to be the home club of Sweden’s Zlatan Ibrahimovic or Norway’s Jon Arne Riise. And followers of soccer will know that the idea of a ‘United Nordic Federation’ is a non-starter: Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden are bitter rivals in the sporting arena. The idea of ‘Norden FC’ is utterly preposterous. This is not to say that Norden is without genuine marketing potential. Coincident with Norden’s day 2011, the telecommunications company Telenor ran a series of advertisements featuring a variety of Nordic flags beneath headings written in a range of Nordic languages. These announced that customers of ‘Telenor Borderless’ could call numbers in ‘Sweden from the whole of Norden for the same price as at home’.33 Telenor’s customers could rest assured that, whether they were in Nuuk, Norrköping, Naantali, Narvik, Næstved, Neskaupstaður, Näfsby or Norðragøta, they could feel at home in ‘the North’. Messages such as these represent but one instance of the banal ‘flagging’ of Norden in everyday life. A further example is the Nordic Ecolabel that   Sara Rimpi, ‘Arlanda dyrt så in i Norden’, Dagens Nyheter, 21 March 2011, ‘Näringsliv’, p. 6; Johan Hellekant, ‘Svensk operabiljett billigast i Norden’, Svenska Dagbladet, 3 May 2011, ‘Kultur’ p. 6; Sara L. Bränström, Jeanette Björkqvist and Björn Lindahl, ‘Bostad Norden’, Svenska Dagbladet, 14 January 2011, ‘Näringsliv’, pp. 8–9; 17 January 2011, pp. 8–9; 18 January 2011, p. 11. 33   See, for example, ‘Huippu-uutinen sinulle, joka matkustat Pohjoismaissa’, Svenska Dagbladet, 22 March 2011, ‘Näringsliv’, p. 7. 32

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can be found on a range of ‘environmentally-sound products’.34 This label can be understood as a double flagging of ‘the North’ given that a concern for ‘sustainable consumption’ and an awareness of the need to safeguard the environment is automatically associated with Norden. The Nordic Ecolabel takes the form of a swan. This was inspired by Hans Hartvig Pedersen’s poem ‘The Nordic Swans’ (1936). The same motif – this time coloured blue – also provides the logo for the Nordic Council. Founded in 1952, this appointed body is made up of 87 members drawn from the five states and three semi-autonomous areas that habitually constitute ‘the North’. This octet is banally flagged whenever the swan motif is used: it features eight stripes, each of which stands for one of the eight ‘nations’ that make up the primary designation of Norden. These are respectively Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden plus the territories of Greenland, the Faroe Islands and the Åland Islands. Of the latter category, Greenland and the Faroes form part of the Danish realm whilst the Åland Islands is an autonomous region of Finland. The flagging of Norden in Mariehamn – the capital of Åland – is particularly noteworthy. Its parliament building – Självstyrelsegården – was inaugurated in 1978. In a ceremonial space outside the main entrance are a series of plaques describing ‘landmark years’ in Åland’s independence story. They commence in 1809, when Åland and Finland shifted from Swedish to Russian control, and culminate in the Nordic Council’s recognition of the Åland Islands in 1970. This provides a concrete example of the ‘Nordic element’ being flagged for reasons of an operable national identity – that is, the Åland ‘nation’ within the Finnish state. Åland’s flag and that of the other Nordic ‘nations’ appeared in the Norden’s day 2011 issue of Dagens Nyheter’s crossword. The answer to the clue was ‘Helsingfors’ (Helsinki). The agreement signed there on 23 March 1962 is supposed to be marked on an annual basis by local authorities within Norden. They are encouraged to fly the flags of the region. Meanwhile an organization such as the Norden Association arranges Nordic banquets (gästabud).35 This association (Föreningen Norden) was established in 1919. It is an NGO that seeks ‘to stimulate and improve Nordic cooperation at all levels, especially in the fields of education, culture, the labour market, industry, mass media, international aid and environmental care’.36 The association promotes itself as a parallel organization to the ‘official’ Nordic Council and the Nordic Council   Nordic Ecolabelling, ‘The Nordic Ecolabel – The Official Ecolabel in the Nordic Countries’, undated, http://www.nordic-ecolabel.org/about, accessed 4 April 2011. 35   Norden Association, ‘Nordens dag’, undated, http://www.norden.se/Mot-Norden/ Nordens-dag, accessed 4 April 2011. 36   Norden Association, ‘“Norden” and the Norden Association’, undated, http://www. norden.se/Om-oss/Foreningen-Nordens-verksamhet/In-English, accessed 4 April 2011. 34

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of Ministers (established in 1971) – respectively, the fora for interparliamentary and intergovernmental cooperation. The logotype of the Norden Association is described as: … a symbol for Nordic cooperation. The eight dots represent the five Nordic countries and the three autonomous regions. The globe represents the fact that the cooperation not only serves the Nordic countries, but also serves the interest of peace and justice throughout the whole world.37

Every action sponsored by the Norden Association or the Nordic Council leads to a reiteration and reframing of the ‘Nordic element’.38 This is a regional ‘mesolayer’ which, just like the nations of which it is composed, is ‘continually being re-written, and the re-writing reflects current balances of hegemony’.39 The book you are reading is part of that rewriting. The date of its publication is propitious. Norden’s vital statistics – and, with it, its viability as a going concern – will come under particular scrutiny in 2012, the sixtieth anniversary of the Nordic Council. Moreover, 23 March 2012 will be the fiftieth ‘Norden’s day’. Bridges to Peace This ready-made schedule of secular feast days and anniversaries provides Norden with a canonical calendar. Previous ‘rewritings’ of the North include Norden’s day 1991. On 23 March of that year the governments of Denmark and Sweden signed an agreement for a fixed link across Øresund, the strait separating the Danish island of Zealand (Sjæland) from the province of Scania (Skåne) in southern Sweden.40 The resulting bridge was inaugurated on 1 July 2000 with speeches given by King Carl Gustaf of Sweden and his Danish counterpart, Queen Margrethe of Denmark. Its official name is Øresundsbron, a suitably Nordic mix of the two Scandinavian languages. Similar use of pomp and pageantry was used to herald the opening of another regional link some five years later, this time at the southern end of the Norway– Sweden border at Svinesund, a sound east of Oslo. This transnational region encapsulates the shared past of the two nations, in both peace and war. With its crossings and citadels, Svinesund reveals as much a tale of conflict and mistrust as it does one of peace and reconciliation. The shared pasts and yet very different  Ibid.   Burch, ‘Norden Reframed’. 39  Billig, Banal Nationalism, p. 71. 40   Facts Worth Knowing About the Øresund Bridge (Copenhagen, 2008), p. 6. 37 38

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fates of Norway and Sweden are played out in their contrasting attitudes towards their parallel national histories. This became evident in 2005 during the centennial marking of the peaceful dissolution of the Swedish–Norwegian union (1814–1905). In Norway this anniversary prompted an extensive and well-funded series of events under the mantra of ‘A Voice of Our Own’.41 This reflects the fact that 1905 is perceived as marking a crucial hiatus in Norwegian history. In contrast, it represents a minor year in the Swedish annals.42 This had implications for the manner in which the events of 1905 were commemorated or forgotten a hundred years later. In Norway, 7 June became the key focus. This was the day in 1905 when the Storting (the Norwegian parliament) unilaterally voted to sever the union. However, it is notable that, in Sweden, the focal point was 23 September, the moment when the peace negotiations reached their successful conclusion, the union was legally annulled and the Swedish king abdicated from the Norwegian throne. Sweden and Norway, superficially at least, have much in common. Yet, as the anniversary of 1905 revealed, important factors differentiate the two. They are both Scandinavian countries with mutually comprehensible languages (a situation which facilitates lots of jokes at each other’s expense). They share one of the longest land borders in Europe. Both are ancient nations, but Norway is a comparatively new state. This fact, plus its gruelling experiences in the Second World War and its now bountiful natural resources, helps explain why Norway is a member of NATO but not of the EU. Sweden, on the other hand, is a member of the EU (but does not use the euro) and continues to maintain an official policy of military non-alignment. Despite such anomalies, the centenary of the dissolution of the union was deployed to underpin the cordiality of present-day Swedish–Norwegian relations. Nowhere was this more apparent than during the inauguration by the two royal families of the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo, completed in 2005 at a cost of some NOK 107 million. All the annual Nobel prizes are conferred by Sweden, with the exception of the Nobel Peace Prize, which is administered and awarded in Norway. This contributes a great deal to the branding of Norway as ‘a peace nation’ and a self-declared world leader in international conflict resolution.43 This ‘living legacy’ has been given additional performative impetus with the   This phrase alluded to the fact that Norwegian foreign affairs were directed from Stockholm during the union period. Norway achieved ‘a voice of its own’ on the international stage following the events of 1905. 42   Torbjörn Nilsson, ‘Sverige och 1905 – glömska eller förträngning?’ Historiska Tidsskrift, 84 (2005), pp. 217–228. 43   Øystein Haga Skånland, ‘“Norway is a Peace Nation”: A Discourse Analytic Reading of the Norwegian Peace Engagement’, Cooperation and Conflict, 45 (2010), pp. 34–54; Ivar 41

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establishment of the Nobel Peace Center. The director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute, Geir Lundestad envisioned it as ‘a living center for communicating the ideals of the Nobel Peace Prize and focusing attention on current conflicts’.44 The centenary of the dissolution of the Swedish–Norwegian Union provided a further opportunity to bolster this peace-loving image of ‘the North’: in an open letter of February 2005 the then Secretary-General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, referred to the peaceful separation of 1905 as ‘an example to aspire to in … a world still riven by conflict’, adding that the ‘centennial is an inspiring occasion for all of us working in the cause of peace’.45 This instrumentalism is a particularly unambiguous example of how historical narratives are never the simple conveyance of ‘facts’. The ‘cohesive mortar’ of Norden is literally used to build bridges and girder rhetorical arguments about Norden and peace. The 1905–2005 centennial marked a high point of this. Yet it can only be understood against a continuous backdrop of banal Nordism, insisting, as it does, that Norden ‘serves the interest of peace and justice throughout the whole world’ (to recall the exhortations of the Norden Association). One can equate this attempt to take ownership of ‘peace’ with a delicious slice of ham. In Europe the ‘link between the characteristics of certain products and their geographical origin’ can lead to the placing of protected geographical status on specific foodstuffs associated with particular places within the EU.46 Adopting the same logic, one can conclude the following: peace promotion is to Norden what prosciutto ham is to Italy. This helps explain why certain representatives of the Republic of Estonia would like to bury their country’s Soviet past by branding it as a Nordic, rather than a Baltic, nation. Its current president, Toomas Hendrik Ilves, has argued that the Baltic states are united only in the shared memory of military occupation by hostile powers.47 In making this statement, he has conveniently Libæk and Øivind Stenersen, The History of Norway: From the Ice Age to Today, trans. James Anderson (Lysaker 2003), p. 177. 44   Norway, the Official Site, ‘The Nobel Peace Center – A Place of Peace’, undated, http://www.norway.org/policy/peace/center/center.htm, accessed 29 April 2006. This document is now no longer available. The organisation’s website is currently http://www. nobelpeacecenter.org/en/. 45   Kofi Annan, ‘Message on the Centennial of the Peaceful Dissolution of the Union between Norway and Sweden’ (press release), February 2005. 46   These are termed ‘protected geographical indication’ (PGI) or ‘protected designation of origin’ (PDO). See Europa, ‘Protection of Geographical Indications and Designations of Origin’, 14 September 2010, http://europa.eu/legislation_summaries/agriculture/food/ l66044_en.htm, accessed 31 March 2011. 47   Burch, ‘Norden, Reframed’, pp. 576–577.

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forgotten that the same can be said of Norden. However, the rosy hue that the passing centuries have accorded Sweden’s seventeenth-century ‘occupation’ of Estonia has led it to become known as the ‘happy Swedish time’.48 This cheerful imperialism is eased further by the fact that the ‘neutral’ Sweden of today is so banally associated with peace. The brief war of 1814 that Sweden waged to force Norway into an unequal union is used as the basis of an oft-repeated boast: ‘Sweden has not been at war for nearly 200 years.’49 Its capital is therefore the fitting home to an organization such as the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, ‘an independent international institute dedicated to research into conflict, armaments, arms control and disarmament’.50 Stockholm was also the originating city for the Non-Violence Project established in 1993. This was triggered by a weapon that is incapable of firing, namely Carl Fredrik Reuterswärd’s sculpture Non-Violence, which is probably the best known artwork by a Swedish sculptor. This symbol of a gun with a knotted barrel was first sketched by Reuterswärd in 1980 in response to the murder of John Lennon. Its three-dimensional form is replicated across the world, including most famously outside the United Nations building in New York (1988). In 2002 the Nordic Council’s head office in central Copenhagen provided the venue for an exhibition examining the work.51 In the accompanying catalogue Kofi Annan described this potent symbol as encapsulating ‘in a few simple curves, the greatest prayer of man; that which asks not for victory, but for peace’.52 This high-flown oratory, like Annan’s open letter in association with the centennial anniversary of the peaceful dissolution of the Swedish–Norwegian Union, provides the ballast for banal Nordism. Norden is elevated as the acme of peace and reconciliation. Mr Annan’s Swedish wife would probably approve of this entirely positive spin placed on her home country.53 She is Nane Maria Annan (née Lagergren, born 1944), a lawyer and the niece of Raoul Wallenberg  Ibid.   See, for example, Lena Holger (ed.), Fredssoldater (Stockholm, 2009), p. 192; Peter Aronsson, ‘Introduction: Uses of the Past – Nordic Historical Cultures in a Comparative Perspective’, Culture Unbound, 2 (2010), p. 558. 50   SIPRI, ‘Stockholm International Peace Research Institute – A Top Global Think Tank’, undated, http://www.sipri.org/about, accessed 4 April 2011. 51   ‘Carl Fredrik Reuterswärd: Non-Violence, 1980 – 2002’, press release, 10 January 2002, http://www.kopenhagen.dk/fileadmin/oldsite/presse/CFRsvenskpress.htm, accessed 4 April 2011. 52   Non-Violence, ‘The Symbol Non-Violence’, http://www.nonviolence.com/about #thesymbol, accessed 4 April 2011. 53   I am grateful to Nikolas Glover for drawing my attention to the nationality of Kofi Annan’s wife. 48 49

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– an individual who has a claim to be the very embodiment of non-violence and human rights. Wallenberg’s selflessness and daring during the Second World War enabled a great many Jews in Hungary to survive the Holocaust. Memorials to Wallenberg are even more numerous and widespread than are copies of Reuterswärd’s sculpture Non-Violence.54 The scale of this commemoration is destined to increase in 2012, which will mark the centenary of Wallenberg’s birth. The commemorative events that are certain to ensue will help ensure that ‘there will be no end to the Wallenberg story’.55 The Mythical North The centenary of Raoul Wallenberg’s birth coincides conveniently with the diamond anniversary of the Nordic Council. It will (to recall Rogers Brubaker) be possible to gauge Norden’s ‘balances of hegemony’ by scrutinizing the manner in which various ‘entrepreneurs’ evoke and invoke ‘the North’ during this doubly commemorative year. Each initiative will mark a further development in The Cultural Construction of Norden. This, the title of a multi-authored book, edited by Øystein Sørensen and Bo Stråth and published in 1997, provided the brickand-mortar metaphor cited above. It was partly financed by the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation (Riksbankens Jubileumsfond), the same organization that served as the principal supporter for ‘Nordic Spaces’, the initiative that culminated in Ashgate’s Nordic-themed series of publications. The book that you are holding does not simply mirror a Nordic reality: it constitutes, in a literal sense, part of the ‘cohesive mortar’ that makes up that elusive ‘Nordic element’. The implications of this are rarely acknowledged or explored. The Cultural Construction of Norden, for example, begins by very effectively showing that Norden is an ongoing political construct based on myth.56 It ends with a ‘Nordic chronology’.57 This timeline gives credence to the construction of Norden, providing it with a heritage and an ongoing lineage. Rather than an innocent statement of facts, it is a furtherance of the myth of ‘the North’. All such investigations run the risk of contributing to this myth-making – and of ‘creating new ones’.58 This is true even of a publication with the grand   Tanja Schult, ‘Whose Raoul Wallenberg is it? The Man and the Myth: Between Memory, History and Popularity’, Culture Unbound, 2 (2010), pp. 769–796. 55   Ibid., p. 792. 56   Sørensen and Stråth, The Cultural Construction of Norden, pp. 21–23. 57   Ibid., pp. 286–296. 58   Widar Halén and Kerstin Wickman (eds), Scandinavian Design Beyond the Myth: Fifty Years of Design from the Nordic Countries (Stockholm, 2006), p. 151. 54

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title Scandinavian Design Beyond the Myth: Fifty Years of Design from the Nordic Countries. It begins with a foreword by Per Unckel, the then secretarygeneral of the Nordic Council of Ministers which commissioned and funded the publication and associated exhibition. Unckel concedes that the notion of ‘Scandinavian design’ was a ‘fiction’ which ‘developed from a set of myths about the region, its countries, nature and the people who lived there then’.59 The use of ‘Scandinavian’ rather than ‘Nordic’ in Unckel’s foreword confirms Norden to be a series of overlapping and contradictory myths and fictions about multiple Norths that come under a variety of headings (‘the North’, ‘the high north’, Norden, Scandinavia and so forth).60 And Unckel really had no need to phrase his observations in the past tense: the book that he was introducing confirms that fictions of ‘the North’ are still rampant. This is evident in an essay in Scandinavian Design Beyond the Myth entitled ‘Unpredictable Sweden’ written by the design historian, Kerstin Wickman. On first reading, her short text gives the impression of challenging stereotypes, problematizing categories of identity and undermining interpretative certainties by concluding that ‘nothing is what it seems to be’.61 This empty rhetoric provides a cover for the churning out of trite clichés about ‘the light of the Swedish countryside and the magic of a summer night’. The ceramics of Mia E. Göransson are held up as encapsulating ‘the delicate, pregnant elusiveness of Swedish nature’. Swedish design, we are told, possesses ‘tactile characteristics ... [and] aims to please in an almost invisible manner’. Glass – that ‘seductive but elusive material’ – is identified as the substance that best expresses design from ‘this orderly and cautious country with its obsession with everyday life’.62 The images illustrating Wickman’s text include a number of functional objects of industrial design such as telephones and even a welder’s mask. These are, however, presented in pristine isolation as artistic, rather than utilitarian, artefacts. This is typical of conventional accounts of design history which tend to focus on aesthetically pleasing objects for the home to the exclusion of items from other spheres. This point is well made by Kjetil Fallan in his recent book on design history. The image he uses to visualize this missing aspect is a torpedo boat from Norway called, interestingly enough, ‘Nasty’.63 For Kerstin Wickman to have fulfilled the promise of both her chapter title and that of the book as a whole it would have been necessary to adopt the sort of   Ibid., p. 5.   See my review of Place Reinvention: Northern Perspectives (Torill Nyseth and Arvid Viken, eds, Ashgate, 2009) in Landscape Review, 36/6 (2011), pp. 703–704. 61   Halén & Wickman, Scandinavian Design Beyond the Myth, p. 213. 62  Ibid. 63   Kjetil Fallan, Design History: Understanding Theory and Method (Oxford and New York, 2010), p. 9. 59 60

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approach advocated by a designer such as Zandra Ahl.64 ‘Unpredictable Sweden: Beyond the Myth’ could have been summed up in one painstakingly designed, ultra-Swedish object which ‘aims to please in an almost invisible manner’: the Carl-Gustaf 84 mm multi-purpose, man-portable, reusable recoilless rifle. However, including this cannon among the canon of Swedish cultural objects and as an archetype of all things Nordic is highly problematic for a number of reasons. First, the nations that make up Norden are self-obsessed and prone to narcissism, meaning that they are sensitive to criticism, especially if it should come from an ‘outsider’ like me.65 Second, on a regional level, introducing a discordant note into Norden’s Muzak soundtrack would threaten to undermine a barely disguised sense of ‘moral supremacy’ that is intrinsic to promotions of all things Nordic.66 Even those so-called Nordic traits that are ostensibly negative can be turned into badges of pride. Thus, the angst that supposedly blights ‘the North’ gives birth to an artistic icon in the shape of Edvard Munch’s The Scream.67 Meanwhile, the name of the man who pioneered dynamite is synonymous with peace rather than war.68 Norden’s unremittingly positive message means that even those who wish to do away with the myth of Norden share a sense of pride about the region’s contribution to peace.69 This is unsurprising given that traditions and stereotypes ‘provide enticing and comforting maps’.70 Such uses of myth serve at least one further, vitally significant function: they provide a very necessary antidote to a far more sinister reading of Norden. This is apparent to all those who, at the time of writing, are searching Wikipedia for information on ‘Nordism’.71 They are redirected automatically to ‘Scandinavism’. In a warning footnote inserted at the outset of this entry it is   Stuart Burch, ‘Taking Part: Performance, Participation and National Art Museums’ in Simon Knell et al. (eds), National Museums: New Studies from Around the World (London, 2011), p. 241. 65   Stuart Burch, ‘Nationell narcissism’, Historisk Tidskrift för Finland, 95/1 (2010), pp. 204–211. 66   Sørensen and Stråth, The Cultural Construction of Norden, pp. 29, 92–93. 67   Stuart Burch, ‘Låt det nordiska komma in’, in Jenny Björkman, Björn Fjæstad and Jonas Harvard (eds), Ett nordiskt rum: Historiska och framtida gemenskaper från Baltikum till Barents hav (Gothenburg and Stockholm, 2011), pp. 60–71. 68   The Swede, Alfred Nobel (1833–96). The terms of his will instituted the prizes given in his name. These, as has already been noted, are conferred in Stockholm, with the exception of the Prize for Peace which is administered and awarded in Oslo. 69   See Fredrik Svedjetun’s comments to this effect in Peter Fällmar Andersson, ‘Vem i hela Norden bryr sig?’, Nordvästra Skånes Tidningar, 23 March 2011, p. A12. 70  Lundström, Stranger than Paradise, p. 13. 71   The following information was accessed on 15 April 2011 at http://en.wikipedia. org/wiki/Nordism (redirects to ‘Scandinavism’); http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordicism 64

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stated: ‘The political movement of Nordism should not be confused with the racial ideology of Nordicism, which latter [sic] considers the Nordic people a master race.’ Clicking on ‘Nordicism’ leads to a far from banal account of its long-standing and persistent links with race and racism. The Norwegian anthropologist, Thomas Hylland Eriksen warned about the threat posed by ‘zealous patriots’ at least as early as 1993.72 His words have a terrible poignancy following the massacre perpetrated by Anders Behring Breivik on 22 July 2011. The extent to which banal Nordism hindered the exposure of the likes of Breivik remains an open question.73 However, with such objectionable facets festering beneath the surface, it is hardly surprising that ‘the North’ is incapable of standing up to too much scrutiny. Norden invokes ‘a prohibition of questions. The dream is the reality, the wish is the politics ... analysis is untrue and reality is a lie.’74 This places an embargo on a too-critical critique of Norden. The risk is, therefore, that the same old myths get repeated. At its worst, Norden is the last bastion of the lazy journalist. To take but one example: Iceland’s financial woes, economic meltdown and consequent referendum over whether to settle the foreign debts of the investment bank, Icesave. This led one commentator to muse about neo-Vikings marauding in the financial world, aggressive non-Nordic superpowers threatening the plucky little nations of Norden, and vacuous words about Nordic neighbourliness.75 This is all pretty innocuous stuff – banal in the most boring sense of the word and a harmless way for a Swedish newspaper-reader to liven up his breakfast by experiencing a frisson of pride and Nordic fellowship. There is nothing wrong with this. What is troubling is that it tends to throw a veil over less savoury aspects of Norden. This brings us back to that wrong-sounding ‘Swedish grenade’.

(redirects to ‘Nordic race’). These entries have now changed considerably and the admonitory note cited above has since been deleted. 72   Thomas Hylland Eriksen, ‘Being Norwegian in a shrinking world: Reflections on Norwegian identity’, in Anne Cohen Kiel (ed.), Continuity and Change: Aspects of Modern Norway (Oslo, 1993), available at http://folk.uio.no/geirthe/Norwegian.html, accessed 6 November 2011. 73   Breivik posted his far-right views ‘on several Scandinavian websites, including Nordisk – a site frequented by neo-Nazis, far right radicals and Islamophobes since 2009.’ Mark Townsend et al., ‘Norway attacks: Utøya Gunman Boasted of Links to UK Far Right’, Guardian, 23 July 2011, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/23/norway-attacksutoya-gunman, accessed 23 July 2011. 74   Sørensen and Stråth, The Cultural Construction of Norden, p. 120. 75   Erik Helmerson, ‘Island: De nya vikingarna plundrade sitt eget folk’, Dagens Nyheter, 9 April 2011, p. 4.

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Cry ‘Norden!’ and Let Slip the Dogs of War There is evidence that, locally at least, a debate about Sweden’s weapons industry is gaining momentum. This is clear from the radio report that woke me on that bright Sunday morning in the spring of 2011. A few weeks later another programme on Sweden’s national radio dealt with the issue of the arms industry in greater depth. The feature was introduced as follows: ‘Sweden is the country that exports the most defence equipment per capita in the world whilst we wish to be ambassadors for human rights and the fight against global poverty.’76 It is not only the scale of Sweden’s arms sales that is of note here. So, too, is the terminology. The use of the word ‘we’ implies that all Swedes agree with the state’s ambassadorial role. This human association with the nation is a warning reminder that any condemnation of Sweden’s actions risks being interpreted as a personal affront. This is compounded by the image used to accompany the online version of the radio programme. It featured Princess Victoria, the heir to the Swedish throne, standing alongside her new husband, Daniel. In an excruciatingly embarrassing pastiche of the Hollywood film, Top Gun, we see the happy couple as they stand awkwardly in front of the ultimate symbol of Sweden’s military ambitions: the JAS 39 Gripen fighter airplane (see Figure 6.2).77 The JAS Gripen is manufactured by Saab AB, the firm responsible for the Carl-Gustaf rifle. Its development – which has been heavily subsidized by the Swedish state – has so far cost an estimated SEK 120 billion.78 The attempted sale of this aircraft to foreign nations has led to claims of bribery and corruption. The most damning criticism relates to Sweden’s dealings with South Africa in the late 1990s. In May 2011 documents came to light suggesting that a subsidiary of Saab AB was involved in paying large bribes in a bid to secure the sale.79 This would appear to confirm the claims set out by Nils Resare in his 2010 book which charts this murky story. It is scathing in its condemnation of the arms industry as well as the highest echelons of Swedish civil society.80 Resare presents evidence to show that Swedish state funds earmarked for development aid

  ‘Sverige är det land i världen som exporterar mest försvarsmateriel per capita samtidigt som vi vill vara ambassadörer för fattigdomsbekämpning och mänskliga rättigheter.’ Människor och tro, 25 March 2011, Sveriges Radio, P1. 77   I am grateful to Jonas Harvard for drawing this visual association to my attention. 78   Olle Nygårds, ‘Gripens rykte hänger i luften’, Svenska Dagbladet, 1 April 2011, ‘Näringsliv’, pp. 4–5. 79   Josefine Hökerberg, ‘Nya dokument kan avslöja Jas-mutor’, Dagens Nyheter, 18 May 2011, p. 8. 80   Nils Resare, Mutor, makt och bistånd: JAS och Sydafrikaaffären (Stockholm, 2010). 76

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Princess Victoria and Prince Daniel. Published with permission of Press Association Images, UK

(bistånd) were used to facilitate the sale of arms. To this end, Swedish cultural activities functioned as a stratagem to mask an ulterior motive: the sale of the JAS Gripen. Under such circumstances it becomes possible to argue that banal Nordism was deployed here as a cynical tool of manipulation. This is a point of view shared by one of the most vocal critics of the JAS Gripen affair, Archbishop Desmond Tutu. This Nobel Peace Prize laureate has argued that Sweden ‘coerced’ South Africa into the purchase of the JAS 39 C/D Gripen, an action that Tutu and others believe led to corruption in the fledgling democracy.81 The Swedish archbishop, K.G. Hammar, opposed the sale by the then Social Democratic government under Prime Minister Göran Persson. Hammar was of the opinion that ‘Sweden exploited … the goodwill it accrued from the fight against apartheid and used it as a reason why the newly democratic South Africa should trade with Sweden’.82   Ibid.; Sveriges Radio, ‘Misstänkta mutor i Jas-affär med Sydafrika’, 16 August 2010, http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=83&artikel=3922269 and http://sverigesradio.se/topsy/ljudfil/2539930.mp3, accessed 4 April 2011. 82   Cited in Sveriges Radio, ‘Korruption i spåren av JAS’, Godmorgon, världen! 15 August 2010, http://sverigesradio.se/topsy/ljudfil/2539930.mp3, accessed 4 April 2011. 81

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These events show the dark side of banal Nordism. They also beg the question: is banal Nordism a deliberate ruse – a ploy consciously fabricated in order to deceive and conceal? In the case of the sale of JAS Gripen to South Africa, the answer is almost certainly yes, it is. However, on a day-to-day basis, the production of banal Nordism is probably as banal as its reception. The ‘constant image’ of Norden is so entrenched that entrepreneurs must find themselves repeating stereotypical images of ‘the North’ even if they are ‘neither consciously nor unconsciously disposed to create such an impression’.83 A case in point occurred during the final, abortive attempt to co-curate the Nordic Pavilion in Venice: the traditional mantra of ‘peace, harmony and new ideas’ was dutifully spouted at its inauguration, even if the process that led to this ill-fated act of Nordic (un)fellowship was clearly anything but harmonious.84

Figure 6.3 The Armémuseum, Sweden’s national army museum. Photo by Stuart Burch   Cf. Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (New York, 1971), p. 6.   Julie Sjøwall Oftedal, ‘Misnøye i Venezia: – Vi vurderer egen norsk utstilling’, 28 August 2010, http://www.arkitektnytt.no/-vi-vurderer-egen-norsk-utstilling, accessed 15 September 2010. 83 84

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A frank appraisal of Norden’s entanglement with contemporary conflict faces additional challenges. This is intimated in a diorama which, at the time of writing, is on show at the Armémuseum in Stockholm. It features two mannequins seated on a living-room sofa. They watch impassively as an unceasing diet of war ‘in a flood that does not cease’ is fed to them via their television.85 Behind them looms a huge military vehicle surmounted by a soldier armed with what looks suspiciously like a Carl-Gustaf rifle. The TV-viewing couple seems entirely oblivious to the reality of what is going on behind them, captivated as they are by the war-as-entertainment that they see on the screen. These ‘normal folk’86 need to be turned around and brought face-to-face with a combat-proven CarlGustaf. This would help allay the lie that ‘Swedes have difficulty understanding how people from other countries look upon wars and those that fight in them’.87 If this asinine statement is really true, how can unworldly Sweden sanction the sale of weapons of mass destruction such as the Carl-Gustaf or the JAS Gripen? It is precisely this disparity between banal self-delusion and bloody reality that urgently needs to be addressed by an institution such as Sweden’s Armémuseum. Saab AB’s intrigues in South Africa as well as in other countries – including Sweden’s embarrassingly unsuccessful attempt to sell the JAS Gripen aircraft to Norway in 200888 – would make fascinating topics for exhibitions at the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo or the Nobel Museum in Stockholm. If this took place, the unifying ‘Nordic element’ would take on a very different hue. The ‘cohesive mortar’ that binds the nations of ‘the North’ might be just that – mortar in the sense of ‘various devices for firing a projectile with a high trajectory’.89 A case in point is the so-called Nordic Standard Helicopter Programme of the late 1990s. Sweden’s former defence minister, Björn von Sydow, was so enamoured with the notion of collaborating with his Nordic

85   The reference to ‘a flood that does not cease’ is taken from an intriguing song entitled ‘18.29-4’ written by Joakim Berg of the Swedish rock group Kent. It appears on their album Röd (2009). See http://kent.nu/latar/18-29-4 and also the comments I make later on in this section and in the conclusion of the chapter. 86  Ibid. 87  Holger, Fredsoldater, p. 192. 88   Revelations that the Swedish authorities had been duped by their Norwegian counterparts led one newspaper to ask: ‘Can Norwegians be trusted?’ Oisín Cantwell, ‘Kan man lita på norrmän?’, Aftonbladet, 4 December 2010, pp. 12–13. See also Jessica Balksjö et al., ‘Jas-blåsningen’, Aftonbladet, 4 December 2010, pp. 10–11. 89   ‘Mortar, noun’, Oxford English Dictionary (OED), 3rd edn, December 2002, http:// oed.com/view/Entry/122447, accessed 4 April 2011.

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neighbours that he went against the guidance of his expert advisers. A decade on, this has proven to be a costly and largely abortive decision.90 Knowledge of an incident such as this provides the potential to tell a rarelytold counter-narrative to Norden’s ‘old song of peace’.91 For instance, during the joyful centenary of the peaceful dissolution of the Swedish–Norwegian Union, little mention was made of the fact that, in 2005, the Norwegian state bought a half-share in the arms manufacturer Nammo.92 This is a pity because Nammo is an exceedingly Nordic company. It was established in 1998 following ‘a merger of ammunition activities of three major Nordic defence companies’, namely Celsius AB, Raufoss ASA and Patria Industries Oyj.93 The last-named firm currently shares equal ownership of Nammo with the Norwegian state. With a workforce of just under 2,000 people and an annual turnover of roughly NOK 3 billion, Nammo specializes in ‘ammunition systems’ as well as ‘missile and space propulsion products’ and considers itself to be ‘a world leader within environmentally friendly demilitarisation services’.94 Another player in this sector is Kongsberg Gruppen, the headquarters of which are in Norway and with the Norwegian state as its majority shareholder. Its annual report for 2010 revealed operating revenues of NOK 15,497 billion, 36.7 per cent of which was accounted for by Kongsberg Protech Systems. Kongsberg states excitedly that this is an area of business that has grown ‘exceptionally quickly’.95 Its top seller is the Protector Remote Weapon Station (RWS). This is promoted as a market leader in offering protection to the occupants of armoured vehicles. More than 10,000 such systems have been sold to seventeen countries, only one of which is named: the US army. This customer ‘has announced plans to procure up to 18,000 systems over the next five years’.96 The Kongsberg group has a corporate code of ethics and seeks ‘to comply insofar as possible with the “Norwegian Code of Practice for Corporate   Sveriges Radio, ‘Minister struntade i expertråd vid helikopterköp’, Nyheter/Ekot, 17 August 2011, http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=83&artikel=46488 20, accessed 17 August 2011. 91   The origins of this phrase (which also features in the title of this chapter) is derived from the aforementioned song, ‘18.29-4’ by the Swedish rock group Kent (see the penultimate paragraph of this chapter). 92   Asle Skredderberget, ‘Staten kjøper seg opp i omstridt våpenprodusent’, Aftenposten, 24 November 2005, http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/okonomi/article1163801.ece, accessed 24 November 2005. 93   Nammo, ‘Nammo in Brief ’, http://www.nammo.com/Nammo-Group, accessed 12 November 2011. 94  Ibid. 95   Kongsberg Gruppen, Annual Report 2010, p. 12. 96   Ibid., pp. 8–9 and 28. 90

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Governance”’.97 In 2010 it placed a particular focus on anti-corruption measures; even so, it admits to ‘shortcomings’ when it comes ‘to internal control and the other areas defined as parts of corporate social responsibility’.98 For its part, Nammo stresses that the development, sale and marketing of all its products ‘is strictly in accordance with laws and regulations [laid down] by the national authorities of our respective domestic customers’.99 An opportunity to test not only this assertion but also Norway’s wider credentials as ‘a peace nation’ was denied in 2006 when the Norwegian state broadcaster NRK refused to transmit a documentary examining Norway’s role in the arms industry.100 Norden’s museums should break this silence by facilitating a much-needed discussion of the ethics of the arms trade. Sweden’s Armémuseum, for example, could juxtapose its Carl-Gustaf from the 1940s with Saab AB’s latest model. The Non-Violence Project might be asked to write a thought-provoking exhibition booklet and education guide. Reuterswäld’s knotted pistol displayed alongside a Carl-Gustaf would provide a trigger for debate. So, too, would the inclusion of a Carl-Gustaf in the design galleries of Sweden’s Nationalmuseum. The display could be entitled ‘Unpredictable Sweden: Beyond the Myth’. It would, moreover, be interesting to use this novel insertion as an opportunity to compare the marketing of artefacts designed for the home with the promotion of military equipment. The sleek and seductive presentation of Saab AB’s products on its website suggests that these spheres of advertising have much in common. The question is, of course, whether such Norden-evoking and Nordeninvoking efforts would be acceptable to the region’s cultural, financial and academic entrepreneurs, organizations and funders. They might well lodge objections on the grounds of taste and propriety. These protests could be countered by referring to other, far more extreme precedents. The juxtapositions and provocations suggested in the preceding paragraphs are mild in comparison to the sights on show at Body Armour, a temporary exhibition mounted by Sweden’s Armémuseum in 2011 (see Figure 6.4). This was devoted to Morten Traavik, the first artist in residence at Forsvarsmuseet, Norway’s Defence Museum. His exhibition featured the latest in an ongoing series of works under the general title ‘HÆRWERK’. This very old word, variations of which feature in many languages, is familiar from the phrase ‘cry havoc’, the order issued to an army to signal the seizure of spoil – as in the famous Shakespearian line: ‘Cry   Ibid., p. 15.   Ibid., pp. 14 and 63. 99   Nammo, ‘Nammo in brief ’, accessed 12 November 2011. 100   Skånland, ‘“Norway is a Peace Nation”’; Arve Henriksen, ‘NRK Rejects Film that Debunks Norway’s Peaceful Image’, Aftenposten, 31 March 2006, http://www.aftenposten. no/english/local/article1264501.ece, accessed 31 March 2006. 97 98

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“Havoc!” and let slip the dogs of war’.101 In Traavik’s case such ‘spoils’ include the morphing of weapons and body parts to produce disturbing and surrealistic objects that prompt reflection on the link between sex and violence. These and other initiatives by Traavik led to much debate in Norway, in part because the leadership of Norway’s defence forces apparently attempted to censor certain works.102

Figure 6.4

Body Armour from the series ‘HÆRWERK’ by Morten Traavik, the first artist in residence at Norway’s Defence Museum. Photo by Stuart Burch

Whilst the Armémuseum in Stockholm was brave enough to host a contentious Norwegian artist, would it be so willing to ‘cry havoc!’ on Sweden’s arms industry? Could it, for instance, metamorphose the barrel of a Carl-Gustaf into an engorged penis à la Morten Traavik? Consideration would first have to   Julius Caesar, Act 3.1: 273. See William Shakespeare, The Oxford Shakespeare: Julius Caesar (Oxford, 1998), p. 173. See also ‘Havoc, n.’, Oxford English Dictionary (OED), 2nd edn, 1989, http://oed.com/view/Entry/84740, accessed 15 April 2011. 102   Information derived from the introductory panel to the exhibition, Body Armour (Armémuseum, 12 April–11 September 2011). 101

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be given to the fact that Saab AB sponsored the National Swedish Museums of Military History (SFHM) to the tune of SEK 2.2 million in 2009.103 This funded the rebuilding of the Swedish Air Force Museum, which was awarded the accolade of Swedish Museum of the Year for 2011. In 2007 Saab AB helped pay for the redisplay of Armémuseum’s trophy collection featuring some 4,500 colours and standards seized during Swedish military campaigns dating from the seventeenth century to 1814. These and other spoils of war would have been gathered once the order ‘havoc!’ had been issued. Such items were taken triumphantly back to Sweden as evidence of the nation’s prowess on the field of battle. Their continual display is, in other words, the antithesis of Kofi Annan’s prayer ‘which asks not for victory, but for peace’. Nostalgia and a pride in Sweden’s past military endeavours clearly resonate with the production and sale of weapons today – as testified by Saab AB’s sponsorship. Saab AB’s generous financial support helped put the Swedish State Trophy Collection ‘in [a] new light’.104 Such illumination needs to be shed on more contemporary aspects of war. The moral and ethical implications of Sweden’s involvement in the arms trade is mentioned, albeit briefly, in the guidebook accompanying the Armémuseum’s permanent collection.105 The text is accompanied by a photograph of the museum’s 1948 Carl-Gustaf. This, as we have seen, is no historical relic but the antecedent of the even more lethal current model. Its manufacture and sale merits far greater emphasis and scrutiny. This is particularly necessary given that in March 2011 Saab AB announced that it had clinched a deal to sell SEK 1,155 billion worth of Carl-Gustaf rifles and ammunition to an unnamed purchaser. This commenced in September 2011 and continued throughout the following year.106 The money and weapons will exchange hands coincident with the Nordic Council’s commemoration of its sixtieth anniversary. The lack of transparency regarding the destination of this lethal equipment flies in the face of Sweden’s reputation for openness and democracy. It so happens that Sweden is one of the very few countries in Europe that allows large-scale

  Statens Försvarshistoriska Museer, Årsredovisning 2009, http://www.sfhm.se/ upload/SFHM_NY/Årsredovisningar/Årsredovisning 2009.pdf, p. 34, accessed 11 April 2011. 104   Statens Försvarshistoriska Museer, ‘Statens trofésamling i nytt ljus’, http://www. sfhm.se/templates/pages/ArmeStandardPage.aspx?id=5135, accessed 11 April 2011. 105   Anna Maria Forssberg (ed.), Armémuseum: om krig och människor (Stockholm, 2009), p. 67. 106   Saab AB, ‘Carl-Gustaf system’ (press release), 11 March 2011. 103

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donations to political parties to remain anonymous.107 This has led to stinging criticism from the Council of Europe’s Group of States against Corruption (GRECO).108 This state of affairs is as anomalous to banal Nordism as is the knowledge that Sweden is, per capita, the world’s leading exporter of arms. Is it ethical for the National Swedish Museums of Military History to accept sponsorship from Saab AB? Does it have an impact on curatorial decisions? Would it matter if Saab AB had given anonymous financial backing to the Alliance parties of the ruling centre-right coalition or the preceding Social Democratic government? Would such support influence the political representatives who sit on the panel that advises on the export of military and other strategic equipment?109 Similar questions concern the ‘Swedishness’ of Saab AB. The name Wallenberg might well be synonymous with peace, but this does not prevent the ‘Wallenberg foundations’ from being listed as an 8.7 per cent shareholder in Saab AB as of December 2010.110 A public discussion and debate about these and other such issues is hindered by banal Nordism. The unreflected blind spots that it induces will only be rectified through a thorough-going analysis of Norden’s involvement in peace and conflict. One of the most dramatic examinations of this ilk is the documentary film Armadillo111 which deals with the activities of Danish soldiers in Afghanistan, including intimations that they revelled in the killing of Taliban fighters – to the extent that they allegedly ‘liquidated’ wounded combatants. The victorious soldiers are seen gathering up the weapons of their bullet-ridden opponents. They transport what they proudly call their ‘loot of war’ back to base. This cache of war booty is an updated version of the Saab AB-sponsored

  Ewa Stenberg, ‘Sverige inte alls så öppet’, Dagens Nyheter, 24 November 2010, http://www.dn.se/nyheter/politik/sverige-inte-alls-sa-oppet-1.1214816, accessed 11 April 2011. 108  GRECO, Compliance Report on Sweden, Greco RC-III (2011) 4E, Strasbourg, 1 April 2011, http://www.coe.int/t/dghl/monitoring/greco/evaluations/round3/GrecoRC 3%282011%294_Sweden_EN.pdf, accessed 26 April 2011. 109   This is the Export Control Council (Exportkontrollrådet), a cross-party parliamentary body that advises the Swedish Agency for Non-Proliferation and Export Controls (Inspektionen för strategiska produkter). 110   The full list of the largest shareholders (as of 31 December 2010) was as follows: Investor AB (30%); BAE Systems (10.2%); Wallenberg foundations (8.7%); Nordea Funds (5.4%); Swedbank Robur Funds (4.3%); 4th AP Fund (1.9%); Länsförsäkringar Funds (1.8%); SEB Funds (1.7%). See Saab, ‘Key Facts’, http://www.saabgroup.com/en/AboutSaab/Company-profile/Saab-in-brief/Key-facts/, accessed 11 April 2011. 111   Armadillo, directed by Janus Metz, released 27 May 2010, 100 minutes, Fridthjof Film A/S. 107

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trophy collection at Sweden’s Armémuseum – proof positive that the men of the North are capable of matching their Viking forebears. The response of one English-language movie critic to this documentary film is noteworthy: ‘Armadillo doesn’t offer conclusive proof that the Danish soldiers broke the rules of engagement. Nonetheless, the very possibility that they might have done is startling in itself.’112 This can be interpreted as one final instance of banal Nordism: the very possibility that Danish soldiers could be as inhuman or depraved as soldiers from Britain, the United States or any other nation is shocking precisely because we are banally conditioned to expect that Norden ‘serves the interest of peace and justice throughout the whole world’.113 Combat-proven Conclusions The origins of this chapter coincided with the so-called ‘Arab Spring’ of 2011. I began writing shortly after British Prime Minister David Cameron became the first foreign statesman to visit Egypt following the uprising that would see the ousting of Hosni Mubarak. Cameron stopped off in Cairo on his way to a three-day tour of the Gulf states. In his entourage were representatives of ‘eight of Britain’s leading defence manufacturers’.114 Cameron’s decision to tour the region in the company of weapons exporters was to prove both controversial and premature. The spring of 2011 has long since passed, but the turmoil in the Arab world looks set to continue for the foreseeable future. Even at an early stage it was clear that the consequences will be momentous and far-reaching. Take Libya, for example. On 17 March 2011, UN Security Council Resolution 1973 authorized member states to take all necessary measures short of ‘a foreign occupation’ to protect the people of Libya. This led to the implementation of a ‘no-fly zone’ which remained in place until 31 October 2011. By that date Muammar Gaddafi was dead and the country’s National Transitional Council had issued a ‘Declaration of Liberation’.115

  Geoffrey MacNab, ‘Armadillo: The Afghanistan War Documentary that Shocked Denmark’, Guardian, 3 June 2010, http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/jun/03/ armadillo-danish-documentary-afghanistan, accessed 11 April 2011. 113   This, it may be recalled, is the maxim of the Norden Association. 114   Nicholas Watt and Robert Booth, ‘David Cameron’s Cairo Visit Overshadowed by Defence Tour’, Guardian, 21 February 2011, http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/ feb/21/cameron-cairo-visit-defence-trade, accessed 30 November 2011. 115   United Nations Security Council S/RES/2016 (2011), 27 October 2011, §6. 112

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Management of the ‘no-fly zone’ came under the command of NATO. Although not a member of this organization, Sweden opted to participate – but on a highly constrained basis. The eight JAS Gripen that were initially sent were not allowed to take part in bombing sorties.116 Instead, their role was confined to reconnaissance. Even this was restricted: the pilots were instructed to avoid actively following Gaddafi’s forces.117 Such constraints were not set by Norway and Denmark, both of which took part as members of NATO.118 The Libya operation thus underlined clear differences between the Nordic countries. Indeed, the Nordic region was no more united than the rest of the world over the course of action mandated by UN Resolution 1973. Staffan Danielsson of the Centre Party, speaking in the Swedish parliament, described the nature of his country’s involvement in the Libya campaign as ‘a little odd’ given that, in the final analysis, it left the actual task of defending the Libyan people to others.119 Yet this abrogation of responsibility makes perfect sense when looked at through the prism of banal Nordism. Sweden’s behaviour safeguarded its reputation as having a tradition of peace – the value of which was emphasized by its foreign minister, Carl Bildt, when the issue of the war in Libya was debated in parliament.120 The name JAS Gripen refers to the aircraft’s three principal functions, namely: pursuit (Jakt), attack (Attack) and reconnaissance (Spaning). In Libya only the ‘S’ of its name was utilized. This decision enabled Sweden to take part in a war but in such a way as to avoid risking its reputation for enjoying ‘peace for nearly 200 years’. It fought in a battle without resorting to violence. It helped win the war by enabling others to wage it. This is akin to manufacturing ‘defence’ equipment like the Carl-Gustaf and selling it to belligerent powers. The wages of war are plentiful. The JAS Gripen has many qualities, but it had not been tested in battle. Unlike the Carl-Gustaf it was not ‘combat-proven’. Now, thanks to the war in Libya, it can claim this highly desirable accolade. Sweden’s ostensible involvement in Libya was to help topple a hated and muchfeared dictator. There were, however, other concerns (or happy consequences, 116   ‘Vi säger att planen inte ska få angripa markmål.’ Urban Ahlin cited in Regeringskansliet, ‘Svenskt deltagande i den internationella militära insatsen i Libyen’, Riksdagens protokoll 2010/11:81, 1 April 2011, http://www.riksdagen.se/webbnav/index. aspx?nid=101&bet=2010/11:81, §2, accessed 22 November 2011. 117   Mikael Holmström, ‘Bara spaning för svenskar’, Svenska Dagbladet, 23 April 2011, p. 17. 118   A fact pointed out by Carl B Hamilton (FP) in an address to parliament. See ‘Svenskt deltagande i den internationella militära insatsen i Libyen’, Riksdagens protokoll, §14, accessed 22 November 2011. 119  Ibid. 120   Ibid., §10.

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depending on your point of view). The high profile the aircraft received during the conflict will help those who wish to fund and develop a new-generation JAS Gripen.121 Crucially, Libya’s war was Sweden’s export opportunity. The marketing of Saab AB’s JAS Gripen has been enhanced considerably. This was a skilful manoeuvre: Sweden’s reputation for peace was secured while its potential as an exporter of weapons was enhanced. And so it is that Norden’s ‘old song of peace’ can continue to be sung in Stockholm – the capital city of a country that has only known peace for 200 years. This phrase – an ‘old song of peace’ – has been inspired by the cryptically titled song, ‘18.29-4’. This forms the first track on the album Röd (Red) by the Swedish rock group, Kent. An amateur choir of church-goers sings the band’s lyrics. To the accompaniment of tolling bells and a church organ they refer to the shooting of soldiers. Yet no-one can be bothered to ask why. Instead, the soldiers die to a soundtrack of popular peace songs sung by the masses. However, to paraphrase this pseudo-hymn, ‘even a hundred thousand voices can be wrong’. Only time will tell if the blissful ignorance inspired by the workings of banal Nordism will prevail. One thing is clear: the singers of those old songs of peace will be obliged to raise their voices ever louder in an effort to drown out the explosive impact of Saab AB’s Carl-Gustaf and the deafening roar of its JAS Gripen. Bibliography Printed Primary Sources Aftonbladet, 4 December 2010. Annan, Kofi, ‘Message on the Centennial of the Peaceful Dissolution of the Union between Norway and Sweden’ (press release), February 2005. Dagens Nyheter, 1, 21, 23 March 2011; 9, 10 April 2011; 18 May 2011. Facts worth knowing about the Øresund Bridge (Copenhagen: Øresundsbrokonsortiet, 2008). Kongsberg Gruppen, Annual Report 2010. Nordvästra Skånes Tidningar, 23 March 2011. Saab AB, ‘The 84 mm Carl-Gustaf Multi-Purpose Weapon System’, product sheet, 8 pp – Carl-Gustaf – Eng – vol.1, April 2009. Saab AB, ‘Carl-Gustaf system’ (press release), 11 March 2011.

  Ewa Stenberg, ‘Tolgfors vill ha super-Jas’, Dagens Nyheter, 1 March 2011, p. 10.

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Svenska Dagbladet, 14, 17, 18 January 2011; 22 March 2011; 1, 23 April 2011; 3 May 2011. Secondary Sources Aronsson, Peter, ‘Introduction: Uses of the Past – Nordic Historical Cultures in a Comparative Perspective’, Culture Unbound, 2 (2010), pp. 553–563. Billig, Michael, Banal Nationalism (London: Sage, 1995). Brubaker, Rogers, Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). Burch, Stuart, ‘Nationell narcissism’, Historisk Tidskrift för Finland, 95/1 (2010), pp. 204–211. Burch, Stuart, ‘Norden, Reframed’, Culture Unbound, 2 (2010), pp. 565–581, available at http://www.cultureunbound.ep.liu.se/v2/a33, accessed 25 March 2011. Burch, Stuart, ‘Låt det nordiska komma in’, in J. Björkman, B. Fjæstad and J. Harvard (eds), Ett nordiskt rum: Historiska och framtida gemenskaper från Baltikum till Barents hav (Gothenburg and Stockholm: Makadam, 2011), pp. 60–71. Burch, Stuart, ‘Taking Part: Performance, Participation and National Art Museums’, in S. Knell et al. (eds), National Museums: New Studies From Around the World (London: Routledge, 2011), pp. 225–246. Eriksen, Thomas Hylland, ‘Being Norwegian in a Shrinking World: Reflections on Norwegian Identity’, in Anne Cohen Kiel (ed.), Continuity and Change: Aspects of Modern Norway (Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, 1993), available at http://folk.uio.no/geirthe/Norwegian.html, accessed 6 November 2011. Fallan, Kjetil, Design History: Understanding Theory and Method (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2010). Forssberg, Anna Maria (ed.), Armémuseum: om krig och människor (Stockholm: Armémuseum, 2009). Goffman, Erving, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (New York: Doubleday, 1971). Halén, Widar and Kerstin Wickman (eds), Scandinavian Design Beyond the Myth: Fifty Years of Design from the Nordic Countries (Stockholm: Arvinius Förlag, 2006). Hettne, Björn, Sverker Sörlin and Uffe Østergård, Den globala nationalismen: nationalstatens historia och framtid (Stockholm: SNS, 1998). Holger, Lena (ed.), Fredssoldater (Stockholm: Armémuseum, 2009). Insall, Tony and Patrick Salmon (eds), The Nordic Countries: From War to Cold War, 1944–1951 (London: Routledge, 2011).

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Libæk, Ivar and Øivind Stenersen, The History of Norway: From the Ice Age to Today, trans. James Anderson (Lysaker: Dinamo, 2003). Lundström, Jan-Erik, Stranger Than Paradise: Contemporary Scandinavian Photography (New York: The International Center of Photography, 1994). Nilsson, Torbjörn, ‘Sverige och 1905 – glömska eller förträngning?’, Historiska Tidsskrift, 84 (2005), pp. 217–228. Resare, Nils, Mutor, makt och bistånd: JAS och Sydafrikaaffären (Stockholm: Natur & Kultur, 2010). Schult, Tanja, ‘Whose Raoul Wallenberg is it? The Man and the Myth: Between Memory, History and Popularity’, Culture Unbound, 2 (2010), pp. 769–796. Shakespeare, William, The Oxford Shakespeare: Julius Caesar (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998). Skånland, Øystein Haga, ‘“Norway is a Peace Nation”: A Discourse Analytic Reading of the Norwegian Peace Engagement’, Cooperation and Conflict, 45 (2010), pp. 34–54. Sørensen, Øystein and Bo Stråth (eds), The Cultural Construction of Norden (Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, 1997). Wetterberg, Gunnar, Förbundsstaten Norden, TemaNord 582 (Copenhagen: Nordic Council, 2010). Internet Sources Alexander, Harriet and Marcus Oscarsson, ‘Swedes in Shock at King Carl Gustaf Sex Scandal’, Daily Telegraph, 6 November 2010, http://www.telegraph. co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/sweden/8114740/Swedes-in-shock-atKing-Carl-Gustaf-sex-scandal.html, accessed 25 March 2011. ‘Carl Fredrik Reuterswärd: Non-Violence, 1980 – 2002’, press release, 10 January 2002, http://www.kopenhagen.dk/fileadmin/oldsite/presse/ CFRsvenskpress.htm, accessed 4 April 2011. Defense News, ‘Defense News Top 100 for 2010’, http://special.defensenews. com/top-100/charts/rank_2010.php, accessed 12 October 2011. DigitaltMuseum, ‘8,4 cm granatgevär m/1948’, accession no. AM.125476, http://www.digitaltmuseum.se, accessed 25 March 2011. DigitaltMuseum, ‘Genomskjuten plåt, 5,56 mm Carl Gustaf AP’, accession no. AM.038951, http://www.digitaltmuseum.se, accessed 25 March 2011. DN.se, ‘Kalmarunion inte på nordisk tapet’, Dagens Nyheter, undated, http:// www.dn.se/nyheter/sverige/kalmarunion-inte-pa-nordisk-tapet, accessed 25 March 2011.

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Europa, ‘Protection of Geographical Indications and Designations of Origin’, 14 September 2010, http://europa.eu/legislation_summaries/agriculture/ food/l66044_en.htm, accessed 31 March 2011. Granit, ‘About Granit’, http://www.granit.se/?id=1492, accessed 25 March 2011. GRECO, Compliance Report on Sweden, Greco RC-III (2011) 4E, Strasbourg, 1 April 2011, http://www.coe.int/t/dghl/monitoring/greco/evaluations/ round3/GrecoRC3%282011%294_Sweden_EN.pdf, accessed 26 April 2011. Henriksen, Arve, ‘NRK Rejects Film that Debunks Norway’s Peaceful Image’, Aftenposten, 31 March 2006, http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/ article1264501.ece, accessed 31 March 2006. Holmbäck, Christopher, ‘Svenska vapen är deras vardag’, Fokus, 29 October 2009, http://www.fokus.se/2009/10/svenska-vapen-ar-deras-vardag, accessed 25 March 2011. London Stock Exchange Aggregated Regulatory News Service (ARNS), ‘BAE Systems Plc Interim Results -6-’, 1 August 2008, http://www.lexisnexis.com. MacNab, Geoffrey, ‘Armadillo: The Afghanistan War Documentary that Shocked Denmark’, Guardian, 3 June 2010, http://www.guardian.co.uk/ film/2010/jun/03/armadillo-danish-documentary-afghanistan, accessed 11 April 2011. Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland, ‘The Nordic Declaration on Solidarity’, 5 April 2011, http://www.formin.fi/Public/default.aspx?contentid=217312, accessed 11 April 2011. Nammo, ‘Nammo in Brief ’, http://www.nammo.com/Nammo-Group, accessed 12 November 2011. Nipen, Jersti, ‘Vil endre nordisk samarbeid om Venezia-biennalen’, Aftenposten, 31 August 2010, http://www.aftenposten.no/kul_und/article3790347.ece, accessed 15 September 2010. Non-Violence, ‘The Symbol Non-Violence’, http://www.nonviolence.com/ about#thesymbol, accessed 4 April 2011. Norden Association, ‘Nordens dag’, undated, http://www.norden.se/MotNorden/Nordens-dag, accessed 4 April 2011. Norden Association, ‘“Norden” and the Norden Association’, undated, http:// www.norden.se/Om-oss/Foreningen-Nordens-verksamhet/In-English, accessed 4 April 2011. Norden Association, ‘All For One, One For All’, 7 April 2011, http://www. norden.org/en/news-and-events/news/all-for-one-one-for-all, accessed 11 April 2011.

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Nordic Ecolabelling, ‘The Nordic Ecolabel – The Official Ecolabel in the Nordic Countries’, undated, http://www.nordic-ecolabel.org/about, accessed 4 April 2011. Norway, the Official Site, ‘The Nobel Peace Center – A Place of Peace’, undated, www.norway.org/policy/peace/center/center.htm, accessed 29 April 2006. Oftedal, Julie Sjøwall, ‘Misnøye i Venezia: – Vi vurderer egen norsk utstilling’, 28 August 2010, http://www.arkitektnytt.no/-vi-vurderer-egen-norskutstilling, accessed 15 September 2010. Regeringskansliet, ‘Svenskt deltagande i den internationella militära insatsen i Libyen’, Riksdagens protokoll 2010/11:81, 1 April 2011, http://www. riksdagen.se/webbnav/index.aspx?nid=101&bet=2010/11:81, accessed 22 November 2011. Saab AB, ‘Carl-Gustaf M3 Weapon System’, http://www.saabgroup.com/en/ Land/Weapon-Systems/support-weapons/Carl_Gustaf_M3_weapon_ system/In-use, accessed 25 March 2011. Saab AB, ‘Key Facts’, http://www.saabgroup.com/en/About-Saab/Companyprofile/Saab-in-brief/Key-facts/, accessed 11 April 2011. Skredderberget, Asle, ‘Staten kjøper seg opp i omstridt våpenprodusent’, Aftenposten, 24 November 2005, http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/ okonomi/article1163801.ece, accessed 24 November 2005. Statens försvarhistoriska museer, ‘Statens trofésamling i nytt ljus’, http:// www.sfhm.se/templates/pages/ArmeStandardPage.aspx?id=5135, accessed 11 April 2011. Statens försvarhistoriska museer, Årsredovisning 2009, http://www.sfhm.se/ upload/SFHM_NY/Årsredovisningar/Årsredovisning 2009.pdf, accessed 11 April 2011. Stenberg, Ewa, ‘Sverige inte alls så öppet’, Dagens Nyheter, 24 November 2010, http://www.dn.se/nyheter/politik/sverige-inte-alls-sa-oppet-1.1214816, accessed 11 April 2011. Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), ‘The SIPRI Top 100 Arms-producing Companies, 2009’, http://www.sipri.org/research/ armaments/production/Top100, accessed 25 March 2011. Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), ‘Stockholm International Peace Research Institute – A Top Global Think Tank’, undated, http://www.sipri.org/about, accessed 4 April 2011. Sveriges Radio, ‘Korruption i spåren av JAS’, Godmorgon, världen!, 15 August 2010, http://sverigesradio.se/topsy/ljudfil/2539930.mp3, accessed 4 April 2011. Sveriges Radio, ‘Misstänkta mutor i Jas-affär med Sydafrika’, 16 August 2010, http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=83&artikel=3922269

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and http://sverigesradio.se/topsy/ljudfil/2539930.mp3, accessed 4 April 2011. Sveriges Radio, ‘Arabisk vår?’, Konflikt, 22 January 2011, http://sverigesradio.se/ sida/artikel.aspx?programid=1300&artikel=4306449, accessed 25 March 2011. Sveriges Radio, ‘Minister struntade i expertråd vid helikopterköp’, Nyheter/Ekot, 17 August 2011, http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=83& artikel=4648820, accessed 17 August 2011. Townsend, Mark et al., ‘Norway attacks: Utøya Gunman Boasted of Links to UK Far Right’, Guardian, 23 July 2011, http://www.guardian.co.uk/ world/2011/jul/23/norway-attacks-utoya-gunman, accessed 23 July 2011. Vidlund, Susanna et al., ‘Vi vänder blad och går vidare’, Aftonbladet, 4 November 2010, http://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/article8069975.ab, accessed 25 March 2011. Watt, Nicholas and Robert Booth, ‘David Cameron’s Cairo Visit Overshadowed by Defence Tour’, Guardian, 21 February 2011, http://www.guardian. co.uk/politics/2011/feb/21/cameron-cairo-visit-defence-trade, accessed 30 November 2011.

Chapter 7

‘Nordic’ as Border Country Rhetoric: Danish versus German in South Jutland Museums and Memorial Culture Olav Christensen

Seen from a Danish perspective, the Danish–German relationship is not only dramatic but also traumatic. This chapter describes how Danish museums in the borderlands communicate conflicts of the past, when Danes were attacked by Germans on both military and cultural battlegrounds. It shows how stories of foreign harassment have the potential of being transformed and used in a context of xenophobia. From his American point of view, the political scientist Timothy W. Luke writes that museums are places in which a number of key cultural values are first defined and that, in this process of definition, what is personal becomes political so that thereafter the political can hardly be distinguished from the personal. Thus, museums help form (and maintain) what the public perceives as reality: Like neighbourhoods and schools, museums are places where we first learn about our culture, history and environment, and to which we later turn for reassurance that our perception is correct.1 This applies especially to cultural history museums, which often have important target groups within the local communities in which they operate. The approaches taken by these museums rarely appear on the public agenda, although their messages often have the character of politically correct stances, especially within their own target groups. This lack of critical evaluation makes it far too easy to overlook the fact that cultural history museums sometimes confirm views of reality that have problematic consequences. This problem becomes particularly acute when museums present representations of ethnic and national communities. The limited communicative repertoire that museums have at their disposal (artefacts, pictures/film and 1   Timothy W. Luke, Museum Politics: Power Plays at the Exhibition (St Paul and London, 2002).

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short texts) allows little room for nuanced views. When the consequence is oversimplification and a dearth of nuance in issues of ‘us’ versus ‘them’, or inclusion and exclusion, we end up with static pictures of important community institutions. The model for museums that present identity is the national museum, and this type of museum has a long history in Europe.2 Even though this model has been subjected to massive criticism and has been under revision in many regions,3 museums far more commonly present national and ethnic communities as closed and restricted rather than as open, inclusive and dynamic. The Difficult Requirements of Delimitations The Danish regions bordering on Germany – the villages, churchyards and elsewhere in the landscape of Sønderjylland [South Jutland] – have thousands of memorial monuments. They feature short messages carved into stone, referring not only to earlier conflicts and disputes, defeats and thirst for revenge, but also to victories and pride.4 Complementary information placing these statements in context, the ‘grand narratives’ of the Danish border country, can be found in the museums and history and information centres in the district. Danish versions of conflicts with the country’s German neighbour are presented in the form of facts and myths in such a way that it is difficult to distinguish between cultural and territorial disputes. The many cultural institutions and monuments in the South Jutland landscape relate one aspect of a complex and difficult history. Seen from a Danish national perspective, these are anything but striking: they merely tell what the Danes ‘know’ about the past. Hence, they contribute to maintaining Danish images of self. In this chapter, the intention is to examine Danish– German disputes and the cultural expressions of these through two perspectives: how Danishness is maintained through the thematization of, and references to,

2   Peter Aronsson, ‘Vad är ett nationalmuseum?’, in Kungl. Vitterhets Historie och Antikvitets Akademiens årsbok (Stockholm, 2010), available from http://www.vitterhetsakad. se/publikationer. 3   Saphinaz Amal  Naguib,  ‘Reconciling History and Memory at the Cité Nationale de l’Histoire de l’Immigration in Paris’, in  Hanne-Lovise Skartveit and Katherine J. Goodnow  (eds),  Changes in Museum Practice: New Media, Refugees and Participation (Oxford, 2010). 4   See Inge Adriansen, Erindringssteder i Danmark. Monumenter, mindesmærker og mødestede (Copenhagen, 2010); also Inge Adriansen and Matthias Schartl, Erindringssteder nord og syd forGrænsen (Sønderborg and Schleswig, 2006).

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its essence; and how emphasizing differences in relation to ‘the other’ reinforces boundaries between what is Danish and what is German.5 It must be assumed that few readers are familiar with the historical background of Danish–German conflicts. A relatively comprehensive explanation of how these two became mutual enemies is therefore necessary, and, to a certain degree, so is the history of ideas on both sides of the border. Rather than passing judgement on right and wrong, my intention is to highlight the rhetoric of delimitation as expressed in the South Jutland memorial culture in the way it can be experienced today. The text does not aim to include or compare a possible similar memorial culture on the German side. It is nevertheless important to clarify from the outset what is problematic in both the Danish and the German interpretations, which means drawing clear dividing lines that are based on populations and culture between where one country stops and the other begins However, the fact is that the dividing lines are anything but absolute: the further south one goes in Denmark, the higher the number of inhabitants with German cultural preferences. After crossing the border into Germany and moving south, the number identifying themselves with what is Danish gradually diminishes. Delimiting Danish, as opposed to German, by referring to something ethnic or genetic is not an option because differences other than cultural ones cannot be identified in these regions. Even so, or perhaps precisely because of this, the Danes found another dimension by which to define differences: the concept of Norden. Although Germany sometimes included itself in defining ‘the North’, the Danes considered their border with Germany to be the southernmost boundary of the Nordic countries, which made that border crucial to them. During this period, Norden was a vague concept used principally only as a contrast to ‘the south’. By marking this border as Norden’s southern edge, Denmark could clearly distinguish itself from Germany and the rest of continental Europe. Anchoring itself firmly in the Nordic sphere ensured that even Sweden and Norway would associate Denmark with the familiar Nordic values, rather than those of the continent. The cultural reference ‘Nordic countries’ was first introduced by French intellectuals, with Montesquieu in the lead. He included climatic conditions to explain why the Nordic peoples were more freedom-loving than Europeans further south. His idealization resonated with the Danes, who deemed this a suitable rhetorical weapon against their neighbour to the south and therefore deployed it in the ideological ‘warfare’ against what was German. The reason why Montesquieu’s concept was so appealing can be found in Denmark’s decline 5   For a discussion of the principles of the relationship between ethnic content and ethnic boundary, see Fredrik Barth, ‘Introduction’, in Fredrik Barth (ed.), Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture Difference (Oslo, 1969), pp. 9–38.

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during the period when it slipped from being a regional power to becoming a small state under pressure. The first section of this chapter therefore includes a brief historical review of this decline and the emergence of conflicts with the German section of the population. Following this, I will highlight an example of how that which was German was interpreted as part of a Nordic cultural context as a cultural–political justification of the German strategy to expand into the north. This is a theme in today’s South Jutland museums, but the history is presented in such a way that it emphasizes German as non-Nordic, and is an example of how cultural content is manoeuvred differently from one side of a border to another. Also included here is the cultural–political background, particularly those elements that concern the history of ideas and identity. Dominating the numerous museums and memorials are the different ways of focusing on the border. This is primarily carried out by narrations about the many problems related to defending the border against the Germans and Germany, and hence also the issue of how to maintain distance from others. The dominant theme of this chapter is South Jutland memorial culture, but a review of its entire rich symbolic, visual and textual universe is impossible, given the limitations of space. Bearing the existing frames in mind, priority will therefore be given to a review of the border as it is presented in some selected museums and memorials. What is problematic in relation to focusing so strongly on the phenomenon of border and delimitation attains special expression in the Sæd Border Museum (Grensemuseet). This museum exhibits attitudes which are particularly voiced by the Dansk Folkeparti [Danish People’s Party], a party which is critical of immigration and is also somewhat xenophobic. Even though political positions are rarely aired so controversially in museums, it is still reasonable to ascertain the extent to which the less extreme messages in South Jutland museums also contribute to legitimizing positions that only a very few would really want to identify with. A Dynasty under Pressure Denmark has a past as a multinational empire in north-western Europe. Swedish expansion initially led to the loss of Skåne (a large section of northern Denmark ceded to Sweden) in the mid-seventeenth century, and Swedish ambitions of becoming a Great Power later put Danish interests in the Baltic under pressure. Around 1800 there was still a Danish empire, consisting of Iceland, Greenland and the Faroes in the west, Norway in the north, and the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein in the south, in addition to the core area of Denmark. Within

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this region a number of ethnic and national groups primarily had the king, the bureaucracy and the capital city of Copenhagen as their common frame of reference. Denmark’s decline from great regional power to today’s nation-state was, however, a process marked by a succession of defeats and humiliations. Internal conflicts proved to be equally as calamitous as external pressure. Conflicts between the central power in Copenhagen and the German duchies that were part of the common realm of Denmark initially led to a civil war in 1848–1850, and in 1864 to war with the new Germany. The war ended with a painful loss of land, from Hamburg in the south to the Kongeåen river, far north in Jutland. The nineteenth century started with several major defeats and losses for the Danish state. In 1801 British naval ships attacked the Danish–Norwegian fleet off the coast of Copenhagen, and in 1807 they bombarded Copenhagen and seized the Danish fleet. In 1813 the Danish state bank went bankrupt, and in 1814 Denmark lost Norway to Sweden as part of the settlement between the Great Powers after the Napoleonic Wars. After Napoleon had dissolved the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, he opened up the possibility that the Danish king could incorporate the principality of Holstein into Denmark. Even though this contradicted old treaties, this change was implemented, thus infuriating the German population. When Denmark later, as compensation for the loss of Norway in 1814, was given the German principality of Lauenburg (south of Holstein), the balance between the population groups changed in a way that did not benefit the Danes. Earlier, Norwegians had sided with Denmark against German cultural dominance, but now the proportion of Germans in the population had grown. Around one million people lived in the core country of Denmark, while the three duchies dominated by Germans had around half this number. The task of balancing the multi-ethnic Danish state had become substantially more difficult. This development was also the direct impetus behind the establishment of Danish national museums. As Peter Aronsson has pointed out: In 1806 the Danish antiquarian Rasmus Nyerup stated the need of a national museum as ‘an asylum for the slowly disappearing ancient national monuments … a temple for the remains of the spirit, language, art and power of our past, where every patriot can study the successive advance of the nation’s culture and customs’.6 6   Peter Aronsson, ‘Representing Community: National Museums Negotiating Differences and Community in Nordic Countries’, in Scandinavian Museums and Cultural Diversity (Oxford and New York, 2008).

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‘We Have the Honour of Being Nordic’ The situation in Denmark at the end of the eighteenth century had some features in common with the situation in many German (small) states, where the dominance of the French language in the administration and the upperclass elite provoked a nationalistic linguistic movement.7 There were a number of reasons why many considered the German language to be ‘nobler’ than Danish. The power elite was German or spoke German, the German language dominated at the court and in the state administration, and the most prestigious university was located in Kiel in Germany. German culture and science were also experiencing a golden age during the second half of the eighteenth century, led by a number of significant philosophers and authors. Danes found German dominance unreasonable and provocative. To increase the proportion of Danes with attractive positions at the court and in the administration, a so-called Indfødsrett [Native Right] was introduced in 1776. This aimed to give all inhabitants of the Danish state pre-emptive rights to such positions, but because it also comprised inhabitants in the German-dominated duchies, it represented no true victory. Far from diminishing, the conflict between the king’s Danish and German subjects deepened. Towards the end of the 1780s the conflict resulted in polemic writings in which hostility did not merely simmer but sometimes flared up brightly.8 Danes claimed that ‘German’ meant two things in Danish: the first was neutral and descriptive, referring only to a person’s birthplace; the second meaning would be used to designate anyone who considers something valuable only if it is German, and who would ‘look down on everything Danish’ – hence a kind of ethnicallybased condescension. The common practice wherein Germans discriminated against Danes and some Danes would give Germans advantages to ingratiate themselves with the high and mighty is called Tydskeri (‘Germanness’) in Danish.9 In 1790 Christen Pram, the Norwegian-born editor of the prominent Danish periodical Minerva, was one of those who propounded the opposite practice, which is that Danes should be given the first right to a position even if their competence was ‘slightly less excellent’.10 The prevailing notion was that many Danes were subservient to the German upper class, and this was highly provocative.   Ole Feldbæk and Vibeke Winge, ‘Tyskerfejden 1789–1790’ in Ole Feldbæk (ed.), Dansk Identitetshistorie, vol. 2 (Copenhagen, 1991), pp. 22ff. 8   Ibid., p. 39f. 9   Ibid., p. 66. 10   Ibid., p. 97. 7

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The German-dominated elite in Copenhagen, the rulers of the Danish state, did not react in public to these sometimes gross offences. However, they reacted in the field of schooling, perhaps the most important arena for the power struggle between the Danish and the German. Addressing the School Commission, the influential nobleman L.R. Reventlow asked that one should ‘seek to do away with the exaggerated patriotism, or so-called Danskhed [Danishness], which fuels an unreasonable loathing of the aliens’. With royal approval, he and other socially prominent individuals had also issued and introduced school rules to be applied at their large estates, the intention being to prevent the children of farm workers from being exposed to the identity project of the Danish-national bourgeoisie.11 The anti-German feelings and verbal wars that persisted in Copenhagen during the final decades of the eighteenth century were passed over in silence by the German and German-dominated duchies.12 This was the case even when the most sensitive issues were raised, such as where the Danish–German border was to be drawn in Schleswig. As early as 1790, language and ethnicity were linked in a manner that hinted at the looming wars in the region: ‘In the Danishspeaking part of Schleswig the children are taught in German in school even if they do not understand any of it, while at home they hear nothing but Danish.’13 Even if such descriptions of the situation were true only in exceptional cases, they helped to construct a picture of Danish and German as two incompatible elements. Although it was not stated in so many words, it was suggested that the state contained some polar opposites that made it a problematic entity. Conflicts with what was German helped sustain and enlarge Danish nationalism in relation to defining both a national content and an ethnic boundary. But, so far, the boundaries had only been drawn towards the south, not towards the north, for the Danish language was understood from North Cape in northernmost Norway to the southernmost Denmark.14 Moreover, Norwegians were subjected to Tydskeriet on a par with the Danes. The image of two peoples, Danes and Norwegians, with common destinies created a positive bond, supporting a Nordic orientation in relation to using ‘what is Nordic’ as extra ammunition in the verbal war against what was German. In a text from 1778, one of the foremost Danish authors and intellectuals of the time, Tyge Rothe, trumpeted the following statement: ‘You German men … we have the honour of being Nordic.’15     13   14   15   11 12

Ibid., p. 103f. Ibid., p. 99. Ibid., p. 85. Ibid., p. 84. Ibid., p. 14.

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This rhetoric was underpinned by the notion that Danish and German were incompatible elements – that there was something at work that was fundamentally and qualitatively different and more substantial than differences based on language. Danish was Nordic. German was not. In ‘Hædersminde’ (‘Memorial to Glory’), which was submitted by Enevold de Falsen in the first Danish competition for a national anthem in 1818, one line of the lyrics cries ‘To arms you Nordic men!’.16 ‘Nordic men’ was a reference with resonance, and it had support in an emergent Nordic Romanticism which not only had a foothold in Denmark, Sweden and Norway, but was also a European trend. Germanization in Museums An observant motorist entering the southern regions of Denmark from Germany will notice that there are flagpoles in every other garden. These are the regions where the Danish flag, called Dannebrog, has its staunchest supporters. Despite being heavily laden with symbols and, according to myth, stemming from the 1200s, the national flag by itself is not a sufficient symbol when it comes to marking the boundary between Danish and German. To counterbalance the powerful neighbour to the south, the Danes’ strategy is to mobilize all its neighbours to the north, represented by the flags of all the Nordic countries. Together with Sweden, Finland, Norway and Iceland, Denmark is more than itself. Even more importantly, these flags state that one is moving across something that is more than a national border: Where Germany ends and Denmark begins is the boundary of the Nordic countries. In the series of Danish national traumas the delimitation against the German cultural area in South Jutland has been by far the most difficult to bear. This has been evidenced in military terms by two wars, in 1848–50 and 1864 (both as a result of German invasions), and German occupation (1940–45); in terms of international law by a referendum on national ties (1920); and in relation to culture by a conflict over language, symbols and the power of definition (1800–1920). For the Germans, too, there have been heavy crosses to bear for those in the middle of these conflicts and changing framework conditions. The wounds after the border dramas have nonetheless been deeper on the Danish side. In light of the two overwhelming and catastrophic experiences Germany went through during and after the world wars in 1914–18 and 1939–45, conflicts in the areas bordering on Denmark seem like minor controversies on the surface 16   Flemming Conrad, ‘Konkurrancen 1818 om en nationalsang’, in Feldbæk, Dansk Identitetshistorie, vol. 2, p. 229.

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of a generally acceptable relationship between neighbours. Seen from a Danish perspective, and in particular seen from South Jutland, however, it is difficult to interpret the German occupation of Denmark from 1940 to 1945 as anything but confirmation of who the aggressive party is and who carries the primary responsibility for the problems in Danish–German history.17 The military conflicts with Germany are the theme in the Dybbøl History Centre (Dybbøl Historiecenter) which has taken many steps towards presenting war history as entertainment. Close by stands the foremost Danish symbol of the resistance against the Germans, the Dybbøl Windmill (Dybbøl Mølle) which is also part of the Danish history canon.18 The main narrative of the museum which has been established in the windmill is Danish heroism in the encounter with the invading German troops. It is also suggested in several contexts that the windmill as such is a representation of the courageous and unconquerable Danes in the encounter with a much more powerful enemy: it has been rebuilt several times after having been shot to pieces. The occupation history also has its own premises: the German prison camp, Frøslev, where patriotic Danes were held captive by the Germans during the Second World War, is part of the series of presentation centres in the border region. While the physical confrontations with the Germans and Germany are unambiguous expressions of the dividing line between Danish and German, and also strengthen the Danes’ self-image as a small but courageous people in brave opposition against a far more powerful opponent, there are also presentation centres that feature narratives about renegades. An example is the Danish pastor Johannes Jacobsen (1854–1919), who dedicated his life to attacking all that was Danish and idealizing the German. Even more provocatively, he did this by directly attacking the idea that the border between the Nordic and the German followed the geographical boundary between the two countries. Jacobsen’s activities were based in the small town of Skærbæk which, from 1864 to 1920, was part of the German Empire. Here, the Skærbæk museum has taken on the task of presenting the story about attempts to Germanize the area. Various and in part changing exhibitions, pamphlets and yearbook articles   It is difficult to find examples where Danes assume co-responsibility for the problems on the Danish side of the border. An exception is Sønderborg Slot (Castle), which makes an honest attempt to give a balanced look at the historical background of the region’s conflicts. But the complexity of this history and the knotty problem of assigning responsibility and guilt are completely impenetrable for anyone other than experts and those who take pains to read thoroughly. 18   Danish Ministry of Culture, Kulturkanon (Copenhagen, 2006); Lars-Eric Jönsson, Anna Wallette and Jens Wienberg (eds), Kanon och kulturarv. Historia och samtid i Danmark och Sverige (Gothenburg and Stockholm, 2008). 17

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present the many-sided activities of Pastor Jacobsen to Germanize an otherwise Danish-dominated area. As a student at the German Latin school in Haderslev he acquired ‘a German attitude and came under the influence of the Schleswig– Holstein ideals, which were a mix of hostility against things Danish, longing for freedom and local patriotism’.19 Even when he was merely a theology student he was already speaking in public about the great pan-Germanic world realm of the future. In 1884 Jacobsen applied for the post of pastor in Skærbæk. A local tradition relates how he won the post in spite of his anti-Danish attitudes: when a deputation from the parish visited Jacobsen in his house, he had his wife play Danish songs on the piano.20 Only a year later, in 1885, Jacobsen was already promoting Germanization; through the Association for Men and Youths (Forening for Mænd og Ynglinge) he combined Germanization with Christianity and had the local German pharmacist made head of the school. In 1887 he founded a local chapter of the German Warrior Association (Tyske Krigerforening), and when the German Association for North Schleswig (Tyske forening for Nordslesvig) was established in 1890, he chaired the meeting. The following year he took the initiative to establish a local chapter in Skærbæk. Through his position in these associations he played a key role in German agitation – for example, by claiming that the Danish ‘yoke’ was becoming heavier and heavier to bear. During the 1890s when Matthias von Köller, Supreme President of Schleswig, pushed for a harsh policy against everything suggesting the Danish, Jacobsen fuelled and stoked the fires of conflict between the two national groups in the region. In 1890 Jacobsen founded the Creditbank Scherrebek, which was a front for several German banks. The aim was to challenge and break the Danish savings bank which had been established by rich Danish farmers. During the following years he was behind a number of enterprises launched under the cover of the Creditbank Scherrebek. In 1895 he bought some heathland to found a German farming colony, and in 1897 he founded a brick and briquette factory, bought a pub, and participated in the establishment of a steam bakery. Jacobsen also sought political power and stood for election in various contexts, but without success. On 4 February the company Nordseebad Lakolk Gmbh was founded with the purpose of developing and operating a seaside resort, Lakolk, on the west coast of the island of Rømø. On the same day, the local newspaper reported that the company had purchased a significant amount of land. Realizing that the plans for Rømø required transport, Jacobsen and his partners established a   H.E. Sørensen, Lakolk. Et badested gennem 100 år 1898–1998 (Skærbæk, 1998),

19

p. 11.

 Ibid.

20

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shipping company, Scherrebeker Rhederei, and ordered a steamship. Right from the outset the resort at Lakolk was planned as a holiday centre for the growing middle class in Germany. It was thus designed to help Germanize South Jutland, and consequently several local Danish-friendly capitalists declined to participate. The intention nevertheless made an impression on the German powers that be as they were heavily in favour of, and supported, the operation of the resort. Even before the resort had become a reality Jacobsen began to market it: Lakolk is ‘the name of an old Frisian village, destroyed by a violent storm surge. When the tide is extremely low the ruins that are half buried in the sand … [and] swallowed by the sea centuries ago, become visible from among the sand dunes.’21 The story of the ruins was a local myth; no ruins have ever been observed. However, as a myth it was eminently suited to the circumstances because it could be interpreted as a narrative of how ancient German land rises from the earth after centuries of ‘sleep’. The resort at Lakolk was clearly intended to be a Nordic spearhead for Germanness in North Schleswig. In light of this, it is logical that the first construction stage (1898) consisted of ‘a number of Norwegian log cabins’ and a restaurant building ‘like a Norwegian log cabin built from logs with a large veranda and dining room’. In fact, the resort at this time only consisted of two family housing units and two four-room barracks which contained a dining hall. The newspaper Tondernsche Zeitung did not hold back on the exaggeration, praise or marketing: Lakolk was a ‘health resort’ for the German middle class, prices were low and it was only seven to eight hours away from Hamburg.22 The next year, in 1899, several additional buildings were erected, including the restaurant building, Kaiserhalle, and the German press showed great enthusiasm. Tondernsche Zeitung wrote unreservedly that ‘[a]mong the romantic dunes can be seen the elegantly decorated and particularly comfortable cabins built in the Nordic style’.23 The new buildings were decorated with spires and carved gables in a style the company called both ‘Nordic’ and ‘Norwegian’. Some gables had carved dragon heads, allegedly inspired by the ‘Viking style’ popular in Norway from the end of the 1800s, developed partly according to the socalled Swiss style and partly inspired by the stave churches and other wooden Norwegian mediaeval buildings. Emperor Wilhelm II was such a great admirer of this style that he moved an original stave church to Germany and had an enormous country residence built in Rominten, designed by the Norwegian

  Sørensen, p. 19.   Ibid., p. 18. 23   Ibid., p. 36. 21 22

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architect Henrik Sinding-Larsen.24 In the emperor’s annual journeys ‘nach dem Norden’ (‘to the North’) his ship, Hohenzolleren, steamed along the Norwegian coast.25 The signals from the top were clear enough. ‘Norwegian’ and ‘Nordic’ were to be used synonymously. The Nordic countries (particularly Norway) were considered to be relics of a German past, and the ‘Nordic’ style (which was also used at Lakolk) represented something ‘originally’ German. Some of the holiday cabins’ names, such as Kamerun, Samoa and Kiaotschou (a Chinese town conquered in 1897) reflected the German Empire’s colonies and its geographical ambitions, while others, such as Bäreninsel (Bear Island, occupied by Germany in 1899), Spitzbergen (Svalbard), Nordpol (North Pole) and Nordstern (North Star), pointed towards the North and the Nordic countries. Names from Nordic and German mythology, such as Walhall and Niffelheim, were also used.26 Jacobsen’s efforts to promote the German Empire did not go unnoticed. In the summer of 1900 he was awarded the Order of the Red Eagle of the fourth class, presented by Emperor Wilhelm II, for his work in the Nordmarken (northern fields).27 Jacobsen shared the same values as his emperor. It was reported that when the Warrior Association celebrated the evening of St Hans in 1900, Pastor Jacobsen in the light of the campfire gave a ‘magnificent sermon dedicated to the sea and filled with the original powerful words from the Edda28 and proud Germanism’.29 When the resort found itself in financial difficulties, the pastor toured Germany and solicited support by emphasizing the importance of the resort for the German case in North Schleswig. When bankruptcy proved to be unavoidable, and there was nobody willing to pay for what had become the high costs of Germanization, the general ledger of Nordseebad Lakolk conveniently burnt to ashes inside one of the safe-deposit boxes at the Creditbank Scherrebek. Although this made it difficult to produce evidence against Jacobsen, he was, in any case, sentenced to two years’ imprisonment in 1903, a sentence never enforced by the German authorities. Thereafter, all of the pastor’s enterprises toppled one after the other. This downturn represented a moral defeat both for the policy of Germanization (a consequence of which was the loss of the German majority in Skærbæk) and the Prussian civil service.   Birgit Marschall, Reisen und Regieren. Die Nordlandfahrten Kaiser Wilhelms (Hamburg, 1991). 25  Ibid. 26  Sørensen, Lakolk, p. 54f. 27   Ibid., p. 47. 28   The poetic Edda is Old Norse poems, and the prose Edda is Snorri Sturlusson’s history of the Norse and Norwegian kings. 29  Sørensen, Lakolk, p. 46. 24

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Skærbæk Weaving School and Nordic Folk Art In its exhibitions, the museum in Skærbæk focuses on Pastor Jacobsen and his Germanization activities. The exhibitions focus mostly on textiles produced in the weaving school, (Schule für Kunstweberei), which was brought down by the fall triggered by Jacobsen’s Lakolk bankruptcy. The initiative for the school began to take form in 1895 when the director of the Museum of Arts and Crafts in Hamburg, Justus Brinckmann (1843–1915), gave a lecture on old Nordic and Schleswig–Holstein folk art. After the lecture, Brinckmann, his assistant Friedrich Deneken (1857–1927) and Jens Thiis (1870–1941) held a meeting in which an idea was born: to create a German parallel to the Norwegian revival of the tapestry tradition. From the 1890s onwards, artists’ infatuation with the Nordic blossomed in Germany. Because the border conflicts made Denmark unpopular, it was to all intents and purposes Norway and Sweden they looked to in order to find Nordic ideals. The Norwegian artist Frida Hansen had enjoyed great success with her tapestries inspired by folk art: she patented the Opstad loom and received an order for twelve tapestries from Emperor Wilhelm for his hunting lodge in Rominten (1892). The painter Gerhard Munthe produced motifs for tapestries, also inspired by mediaeval tapestries and folk art, with great success.30 Jens Thiis, the Norwegian director of the newly-established industrial design museum, Nordenfjeldske Kunstindustrimuseum, in Trondheim, was commissioned by Brinckmann to have Frida Hansen travel to Germany. This initiative failed because Frida Hansen considered weaving to be a national art that should not be transferred to other countries. Thiis then had his sister-in-law Katrine Dons, who worked for the Norwegian home crafts association, take on the job. Brinckmann’s old friend Pastor Jacobsen had been involved in the plans, and it was decided that the weaving school would be located in Skærbæk and that the pastor would be its chairman. Locating the school in North Schleswig was given strategic grounds: ‘It was hoped thereby to promote home industry in the Skærbæk area and perhaps thus keep the young women away from the Danish schools and colleges north of the border.’31 In the course of four weeks in 1896 Katrine Dons taught her tapestry technique to two others, who in turn taught the art to new weavers. Even though Frida Hansen and Gerhard Munthe were very important to the Skærbæk weaving school, as both an ideal and an inspiration, and the weaving was carried out on 30   See also Bernd Henningsen et al. (eds), Skandinavien och Tyskland 1800–1914. Möten och vänskapsband (Berlin, 1997); Hans Henrik Brummer and Cecilia Lengefeld (eds), En glömd relation. Norden och Tyskland vid sekelskiftet (Stockholm, 1998). 31   Skærbæktæpper – den glemte verdenskunst (The Sønderborg Castle Museum), p. 3.

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an Opstad loom, the direct copying of Norwegian folk art was not the main idea.32 The point of departure for the school was to ‘revive’ Nordic traditions in textile art, and, in the first exhibitions and their accompanying catalogues, the patterns were often said to be ‘from Schleswig–Holstein’. The geometrical patterns which were used in Skærbæk especially for chair covers were taken directly from Norwegian woven tapestries, probably via Katrine Dons.33 The Skærbæk weaving school quickly became a success, being awarded medals at exhibitions even in its first year of operation, and arts and crafts museums, particularly in Germany, bought its products,. In 1898 the Danish Museum of Art and Design in Copenhagen purchased tapestries that were reviewed in Danish periodicals in this field. The Danish press reacted with outrage, as it was seen as being against the nation’s interests to support such Germanization activities in South Jutland. The protests against the purchases were strong, and no more tapestries were bought: ‘Since then, generally nobody has spoken of Skærbæk tapestries north of Kongeåen [the border river at the time].’34 In Skærbæk Museum it is completely possible to see an exhibition of locally woven tapestries without understanding the underlying narrative. But the person who reads the texts, brochures and pamphlets carefully will find another narrative about the renegade Pastor Jacobsen and the failed policy of Germanization in the district. The wrongly attributed cultural elements, such as Norwegian notched log cabins, naming that had nothing to do with the area, and the establishment of a weaving school based on techniques completely outside local tradition completely erased the German connection with the Nordic. Hence, this also becomes a narrative of how ‘what is Nordic’ for Germans is in fact only borrowed plumes with no genuine source. Using cultural content with the aim of undermining a distinct Danish Nordic identity has therefore had the opposite effect for posterity. The Germanization in Skærbæk Museum must be understood as borrowing from a culture on one side of the border and moving it to the other. The morally compromised Pastor Jacobsen is not in a position to negotiate the boundary of the Nordic, but instead ends up highlighting that such a border actually exists. Jacobsen and his emperor perish, along with the German Nordic country in the Skærbæk area. We might say that things have come full circle: the German land, which according to myth was, once upon a time, destroyed by a storm surge and then was revived, again sank into the sea.

 Ibid., p. 8.  Ibid. 34   Ibid., p. 2. 32 33

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The Danes under Pressure The development of the type of German nationalism that Pastor Jacobsen espoused started as a peaceable project based on gathering cultural elements such as literature and folklore. The first of a series of constructs with the prefix volk (folk) was created by the philosopher Johan Gottfrid Herder in the 1770s. Today the designation ‘folk songs’ sounds like an innocuous and even benign category, but in Herder’s understanding of the term (which rapidly gained popularity), it pointed far beyond itself. Folk songs were ascribed a collective origin, being manifestations of the existence of a folk, a people. Folk songs and folklore in general contributed to making concrete something which until then had been utterly vague and unarticulated – what Benedict Anderson designates ‘imagined communities’ which came about when the folk – the people – became a creating subject. The concept satisfied needs created by the hottest political project of the time, the efforts of the emerging bourgeoisie to shift the balance of power from royalty and nobility to the citizenry – that is, to construct what we recognize as nationalism. Early German cultural self-definition did not feature animosity against other groups, and it considered cultural diversity a positive thing. Herder’s description of peoples as a ‘family’ of members of varying ages, in which each and every member had dignity and valuable qualities, introduced another perspective. The task of each nation was to seek out and ennoble its ‘folk soul’, which was to be achieved through the development of language, religion and customs. When it came to realizing these things, Herder recommended comparative studies of such subjects as folklore, and he showed the way with his work, Volkslieder (1778–79). The Napoleonic Wars around 1800 led to extensive acts of violence and abuse against a number of small German states, where occupation, destruction and plundering were rampant. This was a crossroads in the development of German self-understanding, not least when it came to ‘aliens’. Cosmopolitan and open ideals had to make way for a gradually more aggressive and ethnocentric nationalism. The German self-image increasingly came to be dominated by rhetoric proclaiming Germanic superiority, accompanied by negative characterizations of other groups or nations. At the same time, the first demands based on cultural policy for a greater Germany surfaced – a Germany to comprise all the regions where German was spoken. This process also included the use of folklore, the ethnic language and other common culture, and such definitions as to what was German and what was Danish therefore had substantial consequences.

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What was particularly provocative from a Danish perspective was the new meaning of Deutsch (German) and Germanisch (Germanic): here, German was used to mean all of north-western Europe, not only Germany and Holland but also Scandinavia and England. The German grammarian J.C. Adelung (1732–1806) considered the Nordic languages a subset of the German language, and Danish as corrupted Low German.35 As a means of legitimizing national demands, the humanities gained an increasingly important role. The brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm had key positions in the establishment of Germany’s culturally-based power ambitions. Both saw Germany as a natural ‘mother nation’ in north-western Europe and German as the linguistic common denominator. The most influential of them, Jacob Grimm, used any and all opportunities to include what was Nordic as part of what was ‘Germanic’. The increasing conflicts between Danish and German gradually developed from verbal skirmishes to more fundamental differences and hostility, and until 1848 language was the most important ‘enemy front’. To counteract German mobilization, around 1814 Danish was accorded the status of being the main language in school by law, and it was not uncommon for textbooks to attack the German language and its previous status.36 Gradually in Denmark, German was undermined as an administrative language, the number of newspapers published in German declined, a Danish chair was established at the University of Kiel, various initiatives were launched to strengthen the Danish language in Schleswig and, in 1840, a new language decree was issued to establish Danish as the administrative language. Where it was the language used in schools and churches in (parts of ) Schleswig. Danish intellectuals also gradually oriented themselves away from German and towards English and French literature. For their part, the Germans in the duchies increasingly turned their attention towards the south, not least in Holstein, where nationalism was influenced by the German national movement after the Napoleonic Wars.37 Increasing dissatisfaction also emerged with Danish-based nationalization of the language, for example, and throughout the 1840s the internal tensions grew in intensity. In 1848 a rebellion against Denmark’s rule broke out in Schleswig–Holstein. With support from Prussian troops, the rebels moved as far north as Fredericia in Central Jutland without encountering significant resistance. On 6 July 1849 the Danish forces succeeded in breaking out of Fredericia, which was under siege. Later this was promoted as the victory of the Unknown Soldier (Den tapre Landsoldat) – literally, the brave conscript, in contrast to a   Inge Adriansen, Fædrelandet, p. 41.   Vibeke Winge, ‘Dansk og tysk 1790–1848’, in Feldbæk Dansk Identitetshistorie vol. 2, p. 134. 37   Ibid., p. 149. 35

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mercenary – and around this heroic figure a humiliated Denmark constructed a nation-building narrative about the people’s will to defend themselves. What turned the situation for Denmark, and what made it possible for the Danish army to crush the rebellion in Schleswig, was the fact that the Prussian soldiers were withdrawn to Holstein. Behind the retreat was Russian pressure, but Great Britain also contributed to forcing an end to the so-called Three Years’ War without any changes in the borders. In 1850 Denmark was thus able to lick its wounds while retaining the German duchy still part of the nation. In 1848, the same year as the first Danish–German war broke out, Jacob Grimm published Geschichte der deutschen Sprache (History of the German Languages), which contained a number of German annexation demands based on linguistic and historical arguments. This book claimed again that Germany’s ‘natural’ border to the north was at Skagen (the northernmost tip of Jutland), which Grimm also asserted would become a reality in the long term. There are five Germanic languages, Grimm writes – High German, Dutch, English, Swedish and Danish – and this assertion plus the demands for annexation meant that his book attracted a great deal of attention and resistance in Scandinavia. The pressure from German against Danish and Swedish/Norwegian led to a consolidation around what was Nordic in the mid-nineteenth century. Key Danish researchers defended the position of the Danes in relation to Germany by referring to the Nordic countries as an independent cultural region.38 In 1864 the Schleswig-Holstein rebels got their revenge when they quashed all Danish resistance, supported by forces from Prussia and Austria. The new German–Danish border was established at Kongeåen, and for more than fifty years this was the northern border of the German Empire. From the Danish perspective, this was intolerable. The loss of large tracts of land was particularly hard to swallow for the Danes, as tens of thousands of Danish-speakers lived on the German side of the new border. Within the new Germany the schools in Schleswig became the arena for Germanization. However, the Danes mobilized forcefully to preserve and strengthen Danish culture and language in the region. At this time, it became increasingly common to replace the designation ‘Schleswig’ with the Danish name Sønderjylland (South Jutland), which undeniably linked the northern parts of Schleswig to Denmark on a linguistic level, even if the reality on the ground was different. Patriotic Danes would say that the Nordic would not be easily exterminated in South Jutland because if ‘the inhabitants who live there were to be forced to deny their Nordic descent, churches, towns and farms, even 38   Exponents of this view include Rasmus Rask (1787–1832), C.C. Rafn (1795–1864) and J.J.A. Worsaae (1821–1885).

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woods, fields and brooks would testify about the Danish’.39 Thus, the landscape, building customs and culture are loaded with unambiguous expressions of the ethnicity of the population – a bulwark against an expansive Germany. Nonetheless there were also grounds for anxiety: ‘If ever North Schleswig is successfully Germanised, then the dam of Danishness has been breached, and then the Germans will effortlessly spread even to Skagen.’40 Danish anxiety was not as groundless as the ideas about the capacity of resistance in nature and culture might suggest. The German authorities were considering an expansion of Germany to the north. In the decades preceding 1914 great attention was paid to educating German children about the correct understanding of Germany’s ‘natural borders’, and in the most commonly used textbooks this comprised Switzerland, Lichtenstein, Belgium, Luxemburg and the Netherlands. Skagen is referred to as the northernmost point in Germany. The book, Rembrandt als Erzieher (Rembrandt as Educator), was so popular that it was reprinted thirty times in its first year of publication (1890). A popular version of Nietzsche’s ideas mixed with bombastic characteristics of the German folk soul and grovelling admiration for (the allegedly German!) Rembrandt, the book summarized its message by presenting pan-Germanism as a moral obligation for Germans.41 The author, Julius Langbehn, envisioned a future great German mega-state: when it included Denmark, Sweden and Norway, it would put his home, Schleswig-Holstein, in the centre. When the war which many Germans had looked forward to finally broke out in 1914, it was anything but heroic. Reality could not have been further from the bombastic war romanticism of knights and masculine courage and resolution: what the young German soldiers found was trench warfare with gas attacks, catastrophic lack of hygiene and mass death. For the Danish ethnic population that had come within the borders of Germany after the 1864 war, the First World War had calamitous consequences. Most felt that this war was not their business at all, but men and, near the end, also boys were conscripted on a large scale, and more than 16,500 never came home (16,500 from all of Schlesvig, 5200 from the parts that became Danish in 1920). The Border in Today’s South Jutland Memorial Culture After Germany’s defeat in 1918, the Versailles Treaty of 1919 decreed that national minorities in war-torn regions of Europe would have the right to  Adriansen, Fædrelandet, p. 81.   Ibid., p. 82. 41   Ibid., p. 88. 39 40

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determine which state they wanted to be part of. Schleswig was one of these regions, and a 1920 plebiscite determined that the Danish–German border had to be moved from Kongeåen to today’s border. This gave Denmark more than 100,000 new inhabitants on 15 June 1920. The referendum and the new border are themes in many of the South Jutland museums. the Border and Reunification Museum (Genforenings- og Grænsemuseet) in Christiansfeld is located where the border was established in 1864. The museum was opened in 1995 in the presence of the Danish royal family and other notables, and even though it was founded and is operated by local people with an interest in culture, it is undoubtedly the most official of the border museums in South Jutland. The phenomenon of genforening – reunification, the first half of the Christiansfeld museum’s name – recurs in South Jutland museums. Closer clarification or definition of what is meant by this term is encountered only in one location, in exhibitions at Sønderborg Castle which explore the Danish–German relationship. Here, it is possible for an alert visitor to understand the realities: the dynastic kingdom of Denmark, which lost its sovereignty over land from Hamburg to Kongeåen in 1864, was a completely different state from the Denmark which, in 1920, regained the region which is called Nord-Schleswig on the German side and Sønderjylland on the Danish side. As the name suggests, the region was previously part of the Duchy of Schleswig, which in turn was connected to Holstein through a treaty sanctioned by the Danish king. Genforening meant dividing Schleswig in two and transferring the northern part to the nation-state of Denmark.42 Because all the museums (except the one mentioned) emphasize language and cultural community in the contexts where ‘reunification’ is a theme, no Dane or pro-Danish person would reflect upon the fact that this concept is at best misleading. In the Border and Reunification Museum in Christiansfeld the moving of the border in 1920 concerns events of a symbolic, mythological and moral nature, and the state’s legal background is absent. Among the museum’s most important objects are a number of ‘relics’ from 1920 that are linked to the Danish abolition of the 1920 border and the establishment of a new border further south. According to a prophecy from the second half of the 1800s, when the time was ripe and the border was again moved south, the Danish king would come riding across the border on a white horse. In 1920, in connection with staging the changing of the border, much effort was made to obtain a white horse for King Christian X to ride when he crossed the 1864 border.43 After 42   Broder Schwensen, ‘1920 – Tre myter om en genforening’, in 19 myter i Sønderjyllands historie (Aabenraa, 2002), pp. 199–207. 43   Uffe Barsballe Thyssen, ‘Christian X og den hvide hest’, in 19 myter i Sønderjyllands historie, (Aabenraa, 2002), pp. 208–217.

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much ado, an albino horse was obtained in Jutland, and the public was ecstatic when the king made his entrance riding on this horse. It is said that the king himself was strongly moved by this, and that at one point he bent down and lifted a young girl up on to the horse with him, so that she was sitting on his lap when he rode across, and thus abolished, the hated border. Pictures from this event were distributed in large numbers across Denmark, and one of the most symbolic artefacts in the Border and Reunification Museum is the dress that this girl wore when riding across the border in Christiansfeld on the king’s lap. For the purposes of the museum’s presentation, it is vital to emphasize that the 1864 border had no roots in the real world. To illustrate this, the following symptomatic story about drawing the border is told. On the fateful day in 1864 when the border was to be drawn, the patriotic host of the local pub served the Prussian officers ample quantities of strong drink. This made the Germans malleable enough that the Danes could manage to have the border placed in such a way that the pub came within Denmark’s border. The border from 1864 is also highlighted in the information centre at the Skamlingsbanken, a well-known Danish centre for meetings and memorials. In 1863, an 18-metre high column, made of Swedish granite, was raised here with the names of eighteen Danish patriots carved on it. The memorial did not even see its own inauguration before the area was occupied by German troops in 1864. The information centre tells about German efforts to have the column removed: the Nordic granite proved to be difficult to blow up, and when the Germans tried to distribute the pieces in the district, quick-witted Danes bought them with the idea that, one day, the column might be re-erected. As a result of the negotiations after the war in 1864, the border was moved some kilometres south. Hence, Skamlingsbanken was returned to Denmark, and ‘in May 1866 the column was again placed on its old plinth – now as an extra strong symbol with broken corners and edges after the rough treatment at the hands of the Prussians’. Skiblund Krat is the foremost in the series of Danish manifestations of the traumas of the border that was drawn after the defeat in 1864. It lies north of the border on a small hill above Kongeåen, and from here Danes could look out on to their lost land. It would, however, be wrong to say that they came to terms with the loss. Rather the opposite: Skiblund Krat became a hotbed of Danish mobilization. A folk high school (an educational institution aimed at personal development rather than academic studies) was built here, and a large outdoor amphitheatre was constructed where speeches, poems and songs were used to process grief over the loss and where people could come together to discuss winning back the land in the future. The surrounding area has a large number of memorial stones and statues. Epitaphs of Danes who had made

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special contributions to the field of culture were carved on the stone, and earlier greatness and victories were recalled. While Skiblund Krat has become overgrown and the many memorial stones have fallen into oblivion, more potent expressions of the Danish– German relationship have sprung up in the past half-century. Along today’s Danish–German border (the 1920 border) there are two museums that profile themselves as border museums. Bov Museum (founded in 1957) uses as its point of departure cultural history relating to the border guards and customs officials who guarded the border, and shows uniforms and pictures from the border stations. There is a certain degree of heroism about the efforts of the border guards. But the impression given of Danish courage and steadfastness when German tanks rolled across the border in 1940 is backed by little historical evidence. The museum also owns a heritage-protected border barrier located at the border crossing at Rønsdam. In 2003, a Bomlaug (barrier association) of volunteers was formed with the mission of maintaining the barrier. Close to the Danish–German border crossing at Sæd in South Jutland, across the road from the Nordic flags on display, lies the Sæd Border Museum (Grensemuseet i Sæd). It is set up in the old customs station, and more authentic premises can hardly be imagined. What is the border actually there for, other than to mark the end of one nation and the start of another? Two rationales appear to be the most important ones: collecting customs and excise fees, and keeping out people (and goods) one does not wish to cross the border. But in the EU, of which Denmark is a member, one of the most important political goals is to remove customs barriers and to open borders to promote the free flow of people, goods and services. Few countries, if any, have been more strongly in favour of this than Denmark. But there has also been resistance to the EU’s open-door policy, which is part of the reason for the substantial rise in popularity of the Dansk Folkeparti (Danish People’s Party), which is hostile to immigration. This political party is a collection point for people ranging from national conservatives to critics of immigration and the outright xenophobic. Even though the museum in Sæd is run by a private foundation which generally relies on volunteer work by members of the Border Association (Grænseforeningen), the Dansk Folkeparti has had a decisive influence on the establishment. The museum’s message never strays far from the ideology of the Dansk Folkeparti. Bearing this in mind, it was also Pia Kjærsgaard, the party’s leader, who officially opened the museum. Kjærsgaard used the opportunity to promote the party’s belief that great dangers are threatening the old fatherland of the Danes, particularly in the form of aliens streaming across the nation’s borders.

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Visitors to the Border Museum are given a tour through 1,500 years of history about aggression and threats against Denmark from the south. Presenting the history of the state of Denmark through a millennium and a half is in itself not very remarkable in a Danish context: after all, the National Museum in Copenhagen designates a 10,000 year-old skeleton as ‘the first Dane’. The Sæd Border Museum starts with the Dannevirke, earthwork fortifications from around 500 ce. The museum’s narrative leaves no doubt that the Dannevirke is the first Danish bulwark against intruders from the south, even though no one knows who built it or whether it was built to defend against invaders from the south or the north. On the other hand, there are no reflections on the expansion of the Danish state from the 900s (the Viking period) to the 1600s, which its neighbours must have perceived as invasion. The conflict over the Danish– German duchies Schleswig and Holstein is hardly connected to the ambitions Denmark nurtured of becoming a Great Power, but is instead presented as a question of pressure against Denmark from the outside. The key museum narratives are about the two Danish–German wars in 1848–50 and 1864, about the consequences for the Danes of being forced to serve under German masters during the First World War, and about the invasion and occupation of Denmark by Hitler’s Germany from 1940 to 1945. The museum exhibitions leave one with a picture of Denmark as a nation under strong external pressure, a community and territory that must be defended with clear and well-defined borders. The use of the past to promote cultural–political positions is common in museums, but in Sæd this is anchored to an unadulterated party-political message from Pia Kjersgaard that, without borders, nations and communities will dissolve. The border against Germany exists to protect Danishness, and a special responsibility rests on the Danes because this border is also the border of the Nordic countries. Even so, Germany or Germans are not presented as enemies; rather it is ‘foreigners’ and ‘foreign bandits’ that dictate the need for strong border protection. On the Border of Xenophobia The message that is served in the Sæd Border Museum is clearly about identity politics as it is strongly anchored to the history of Denmark, and reference is made to the flag and the royal family. The exhibitions appeal to Danish traditions and values, while it is more than suggested that the fate of one’s own nation and culture is at stake. The mixture of pride over what has been and anxiety about what the future will bring produces patriotism under pressure because a picture is conjured up of the defenders of what is Danish with their backs to the wall.

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The museum in Sæd is a rare clear example of how identity politics can have a mobilizing effect and promote particular political positions. In the summer of 2011 the museum’s radical message about the importance of protecting the border to defend Danishness became practical policy. As part of some horse-trading with its Danish government partners, the Dansk Folkeparti gained acceptance for re-establishing border control and building new border checkpoints. Reactions were quick and sharp. German and Swedish politicians loudly criticized the new Danish border regime, and Poland, which at the time had the chairmanship of the EU, made it clear that the legality of the new border control would be assessed. Guido Westerwelle (FDP), German Minister of Foreign Affairs, told Jyllandsposten (a major Danish newspaper) on Saturday 3 July: ‘I do not want these new buildings on our border to be seen as presaging misfortune for Europe.’ Pia Kjærsgaard, leader of the Dansk Folkeparti, wrote an article in Flensborg Avis (a German newspaper from the border region, which is also published in Danish), calling the reactions hypocrisy and a double standard because the Germans had also introduced control on the border with France after a dramatic increase in the number of refugees from North Africa. Later in her article, Kjærsgaard reveals the attitudes that are that rationale for the party’s involvement in the museum in Sæd. Political opponents, and particularly the Social Democrats, are more concerned about being on good terms with the EU than ‘protecting the Danish population against itinerant thieves, robbers, bandits, swindlers and people without means of subsistence’. New EU countries such as Romania and Bulgaria are called ‘high-crime countries’, but worst of all is the fact that ‘illegal immigrants are flooding into Europe’ from countries such as Egypt and Libya. Kjærsgaard concludes by asserting that ‘[t]he dream of a Europe without borders has become a nightmare for the populations of Europe’.44 Following the Dansk Folkeparti’s election defeat in the late summer of 2011 it is uncertain what will happen with regard to border control. For the Sæd Border Museum all the media attention garnered by party leader Pia Kjærsgaard and her Dansk Folkeparti in the summer may lead to a greater number of visitors. In the aftermath of the domestic terrorist attack against Norwegians on 22 July 2011, questions have been raised about the relationship between speech and action. At what point do xenophobic utterances legitimize extreme actions? When should co-responsibility take charge? The way in which the Sæd Border Museum presents the relationship between Denmark and other 44   Some Danish newspapers that have had articles on border control: Ekstrabladet 6 and 7 July 2011, Flensborg Avis 7 July 2011, Jydske Vestkysten 6 July 2011, and Jyllandsposten 3 and 7 July 2011.

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countries contributes to legitimizing attitudes that may threaten the civil rights of large groups of Danes. There may be reason to ask whether, in characterizing individuals en bloc, we have already transgressed the border of common decency. It is legitimate to massage collective wounds from a difficult situation in the past. But there is little reason to create new traumas. Bibliography Printed Primary Sources Ekstrabladet, 6 and 7 July 2011. Flensborg Avis, 7 July 2011. Jydske Vestkysten, 6 July 2011. Jyllandsposten, 3 and 7 July 2011. Secondary Sources Adriansen, Inge, Fædrelandet, folkeminderne og modersmålet (Sønderborg: Skrifter fra Museumsrådet for Sønderjyllands Amt, 1990). Adriansen, Inge, Erindringssteder i Danmark. Monumenter, mindesmærker og mødestede (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanums Forlag, 2010). Adriansen, Inge and Matthias Schartl, Erindringssteder nord og syd for Grænsen (Sønderborg and Schleswig: Museum Sønderjylland – Sønderborg Slot, 2006). Aronsson, Peter, ‘Representing Community: National Museums Negotiating Differences and Community in Nordic Countries’, in Scandinavian Museums and Cultural Diversity (Oxford and New York: Berghahn, 2008). Aronsson, Peter, ‘Vad är ett nationalmuseum?’, in Kungl. Vitterhets Historie och Antikvitets Akademiens årsbok (Stockholm, 2010), available from http:// www.vitterhetsakad.se/publikationer. Barth, Fredrik, ‘Introduction’, in Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture Difference (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1969). Brummer, Hans Henrik, En glömd relation. Norden och Tyskland vid sekelskiftet (Stockholm: Carlsson, 1998). Conrad, Flemming, ‘Konkurrancen 1818 om en nationalsang’, in Ole Feldbæk (ed.), Dansk Identitetshistorie, vol. 2 (Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzels Forlag, 1991). Danish Ministry of Culture, Kulturkanon (Copenhagen: Danish Ministry of Culture, 2006).

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Feldbæk, Ole (ed.), Dansk Identitetshistorie, vol. 2 (Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzels Forlag, 1991). Feldbæk, Ole and Vibeke Winge, ‘Tyskerfejden 1789–1790’, in Ole Feldbæk (ed.) Dansk Identitetshistorie, vol. 2 (Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzels Forlag, 1991). Henningsen, Bernd et al. (eds), Wahlverwandtscaft. Skandinavien und Deutschland 1800 bis 1914 (Berlin: Jovis Verlag, 1997). Jönsson, Lars-Eric, Annette Wallette and Jens Wienberg (eds), Kanon och kulturarv. Historia och samtid i Danmark och Sverige (Gothenburg and Stockholm: Markadam in cooperation with Centrum for Danmarksstudier, 2008). Luke, Timothy W., Museum Politics: Power Plays at the Exhibition (St Paul and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2002). Marschall, Birgit, Reisen und Regieren. Die Nordlandfahrten Kaiser Wilhelms (Hamburg: Ernst Kabel Verlag, 1991). Naguib, Saphinaz Amal,  ‘Reconciling History and Memory at the Cité Nationale de l’Histoire de l’Immigration in Paris’, in Hanne-Lovise Skartveit and Katherine J. Goodnow (eds), Changes in Museum Practice: New Media, Refugees and Participation (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2010). Schwensen, Broder, ‘1920 – Tre myter om en genforening’, in 19 myter i Sønderjyllands historie (Aabenraa: Historisk Samfund for Sønderjylland, 2002). Skærbæktæpper – den glemte verdenskunst (The Sønderborg Castle Museum). Sørensen, H.E., Lakolk. Et badested gennem 100 år 1898–1998 (Skærbæk: Melbyhus, 1998). Thyssen, Uffe Barsballe, ‘Christian X og den hvide hest’, in 19 myter i Sønderjyllands historie (Aabenraa: Historisk Samfund for Sønderjylland, 2002). Winge, Vibeke, ‘Dansk og tysk 1790–1848’, in Ole Feldbæk (ed.) Dansk Identitetshistorie, vol. 2 (Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzels Forlag, 1991).

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Chapter 8

Performing Nordic Spaces in American Museums: Gift Exchange, Volunteerism and Curatorial Practice Lizette Gradén

When a volunteer or a staff member at the Nordic Heritage Museum in Seattle, Washington, holds an object in her or his hand – one of the approximately 60,000 in the museum collection – and perceives this object as Nordic, what does this say about how space is (re)created through material processes? These objects and their stories come from families and communities, and as effects of movements that people have made in migrating from one place to another and during their way through life. Immigrants from the Nordic countries came to the Seattle area in late nineteenth century and up until today and for various reasons, but sharing confidence that they could improve their situations in America. The items that these groups have left in the museum’s care raise questions about the relationship between people and material objects, about heritage by lineage and heritage by choice. Most important, stretch the margins of nation-states in the Nordic countries, and show how Nordic culture emerge as museums, collections, and exhibitions in the United States.1 Nordic culture produces material culture, and material culture framed as Nordic produces Nordic culture outside the Nordic countries themselves. This culture produces spaces with volumes and areas. The museum can be understood as the epitome of such spaces. In its broadest sense, a ‘Nordic space’ can span continents and include the Atlantic; a ‘Nordic place’, on the other hand, can be localized to a museum exhibition that reiterates such cultural elements as names, rituals, organizations, and the practices of everyday life. 2 Whereas space is more fluid and negotiable, the creation of place is more concrete and requires   I would like to thank the following colleagues and friends for valuable comments on this chapter: Marsha MacDowell, Bruce Karstadt and Eric Nelson. Thanks also to colleagues in the Nordic Spaces project for comments on an earlier version of this chapter. 2   Yi-Fu Tuan, Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience (Minneapolis, 1977), p. 6; Yi-Fu Tuan, Place, Art and Self (Chicago, 2004). 1

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action and time to maintain. Consider the relationship between Norden (as the compound of Nordic countries is referred to in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Iceland), and the areas that immigrants and expatriates from these countries inhabit in the United States. By transplanting and reiterating cultural practices such as names, rituals and materializations, as well as practices of everyday life, immigrants, their descendants and expatriates produce place. While today’s visitors to Seattle, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Minneapolis may see American cities, some residents of the same cities pinpoint neighbourhoods and buildings they know as Swedish, Finnish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Danish or as Scandinavian or Nordic because of the objects and practices that constitute them. Museums are examples of places where such objects and practices assemble. As institutions dedicated to the collection, preservation, and presentation of culture to a public audience, museums are ‘part of a transnational order of cultural forms that has emerged in the two last centuries and now unites most of the world’, as anthropologists Arjun Appadurai and Carol Breckenridge pointed out in the 1990s.3 As a transnational form of cultural display, a museum also adapts to specific local, regional and national circumstances – or it emerges from them. Museums and their institutional practice has a heritage of its own. What has the label ‘Nordic’ come to mean, as museums showcasing Nordic culture have developed in the Nordic countries and in the United States? It is well known that museums and exhibitions have played active roles in shaping Europeans’ ways of relating to the world and understanding history.4 Particularly recognized is the change in the museum landscape of nineteenthcentury Europe due to the rise of museums of regional folk culture. Here, the Scandinavian countries played a pioneering role, exemplified by the Museum of Nordic Antiquity (1819) in Copenhagen, and Stockholm’s Scandinavian Ethnographic Collection (Skandinavisk-Etnografiska samlingen) (1873), followed by the Skansen Open Air Museum (1891), The Nordic Museum (Nordiska museet) (1907), and the Norwegian Folk Museum (Norsk folkemuseum) (1894) in Kristiania (now Oslo).5 Although they may have become increasingly nationalistic in the twentieth century, the focus was on Nordic and Scandinavian culture when these museums were founded in the   Arjun Appadurai and Carol Breckenridge, ‘Museums are Good to Think: Heritage on View in India’, in Ivan Karp, Christina Mullen-Kraemer and Steven Levine (eds), Museums and Communities. The Politics of Public Culture (Washington, DC, 1992), pp. 34–35. 4   Tony Bennett, The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics (London, 1995); Sharon Macdonald, Difficult Heritage: Negotiating the Nazi Past in Nuremberg and Beyond (London, 2009). 5   Norsk Folkemuseum, founded by librarian Hans Aall, was patterned on the institutions that Hazelius had created in Stockholm. See http://www.norskfolkemuseum.no. 3

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nineteenth century.6 In Sweden, Artur Hazelius, through his founding of the Scandinavian Ethnographic Collection, Skansen Open Air Museum and Nordic Museum, set a model for the collection, preservation and display of cultural heritage by showcasing various categories of material culture together: architecture, folk costumes, furniture, tools and other categories associated with specific communities all over Sweden – lifelike scenes restaged in Stockholm, invoking places all over Sweden. These restagings of places where people used to meet and live were an integral part of Hazelius’s aim to preserve cultural heritage, not only from Sweden but also from neighbouring countries, including Estonia. Thus, the traditional Nordic understanding of museums is as space to ‘know oneself ’, a place for learning about local, national and regional heritage. In contemporary Norden, the critical study of heritage has increased in the last two decades. Folklorist Barbro Klein has suggested that heritage be understood as ‘phenomena in a group’s past that are given high symbolic value and, therefore, must be protected for the future’.7 The Nordic case is of particular interest and relevance because it highlights the question of whose heritage is being preserved and by whom, as well as the role of the museums as makers of future history. It is well known that in contemporary Norden, a portion of the population has one or more homelands apart from the country in which they live. Considering the strong emphasis on heritage preservation, only a few museums of cultural history in the Nordic countries have attempted to represent these groups in their collections. Such acquisitions, even when they pertain to groups arriving from other Nordic countries, have been criticized for being stereotypically selected, and for insensitivity on the part of museum professionals to the various groups and subgroups’ own desires and needs when it comes to heritage preservation.8 Although a transnational form of cultural display, the museum and its exhibitions take on the character of the culture in which the museum exists. Included in the characteristics that impact on how Nordic culture is spatialized are institutional history and curatorial practice. Following folklorist Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett’s argument that material turned heritage brings a meta-cultural dimension to competency   See Magdalena Hillström, Chapter 10 in this volume. Also Magdalena Hillström, ‘Ansvaret för kulturarvet: studier i det kulturhistoriska museiväsendets formering med särskild inriktning på Nordiska museets etablering 1872–1919’, dissertation (Linköping, 2006). 7   Barbro Klein, ‘Folklore, Heritage Politics and Ethnic Diversity: Thinking about the Past and the Future’, in Pertti Anttonen (ed.), Folklore, Heritage Politics and Ethnic Diversity: A Festschrift for Barbro Klein (Stockholm, 2000), p. 25. 8   Hanna Snellman, ‘Performing Ethnography and Ethnicity: An Early Documentation of Finnish Immigrants in Nordiska museet’, Ethnologia Europaea, 40/2 (2010): 47–59. 6

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and skill and extends values and methods from the museum to practitioners, these values and methods include collection, preservation, presentation and interpretation.9 At the same time, the practitioners of traditional cooking, carving, knitting, painting and so forth, whose competence and skills become heritage in the museum, develop a new relationship to their knowledge and skills.10 Expanding on Kirshenblatt-Gimblett’s argument, what can we learn by switching focus from curators and deliberate acquisitions to the potential influence that lay practices and solicited and unsolicited gifts may have on museum institutions? As Maria Rosario Jackson points out, there is increased pressure on museums all over the world to grapple with finding strategies to engage community members to take a more active part in museum work.11 Such strategies include aspects such as new purpose built facilities and increased professionalization. This is evident among museums dedicated to Nordic culture in the United States. As a result of their attempts to engage younger descendants and expatriates in heritage preservation these museums are also beginning to understand heritage in new ways. In this chapter I focus on the inception and remaking of museums dedicated to Nordic culture in the United States. By Nordic I mean the five countries of Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland and Iceland, including for example autonomous regions such as the Faroe Islands, Åland Islands and the transnational area of Sápmi, the land of the indigenous people of Northern Europe. However, in an American context the use of Scandinavian and Nordic is often distinct but sometimes it overlaps. Based on the case of how Nordic spaces are created in American museums, I argue that if the promotion of professional museum practices increasingly displaces volunteer methods of display, it may also reduce the sensibility to heritage invoked by the objects and collections themselves. Using co-curatorial efforts at the Nordic Heritage Museum in Seattle, Washington, and the American Swedish Institute in

9   Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, ‘From Ethnology to Heritage: The Role of the Museum’, in Entre Autres/Among Others: Proceedings of SIEF Conference (2005). Available at: http://www.nyu.edu/classes/bkg/web/SIEF.pdf, accessed 2 August 2012; Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Destination Culture: Museums, Tourism and Heritage (Berkeley, 1998). Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, ‘Theorizing Heritage’, Ethnomusicology, 39/3 (1995): 367–380. 10   Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, ‘From Ethnology to Heritage’. 11   Maria-Rosario Jackson, ‘Coming to the Center of Community Life’ in Mastering Civic Engagement: A Challenge to Museums, American Association of Museums (Washington, DC, 2002), pp. 29–38.

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Minneapolis, Minnesota, as examples, I wish to show how volunteer efforts constitute a form of cultural heritage that is worthy of respect and preservation in itself. I also wish to shed light on how democratic culture and collective efforts that are highly valued in the Nordic countries are key to the branding of Nordic culture outside of the Nordic countries themselves.12 Crafting Heritage of Diversity through Museums When Hazelius and his counterparts established museums of folk culture in the Nordic countries, this process ran parallel with emigration from these countries to the United States. Between the 1840s and the 1950s waves of emigrants were pushed by a multitude of reasons, including poverty, religious beliefs, military duty and despair, and pulled by factors such as work, land, adventure and dreams of a future. This process, in combination with the fact that travelling on passenger ships between Nordic countries and America became affordable in the 1880s, created a possible trajectory across a vast space. Whereas emigration, I would argue, played a role in the nationalization process of the museums in Sweden and Norway that took place in the twentieth century, emigration’s impact on this process has not been problematized within this context in the Nordic countries as it has been abroad.13 Taking Hazelius’s ‘know yourself ” idea as a model, many of the American notions of folk-life research came from European models but were ‘transplanted in changed form due to different conditions of settlement, interaction with the land, and shallower historic time’.14 While museums such as the Nordic Museum and the Norwegian Folk Museum branded Sweden and Norway (separately after 1905) as progressive nations by curating the peasant past (allmogen), a more diverse image of Denmark, Sweden and Norway and its neighbouring countries took form in the United States. These museums in America, dedicated to the heritage of immigrants from the Nordic countries, must be understood in relation to practices and processes

  See Øystein Sørensen and Bo Stråth (eds), ‘Introduction’, in The Cultural Construction of Norden (Oslo, 1997); Henrik Berggren and Lars Trädgårdh, Är svensken människa? Gemenskap och oberoende i det moderna Sverige (Stockholm, 2006). 13   See, for example, Arnold H. Barton, A Folk Divided: Homeland Swedes and Swedish Americans, 1840–1940 (Carbondale, 1994), Barton, H. Arnold, Sweden and Visions of Norway: Politics and Culture, 1814–1905 (Carbondale, 2003) and Odd S. Lovoll, The Promise of America: A History of the Norwegian-American People (Minneapolis, 1999). 14   Howard Wight Marshall, ‘Folklife and the Rise of American Folk Museums’ in Patricia Hall and Charlie Seeman (eds), Folklife and Museums (Nashville 1987), p. 34. 12

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through which they are shaped, as well as to how they select, collect, arrange and display their collections. A museum can be described in many ways – for example, as a collection of collections or a cultural object that holds items preserved for a future history. While the place called home – be it a house, parish, town, city or country – is likely to be changed by subsequent occupants and their recreators, a museum invokes changeless past times and absent places.15 Once established in America, immigrants from the Nordic countries did as most European settlers in America. They established pioneer museums to communicate their heritage from overseas and the settlement process.16 Whereas the pioneer museums showcased the early settlements of small towns, the museums created in urban areas between 1926 and 1980 shared a mission to preserve and develop selected aspects of the culture of their homeland in America, a focus which, after the Second World War, was expanded to include hyphenated cultures: Swedish-American, DanishAmerican, Norwegian-American, Finnish-American, Icelandic-American, and combinations of these. These museums should be understood as part of a general rise of ethnic-, race- and culture-specific museums in the United States. In areas with a high concentration of Scandinavian immigrants, especially in the Upper Midwest, local museums included Scandinavian collections in their acquisitions and exhibitions. Following actor-network theorist Bruno Latour’s idea that both human and non-human actors assemble, negotiate and reassemble culture, these museums highlighting Scandinavian and Nordic culture can be understood to perform both culture and groups by giving them material substance.17 This performative approach allows me to unfold how laypeople practise influence institutions still today. Among the six museums that feature one or more Scandinavian country18, the American Swedish Institute and the Nordic Heritage Museum perform a Nordic profile.19 These museums with a specific Nordic profile share the feature of being founded by first-generation emigrants to the United States, – individuals who arrived in the twentieth century. Another feature that these museums share is that they are based on gifts.   Yi-Fu Tan, Place, Art and Self, pp. 12–22.   David Lowenthal, Pioneer Museums, in Leo Warren and Roy Rosenzweig (eds), History Museums in the United States: A Critical Assessment (Urbana, 1989), pp. 115–131. 17   See Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social. 18   The American Swedish Historical Museum, Vesterheim in Decorah, The American Swedish Institute in Minneapolis, The Swedish American Museum in Chicago, the Nordic Heritage Museum in Seattle. 19   There are additional institutions with a mission to share Nordic culture, such as Scandinavia House in New York. I have limited the scope of this chapter to institutions that promote itself as a museum and has a permanent collection. 15 16

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Gift-giving Materializes and Spatializes Relationships Gifts to the Scandinavian museums in general can be broken down into various categories. These include donations – larger gifts where the expectations of a return are articulated, such as to perform legacy or preserve a particular culture. Amandus Johnson, born in Långasjö, Småland, founded the American Swedish Historical Museum in Philadelphia in 1926 during the city’s sesquicentennial celebrations. Johnson mobilized a network of Swedish-American friends who donated money towards building the museum, of which Johnson served as director until 1943. In the 1920s and 1930s Dr Johnson corresponded with Swedes all over the United States and in Sweden in order to assemble the bulk of the initial collections, and gifts were donated. Building on the heritage of gift-giving, since the early 1950s the American Swedish Historical Museum has expanded its collection from unsolicited and (occasionally) solicited donors.20 Another form of donation is the giving away of a home. One example is the American Swedish Institute, in Minneapolis, dating back to 1929. The Turnblad mansion, built in 1908, was explicitly gifted to the ‘Swedish people in Minnesota and their descendants’ by Småland immigrant and newspaper publisher Swan J. Turnblad in 1929. The mansion, originally Turnblad’s home, was reframed as the American Institute of Swedish Arts, Literature and Science and then, from the 1950s, as the American Swedish Institute, a place where Swedish-American culture would also be displayed.21 Through this gift Turnblad also transformed his own identity from poor peasant immigrant from Småland to prosperous Swedish-American. Some museum institutions have been generated by existing collections. An early example is the Vesterheim Norwegian-American Museum, established in 1925 in Decorah, Iowa. The Vesterheim was a result of community gifts given to Luther College from 1877 onwards, making the Norwegian–Americans pioneers in the preservation of cultural diversity in America.22 The museum brands itself as the most comprehensive museum in the United States dedicated to a single immigrant group. Like the Vesterheim, the collection at the Danish   Email correspondence with Museum Director Tracey Beck and Curator Carrie Hogan. 21   Holding a collection of 8,000 objects and 32,000 including archives, the ASI has recently expanded its focus to include temporary exhibitions of Norwegian, Danish, Icelandic and Finnish arts and crafts. 22   Email correspondence with Tova Brandt, Curator of Exhibitions at the Danish Immigrant Museum, Elk Horn, and former curator at the Vesterheim Museum, Decorah. Today, this collection houses 24,000 objects and resides in the building to which it moved in 1930. 20

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Immigrant Museum in Elk Horn, Iowa, derives from a college, Dana College, and the initiative to build a museum for this collection came from academics and grassroots associations. The museum was founded in 1983 but not opened to the public until 1994. As a result of gift exchange, primarily within the DanishAmerican community, the museum today houses 35,000 objects (archives included). Museums can fall into yet another category as the repository for gifts, performing the culture of immigrants from one or more Nordic country and their descendants, examples being the Swedish American Museum in Chicago and the Nordic Heritage Museum in Seattle, founded in 1976 and 1980 respectively.23 Once a gift has been presented and accepted, whether a home turned into museum, entire households, collections or single objects, performance raises expectations of a gift in return. Gifts share the character of being defined by the givers and recipients who participate in the act, but also by powers beyond the immediate participants. The idea of reciprocity, in particular, has its own heritage. Within the Nordic realm, the principle of generating relationships through reciprocity appears, for example, in the Kalevala and the Poetic Edda.24 In a similar vein, anthropologist Marcel Mauss’s analysis of the relationship between gift and community demonstrates that reciprocal gift-giving maintains and furthers moral relationships, builds trust and fosters solidarity.25 Marcel Mauss’s analysis has continued to help contemporary students of material culture understand that economic aspects are a recent development and that exchange value extends beyond the utilitarian.26 His work shows that there are myriad reasons for exchanging gifts, one of which is to create society.27 What role has gift exchange played in shaping Scandinavian museums that feature Nordic culture in the United States? What role does gift-giving play when Nordic spaces emerge   Interview with Karin Abercrombie, Director of the Swedish American Museum, Chicago, 6 October 2010. Email correspondence with curator Lisa Hill-Festa and registrar Jason Herrington. As of November 2011 the Nordic Heritage Museum holds around 66,000 items in the permanent collection, including archives. 24   It says: ‘with weapons and weeds should friends be won, as one can see in themselves, those who give to each other will be friends once they meet half way’: The Poetic Edda, 40. 25   Marcel Mauss, The Gift: Forms and Reason of Exchange in Archaic Societies, trans. W.D. Halls (London, [1959] 1990), pp. 39–46. 26   Arjun Appadurai, ‘Commodities and the Politics of Value’, in Arjun Appadurai (ed.), The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 3–63; Karen Sykes, Arguing with Anthropology: An Introduction to Critical Theories of the Gift (London, 2005), pp. 194–195. 27   Marcel Mauss, The Gift, pp. 39–46. 23

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at these institutions? Do these performances differ from performances of the Nordic in the Nordic countries? When applied to exhibitions of Nordic culture both in museums in Norden and in their later counterparts in the United States, Mauss’s ideas shed light on the strategic aspects that the exchange of gifts entails. By giving more than their neighbours have given, people of Nordic ancestry in the United States may expect to win increased respect from both their rivals and from the recipient museums. It makes a difference how the gift is composed, packaged, presented and by whom. Gift exchange is a matter of performance, and thus of cultural competence. This competence in performing Nordic heritage sets the Nordic donor and volunteer, who give of their material possessions, engagement and time apart from those associated with non-Nordic museums. Performance, as applied in this chapter, is any activity that is framed, highlighted, and displayed.28 This is the case with gift exchange and gifts. Further, understood as a performance, the gift-giving act assumes responsibility to an audience.29 Within the Nordic sphere, one of the most striking performances of gift-giving was the ceremonial return of the Flateyjarbók from Denmark to its former colony Iceland in 1971 after 250 years of possession. The event gathered an audience of 15,000 people at Reykjavik harbour and 200,000 via television and radio.30 In my study of the museums there are three kinds of performance at work: the reframing of homes to museums, such as the development of the American Swedish Institute;31 the interaction of collections and objects with visitors in cultural institutions; and the act of gift exchange which integrates thought and hands-on action.32 When studied as performance, gift exchange both reflects and generates social and cultural circumstances beyond what takes place onstage. Gift Exchange: Museums and Collections as Performances of the Past Many collections that make up the museums of folk culture in the Nordic countries were originally gifts. In Sweden such contributions are reflected by the lists of gifts published in the Nordic Museum’s annual Fataburen until the   Richard Schechner, Performance Studies: An Introduction, 2nd edn (New York and London, 2006), p. 2. 29   Richard Bauman (ed.), Performance: Folklore, Cultural Performances and Popular Entertainment (New York and London, 1992), pp. 41–49. 30   Magnus Magnusson, ‘Introduction’, in Jeanette Greenfield, The Return of Cultural Treasures (Cambridge, 2005). 31   See the eightieth anniversary exhibition, labels by Byron Nordstrom, ASI archives. 32   Richard Schechner, Performance Studies, p. 57. 28

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1970s, by the acquisitions register (huvudliggaren) and, if not accessioned, by the three-volume records of objects from the byteskammaren (exchange chamber), which were used for trade between the Nordic Museum (Nordiska museet) and other museums, primarily in the Nordic countries and the Baltic states. 33 Packages of coffee were exchanged by curators at the Nordic Museum’s section for contemporary documentation (Samdok) for interviews with Finnish immigrants in Stockholm. The same gesture of gift-giving is chosen to strengthen ties between people of Nordic ancestry in the United States with their immediate community and their former homelands. In the United States, a Scandinavian or Nordic museum, on the basis of gifts, presents a background of the group in its home country and tells a story about emigration to the specific area where the museum is located. The prominent parts of the presentation are the role the specific group played in building American society and the emphasis on the important roles of events and prominent individuals, including the museum founder. Based on gifts from immigrants from the Nordic countries, their descendants and from family that have remained in the Old Country, these collections highlight the selective process of cultural heritage-making, epitomizing both the chosen particularities. Objects no longer in use at home are donated. As the museum matures as an organization, curation of such collections increase. The museum as heritage performance confirms societal values and the thus confirms the group as a vital actor in American society, with roots deep in the Scandinavian or Nordic soil. Transformations from Vernacular Culture to Cultural Heritage For many years within folklore and ethnology studies, the vernacular has meant something handcrafted, with a history diverging from the academic and formal, made of local resources and shaped by local knowledge and practices.34 The content of the vernacular, however, is malleable. It tends to refer to cultural forms created and organized by individuals who identify with groups affiliated by family, religion, occupation, ethnicity and other features, who pass on their   Fieldwork with staff at the department of collections at the Nordic Museum, Stockholm, November 2011. Byteskammare (also referred to as skrubbar) – exchange chambers – host objects that have not been accessioned into the collection and can therefore be used for exchange as described in a written statement by Sigrid Eklund of the Nordic Museum and shared with me by current staff. I have not encountered this kind of exchange at the American museums I’ve worked with ... 34   Henry Glassie, Vernacular Architecture, Material Culture (Philadelphia, 2000); John Brinckerhoff Jackson, A Sense of Place, a Sense of Time (New Haven, 1994). 33

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forms to groups and institutions that are more formal or represent broader or more general communities. In the 1960s and 1970s, in some Midwestern communities dedicated to arts and crafts (for example, Decorah, Iowa, and Lindsborg, Kansas) and to the settlers’ origins, the vernacular took new forms. Not only woodcarvings, folk costumes, food, dances, and festivals but also billboard flags, giant coffee-pots, oversized trolls, Dala horses, Viking ships and Viking images, along with reassembled timber cottages and windmills from the Old Country, emerged as materializations of ethnic culture. This type of vernacular lacked the patina of tradition that defined older models of material culture that were exemplars of, or more clearly affiliated with, immigrant heritage, such as the dug-out dwellings, log cabins, saunas and churches built by the pioneer Nordics of the Midwest. Neither did it resemble peasant culture and folk art that is thought of as vernacular in the Nordic countries. Out of this combination of Old World and New World factors emerged a vernacular style that assembled in material from the distinctive cultural and social patterns of the Midwest. Such deliberate heritage-making created a certain compression of Nordic nostalgia in the region. This development in the Midwest was both an effect of, and a contribution to, social and cultural change in the United States. The notion of what could be considered vernacular also changed, theoretically, when the authors of Learning from Las Vegas argued that the commercial should be included in the sphere of vernacular architecture and landscape objects.35 From the 1970s onwards, the vernacular would include structures such as billboards, prefabricated houses surrounded by plastic flowers, pink flamingos and various assemblages of ready-made objects. Among immigrants from the Nordic countries and their descendants, this type of vernacular has, since the 1960s, combined the billboards and new structures with symbols recognized in America as Nordic. The frame for this new vernacular also created a platform for Nordic immigrants to take seriously the aesthetics of the contemporary, and Nordic symbols are carefully selected, reframed and performed as heritage on the American stage of popular culture. For example, Lindstrom, Minnesota, is one of several communities that have converted their water tower into a giant coffee-pot – a visual icon that plays on the idea that Swedes (and Finns and Norwegians) drink coffee by the gallon, or consume coffee as if it were water (see Figure 8.1). For towns branded as ethnic in the rural Midwest, appropriation of this vernacular may be seen as analogous to marking open spaces with road signs for

35   Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour, Learning from Las Vegas: The Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form (Abingdon, 2007).

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Figure 8.1

A water tower in Lindstrom, Minnesota, reframed in the design of a giant coffee-pot. Photo by Henrik Nordstrom

direction. It may also be seen as a consequence of an expanding highway system in the 1960s and 1970s, which made small towns fear they would become ‘drive-bys’ rather than ‘drive-thrus’, thereby losing the benefits of urbanization, commodification of culture and revenue from car-borne travellers. These changes in the landscape were paired with increased interest in ethnicity in the wake of the civil rights movement. It was this complex combination, I believe, that inspired TV series such as Roots and the annual Smithsonian Folklife Festival, which has long focused on community traditions based on religion, occupation and ethnicity, but has also encouraged cultural brokers such as festival committees, artists, businesses and city councils to take down the last Coca-Cola signs and look to the town settlers in a heritage process that would transform their American small towns into Scandinavian destinations.36 In recent decades, the heritage created by settlers and presented in pioneer museums in the early 1900s has become ‘early heritage’ as the vernacular that   For a more in-depth analysis of the relationship between landscape, ethnification of towns and brokering of folklore, see Richard Kurin, Reflections of a Culture Broker: A View from the Smithsonian (Washington, DC, 1997); and for examples of the Scandinavian communities, see Lizette Gradén, ‘On Parade: Making Heritage in Lindsborg, Kansas’, dissertation (Stockholm, 2003), pp. 78–90. 36

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emerged from the 1960s and 1970s has moved into museum institutions, often in the form of gifts. Originally gift-based themselves, these museums are vital institutions in the shaping of Nordic-American culture today. They are run by, cater to, and collaborate with Americans of Scandinavian or Nordic descent, recent immigrants, expatriates and people with an interest in Nordic culture. Even in the early twenty-first century, Americans have to tell census-takers of their overseas ancestry. According to the US Census Bureau survey on ancestry in 2000, the number of Americans who indicated Nordic ancestry were as follows: Danish, 1,430,724; Finnish, 623,519; Icelandic, 42,716; Norwegian, 4,477,725; and Swedish 3,998,303. In addition, a further 425,099 individuals claimed Scandinavian ancestry.37 It is people such as these who have handed over spinning wheels, kitchenware, folk costumes and paintings as well as oversized Dala horses, trolls, gnomes and windmills, along with crystal bowls, modernist furniture, Christmas tree ornaments, designer fabric and souvenirs from overseas to the museums for care and keeping. These objects and collections make up the material with which groups such as families, organizations and individuals infuse the museums, pushing the boundaries of the concept of Nordic heritage further ahead in time. Volunteer Displays as Shrines In the residential area of Ballard in Seattle, Washington, first-generation Swedish immigrant Marianne Forssblad participated in the transformation of a schoolhouse into the Nordic Heritage Museum. From its inauguration until today this institution has had a mission to share Nordic culture through exhibitions, preservation, education and by serving as a community facility.38 Since its opening in 1980, the Nordic Heritage Museum has served as a gathering place for people who identify themselves as Danes, Swedes, Norwegians, Finns, Swedish-speaking Finns, Sami and Icelanders living in the American Pacific Northwest. On both sides of the Atlantic, being Nordic is a matter of putting heritage in place. The same group of people in the Pacific Northwest also identify themselves as members, visitors, volunteers and staff of the museum, as   The United States’ Census Bureau, ‘Census 2000 Gateway’, http://www.census.gov/ main/www/cen2000.html, accessed 2 August 2012. 38   Nordic Heritage Museum mission statement: The Nordic Heritage Museum shares Nordic culture with people of all ages and backgrounds by exhibiting art and objects, preserving collections, providing educational and cultural experiences, and serving as a community gathering place. See Nordic Heritage Museum, ‘General Information – About the Museum’, http://www.nordicmuseum.org/general.aspx, accessed 2 August 2012. 37

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descendants of immigrants to the United States, or as expatriates. Some people who have been exposed to Nordic culture in the United States identify themselves as Ethnic, Scandinavian, or Nordic by choice. Others refer back to their families as having fuelled the American economy through the fishing industry, logging and airplanes. Today, recent immigrants often refer to their employment at Microsoft, Boeing or Amazon.com. Moreover, when the museum presents this multifaceted group of people to a wider community, they are described as ethnic, Scandinavian and Nordic, often in overlapping ways. How can such a museum be interpreted? Is this a museum that reflects a choice factor in ways that have not yet been possible in Europe? The ways in which Scandinavian or Nordic museums in the United States create heritage was perhaps more possible in Norden in the nineteenth century than it is today? Inside the Nordic Heritage Museum, the galleries, storage areas and hallways give new meaning to the word collected’, at least as it is usually understood when it comes to museums. With great passion, members of the community and staff have juxtaposed ethnographic objects, fine art, recordings of music, dance, life stories and popular culture. The Danish-produced exhibition Dream of America, itself a transplant from Denmark in the mid-1980s, depicts the emigration process to America. Added on to the Danish produced part of Dream of America is an in-house exhibition on the secondary immigration from the American Midwest to the Pacific Northwest in the twentieth century. This part highlights the bars, churches and businesses of Ballard. In addition to this core exhibition are galleries dedicated to exhibitions on, for example, fishing or folk art (see Figure 8.2). Moreover the museum hosts temporary exhibitions granted collaboration with museums and galleries in the Nordic countries. Museum members, volunteers and staff are engaged in various programmes: cooking, language classes, and knitting conferences, as well as celebrations such as Viking Days and Yulefest. ‘It’s a cultural compound’, says current CEO Eric Nelson of the building and its activities when explaining the museum’s level of activity and complexity.39 In addition to staff generated exhibtions, the museum holds displays of Icelandic sweaters, spinning wheels, photos of sheep, the Icelandic sagas, sculptures depicting Leifur Eiriksson created by artist August Werner, Norwegian skis and other skiing paraphernalia, fishing gear, trolls, figurines dressed in bunader (folk costumes) from Hardanger, Danish bread, bobbin lace, miniature windmills a korsvirkeshus (cross–timbered) exterior, the complete works of Hans Christian Andersen, a Finnish sauna scene, an impersonation of Väinemöinen, the storyteller in the Finnish national epic Kalevala, along with   Interview, Seattle, 28 July 2011.

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a display of a 1970s Finnish-American home next to a spread of Marimekko textiles, scenes from the Swedish Lutheran church, along with presentations of the People’s Home,40 images of the Swedish hospital in Seattle, along with table flags and information from IOGT, the temperance movement from overseas. Within an allotted area is a seasonal ritual display. At the time of my visit, the volunteers were showcasing Midsummer, featuring a midsummer pole, herring and brännvin (potato vodka), plus a child mannequin dressed in a Leksand folk costume. Should Nordic museums collect such things and, if so, how should they display them? These objects were selected, cared for, carefully combined and exhibited by volunteers in spaces of the museum referred to as heritage rooms.

Figure 8.2 Folk-art gallery at the Nordic Heritage Museum in Seattle, Washington. Photo by Lizette Gradén, Nordic Heritage Museum Staff members often refer to the heritage rooms as ‘museums in the museum’, emphasizing that they are part of the museum yet separate because the curators support and guide, but do not intervene in, the collection or display of objects. While they are shaping the displays in these rooms, however, the volunteers 40   Folkhemmet – a concept describing the ideal welfare state developed by the Swedish Social Democratic Party in the 1930s.

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borrow the vocabulary of curators and exhibit designers. By ‘caring for’ and ‘designing’ the displays, they mean cleaning, mending and arranging the objects and collections into an aesthetic and comprehensible whole. These rooms are most popular among museum members and community visitors. Next to each display room is a locked storage area, from which the volunteer group can select new items, which changes the exhibition, keeps it in flux. The Icelandic group meets weekly to handle and talk about their ‘things’ – fishing gear, Leifur Eiriksson figures, household items, Icelandic wool, yarn and sweaters. Understood as performances of cultural competence these objects and the stories about them diverge from curator generated exhibitions, On the other hand these displays connect people and places and ultimately extends network into the Pacific Northwest. The volunteers’ mastery of combining objects is self-taught and elaborated through collaboration within the group. Both men and women have filled their own spaces at home in the same way they display their culture for themselves and for visitors – intuitively and organically. Often the only design principles are an affinity for pairs or groups (stilleben or still life), or adding another order to orders that are more difficult to discern, such as the passage through life and migration from one place to another, but there is no scientific order. The volunteers collect energetically, with no plan or theme other than to renew their display of things that they themselves have brought to the museum, or things that have been brought in before they were involved. ‘I guess there are more trolls than anything else,’ comments a museum volunteer as we pass through the Norwegian display. But this plenitude is not intentional. ‘People have lots of these trolls at home, too,’ she says, underlining the connection between family and the museum, home displays and what can be seen in the Norwegian heritage room.41 Lately, the volunteer exhibitors have found themselves being pulled in new aesthetic directions. The rooms that are no longer updated on a regular basis – such as the Danish room – are being taking care of by curatorial staff. Lisa HillFesta, Curator of Collections, explains: The volunteers for the Danish and Finnish display are ageing and we don’t see a new generation stepping in. An intern from the community recently renewed the Finnish display. The Norwegians make changes once in the while, and the Swedes make seasonal updates – Midsummer in the summer followed by a crayfish party later on. The Icelandic group is exceptionally active – they meet every week.42   From fieldwork interviews at the Nordic Heritage Museum carried out in 2011.   Interview, Seattle, 28 July 2011.

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The dedication and level of volunteerism on the part of the Icelandic group seems to showcase an old pattern of activity that is commonly seen among groups in a minority position and threatened by crisis. In Seattle, as well as in the European Nordic setting, the Icelanders are the smallest group. The dedicated tending to the heritage rooms by the Icelanders, Swedes and Norwegians can be understood as an effect of continuous heritage-making in their communities. The museum exhibitions become an epitome of such activity. Long before the Nordic Heritage Museum was thought of in 1979, there was an effort to establish a Norwegian museum in Seattle. The catalyst for this early museum was Arthur Eide, who wished to establish a collection that would represent both old and new expressions of Norwegian culture. In an article on the Museum’s inception Marianne Forssblad, who served as museum director from 1980 to 2006, points out two events that led up to the founding of a museum that focused on the Nordic community rather than on the individual ethnic group. The first was the World’s Fair held in Seattle in 1962, in which the Nordic countries were well represented; it became evident at this event that the Pacific Northwest was rich in cultural treasures either brought in from the Nordic countries or created as part of the growing Nordic-American community in the region. As a result, a Nordic Festival was created that same year, and the event became annual. Spurred on by the festival, people in the Seattle community envisioned a permanent place for their Nordic ‘things’: fishing gear, logging equipment, folk costumes, saunas, spinning wheels, household items, Bibles and other books,43 and the museum emerged organically from these gifts. Over the years, the collection has expanded thanks to the efforts of new generations of immigrants, keeping the museum in flux. The high level of volunteerism may be understood as way of counteracting a fear of losing footing in the museum as a result of increased professionalization. When families and individuals selected the American Swedish Institute or the Nordic Heritage Museum as the host for their eclectic gifts, they tapped into a long history of giving gifts to museums.44 Viewed as a collective effort to connect places by materializing new spaces, each of the five heritage display collections at the Nordic Heritage Museum also resembles a display of diplomatic gifts, a category in which the most renowned transnational example   Marianne Forssblad, Nordic Heritage Museum 26 years 1980–2006, Nordic Heritage Museum Historic Journal, 2006, pp. 24–25. 44   Lizette Gradén, ‘Performing a Present from the Past: The Värmland Heritage Gift, Materializing Emotions and Cultural Connectivity’, Ethnologia Europaea, 40/2 (2010): 29–46; Lizette Gradén, ‘Dressed in a Present from the Past: Heritage Gifts and Embodiment in the Creation and Recreation of Cultural Belonging’, Culture Unbound, 2 (2010): 695–717. 43

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is the Statue of Liberty.45 These diplomatic gifts come with more or less overt expectations of receiving something in return. The vernacular gift stems from civic society, given by collectives such as family, ethnic groups or organizations. These are symbols of trust and expectation. Such gifts ask an institution to frame them, highlight them and display them.46 By accepting them into the collections for preservation, the museum also performs them as heritage, which in turn acknowledges them as future history. In America, where the responsibility for cultural heritage rests on the civil society to a higher degree than in the Nordic countries, giving and receiving gifts is thus a performance that can be potentially used to strengthen relationships, and shows that the distinctions between gifts, bribes and patronage may be complicated. At a time when the Nordic Heritage Museum, like its fellow Scandinavian museums in the Midwest, is spending money on upgrading exhibitions and professionalizing its profile, exhibitions viewed as outdated are often dismantled. The heritage rooms are examples of the opposite. These show how museum visitors come to see familiar objects which evoke memories, which, when handled and talked about, become vehicles for transportation in time and to real and imagined places. By providing such Nordic spaces for creativity and reflection, the museum appears as a shrine for these visitors – a place where ‘through sheer proximity we hope to absorb some of the artifact’s significance – a significance derived from the object’s having been made or used or even slept in by someone we would like to feel closer to’ as folklorist Patricia Hall states it.47 Speaking in the terms of Bruno Latour, we can say that these objects do act on the volunteers who handle them, the visitors who view them and the staff supervising them. They connect people when debated, discussed, handled and thereby enable the institution to prevail. Filled to the brim and framed as heritage, these spaces perform on each and every person who steps across the threshold and into these materialized Nordic worlds. The diversity of objects selected by the volunteer groups and presented in the heritage rooms shows how people feel close to different things Nordic, depending on time, place and other circumstances. While older FinnishAmericans may feel completely at home with the national epic Kalevala and the sauna, their descendants prefer Marimekko fabrics when performing their Finnish heritage at the museum. The combination also demonstrates diversity within the national framework. The Nordic Heritage Museum illuminates how versions of Nordic culture coexist in the transnational museum field. Alluding   For a more detailed discussion, see Gradén, ‘Performing a Present from the Past’.  Schechner Performance Studies, p. 2. 47   Patricia Hall, ‘Applying Theory to Practice: Folklife and Today’s History Museums’, in Patricia Hall and Charlie Seemann (eds), Folklife and Museums (Nashville, 1987), p. 84. 45 46

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to Bruno Latour again, we see the museum as a place where Nordic societies are reassembled in diaspora. Taken together, these rooms emerge as imaginary Nordic spaces. Here, fantasy is not about flight from reality – it is a gift that puts the volunteer, museum staff and visitors into contact with it.

Figure 8.3

The Nordic Christmas display at the American Swedish Institute in Minneapolis. Photo by Shawn Connors, American Swedish Institute

While each Scandinavian museum focuses on the heritage of one particular group in its everyday permanent exhibitions, Nordic spaces may emerge at Christmas, as evident at the American Swedish Institute in Minneapolis in December 2011. The exhibition depicted in Figure 8.3 was marketed as nordisk jul, the Swedish name for Nordic Christmas, a branding effort that underlines the Swedish group as host of the Nordic neighbours. The American Swedish Institute, ‘a museum, historic mansion and cultural centre dedicated to preserving and sharing Swedish culture and heritage in America’,48 contains period rooms and exhibition galleries. The old building   The American Swedish Institute brochure, 2011.

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has now been partially renovated, and a new building is intended to meet the museum’s aim to offer more exhibits, programmes and activities. A cultural centre is envisioned that goes beyond ‘preserving and sharing Swedish culture and heritage in America’ to forming a profile which invites all the Nordic countries to create contemporary transatlantic relationships. Christmas – A Temporal Nordic Space Bruce Karstadt, CEO and President at the American Swedish Institute (ASI) explains the museum’s expansion from a Swedish to Nordic profile: When we had the original building plans for the capital campaign, we had begun to talk about much more strongly and forcefully the ASI needed to become space for other Nordic traditions and members of the other Nordic communities. And we had even had taken the step of having some conversations with a group called Norway House as to whether they could be an effective partner with us in building whatever new space we had. Those talks between us and Norway House collapsed and that isn’t going to happen. But I don’t think that changes our mindset as to us really serving not only the Swedish-American community but also the other Nordic-American communities well in our new space. And it’s a curious position to take probably, because we’re not going to change our name in all likelihood from the American Swedish Institute to something else. 49

The open-door policy expressed by the CEO and the fact that the Sons of Norway group has decided to raise funds for a building of its own not only highlight the tension evoked from the Nordic space as a frame of cultural performance, but also underline the competitive gift-giving among the groups involved. Even if a permanent sharing of a building does not work at the top level of an organization, a temporal coexistence among the volunteers has been at play for years. The annual exhibition A Nordic Christmas brought together members of the local Nordic–American community to decorate five rooms in the Turnblad Mansion for the holiday season in 2010. Since the 1980s Ewa Rydåker, a volunteer at ASI, has invited neighbouring Nordic organizations to participate in the annual Christmas exhibition, in which representatives from each country decorate a room for Christmas. These Nordic Christmas displays are created in collaboration with ASI curator Curt Pederson. The rooms are intended to give   Interview, American Swedish Institute, Minneapolis, 5 October 2010.

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visitors a taste of Christmas traditions in each of the Nordic countries – Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark, and Iceland. They feature decorated trees and table settings for a Christmas dinner. Bruce Karstadt, CEO and President of the ASI, explains this event: There have always been the Nordic Christmas rooms. Members of the Finnish, Danish, Norwegian, and Icelandic communities had long been asked, and were helpful to create a Christmas table, a Christmas room … They come from organizations in Minnesota.50

The groups creating the Christmas displays represent the diversity that characterizes the Nordic descendants in the United States – which includes both recent immigrants and descendants of immigrants who arrived a long time ago. Nevertheless, it is a traditional Norden that is represented, without a trace of the distinctions often made in Europe, such as Swedish-speaking minorities from the Baltic States, German-speaking Danes, Swedish-speaking Finns or Sami. The Swedish Display The Swedish Christmas dinner table was designed by long-time volunteer Ewa Rydåker, with assistance from volunteers in the curatorial department. The team that put together the display describes it as follows: Advent marks the beginning of the Swedish Christmas season. December is a month of decorating and other creative preparations … The noon meal on Christmas Eve is dopp i grytan (dip in the pot). This is a simple mean in remembrance of the time when bread and broth were one of the only foods available. Christmas Eve dinner is an extravagant smorgasbord of ham, lutfisk, rice pudding, pickled herring, sausages, cheeses and at least three kinds of bread and hardtack ... This formal Christmas table is set in honour of the wedding of Swedish Crown Princess Victoria and Mr Daniel Westling on 19 June 2010. The table centrepiece is inspired by the Royal Wedding banquet table arrangements in Stockholm. White Christmas roses enclose the mirror island, supporting a brass Skultuna candelabra, a Rörstrand soup terrine and serving dishes. The items – Rörstrand china, Orrefors crystal, Gense silverware and Klässbol linens – are all from the ASI collections.51   Interview, American Swedish Institute, 5 October, 2010.   Room designers: Display by Ewa Rydåker, with assistance from Margret Nelson and ASI curatorial volunteers. 50 51

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The Danish Display The Danish Christmas display was designed by a group of Danish and DanishAmerican volunteers living in Minneapolis and demonstrates early modern furniture design in Denmark. This is their description: Similar to all Scandinavian countries, a Danish Christmas focuses on the family. The festivities begin with the lighting of the Advent wreath the fourth Sunday before Christmas … On Christmas Eve, church services in the late afternoon are followed by a lavish dinner, usually of roast goose. The first course is a large bowl of rice pudding in which a blanched almond is hidden. The finder receives a small gift, often of marzipan. In many places a bowl of pudding is also set out for the julenisse, or Christmas elf … The walnut and maple table is by Danish master cabinetmaker Thorald Madson. The cheffy dining chairs were designed by N.O Moller in the 1950s, and remain in production. Windsor chair is designed in 1947 by Ove Boldt and produced in Cuban Mahogany by Fritz Hansen … The cabinet was also made in Denmark in the 1940s of Cuban mahogany with beech trim details … The table is set with Danish blue-on-white Royal Copenhagen porcelain and Danish Raadvad stainless utensils, with a handmade thread-andneedle tablecloth and crocheted napkin holders. The tree is decorated with handmade felted ornaments, and felted and crocheted nissernes (young gnomes) are displayed throughout the room. Paintings depict what is described as ‘typical Danish landscapes’; farm scenes and parks.52

The Finnish Display The Finnish Christmas display features a table set with fine china, paper napkins and silver cutlery. Like the Swedish and Norwegian displays, the Finnish emphasizes Christmas food. It is presented by a group of volunteers representing Finnish cultural organizations in Minneapolis. They tell the story: At Christmas Eve (Jouluaatto), Finland is in the long winter night season known as kaamos when the only light is that reflected from the moon and snow. Santa (Joulupukki) and his reindeer live on the tundra in the far north (Korvatuntturi). His visit, anticipated by the children who sit at their own table where a tree is 52   Room designers: Susan Jacobsen, Renee Showalter Hansen, Shelly NordtorpMadson and Sarah Maas. Table setting by Dorothy Dahlquist and her daughters, Susan Brust, Linda Jeffrey and Corrine Lynch. Felt ornaments from Danish Handmade Design, courtesy of Lisbet Franc. Furniture courtesy of Danish Teak Classics, Steve Swanson.

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decorated with gingersnaps (pipparkakku), a cookie heart for each child … the traditional Santa in the middle of the dining table is dressed in fur and reindeer skin, not bright red. In anticipation of Santa’s arrival, the children form a circle and sing Tonttujen Jouluyö – Santa’s Elves’ Christmas Night. When he arrives, they sing to him, Joulupukki – Santa. The children are usually accompanied by a fiddle or kantele. The tree has been decorated the evening before the Christmas Eve festivities, often with decorations made of straw and wood. Christmas Eve is the time for the more special traditional meal, rather than on Christmas Day. Many entrees include fresh or smoked ham, casseroles of potatoes, carrots and rutabaga followed by a selection of baked pastries, Christmas stars (butter pastries with plum jam), Christmas tarts, cardamom bread, gingersnaps and chocolates.53

The Icelandic Display The Icelandic Christmas display is the smallest of the five Nordic Christmas displays and showcases items solely from Iceland. The designer explains: Traditionally family and friends gather in homes to make laufabraud – leaf bread in December. Candlelight is everywhere, and many different coloured lights outside brighten up the dark season … Christmas Eve dinner is most often hankikjot – smoked lamb, potatoes in white cream sauce, green peas and rice pudding. After dinner families gather around the Christmas tree. Icelandic culture includes not only one but thirteen different Christmas men, called Jólasveinar. Each has a different name. They start appearing thirteen days before Christmas, one each day, from the mountains. They are known for their mischievous ways and their presence is felt everywhere. Christmas Day they begin to leave again one by one. The last one departs on the thirteenth day of Christmas, marking the end of the season. The Icelandic Christmas room showcases items from Iceland. The ornaments on the Christmas tree are from Iceland and most are handmade. The glassware on the table is from Glerá Berg, an Icelandic glass factory. The ceramics are also from Iceland, and the tablecloths were handmade in Iceland. The Christmas spoons are different every year. Four of the thirteen Jólasveinar (Christmas lads) are represented.54

53   Room designers: Kathleen Laurila and Marlene Banttari for Finnish Cultural Activities, Inc. Dishes, glassware, flatware: FinnStyle, Minneapolis. Accessories: designers’ private collections. 54   Display designer: Margrét Kristjánsdóttir Arnar.

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The Norwegian Display The Norwegian Christmas room stands out from the other displays. It enacts materially a domestic story in a public space. The display designer explains. On the table and in the case behind the table you have settings of family treasures. The blue and white dishes were a gift from Ingeborg Roed. She had collected them in flea markets in Paris where she worked as a cook in the 1930s. The purple and white dishes were a wedding present to my parents in 1938 from my mother’s aunt who had collected them over many years. They are Rörstrand Lila Spets and always appeared on our family’s table for the most festive of events. The Porsgrund Farmer’s Rose is perhaps the most recognized pattern for Norwegians i utlandet (expatriates). The silverware pattern is Th. Martinsen’s ‘Vidar’. The Christmas tree in our home usually appeared on Christmas Eve, although some years we were busy so it arrived a few days early. I always thought the lights were magical. I loved just staring at the tree, wishing and dreaming. The candle-holders were from my mother’s childhood home. In her childhood home, the tree was cut fresh from the forest and the candles were always lit. Next to the tree were buckets of water and sand just in case! My mother decorated our tree with paper Easter Lilies, the Jesse Tree symbol for Mary. It was a tradition that her mother had adopted while living in Iowa for three years, before returning to Norway where she met and married my grandfather. In honour of both my mother and her mother, I continue to make the lilies each year. The skis were my father’s. During World War II, he served seven parishes in Eidsberg fylke. During the summers, he went from place to place by motorcycle. During the winter, he skied. Check out the bindings! Can you image how many ankle bindings such as those have broken? The cloth on the coffee table was a gift to me from a dear friend many years ago. The image of the Wise Men coming to worship the Christ Child has always fascinated me. I was delighted to be given this piece.55

A Nordic Christmas – Diversity on Display Although shaped for the same purpose at the same time in the year, the five displays that make up A Nordic Christmas at the ASI are different in character and material. As such, they complement one another in a display that is richer overall than each country’s display alone. That said, the national approach is needed to perform the Nordic, just as Artur Hazelius built on the provincial to craft the   Room display by Berit Aus.

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national. Performed as Swedish is the dream of the Royal Christmas, utilizing fine items the volunteers have hand-picked from the ASI museum collection. The display is contrasted by the simple meal of dopp i grytan, a remembrance of hard times back in Sweden. The Danish display comes across as an invocation of a middle-class Danish Christmas and modernist Danish furniture design, but also serves as a display window for Danish handicrafts and the Scandinavian antique stores located in Minneapolis today. The Nisse, who is recognized as a pan-Nordic icon in the United States, and the paintings on the wall of farm scenes and parks, provide links to the Danish peasant past. Overall, it the performance evokes the dream of an urban modernist Danish Christmas. As always when an entire county’s traditions are to be performed, there is an emphasis on certain selected aspects and time periods. In this case, the Finland performed comprises the northern and eastern parts of the country. Playing the kantele on Christmas Eve invokes Kalevala romanticism. Christmas food varies depending on where in Finland one lives, but the rice pudding, baked ham, carrot, potato and turnip casseroles, ginger snaps and Christmas stars are regarded as typical Finnish Christmas food in Finland today. Moreover, according to Finnish folklore, the Finnish joulupukki (literally the Christmas goat, similar to the Norwegian Julebukking and the Swedish julbocken) is not particularly jovial, but traditionally solemn and strict. In later years, however, the Finnish joulupukki or julgubben as he is referred to in Swedish-speaking Finland, like the mischievous Swedish tomte, has been influenced by the American Santa, and re-created as a much friendlier figure. In the materially less lavish, but verbally very rich, Finnish display at the ASI it is the imagined and sensorially-saturated rural Christmas that is performed, accompanied by some stereotypical Lapp and Karelian references. The exhibition condenses values and brings together, in one exhibition space, places and aspects of life that do not necessarily coexist in Finland itself. The Icelandic and Norwegian displays differ from the others by invoking family heritage and by highlighting handmade items and family items from overseas. In the Norwegian case, items described as family treasures come with stories of why they are treasures – stories in which gifts and gift-giving play a central role. Gifts and Volunteer Practice as Nordic Heritage While the museums, collections and exhibitions represent people of Nordic heritage as well as their contribution to American history, their objects and their accompanying stories are part of these communities’ practices. It is

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through actions such as founding, maintaining, funding and contributing to these museums, collections and exhibitions that the Nordic-American identity is practised and (re)created. Within the spaces of the American Swedish Institute and the Nordic Heritage Museum, the material gifts become not only an extension of the community, but also a way in which volunteers, staff and executive staff bring this community into being through organizing collections and executing exhibitions at the museum. Co-curatorial processes are a technology that allows the community to enter the museum sphere and influence relations of power that operate beyond the state. In an attempt to address Bruno Latour’s actor-network theory,56 this chapter has shed light on how human and non-human actors recraft Nordic culture within the wider American community through ethnic networking. As result of the network, two modes of Nordic spaces emerge. In the Nordic Heritage Museum – panNordic culture is materialized through collections, and permanent and temporary exhibitions. In the American Swedish Institute, a place of Swedish culture, Nordic spaces emerge temporarily through visiting exhibitions and Christmas displays. At the Nordic Heritage Museum, the heritage rooms infuse ethnic belonging into the pan-Nordic identity, stressing the kaleidoscopic Norden, articulating that Norden emerges differently depending on whether you approach it from the Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Icelandic or Danish perspective. At the American Swedish Institute, the Nordic dimension serves as contrast when the museum celebrates Swedish culture by inviting the Norwegian, Danish, Finnish and Icelandic cultures for temporary exhibitions such as the Christmas displays. This dynamic resonates with how Norden and its national building-blocks are at play in museums. Norden is not to be seen as a backdrop for each country’s national drama, but as an actor within it. It becomes a strategy to avoid battling with the image of Norden as a peaceful and unified space. Gift-giving has played, and continues to play, an important role in how immigrants from the Nordic countries and their descendants assemble actions, performances, objects and collections of their communities and life paths into places such as museums. These museums created by immigrants and their descendants are of particular relevance because they involve transfers of cultural treasures from one country to another, from one continent to another, from hand to hand in performative acts that bind individuals and groups together. These gifts – vernacular objects transformed into heritage through the act of performance – have been selected as important symbols of cultural identity, given and received as gifts. The framing of these gifts as Nordic heritage in a museum arouses passions and materializes emotions among individuals and groups, and connects them.  Latour, Reassembling the Social.

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These performances of Nordic culture differ from performances of Nordic culture in the Nordic countries. The largest difference emerges when we look at the museums’ engagement with community and especially at the role that lay volunteers and gift-giving play in creating museums and exhibitions. Tracking the management, the expectations and results the American non-for-profit model resembles the ways in which Artur Hazelius and his fellow museum founders in the Nordic countries created their organizations. Gift exchange is much more a matter of performance, and funded also by gifts they are run professionally, but with seemingly more impact from the community they serve than their counterpart institutions in the Nordic Countries.57 Ideally, museums are places where communities debate how they should be re-presented, even after their inception years.58 Although the work of cultural preservation is said to be part of how a changing community defines itself, the transnational form addressed by Arjun Appadurai and Carol Breckenridge still persists.59 Whereas a transnational form may preserve and promote the culture displayed, it also stresses the democratization of museum practices in the construction of museum displays and interpretation. These democratization processes, however, also take on a certain local form. In Sweden and its neighbouring countries such a form has produced two directions – institutions that display non-Nordic cultures and, temporary exhibitions produced in collaboration with selected groups.60 This direction paired with an absence of volunteer influence leaves less room for cultural connectivity as part of the institutional practice. In addition, the older museums in the Nordic countries, often referred to as national museums, for example, the Danish National Museum61 and the Nordic Museum, have in recent years returned gifts and collections from neighbouring countries, thus further staking out a national route for themselves and relying on increased cooperation between the nations to take a shared responsibility for a Nordic past and future.62   Cf. Peter Aronsson, Chapter 11 in this volume.   Ivan Karp, Christina Mullen-Kraemer and Steven Levine (eds), in Museums and Communities: The Politics of Public Culture (Washington, DC, 1992); Klein ‘Folklore, Heritage Politics and Ethnic Diversity’, p. 25. 59   Appadurai and Breckenridge, ‘Museums are Good to Think’, pp. 34–35. 60   The multicultural centre in Stockholm, Sweden, is one example of a communitybased museum, but it is also an example of how Non-Nordic cultures are grouped together in one place. 61   Formerly the Danish Museum of Antiquities, later renamed the Danish National Museum. 62   For a discussion on national museums in Scandinavia see Peter Aronsson, Chapter 11 in this volume. 57 58

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In the United States, however, museums dealing in culture in the wake of immigration from overseas interrelates the ethnic, Scandinavian and Nordic, often in overlapping ways and reflecting an ethnically diverse society in ways that do not seem to be possible in Norden today. Being based on donations and gifts, these museums include objects from several spheres, places and times, which make them intercultural performances.63 These gifts and acts of exchange can be understood as a series of interrelated activities that bind people together in a relational network. By materializing Nordic culture and by highlighting phenomena to which the community grants high symbolic value, these museums ensure that Nordic heritage will be protected, shaping for the future a clearer view of a diversified past. That museums in Norden return long-kept gifts to their neighbouring countries instead of reciprocating the gesture in the form of displays and performances suggests that the ways in which these museums make heritage is less oriented towards Norden today than it was in the nineteenth century The recent push for museums to develop strategies to engage community members more thoroughly in all areas of museum work – as opposed to museum leaders striving to professionalize the institutions and revamp exhibitions – has produced new intercultural performances among the museums preserving Nordic heritage in the United States.64 By being sensitive and responsive to both their older and younger constituencies when it comes to performing culture, the museums are transforming more fluid Nordic spaces into dynamic Nordic places. At the same time, the museums are committing to enhancing community education by introducing their members to a wider world in terms of understanding the world of materializing culture. Working in both these directions, the museums that take responsibility for Nordic culture in the United States simultaneously remain stable and reinvent themselves, as well as the communities they serve. Due to the malleability of Nordic culture, gifts and volunteerism open up shifting networks of relations. Because a century or more has passed since most immigration took place, groups are more inclined to think in regional terms, either because there are not enough people of shared ethnicity to constitute a Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Icelandic or Finnish museum or because enough time has passed that the region seems to make more sense – hence Nordic heritage. Museums dealing with such a malleable culture have the capacity to create boundaries as well as build bridges between its old and new constituency in novel ways.

 Schechner, Performance Studies, p. 315.   Jackson ‘Coming to the Center of Community Life’, pp. 29–38.

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Bibliography Fieldwork Fieldwork at the American Swedish Institute, 2008–2011. Fieldwork at the Nordic Heritage Museum, 2011. Interviews (in the Author’s Possession) Bruce Karstadt , CEO and President, American Swedish Institute, Minneapolis, 5 October 2010. Eric Nelson, CEO, Nordic Heritage Museum, Seattle, 28 July 2011. Karin Abercrombie, CEO, Swedish American Museum, Chicago, 6 October 2010. Lisa Hill-Festa, Curator of Collections, and Jason Herrington, registrar, Nordic Heritage Museum, Seattle, 28 July 2011. Email Correspondence (in the Author’s Possession) Tova Brandt, Curator, Danish Immigrant Museum, Elk Horn, Iowa, 2 July 2011. Tracey Beck, Director, and Carrie Hogan, Curator, American Swedish Historical Museum, Philadelphia, 5 December 2011. Primary Sources American Swedish Institute, brochure, 2011. ASI Archives. Marianne Forssblad, Nordic Heritage Museum 26 years 1980–2006, Nordic Heritage Museum Historic Journal, 2006, pp. 24–46. Nordic Heritage Museum Archives Secondary Sources Appadurai, Arjun, ‘Commodities and the Politics of Value’, in Arjun Appadurai (ed.), The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1986), pp. 3–63. Appadurai, Arjun and Breckenridge, Carol, Museums are Good to Think: Heritage on View in India’, in Ivan Karp, Christina Mullen-Kraemer and Steven Levine (eds), Museums and Communities: The Politics of Public Culture (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992), pp. 34–35.

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Barton, H. Arnold, A Folk Divided: Homeland Swedes and Swedish Americans, 1840–1940 (Carbondale: University of Southern Illinois Press, 1994). Barton, H. Arnold, Sweden and Visions of Norway: Politics and Culture, 1814–1905 (Carbondale: University of Southern Illinois Press, 2003). Bauman, Richard (ed.), Performance: Folklore, Cultural Performances and Popular Entertainment (New York and London: Oxford University Press, 1992). Bennett, Tony, The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics (London: Routledge, 1995). Berggren, Henrik and Lars Trädgårdh, Är svensken människa? Gemenskap och oberoende i det moderna Sverige (Stockholm: Nordstedts, 2006). Glassie, Henry, Vernacular Architecture, Material Culture (Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 2000). Gradén, Lizette, ‘On Parade: Making Heritage in Lindsborg, Kansas’, dissertation (Stockholm: Stockholm University, 2003). Gradén, Lizette, ‘Dressed in a Present from the Past: Heritage Gifts and Embodiment in the Creation and Recreation of Cultural Belonging’ Culture Unbound, 2 (2010): 695–717. Gradén, Lizette, ‘Performing a Present from the Past: The Värmland Heritage Gift, Materializing Emotions and Cultural Connectivity’, Ethnologia Europaea, 40/2 (2010): 29–46. Hall, Patricia, ‘Applying Theory to Practice: Folklife and Today’s History Museums’, in Patricia Hall and Charlie Seemann (eds), Folklife and Museums (Nashville: American Association for State and Local History, 1987). Hillström, Magdalena, ‘Ansvaret för kulturarvet: studier i det kulturhistoriska museiväsendets formering med särskild inriktning på Nordiska museets etablering 1872–1919, dissertation (Linköping: Linköping University, 2006). Jackson, John Brinckerhoff, A Sense of Place, a Sense of Time (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994). Jackson, Maria Rosario, ‘Coming to the Center of Community Life’, in Mastering Civic Engagement: A Challenge to Museums (Washington, DC: American Association of Museums, 2002). Karp, Ivan, Christina Mullen-Kraemer and Steven Levine (eds), Museums and Communities: The Politics of Public Culture (Washington, DC, 1992). Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, B., ‘Theorizing Heritage’ Ethnomusicology, 39/3 (1995): 367–380. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, B., Destination Culture: Museums, Tourism and Heritage (Berkeley, University of California Press 1998).

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Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara, ‘From Ethnology to Heritage: The Role of the Museum’, in Entre Autres/Among Others: Proceedings of SIEF Conference, (2005). Available from http://www.nyu.edu/classes/bkg/web/SIEF.pdf, accessed 2 August 2012. Klein, Barbro, ‘Folklore, Heritage Politics and Ethnic Diversity: Thinking about the Past and the Future’, in Pertti Anttonen (ed.), Folklore, Heritage Politics and Ethnic Diversity: A Festschrift for Barbro Klein, (Stockholm: Mångkulturellt Centrum, 2000). Kurin, Richard, Reflections of a Culture Broker: A View from the Smithsonian (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997). Latour, Bruno, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). Lovoll, Odd S., The Promise of America: A History of the Norwegian-American people, rev. edn (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999). Lowenthal, David, ‘Pioneer Museums’, in Leo Warren and Roy Rosenzweig (eds), History Museums in the United States: A Critical Assessment (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989). Macdonald, Sharon, Difficult Heritage: Negotiating the Nazi Past in Nuremberg and Beyond (London: Routledge, 2009). Magnusson, Magnus, ‘Introduction’, in Jeanette Greenfield, The Return of Cultural Treasures (Cambridge, 2005) Marshall, Howard Wight, ‘Folklife and the Rise of American Folk Museums’, in Patricia Hall and Charlie Seeman (eds), Folklife and Museums (Nashville, TN: American Association for State and Local History, 1987). Mauss, Marcel, The Gift: Forms and Reason of Exchange in Archaic Societies, trans. W.D. Halls (London: Routledge, [1959] 1990). Miller, Daniel, ‘Alienable Gifts and Inalienable Commodities’, in Fred R. Myers and Annie E. Coombes (eds), The Empire of Things: Regimes of Value and Material Culture (Santa Fe: School of American Research Press, 2001). Museum of International Folk Art, Vernacular Visionaries: International Outsider Art (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004). Schechner, Richard, Performance Studies: An Introduction, 2nd edn (New York and London: Routledge, 2006). Snellman, Hanna, ‘Performing Ethnography and Ethnicity: An Early Documentation of Finnish Immigrants in Nordiska museet’, Ethnologia Europaea, 40/2 (2010): 47–59. Sørensen, Øystein and Bo Stråth (eds), The Cultural Construction of Norden (Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, 1997). Sykes, Karen, Arguing with Anthropology: An Introduction to Critical Theories of the Gift (London: Routledge, 2005).

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Tuan, Yi-Fu, Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1977). Tuan, Yi-Fu, Place, Art and Self (Chicago: Columbia College of Art, 2004). Venturi, Robert, Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour, Learning from Las Vegas: The Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form (Abingdon: Routledge [1972] 2007). Internet Sources Nordic Heritage Museum, ‘General Information – About the Museum’, http:// www.nordicmuseum.org/general.aspx, accessed 2 August 2012. Norsk Folkemuseum Oslo, http://www.norskfolkemuseum.no. The United States’ Census Bureau, ‘Census 2000 Gateway’, http://www.census. gov/main/www/cen2000.html, accessed 2 August 2012.

Chapter 9

The Geopolitics of Distinction: Negotiating Regional Spaces in the Baltic Museums Eglė Rindzevičiūtė

Recent decades have witnessed sustained academic interest in the formation of transnational regions on the basis of shared concerns about political, economic, environmental and cultural issues. Many of these scholarly inquiries originated in response to EU policies that encouraged the expansion of governance from the Westphalian territorial nation-state into transnational spaces.1 This chapter contributes to this growing field of research by explicating a particular mechanism of sense-making that is used to situate Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian national spaces in the transnational regional formations. It focuses on the ways in which national distinction was constructed in cultural discourses in relation to spatial categories that stretch beyond national territories. At first glance, the idea of national distinction and transnationalism may seem to be at odds with each other. After the Second World War, European transnational regions were promoted as an antidote to the aggressive territorial nation-state identity. However, it should not be forgotten that transnational regional formations were not invented in the second half of the twentieth century; in fact, they developed in parallel with the modern nation-state. Transnational regionalism was used quite often to reinforce the territorial nation-state by strengthening national distinction: for instance, the ancient civilization of the Mediterranean region supports the sense of Greek or Italian distinction. Furthermore, material articulations of transnational regions do not   For a good overview of EU policies towards the Baltic Sea region, see Pami Aalto, European Union and the Making of a Wider Northern Europe (London and New York, 2006); see also Diana Wallis and Stewart Arnold, ‘Governing Common Seas: From a Baltic Strategy to an Arctic Policy’, Journal of Baltic Studies, 42/1 (2011): 103–107; Stefano Bartolini, Restructuring Europe: Centre Formation, System Building and Political Structuring Between the Nation-State and Europe (Oxford, 2005); and Michael Keating, ‘A Quarter Century of the Europe of the Regions’, Regional and Federal Studies, 18/5 (2008): 629–635. 1

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exist independently as such, but are framed instead through bilateral relations between nation-states. In other words, it would be hard, and perhaps impossible, to think of an object or a material setting that would refer only to a transnational regional space, such as Nordic, Baltic or European, which would not already be ‘owned’ by a cultural tradition of a particular nation-state. Museums are particularly important scientific and cultural institutions that seek to assemble national distinction. An important contention by Martin Prösler is that in museums ‘national culture and history were constructed, expressing the difference between one nation and all the others, a distinction all the more necessary since their state structures were broadly similar’.2 It can be added that the national distinctions produced in museums are not limited to stressing ‘differences’ as ‘national uniqueness’. Another way to construct national distinctions in a museum is to draw on a great many professional scientific fields, most famously political and art history, ethnography and geography.3 These professional knowledge fields are imbued with their own values, such as criteria used to identify a superior aesthetic object (the best art), a narrative of exceptional political success (the oldest, biggest and most powerful state), or the value of the natural environment (rare minerals, ancient formations). I call these values ‘professional values’ and argue that they constitute an important resource that modifies and even creates geopolitical spaces by assembling transnational regional spaces and national distinctions. This study discerns three modes of articulating the transnational spheres. First, the articulation of transnational regional space may take place through bilateral state relations. The development of the art history discipline and the University of Tartu History Museum in Estonia and the history of the Riga City Art Museum in Latvia shows that the Baltic space tends to be articulated through relations with Germans. The second mode is when transnational regional spaces are nationalized for the purposes of national distinction. This mode is illustrated by the case of the Palanga Amber Museum (established 1963), the best-attended branch of the Lithuanian Art Museum (68,825 visitors in 2009), which demonstrates how amber as a marker of the Baltic space was Lithuanianized.4 The third mode uses transnational regional space to redefine bilateral state relations. This chapter investigates two cases in which references to northern European space were used to rehabilitate the Russian cultural legacy in Latvia   Martin Prösler, ‘Museums and Globalization’, in Sharon MacDonald and Gordon Fyfe (eds), Theorizing Museums (Oxford, 1996), p. 34. 3   Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste (London, 1984). 4   Lietuvos dailės muziejaus, ‘2009 m. veiklos ataskaita’, http://www.ldm.lt/LDM/ veikla.htm, accessed 25 January 2012. 2

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and Estonia. Bilateral relations between Russia and the three Baltic republics have been rather tense since the late 1980s and have typically been studied by scholars as a process of conflicts and contestations.5 This chapter outlines a different treatment of bilateral relations with Russia. Through cultural means, the Russian legacy could transcend the conflict and be used as a proxy for the transnational European space. The analysed examples include the Kadriorg (Ekaterintal) Palace in Estonia and the Rundāle Palace (Ruhenthal) in Latvia. Both are among the best-attended museums in the respective countries. Having attracted 89,283 visitors, Kadriorg was the third best-attended museum in Estonia in 2009.6 In turn, Rundāle Palace was the second best-attended museum in Latvia, attracting 173,988 visitors in 2007.7 Due to limitations of space, this chapter cannot do full justice to the complexity of the selected cases. The main purpose is not to provide fine-grained histories of the selected institutions and disciplines, but to indicate diverse uses of transnational spaces and their importance for national distinction. Other cases may be called in to explicate even more types of interrelation between the national and transnational dimensions. The study applied discourse analysis to the printed materials that were obtained during fieldwork in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania (2008–2009), such as the museums’ self-presentations in the printed media and catalogues, guide brochures and DVDs. Explicit descriptions of the exhibition displays were used as sources of the museums’ techniques of constructing meaning. This limitation was imposed consciously, as the museums’ displays and buildings fairly bristle with possibilities for diverse interpretations, and my goal was to explore the actual semiotic work that was done by the museums – namely, the editing of possible readings of the objects and settings in their possession. National and Transnational Meanings of the Baltic Space Museums are usually considered to be rather inert institutions that operate within frames of established traditions: museums rarely pursue radical narratives, but   See Eiki Berg and Pirit Ehin (eds), Identity and Foreign Policy: Baltic–Russian Relations and European Integration (Aldershot, 2009). Russia has been analysed in international relations studies as the ‘other’ of Europe, most famously by Iver B. Neumann, Russia and the Idea of Europe: A Study of Identity and International Relations (London, 1996). 6   In 2009, Kadriorg was superseded only by the new and flashy Kumu Art Museum (169,677 visitors) and the Estonian Open Air Museum (121,116 visitors). 7   In Latvia, the best attended museum was Turaida Castle and Manor (244,982 visitors). Rundāle Palace was followed by the Latvian Open Air Museum (136,017 visitors). 5

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instead explicitly orient themselves to consensual values. Traditional museums, as suggested by Peter Aronsson, do not intentionally seek to be controversial. On the contrary, they try to gloss over the controversial past, but never fully succeed.8 This is particularly true for Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian museums which must deal with the complicated past when selecting stories, objects and settings to be publicly displayed as national heritage. Contemporary Estonia and Latvia (Estland, Livonia and Courland) were ruled by Danish and Swedish crusaders and the Teutonic Order from the thirteenth century.9 Divided between Sweden and Poland–Lithuania in 1561, Livonia was annexed to the Russian Empire in 1721.10 Local power remained vested in the Baltic German nobility: although they were not granted equal rights with the Russian nobility, the Baltic Germans were valued for their great skills in the Swedish administration and they occupied high administrative posts in the Russian Empire.11 Members of Estonian and Latvian ethnic groups took charge of state government for the first time in 1918 when the independent republics of Estonia and Latvia were established following Woodrow Wilson’s declaration of the right to national self-determination. The political role of Baltic Germans diminished, but the old elites stayed active, particularly in the cultural sector. The beginning of the Second World War led to a mass exodus of Baltic Germans, who left for the Third Reich in 1939. Another sort of Germanization followed during the Nazi occupation. Hence, any attempt by Estonian and Latvian museums to situate the contemporary states in transnational regions cannot help but address the material heritage of Swedes, Russians and Germans.12 In contrast to Latvia and Estonia, in Lithuania the history of statehood featured tighter connections with Slavic peoples. Formed in the 1200s, the   Peter Aronsson, ‘Medeltiden i montern’, in Jenny Björkman, Björn Fjaestad and Jonas Harvard (eds), Ett Nordiskt Rum: Historiska och framtida gemenskaper från Baltikum till Barents hav (Gothenburg, 2011). 9   Alan V. Murray (ed.), Crusade and Conversion on the Baltic Frontier 1150–1500 (Aldershot, 2001). 10   In 1801 the Riga province was called Livonia and the Reval province was called Estland. 11   Similarly, the local nobility of GDL was co-opted to administrative posts of the Russian Empire. Privileges of GDL nobles, known as szlachta, however, were increasingly limited as a result of unsuccessful uprisings in 1834 and 1863. See Vytautas Petronis, Constructing Lithuania: Ethnic Mapping in Tsarist Russia, ca. 1800–1914 (Stockholm, 2007), p. 70. 12   Baltic Germans reclaimed many objects that they had previously donated to the Latvian museums and took them away to Germany in 1939: Rīgas vēstures un kugniecības muzejs 1773–1973 (Riga, 1973), p. 29. Cf. Vineta Veikmane, ‘Istoriia razvitiia muzeev v Latviiskoi SSR (1945–1985 gg)’, unpublished doctoral dissertation (Riga, 1990), p. 122. 8

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Grand Duchy of Lithuania (GDL) encompassed vast lands that are currently parts of Belarus, Ukraine and Russia. The GDL entered a commonwealth with the Kingdom of Poland in 1596. Two centuries later the Commonwealth was partitioned between the Russian Empire, the Habsburg Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia in 1795. Just like Estonia and Latvia, Lithuania became part of the Western provinces (called the North-Western region since the midnineteenth century) of the Russian Empire. Ethnic Lithuanians established an independent nation-state in 1918, which did not last long as it was occupied by the Soviet Union in 1940 and again in 1944. Lithuania regained sovereignty in 1990 de facto. In local historiographies, this broad-brush picture of these three countries’ history is typically narrated as a story of disentanglement from the direct governance of other states and the establishment of their own sovereign states, governed by the previously oppressed ethnic groups. Being essentially histories of ethnic nationalisms, these accounts also systematically used a number of transnational categories, most often ‘European’, ‘Northern’ and ‘Baltic’.13 Since this volume discusses the category of ‘Nordic’ in depth, the word ‘Baltic’ deserves special mention here. ‘Baltic’ has a dizzying range of political and cultural meanings, some of which locate ‘Baltic’ in the Nordic space.14 The name of the sea, Mare Balticum, was used by cartographers as early as the twelfth century. The term ‘Baltic’ was used by the Russian Imperial authorities in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to describe the Baltic provinces (der baltische Landestaat) or lands ruled by the descendants of the Livonian Order or the Baltic Germans.15 Defined in this way, the Baltic provinces did not include Lithuania. Indeed, before the mid-nineteenth century the Polish–Lithuanian political nation of nobles saw themselves as descendents of ‘Sarmatians’, a nomadic south-eastern tribe. In the fifteenth century, Polish historians such as Jan Dlugosz (1415–1480) and Maciej Stryjkowski (ca.1547–ca.1593) did not use the name ‘Baltic Sea’; they called it the Sarmatian Sea. The identification of Lithuanians with local pre-Christian tribes, the so-called Balts, was a much later phenomenon that originated in the nineteenth century 13   Here, I have left out other transnational categories, such as ‘eastern Europe’ or ‘postSoviet countries’. These otherwise important notions just could not be properly addressed in one chapter. 14   The contemporary area of eastern Europe was called ‘northern Europe’ in the eighteenth century. Michael Confino, ‘Re-inventing the Enlightenment: Western Images of Eastern Realities in the Eighteenth Century’, Canadian Slavonic Papers/Revue Canadienne des slavistes, 36/3–4 (1994): 505–522; David Kirby and Merja-Liisa Hinkkanen, The North and the North Seas (London, 2000). 15   For more, see Kristin Kuutma, ‘National Museums in Estonia’, in Peter Aronsson and Gabriella Elgenius (eds), Building National Museums in Europe 1750–2010 (Linköping, 2011).

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and gained particular influence in the second half of the twentieth century.16 In Lithuania, the notion ‘Baltic’ acquired strength as an ethnic category with the rise of language-based national movements in the second half of the nineteenth century.17 It has to be remembered that from the 1900s to the 1950s both east and western European linguists debated the existence of a shared Balto-Slavic language group.18 Nevertheless, in everyday use the term ‘Baltic’ is limited to the Latvian and Lithuanian languages. At the beginning of the twentieth century this narrow linguistic category became a base for the Baltic space as the one shared by Lithuanian- and Latvianspeaking peoples.19 This ethno-linguistic Baltic space was soon extended to include Finno-Ugric-speaking Estonians and culminated in the Baltic Entente, signed by the Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian governments in 1934.20 After the Soviet occupation, the ‘Baltic’ (Pribaltika in Russian) was cemented as a regional category that referred to the Soviet republics of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. At the same time, Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian émigré communities found it advantageous to unite in raising the issue in the West of the illegal Soviet occupation of the three countries.21 Both of these factors contributed to sustaining the geopolitical notion of ‘Baltic republics’ in the second half of the twentieth century. The power of this notion was epitomized during the collapse

  See a review by S.C. Rowell, ‘The Face Beneath the Snow: The Baltic Region in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries’, Historical Journal, 44/2 (2001): 541–558. 17   It is thought that the term ‘Baltic’ was first used to describe Latvian, Lithuanian and East Prussian languages by the German linguist Georg Nesselman in his book Die Sprache der alten Preussen (1845). Research about Baltic languages was further developed by August Leskien (1840–1916) and Aleksandr O. Potebnia (1835–1891). 18   This hypothesis of a close association between ‘Slavic’ and ‘Baltic’ languages was quite unpopular with Latvian and Lithuanian linguists. See Thomas Olander, ‘Det baltoslaviske problem: Accentologien’, unpublished thesis (Copenhagen, 2002). 19   Joseph C. Roucek, ‘The Geopolitics of the Baltic States’, American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 8/2 (1949): 171–175. This view was broadened in the 1920s and 1930s when a Lithuanian geographer, Kazys Pakštas, suggested reorienting Lithuania to the Baltic Sea and establishing a Balto-Scandian region. See Kazys Pakštas, Kultūra, civilizacija, geopolitika (Vilnius, 2003). 20   A need for a regional unity which would involve Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland was expressed in the Bulduri conference in 1920. 21   In 1968 the Association for Advancement of Baltic Studies was founded in the United States, and eventually ‘Baltic states’ entered historical and political studies as a unit of analysis. See Rein Taagepera, ‘The Struggle for Baltic History’, Journal of Baltic Studies, 40/4 (2009): 451–464; also Mindaugas Jurkynas, How Deep Is Your Love? The Baltic Brotherhood Re-Examined (Vilnius, 2007). 16

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of the Soviet Union when ‘the Baltic republics’ and ‘the Balts’ were hailed in the global media as being at the forefront of the disassembling of the Soviet empire.22 However, soon after the fall of the Soviet Union, ‘Baltic republics’ as a geopolitical unit was contested: it was argued that the shared experience of Soviet occupation and breaking away from the Soviet Union could not provide a sustained sense of belonging to the ‘Baltic’ space. Pursuing faster and closer integration with Nordic countries, Estonia actively tried to shed its identification with the ‘Baltic region’ as an undesirable Soviet legacy.23 In Lithuania, ‘Baltic’ space did not lose its relevance, but was reshaped in response to new political issues. Here, ‘Baltic’ was appropriated to enhance the national distinction of Lithuanians as the ancient people, the Balts. At the same time, ‘Baltic’ space was reformulated beyond references to Baltic Germans, the three post-Soviet republics and the ancient Baltic tribes. Baltic space was fundamentally revised in the 1990s and 2000s, when both the EU and national governments set off to construct a new Baltic Sea area, drawing neither on linguistic grounds nor on post-imperial legacies. A wider notion of the Baltic Sea region emerged to include all ‘states and their parts that lie near the Baltic Sea’ – that is, the nineteen nations historically located within this territory and the fourteen contemporary states.24 The Northern Dimension strategy was adopted by the European Council in 1999 and began to be implemented in 2001. Within the framework of the Northern Dimension, the EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea was approved in 2009.25 Many academic articulations of Northern, Baltic and eastern European regions followed in the footsteps of these policies. Ole Waever, for example, called for devising a new post-Cold War notion of northern Europe that would organically include the ‘Baltic region’.26 In a similar vein, David Kirby argued that the above-mentioned   For example, The Economist still uses the expression ‘the Balts’ to refer to Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. 23   Egidijus Motieka, ‘Baltijos valstybių integracija: ar mokomės iš praeities klaidų?’ in Lietuva ir jos kaimynai (Vilnius, 1997), p. 37. 24   Ričardas Baubinas, ‘Baltijos regiono geopolitiniai savitumai’, in Lietuva ir jos kaimynai (Vilnius, 1997), p. 19. The Council of the Baltic Sea States, established in 1992, lists Iceland, Norway and Russia among its members. In contrast, the Baltic Council of Ministers (established in 1994) unites only Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. 25   Wallis and Arnold, ‘Governing Common Seas’, pp. 103–104. 26   Waever also noted that the term ‘Nordic countries’ was rooted in Cold War confrontation, wherein Nordic countries could claim unique grounds of neutral and enlightened societies. After the end of the communist–capitalist divide, Nordic countries, according to Waever, risked becoming an insignificant periphery in world politics. It was therefore advantageous to expand the meaning of Nordic to include what was understood as the Baltic Sea area. See Ole Waever, ‘Nordic Nostalgia: Northern Europe After the Cold War’, 22

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notions of ‘Baltic’ space prevented Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania from aligning more closely with the Nordic countries.27 As a result of the contested historical legacies and new European political initiatives, the Baltic space has been, and is still being, conceptualized in normative rather than descriptive ways.28 Having outlined how national agendas were played out in the political constructions of the Baltic space, I will go on now to explicate the ways in which material objects, settings and fields, defined through professional value systems, produced particular constellations of national and transnational spaces. Professional values and material affordances often moderated political conflicts and disagreements. The Bilateralization of Transnational Spaces: Baltic as German, Nordic as Swedish It has been widely acknowledged that both the discipline of art history and art museums have contributed to perpetuating the cultural notions of nationstates as bonded to particular territories and expressed in particular styles.29 The regional category of ‘Baltic’ assumed a tight relation with ‘German’ in Estonian art history. The author of one of the first art histories of Livonia, Wilhelm Neumann (1849–1919), used notions of ‘Baltic art’ (baltische Kunst) and the ‘Nordic German style’ to describe the work of German artists who travelled to Livonia. At the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, professional Estonian artists emerged, and a vigorous debate that opposed Baltic (German) and Estonian art took place in the local press.30 Not until the 1930s did Baltic German art appear in a nationalist Estonian narrative of art history for the first time: in his book, History of Estonian Art, Alfred Vaga argued that ‘[i]t is time to realise that the so-called Baltic art – as far as it is connected with our country – cannot be separated and left out from International Affairs, 68/1 (1992): 77–102. This view is criticized by Heikki Patomäki, ‘Beyond Nordic Nostalgia: Envisaging a Social/Democratic System of Global Governance’, Cooperation and Conflict, 35/2 (2000): 115–154. 27   David Kirby, The Baltic World 1772–1993: Europe’s Northern Periphery in an Age of Change (London, 1995), pp. 2–6. 28   See Marko Lehti, ‘Eastern or Western, New or False? Classifying the Balts in the Post-Cold War Era’, in Fabrizio Tassinari, Pertti Joenniemi and Uffe Jakobsen (eds), Wider Europe: Nordic and Baltic Lessons to Post-Enlargement Europe (Copenhagen, 2006), pp. 69–88. 29   Carol Duncan, Civilizing Rituals: Inside Public Art Museums (London, 1995). 30   Krista Kodres, ‘Our Own Estonian Art History: Changing Geographies of ArtHistorical Narrative’, Kunstiteaduslikke Uurimusi 19/3–4 (2010): 15–16.

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the general history of Estonian art’. By ‘Baltic art’ Vaga referred mainly to the mediaeval art created by Baltic Germans.31 National distinctiveness was paramount in these debates. Some, for example, criticized attempts to treat native folk culture as genuine Estonian art because Estonian folk culture was seen as lacking distinction from Northern countries, such as Norway, Sweden and Finland. Hence Estonia’s cultural proximity to Northern countries was perceived as problematic from a nationalist point of view that valued nationally unique material culture.32 Even Baltic Germans were cautious about association with the Northern countries. Nordic peoples were seen as less civilized, if not outright barbaric; not until the eighteenth century did the cultural status of the Nordic improve in the eyes of Baltic Germans.33 Soviet official historiography, argued Kodres, treated German and Scandinavian influences as a colonial legacy.34 Only after the collapse of the Soviet Union were Swedish rule and, to some extent, Baltic German rule rehabilitated as a strategic move to strengthen Estonia’s association with northern Europe. Since 1989 Estonian school textbooks have used maps and narratives to embed Estonia in northern Europe by portraying Swedish occupation as a positive phenomenon.35 Furthermore, appeals to Estonia’s historical belonging to the Nordic space were often articulated through her relations with Sweden.36 Nordic space was introduced to Estonia as part of the de-Germanization process and therefore, it can be suggested, contributed to giving a negative tone to the ‘Baltic’. For example, it is not surprising that much of the exhibition space of the University of Tartu History Museum was dedicated to Sweden, since the university itself was established by Gustav II Adolf in 1632. The museum itself, however, was established in 1976 and opened its first exhibition in 1982. The principal goal of the museum was to unfold the history of science. However, its exhibition in the 2000s strongly features the Swedish dimension   Alfred Vaga, Eesti kunsti ajalugu, vol. I: Keskaeg (Tartu, 1932), p. 5; cf. Kodres, ‘Our Own Estonian Art History’, p. 17. 32   Kodres, ‘Our Own Estonian Art History’, p. 16. 33   Pärtel Piirimäe, ‘Baltiska provinser eller en del av Norden?’, in Jenny Björkman, Björn Fjaestad and Jonas Harvard (eds), Ett Nordiskt Rum: Historiska och framtida gemenskaper från Baltikum till Barents hav (Gothenburg, 2011), pp. 111–120. 34   Kodres, ‘Our Own Estonian Art History’, pp. 20–21. 35   Heiko Pääbo, ‘Constructing Historical Space: Estonian Transition from the Russian Civilisation to the Baltic Sea Region’, paper presented at the 9th Conference on Baltic Studies in Europe, Stockholm, 12–15 June 2011. 36   A good example here is Helmut Piirimäe, ‘Historical Heritage: The Relations between Estonia and her Nordic Neighbors’, in Marju Lauristin et al. (eds), Return to the Western World: Cultural and Political Perspectives on the Estonian Post-Communist Transition (Tartu, 1997). 31

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that is emphasized in the printed narratives. The work of the university was often severely disrupted in the seventeenth century, and it was closed down and moved to Sweden in 1710. The University of Tartu reopened as a Russian university a century later in 1802. Collaboration with Sweden was reinstated about a century later, when Swedish scholars went to Tartu to replace the Baltic German staff in the 1920s. Although a separate exhibition hall is dedicated to the university’s scientific achievements during the Russian Imperial rule, the museum’s narrative emphasizes not disruptions, but the continuity of the Nordic connections. The museum, it seems, compartmentalizes the academic distinction-oriented stories according to several competing geopolitical spaces (Swedish and Russian) and avoids addressing the history as an interrelation of complex and hybrid stories. Like their colleagues in Estonia, interwar Latvian art historians struggled to incorporate ‘European’ artistic styles into the national canon, because they were perceived as the Baltic German colonial legacy.37 A history of the Riga City Museum of Art (renamed the Latvian National Museum of Art (LNMA) in 2005) is a good example of selective appropriation of regional dimensions.38 The museum was founded in Riga, a flourishing nineteenth-century city that was predominantly populated by Germans (42.9 per cent), where ethnic Latvians were a minority (23.6 per cent) and Russians were significantly present (25.1 per cent).39 The basis for the museum was a growing collection of works by western European and Baltic German artists that accumulated between 1816 and 1868. The City Museum of Art was opened in 1905 in a specially designed building by the above-mentioned Wilhelm Neumann, who also served as its first director.40 Between 1905 and 1918 the museum collected and exhibited mainly Baltic German artists.41 After the establishment of the independent republic of Latvia in 1918, the museum was directed by the famous Latvian painter Vilhelms   Stella Pelše, ‘Creating the Discipline: Facts, Stories and Sources of Latvian Art History’, Kunstiteaduslikke Uurimusi, 19/3-4 (2010): 26–41. 38   For more about the history of the Riga City Museum of Art, see a collection by Māra Lāce (ed.), Valsts mākslas muzejs (Riga, 2005). 39   Data from the 1867 Census; see The Latvian National Museum of Art, http://www. history-museum.lv, accessed 25 January 2012. 40   For more, see Elita Grosmane, ‘Wilhelm Neumann and the Sources of his Inspiration During the Formation of the Museum’, in The Place of Art Museums in Cultural Processes: History and Prospects (Riga, 2005), pp. 19–25; and Tomas Kencis and Kristin Kuutma, ‘National Museums in Latvia’, in Peter Aronsson and Gabriella Elgenius (eds), Building National Museums in Europe 1750–2010 (Linköping, 2011). 41   Edvarda Šmite, ‘Art Comes into the Lives of the Citizens of Riga from the End of the 18th to the Beginning of the 20th Century’, in Lāce, Valsts mākslas muzejs, pp. 328–334. 37

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Purvītis (1872–1945), who initiated the systematic collection and display of works by Latvian artists.42 That the City Art Museum was somewhat slow to extend its symbolic consecration to Latvian artists was later used for Soviet propaganda purposes: in 1986 a museum guide stressed that ‘the works of Russian and Latvian artists were but a rare exception’ during the interwar period.43 In 1940/44–1989 the museum’s collection was expanded to include artworks by Russian and other of the Soviet republics’ artists.44 The collection of western European art was transferred to the State Museum of Western European Art and the City Museum of Art was renamed the State Museum of Latvian and Russian Art. In this way, under the Soviet regime, the art gallery built by Baltic Germans came to embody primarily ethnic Latvian and Russian artistic culture. After the collapse of the Soviet Union the Riga City Museum of Art, renamed the Latvian National Museum of Art, kept the existing geopolitical rationale for the organization of its collections. A recent guide explicitly states that the museum’s orientation is first and foremost the creation of ethnic Latvians: ‘We can speak confidently of the beginnings of professional Latvian art only from the mid-19th century. Therefore our main attention is to the research of a period of some 150 years ...’.45 However, the museum described itself as ‘home to all that is beautiful’ in a brochure published in 2007.46 Here, it is not regional dimensions, such as national art created by ethnic Latvians, but the quality of the art that is used to enhance the museum as a marker of national distinction. In 1996 the Russian art section was reduced to get rid of some Soviet-era paintings and partially replaced by an exhibition of ‘Baltic Art’, dedicated to the work of Baltic German artists.47 Most interestingly, the museum’s brochure clearly states that the Baltic German exhibition is not part of ‘Latvian art tradition’, but a phenomenon that lies outside of Latvian art history. Baltic German art is not the core, but rather ‘the environment in which Latvian art developed’.48 Baltic German art is included as ‘a significant part of Baltic culture in general’ in the museum’s collection strategy, but it is not its highlight.49 42   Māra Lāce, ‘From the Municipal to the National in 100 Years’, in The Place of Art Museums in Cultural Processes: History and Prospects (Riga, 2005), p. 13. 43   Ivars Runkovskis, The Latvian Museum of Foreign Art, Riga (Leningrad, 1986), p. 6. 44   Ibid, p. 14. 45   Daiga Rudzate (ed.), State Museum of Art (Riga, 2001), p. 3. 46   The Latvian National Museum of Art (Riga, 2007), p. 3. 47  Rudzate, State Museum of Art, p. 7. 48   The Latvian National Museum of Art, p. 23. 49  Rudzate, State Museum of Art, p. 13. In a similar vein, the Estonian Kumu Art Museum (opened in 2006) integrates Baltic German art in its narrative on art historical

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During a visit to the Baltic (German) exhibition it struck me that the exhibited works of art are not of particularly high artistic quality, something that is indirectly acknowledged in the museum’s catalogue: ‘historical conditions did not encourage the development of a consistent style of art and consequential change’.50 In this context, it is less surprising that the museum is very proud of its Russian art collection, as it consists of exceptionally valuable works of art. The exhibition of ‘Russian Art’ is therefore described as ‘the finest’ and ‘the richest’ in the Baltic states.51 Unlike in the case of the Baltic (German) exhibition, the Russian halls boast such world-famous artists as Karl Brulov, Ivan Aivazovsky, Ivan Shishkin, Nikolai Roerich, a number of the Peredvizhniki group, and the celebrated art nouveau painters Alexander Benois and Boris Kustodiyev, to name just a few. As the museum has some of the best works by highly valued Russian artists, the Russian art can be unproblematically included in the museum’s goal to celebrate national Latvian art. The Riga City Museum of Art acknowledged its colonial Baltic German origins without abandoning an ambition to promote art created by ethnic Latvians. In doing so, the museum positioned itself as an institution dedicated to art of exceptionally high quality. Such art happened to be produced by Russian artists or communist Latvian artists, most famously the avant-garde artist Gustavs Klucis (1895–1938). In turn, the positioning of the museum in a wider region was done in order to maximize its distinction. ‘The three Baltic republics’ was chosen as the main point of reference for the identity of the museum as the oldest purpose-built fine arts museum ‘in the Baltic’ region.52 Should one extend the Baltic space to include Poland, Russia or Finland, the Riga City Museum of Art would not be able to claim the distinct status of being the oldest since it would be surpassed by the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg (founded in 1764 and opened to the public in 1852), the Ateneum Art Museum in Helsinki (opened in 1888), or the Zacheta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw (opened in 1900).

grounds. See Art Lives in Kumu: The Main Building of the Art Museum of Estonia – Kumu Art Museum (Tallinn, 2006). 50   Ibid., p. 23. 51  Ibid., The Latvian National Museum of Art, p. 25. 52   Māra Lāce, ‘The State Museum of Art, Riga’, in Latvijas māksla 20. Gadsimts [Latvia, Surprising Art from the 20th Century] (Riga, 2002), p. 26.

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Nationalization of Transnational Space: The Lithuanian Balts53 If the meanings of ‘Baltic’ in Estonia and Latvia were negotiated in relation to Baltic Germans, its meanings in Lithuania assumed a strong connection with pre-Christian tribes. I argue that in Lithuania a transnational category of ‘Baltic’ tended to be nationalized – that is, reduced to signify ethnic Lithuanians. In this process a particular material object, amber, was construed as an important stabilizer holding together a community of contemporary Lithuanians as descendants of the Baltic tribes. In 1963 the Amber Museum was opened in a nineteenth-century neobaroque summer palace in Palanga, the most popular seaside resort in Lithuania. The museum’s catalogue described amber, found on Lithuania’s coast, as ‘Northern gold’ and stated that ‘[a]mber is found in many countries in the world, but nowhere is amber so deeply rooted in people’s everyday life, folklore, literature and the arts as it is in Lithuania’.54 The guidebook insisted that the first mention of the ‘ancestors of Lithuanians’ was found in Tacitus’ Germania (ad 98). It is quite curious that the guidebook’s authors took a great deal of liberty in interpreting Tacitus’ text. The guidebook hence claimed that Tacitus described the Aestii tribe (the assumed Lithuanians, although there is no scholarly agreement on which ethnic group the Aestii should be attributed to) as ‘good farmers’ who collected amber in shallow parts of the Baltic Sea and transported it to faraway lands to sell it.55 In this way, the guidebook omitted inconvenient parts of Tacitus’ text. The original text said that the Aestii looked ‘Suebic’, that their language was ‘nearer British’ and that they could be classified as ‘German people’. Furthermore, wrote Tacitus, the Aestii did not value amber (‘to the natives it is useless’ and ‘they are astonished to be paid for it’). It was, according to Tacitus, only thanks to the exquisite taste of the Romans that amber came to be perceived as a valuable stone: ‘it lay there long among the rest of the flotsam and jetsam of the sea until Roman luxury gave it fame’.56 In nationalizing amber as the northern Lithuanian gold that made the ancestors of contemporary Lithuanians visible, the Amber Museum could not help but address the role of Germans in mining and processing amber from   This section draws on my earlier publication, Eglė Rindzevičiūtė, ‘Soviet Lithuanians, Amber and the “New Balts”: Historical Narratives of National and Regional Identities in Lithuanian Museums, 1940–2009’, Culture Unbound, 2 (2010): 665–694. 54   Pranas Gudynas and Stasys Pinkus, Palangos gintaro muziejus (Vilnius, 1964), p. 2. 55   Ibid., p. 9. 56  Tacitus, Germania, transl. by M Hutton, Tacitus in five volumes, 1 (Cambridge MA, 1970), p. 45, cf. Endre Bojtár, Foreword to the Past: A Cultural History of the Baltic People (Budapest, 1999), p. 30. 53

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the Baltic Sea. The history of amber in East Prussia stretched back centuries: since the thirteenth century amber collection had been increasingly regulated by the Livonian Order. The centre of both the amber industry and scientific research was Königsberg, where the first book about amber, Succini Historia, by Andreas Aurifaber, was published in 1551.57 By way of contrast, Lithuania gained access to the Baltic Sea coast and amber resources only in 1923. Since it was written in the context of 1960s Soviet ideology, the guidebook could rather easily diminish the contribution of Germans in the cultural and natural histories of amber by applying a Marxist class discourse. From a Marxist–Leninist point of view, Königsberg’s Germans were treated as feudal colonizers of East Prussia, and their cultural authority was therefore compromised. Why, it can be asked, did amber become so important in the material articulation of Lithuanian ethnic identity? One of the main reasons is the lasting materiality and stabilizing power of amber: Neolithic amber artefacts survived in burials and constitute an important part of archaeological findings. It was through amber that the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea, the territory of hypothetical proto-Lithuanians, was mentioned in ancient histories. Another reason is that Lithuania lacks highly-prized natural resources, its main natural resources being gravel and turf. Ironically, the world’s biggest amber concentration is actually in Russia’s Kaliningrad, where an Amber Museum was opened in 1979. In Lithuania, the history of amber in Königsberg/Kaliningrad is considered little if at all in relation to its self-representation as an amber country. Instead, as I have argued elsewhere, even in the 1990s amber was used to reinforce national distinction: this was revealed in a heated parliamentary discussion, stirred by a proposition to remove amber from a list of precious stones. A member of parliament defended amber as ‘the only precious stone found in Lithuania’.58 A change of the classification of amber, hence, was perceived as threatening the national distinction by devaluing Lithuania’s natural resources and, perhaps, archaeological heritage. Supported by the Lithuanian school of archaeology, the Amber Museum framed amber as a stone the use of which united the Balts, ancestors of all modern Lithuanians.59 In the new millennium, a further social distinction was imposed on Baltic–Lithuanian amber artefacts. In the texts that accompanied a large exhibition, The Art of the Balts, organized by the Lithuanian Art Museum  Bojtár, Foreword to the Past, p. 29.   Rindzevičiūtė, ‘Soviet Lithuanians, Amber and the “New Balts”’, pp. 684–685. 59   By the Lithuanian School of Archaeology I refer to the approach inspired by a famous archaeologist of Lithuanian origin, Marija Gimbutas, who was a supporter of the Amber Museum. Gimbutas’s efforts to discern a Baltic civilization were criticized by Bojtár. See Marija Gimbutas, The Balts (London, 1963). 57

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in Vilnius in 2009, amber was no longer described as an indicator of a tribe or a nation. Instead, it was described as a marker of the social elites; an odd notion of ‘Baltic aristocracy’ was coined that referred to the ancient proto-Lithuanian tribes and had nothing to do with the Baltic Germans.60 A further distinction of Lithuanians as the Balts was construed by ascribing exceptional aesthetic quality to the amber artefacts produced by the Balts. Unpolished ancient amber was described as a conscious aesthetic choice by ancestors who possessed ‘a more subtle understanding of the beauty of amber’.61 In this way, amber was transformed in cultural discourses from a natural history object to a marker of national distinction of a particular group of Lithuanians. Baltic was identified exclusively with proto-Lithuanian tribes, although proto-Latvian tribes could, in principle, be included. The historical role of German industrialists and scientists, although explicitly mentioned in the Amber Museum catalogue of 1963, was eventually sidelined. It can be hypothesized that through nationalizing the Balts as Lithuanians and, in turn, establishing a strong connection between amber (‘Northern’ or ‘Baltic’ gold) and the Lithuanian people, a particular geopolitical project was pursued that legitimized Lithuania’s possession of the sea-coast area. The ‘Amber Baltic Sea’ coast was constructed as Lithuanian property. Although the transnational meaning of Balticness was to some degree retained, in the case of amber, national distinction prevailed over transnationalism. Transnational Space Transforms Bilateral Relations All three Baltic countries have a complicated relationship with their past that belongs to periods of the Russian hegemony. Sizable groups of Russian nationals is a more sensitive issue in Estonia and Latvia (25.6 per cent and 29.6 per cent respectively in 2000) than in Lithuania where Russians made up only 6.3 per cent of the population in 2001.62 So far, scholars have mainly concentrated their efforts on showing Estonia’s wish to emphasize its affinity

  For example, see a text on the exhibition’s website: ‘LDK didikų prabangos jausmas’, http://www.baltumenas.lt/?s=expo&d=5, accessed 25 January 2012. 61   Marius Iršėnas, ‘Baltų menas: naujo pasakojimo paieškos’, Lietuvos muziejai 4 (2009): 24. 62   These data are taken from national censuses in 2000, Latvijas Statistika, http:// www.csb.gov.lv, accessed 19 December 2011; Estonia: 2000 Population and Housing Census (Tallinn, 2001); and from the Lithuanian Department of Statistics, ‘Gyventojų sudėtis 2001’, http://stat.gov.lt, accessed 16 December 2011. 60

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with the Nordic countries and to erase the Russian legacy.63 Since 1990 ties with Northern countries, particularly Sweden and Finland, have appeared to serve rather well Estonia’s need for national distinction, articulated as difference from other Soviet republics. However, there are also interesting cases of using material remnants of the Russian Empire to construct national distinctions in Estonia and Latvia. Focusing on the reconstructions of the Kadriorg and Rundāle palaces, this section details how aesthetic values were used to neutralize the negative political narrative of Russian and German oppression that is often used in local historiographies.64 In Kadriorg and Rundāle, professional values reframed Russian geopolitical space as northern European and articulated Russian–European space as an important cultural resource to Estonian and Latvian national distinction.65 Situated in a leafy park that stretches from the edge of central Tallinn to the Baltic Sea coast, the Kadriorg Palace stands as an ornate remnant of the Russian Empire.66 The baroque palace with plastered and painted walls was built as a gift to Catherine I of Russia (née Marta Helena Skowrońska), the wife of Peter the Great (1682–1725), who was born in Germany but brought up in Livonia.67 The building was designed by the Italian architect Niccolo Michetti (1675–1759), who worked briefly for the court in St Petersburg, and was erected in 1718–27. A nearby district of newly constructed wooden villas was used by St Petersburg aristocrats. However, during the Crimean Wars (1853–56) the significance of Kadriorg as a summer resort declined, and these villas started catering to the ‘Estonian bourgeoisie’. In 1918 the Kadriorg Palace was given to Tallinn city and in 1921 it was transferred to the Estonian Museum. The first exhibition that opened to the   See Eva Clarita Onken, ‘“Woe from Stones”: Commemoration, Identity Politics and Estonia’s “War of Monuments”’, Journal of Baltic Studies, 39/4 (2008): 419–430; James Mark, The Unfinished Revolution: Making Sense of the Communist Past in Central-Eastern Europe (New Haven and London, 2010); Stuart Burch and David J. Smith, ‘Empty Spaces and the Value of Symbols: Estonia’s “War of Monuments” from Another Angle’, Europe-Asia Studies, 59/6 (2007): 913–936. 64   For a critique of excessive anti-Russian approaches in Estonian historiography, see Jüri Kivimäe, ‘Re-writing Estonian History?’ in Michael Branch (ed.), National History and Identity: Approaches to the Writing of National History in the North-East Baltic Region Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Helsinki, 1999), pp. 205–212. 65   According to Kodres, it was typical in Estonia to use the prestige of ‘an older, more advanced culture ... to enhance the standing and value of the local, less known and peripheral cultural heritage’: Kodres, ‘Our Own Estonian Art History’, p. 22. 66   Kadriorg is the Estonian version of the name of the palace that was otherwise known as Katrintal and Yekaterinantal. 67   Jeremy Howard, East European Art, 1650–1950 (Oxford, 2006), p. 59. 63

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public in 1927 displayed works by western European, Baltic German and Estonian artists side by side.68 The Kadriorg Palace was soon claimed for use as a government residence: the art collection was removed from the building to house the visiting king of Sweden in 1929. During the following years the palace was redesigned to serve as a government office and was closed to the public.69 Even during the first Soviet occupation and the Second World War, Kadriorg served as a government building, both for Soviets and Nazis.70 After the war, the palace was turned back into the art museum: however, during this time (1946–91) it fell into such disrepair that it was closed in 1991. Restored and opened again as a branch of the Art Museum of Estonia in 2000, Kadriorg was dedicated to foreign art collection, consisting of western European and Russian art. The museum’s catalogue humbly admits that Kadriorg’s collection is not on a par with the world-famous museums in terms of artistic quality.71 Instead, Kadriorg as palace is framed as an especially valuable national heritage, with its architecture described as ‘splendid’ and lending ‘air, space and glamour’ to the modest collection.72 The restoration of Kadriorg Palace carefully articulated the positive Russian influence on art history in Estonia. In 2008 its catalogue described the palace as an effort by Peter I to Europeanize the Russian Empire. A visitor to the museum is welcomed by a paragraph that calls Kadriorg ‘the crown jewel among the many towers and spires of Tallinn’ and indicates that the palace was ‘planned after the model of Versailles’.73 The guidebook, however, did not stress the political context of the construction of the palace, which began shortly after the end of the Great Northern War between Sweden and Russia (1700–21). Kadriorg marked the beginning of Russian colonial rule and expressed Russia’s ambition to become a Great Power. This message was made clear in the iconography of the artistic decoration. The ceiling of the palace’s central ceremonial hall featured a fresco that portrayed the stories of Actaeon and Callisto. This classical narrative about

  Aleksandra Murre, Kadriorg: 290 (Tallinn, 2008), pp. 26–29.   Ibid., pp. 33–36. 70   Kuutma, ‘National Museums in Estonia’, p. 248. 71   Both the exodus of Baltic Germans and the damage incurred during the Second World War are partially blamed for the scarcity of ‘artistic treasures’ in Estonia. See Kadi Poli, ‘Kadriorg Art Museum’, in Kadriorg Palace (Tallinn, 2008), pp. 3–4. 72   Ibid., p. 6. The case of Kadriorg, which houses the Art Museum, is, of course, more complicated than the one outlined in my chapter. For more about negotiating conflicting rationales of Soviet ideology and Estonian artistic autonomy, see Kuutma ‘National Museums in Estonia’. 73   From a visit to Kadriorg in January 2009. 68 69

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‘the hunter that became the hunted’ was, according to Howard, an allegorical representation of the Russian victory against Sweden.74 Kadriorg Palace was therefore a material remnant of Estonia’s transfer from Northern/Swedish to Russian space. A recent guidebook to the palace, however, did not frame this political change as particularly problematic. The fresco’s content is briefly described as symbolizing ‘the victory over Sweden in the Northern War’ and glorifying the ‘triumphant Russia’.75 The potential controversy over Estonian history was also toned down in a Soviet guidebook (1977) that merely mentioned that the ceiling painting depicted the myth about Actaeon but did not explain its political meaning.76 In 2008 the origins of the palace were not described as a result of Russian aggression and expansion, but rather as a collaborative effort among various western European artists and the attempt of the Russian tsar to Europeanize his Empire. Although in the 2000s the political context of the Kadriorg Palace was addressed in a greater detail than during the Soviet period, the palace was still mainly described as a distinct aesthetic object: ‘a miracle’ and ‘an alien flower in the harsh climate of northern Europe’.77 The guide strategically praised the Kadriorg Palace as ‘a wonderful symbol of the presence of authority in this relatively independent province by the Baltic Sea; figuratively speaking, it was a Baroque frame around the window to Europe created by Peter I’.78 Featuring a separate hall that exhibits portraits of Russian tsars, Kadriorg was depoliticized by the guidebook as an elegant summer palace, used by high society ‘over their way to Western Europe’.79 The history of the Kadriorg Palace is selectively used by the current museum guidebook to construe the palace as a bearer of the Estonian national distinction. The guidebook carefully operates with both social stratification categories (bourgeois, high society) and regional categories that emphasize artistic distinction, brought by the Russian emperors to Estonian territory. The text says nothing about the inferior social status of ethnic Estonian people during the Kadriorg times. In this way, Kadriorg is discursively constructed as a material  Howard, East European Art, p. 59.   Jüri Kuuskemaa, ‘The Palace and Park of Kadriorg’, in Kadriorg: the 18th Century Palace and Park (Tallinn, 2008), pp. 12, 20–21. 76   Gosudarstvennyi khudozhestvenyi muzei ESSR (Tallinn, 1977), pp. 9–10. This Soviet guide attributed the principal value of the museum to its collection of the works of art, especially those made by Estonian artists, and not the Palace as an architectural heritage. In contrast, the post-Soviet guide emphasized the value of the palace and the collection of the Russian art. 77  Murre, Kadriorg, pp. 7–8. 78   Ibid., p. 13. 79   Ibid., p. 21. 74

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statement of Estonia’s belonging to the sphere of high European culture through a proxy of bilateral relations with Russia.80 It is interesting to compare the narratives about the Kadriorg Palace with the story of the Rundāle Palace (Ruhenthal in German) in Latvia. Built between 1736 and 1740 by the favourite architect of Empress Anna of Russia, Francesco Bartolomeo Rastrelli, who designed the Hermitage in St Petersburg, the Rundāle Palace was a summer residence for Duke Ernst Johann von Biron of Courland (ca.1690–1772). In 1561–1793 Courland–Semigallia formed a vassal state of the Poland–Lithuania Commonwealth. After the dissolution of the commonwealth in 1795, the territories were adjoined to Livonia and the Empress Catherine II gave the palace to the Russian Count Valerian Zubov, who in turn handed it over to his brother Platon Zubov.81 During the Napoleonic Wars Rundāle was occupied by the French army. In 1920 it was nationalized by the newly established Latvian government and transferred to the State Museum of History in 1933. The palace opened an exhibition of religious art in 1939.82 After Soviet occupation the Rundāle Palace became a branch of the State History Museum, but was in fact closed, because of ‘a lack of exhibits, space’ and ‘for other reasons’.83 The palace was then abandoned and became increasingly dilapidated. The establishment of the Rundāle Palace as a separate museum in 1972 marked a positive change: the palace was partially restored during the 1980s. In 1983 the Rundāle Palace was included in a Russian-, English- and French-language brochure advertising new museums in the Soviet Union. As a showcase of the Soviet museum sector, Rundāle’s value was seen in being the earliest work by Rastrelli, who was described as ‘the Russian architect’. The Soviet guidebook also stressed the art historical value of the palace, writing that ‘people will come here again to see one of Rastrelli’s few creations which have preserved the entire authenticity and originality of the artistic conception undistorted by later rebuildings and changes’.84 The Rundāle Palace demonstrates how the Russian and Baltic German legacies, normally cast as periods of oppression in the historiography of the ethnic Latvian people, could be incorporated into the history of the Latvian nation as a positive factor. Already in 1940 the guidebook described the palace

  The Russian connection was also used to enhance the cultural status of Narva by erecting a monument to Aleksandr Pushkin in 1999. See Burch and Smith, ‘Empty Spaces’, p. 925. 81   P. Ārends, Rundāles pils (Riga, 1940), p. 21. 82   Veikmane, ‘Istoriia razvitiia muzeev’, p. 39. 83   Ibid., p. 49. 84   New Museums of the USSR (Moscow, 1983), p. 79. 80

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as a valuable Latvian heritage on artistic grounds.85 The distinction of the palace is constructed by interpreting it as an object in the history of European architecture. Seen as a distinct aesthetic structure, the Rundāle Palace can be used by contemporary Latvian discourses as an amplifier of Latvia’s cultural distinction and not as a marker of Baltic German and Russian colonialism. For instance, the palace features a big exhibition that displays portrait paintings of Livonian Baltic German nobility, but does not touch on the political history of Baltic Germans. The accompanying texts attribute this exhibition to a history of the portrait genre. Discourses about Rundāle emphasize the Latvian national distinction by carefully choosing a wider regional space in which the palace can dominate as ‘the best’. In the 2000s the Rundāle Palace has been widely advertised as ‘the most beautiful palace in the Baltic states’ and is called the ‘Versailles of the Baltic’. As in the case of the Riga City Museum of Art, the Baltic space contracts to an area comprising Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which can then be dominated by Latvian museums. Conclusion One feature common to the museums discussed here is that regional dimensions are never the core of exhibition narratives. Stories told in museum catalogues or titles of exhibitions are embedded either in the contemporaneous national borders or professional domains, be they social stratification, artistic and architectural styles, or geological formations. When they are used, the categories ‘Baltic,’ ‘Nordic,’ ‘the North’ and ‘European’ are carefully shaped to strengthen the national distinction. Broader regional spaces are typically articulated through bilateral relations with other contemporary nation-states. For example, ‘Europe’ can be invoked through connections with Germany and Russia and the North through Sweden. Besides the ‘bilateralization’ of transnational regions, promotion of the national distinction is achieved through anchorage in professional value systems derived from the fields of cultural academic disciplines. Hence, transnational regions are performed around multiple axes. The fine arts museums, such as Kadriorg Palace and Rundāle Palace, are proud of their Russian origins. Similarly selective is the use of Baltic space. The Baltic category is promoted in the material history of Lithuanians, but it is downplayed when it relates to Germans. The analysed Latvian cases show that the Baltic space is chosen according its suitability to support the Latvian cultural distinction.  Ārends, Rundāles pils.

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The most important consequence of this selective performance of transnational spaces is pluralism. Because value systems often differ in different professional fields, quite diverse and even opposing regional dimensions can be constructed by the museums of one state. I have argued that certain transnational regional affiliations appear more legitimate in some professional sectors and less legitimate in others. For example, the Russian cultural legacy may be seen as a valuable asset in Estonian and Latvian art museums, but not in their political history museums. The Baltic space could be nationalized, as in the case of Lithuania, or used to reorient national narratives to Sweden or Germany, as in the cases of Estonia and Latvia. Most interestingly, even European space can be articulated through Russian cultural artefacts. Such selections were driven not only by foreign policy orientations, but also by the availability of the material objects themselves. A shortage of objects that can be universally recognized as being of distinct value can inspire most unexpected geopolitical negotiations. If the aesthetically most distinct palace was built by a Russian emperor, a concession will be made to incorporate a positive story of Russian influence in the national historical narrative. This would not necessarily happen should there be better palaces built by ethnic Latvians or Estonians available. If there were other world-famous archaeological findings of prehistoric tribes in Lithuania available, amber would perhaps not occupy such a distinct position in the definition of the historical Lithuanian space as the Baltic space. Indeed, scarcity of material affordance in the natural environment or cultural milieus can be a powerful factor that may initiate appropriation of objects with politically controversial origins as constitutive components of national distinction. For instance, an object perceived as being of mediocre artistic value may be discarded as a marker of colonialism and repression; such was the case of the Bronze Soldier of Tallinn in 2006.86 However, an object of high artistic value can be included in the self-glorifying national narrative even if that object was produced by a colonial power (Kadriorg and Rundāle). Amber is quite widely found in many countries, but amber is constructed as an exceptional ‘national’ stone in Lithuania. This stems from the lack of competition with other materials: it just happens that existing material affordance does not supply other candidates that would be recognized as sufficiently valuable to ‘embody the nation’. Consequently, researchers should recognize that material affordances may play a highly important role in the cultural configurations of geopolitical spaces. Small states sometimes just have to ‘make do’ with what they actually 86   See, for example, Martin Ehala, ‘The Bronze Soldier: Identity Threat and Maintenance in Estonia’, Journal of Baltic Studies, 40/1 (2009): 139–158.

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The Latvian National Museum of Art (Riga: The Latvian National Museum of Art, 2007). Lehti, Marko, ‘Eastern or Western, New or False? Classifying the Balts in the Post-Cold War Era’, in F. Tassinari, Pertti Joenniemi and Uffe Jakobsen (eds), Wider Europe: Nordic and Baltic Lessons to Post-Enlargement Europe (Copenhagen: Danish Institute for International Studies, 2006). Mark, James, The Unfinished Revolution: Making Sense of the Communist Past in Central-Eastern Europe (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2010). Motieka, Egidijus, ‘Baltijos valstybių integracija: ar mokomės iš praeities klaidų?’ in Lietuva ir jos kaimynai (Vilnius: Pradai, 1997). Murray, Alan V. (ed.), Crusade and Conversion on the Baltic Frontier 1150–1500 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001). Murre, Aleksandra, Kadriorg: 290 (Tallinn: The Estonian Art Museum, 2008). Neumann, Iver B., Russia and the Idea of Europe: A Study of Identity and International Relations (London: Routledge, 1996). New Museums of the USSR (Moscow: Sovetskii khudozhnik, 1983). Olander, Thomas, ‘Det baltoslaviske problem: Accentologien’, unpublished thesis (Copenhagen: University of Copenhagen, 2002). Onken, Eva Clarita, ‘“Woe from Stones”’: Commemoration, Identity Politics and Estonia’s ‘“War of Monuments”’, Journal of Baltic Studies, 39/4 (2008): 419–430. Pääbo, Heiko, ‘Constructing Historical Space: Estonian Transition from the Russian Civilisation to the Baltic Sea Region’, paper presented at the 9th Conference on Baltic Studies in Europe, Stockholm, 12–15 June 2011. Pakštas, Kazys, Kultūra, civilizacija, geopolitika (Vilnius: Pasviręs pasaulis, 2003). Patomäki, Heikki, ‘Beyond Nordic Nostalgia: Envisaging a Social/Democratic System of Global Governance’, Cooperation and Conflict, 35/2 (2000): 115–154. Pelše, Stella, ‘Creating the Discipline: Facts, Stories and Sources of Latvian Art History’, Kunstiteaduslikke Uurimusi, 19/3–4 (2010): 26–41. Petronis, Vytautas, Constructing Lithuania: Ethnic Mapping in Tsarist Russia, ca. 1800–1914 (Stockholm: Stockholm University Press, 2007). Piirimäe, Helmut, ‘Historical Heritage: The Relations between Estonia and her Nordic Neighbors’, M. Lauristin et al. (eds), Return to the Western World: Cultural and Political Perspectives on the Estonian Post-Communist Transition (Tartu: Tartu University Press, 1997). Piirimäe, Pärtel, ‘Baltiska provinser eller en del av Norden?’, in Jenny Björkman, Björn Fjaestad and Jonas Harvard (eds), Ett Nordiskt Rum: Historiska

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och framtida gemenskaper från Baltikum till Barents hav (Gothenburg: Makadam, 2011). Poli, Kadi, ‘Kadriorg Art Museum’, in Kadriorg Palace (Tallinn: Art Museum of Estonia, 2008). Prösler, Martin, ‘Museums and Globalization,’ in S. MacDonald and G. Fyfe (eds), Theorizing Museums (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996). Rīgas vēstures un kugniecības muzejs 1773–1973 (Riga: Zvaigzne, 1973). Rindzevičiūtė, Eglė, ‘Soviet Lithuanians, Amber and the “New Balts”: Historical Narratives of National and Regional Identities in Lithuanian Museums, 1940–2009’, Culture Unbound, 2 (2010): 665–694. Roucek, Joseph C., ‘The Geopolitics of the Baltic States’, American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 8/2 (1949): 171–175. Rowell, S.C., ‘The Face Beneath the Snow: The Baltic Region in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries’, Historical Journal, 44/2 (2001): 541–558. Rudzate, Daiga (ed.), State Museum of Art (Riga: Neptuns, 2001). Runkovskis, Ivars, The Latvian Museum of Foreign Art, Riga (Leningrad: Aurora Art Publishers, 1986). Šmite, Edvarda, ‘Art Comes into the Lives of the Citizens of Riga from the End of the 18th to the Beginning of the 20th Century’, in Māra Lāce (ed.), Valsts mākslas muzejs (Riga: Jumava, 2005), pp. 328–334. Taagepera, Rein, ‘The Struggle for Baltic History’, Journal of Baltic Studies, 40/4 (2009): 451–464. Tacitus, Germania, transl. by M Hutton, Tacitus in five volumes, 1 (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1970), p. 45, cf. Endre Bojtár, Foreword to the Past: A Cultural History of the Baltic People (Budapest: CEU Press, 1999) Vaga, Alfred, Eesti kunsti ajalugu, vol. I: Keskaeg (Tartu: Eesti Kirjanduse Selts, 1932). Veikmane, Vineta, ‘Istoriia razvitiia muzeev v Latviiskoi SSR (1945–1985 gg)’, unpublished doctoral dissertation (Riga: Latvian Academy of Sciences, 1990). Waever, Ole, ‘Nordic Nostalgia: Northern Europe after the Cold War’, International Affairs, 68/1 (1992): 77–102. Wallis, Diana and Stewart Arnold, ‘Governing Common Seas: From a Baltic Strategy to an Arctic Policy’, Journal of Baltic Studies, 42/1 (2011): 103–107. Internet Sources Latvian National Museum of Art, http://www.history-museum.lv, accessed 25 December 2011. Latvijas Statistika, http://www.csb.gov.lv, accessed 12 December 2011.

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‘LDK didikų prabangos jausmas’, http://www.baltumenas.lt/?s=expo&d=5, accessed 15 January 2012. Lietuvos dailės muziejaus, ‘2009 m. veiklos ataskaita’, http://www.ldm.lt/LDM/ veikla.htm, accessed 25 January 2012. Lithuanian Department of Statistics, ‘Gyventojų sudėtis 2001’, http://stat.gov. lt, accessed 16 December 2011.

Chapter 10

Sweden versus Norden in the Nordiska Museet Magdalena Hillström

The idea of a Nordic model for nation- and welfare state-building has periodically gained in international popularity since the 1930s. In the domain of cultural policy, the idea of a distinct Nordic model was broadly accepted in the 1970s.1 In a cultural policy subfield – folk culture museums – the Nordic countries have, however, been regarded as setting pioneering examples for the rest of the world since the end of the nineteenth century. When applied to Sweden’s leading cultural history institution, the Nordiska museet (Nordic Museum), the idea of a Nordic model for folk culture museum is deeply paradoxical. Despite its name and despite being a private foundation, since 1919 the museum has officially been the national museum of Swedish cultural history from the year 1500 onwards. During the founder Artur Hazelius’s lifetime and since his death in 1901, the tensions between the museum’s Swedishness and its Nordicness have been a troubling source of conflicting identity and legitimacy in the museum. The subject of this chapter is the Scandinavianist legacy of the Nordiska museet, closely connected to Artur Hazelius, and the ambivalent responses to the indecisive geocultural identity of the institution during the twentieth century. The way in which artefacts from the past are collected and exhibited is one aspect of performing a heritage, connecting it to an overarching, and in this case ambiguous, culture. Another aspect of performance is how the traditions of the museum itself turn into a contested heritage and dynamic resource for different institutional identities. In 1873 the Scandinavianist and orthographer Artur Hazelius (1833–1901) opened the Scandinavian Ethnographic Collection in a small pavilion located on Drottninggatan in the centre of Stockholm. The museum was initially presented as a permanent exhibition of wax mannequins dressed in folk costumes,2 but the collections grew rapidly and within fifteen years they occupied more than   Peter Duelund (ed.), The Nordic Cultural Model (Copenhagen, 2003).   Claes Lundin, ‘Samling af svenska folkdrägter’, Stockholms Dagblad, 29 November 1872. 1 2

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seventy rooms at several addresses on Drottninggatan.3 In 1880 the museum was renamed Nordiska museet. The presence of the word ‘Scandinavian’ in the museum’s original name suggested something about the geographical borders of the collecting field. However, these were most imprecise. In fact, they have never been clearly defined, but the geographical base certainly stretched far beyond the late nineteenthcentury borders of the Kingdom of Sweden. From very early on, the collections included objects and archival records from Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Estonia and Finland. Later, they came also to include objects from Iceland and Greenland, which belonged to the Kingdom of Denmark, Schleswig, Holstein, the North Frisian Islands and other parts of the German Reich. Scandinavianism – A Background Scandinavia’s principal contribution to modern international museum history is its pioneering role in folk culture museums in general, and in the open-air folk culture museum in particular. Many museum founders in Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland contributed to this development towards the end of the nineteenth century.4 As is well known, the early nineteenth century witnessed an increased interest in the remnants of history. Many museum historians have focused on the century as the golden age of cultural history museums, framed by romanticism, nationalism, modern power relations and the rise of a historical consciousness.5 Fewer have been alert to the conceptual and geopolitical uncertainties of cultural and national identity and belonging that faced cultural museum-makers during   Drottninggatan 71(A and C), 68, 77 and 79. Artur Hazelius, Guide to the Collections of the Northern Museum in Stockholm: With 5 Plans and 89 Illustr (Stockholm, 1889). 4   Tonte Hegard, Romantikk og fortidsvern: historien om de første friluftsmuseene i Norge (Oslo, 1984); Tonte Hegard, Hans Aall: mannen, visjonen og verket (Oslo, 1994); Magdalena Hillström, Ansvaret för kulturarvet: Studier i det kulturhistoriska museiväsendets formering med särskild inriktning på Nordiska museets etablering 1872–1919 (Linköping, 2006); Hans Medelius, Bengt Nyström and Elisabet Stavenow-Hidemark (eds), Nordiska museet under 125 år (Stockholm, 1998); Susanna Pettersson and Pauliina Kinanen (eds), Suomenmuseohistoria (Helsinki, 2010); Holger Rasmussen, Bernhard Olsen: virke og vœrker (Copenhagen, 1979); Sten Rentzhog, Friluftsmuseerna: en skandinavisk idé erövrar världen (Stockholm, 2007). 5   Stephen Bann, Romanticism and the Rise of History (New York, 1995); Tony Bennett, The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics (London, 1995); Bettina Messias Carbonell (ed.), Museum Studies: An Anthology of Contexts (Malden, MA, 2004); Simon J. Knell (ed.), National Museums: New Studies from Around the World (Abingdon, 2011); Sharon Macdonald (ed.), A Companion to Museum Studies (Oxford, 2007). 3

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this era of fundamental institutional transformation. The historical backdrop for the foundation of folk culture museums in Scandinavia in the late nineteenth century was permeated by the forces of attraction and repulsion operating between countries intricately joined together in political history. Until 1809 Finland was part of Sweden; in 1814 Denmark and Norway parted company and Norway entered into a union with Sweden, and in 1905 that union was dissolved. Iceland and Greenland were parts of Denmark. Up to the last quarter of the nineteenth century Scandinavianists sought to establish a pan-Scandinavian nation-state and celebrated the cultural unity of the Scandinavian people. The home of the populace in the Finnish and Swedish national anthems, both written in the 1840s, is not Finland or Sweden but Norden, the North. The Scandinavian movement represented a ‘pan-nationalism’ that, in hindsight, has been ridiculed as a romantic illusion of a Nordic community upheld by naive and punch-loving students.6 In its time, however, Scandinavianism was an important cultural and political force that intensely influenced cultural history museum-building in the North. Before becoming a museum founder, Artur Hazelius was involved in the Scandinavianist movement and the efforts to bring forth a future Scandinavian nation, virtually the United States of Scandinavia. He was, like many of his generation, devoted to the idea of a strong affinity and community amongst the Scandinavian people. He participated in the student meetings in Uppsala (1856), in Copenhagen (1862) and in Christiania (1869).7 A widespread Scandinavianist symbol was that of a tree with common roots and three branches. However, one must keep in mind that many Scandinavianists regarded Finland as part of the Scandinavian community. Scandinavianism also played a role in Finland.8 It is difficult to characterize Scandinavianism, not least because its history has often been written through the lenses of twentieth-century nation-building in Scandinavia, in which teleological narratives of the birth of the separate Nordic nation-states frame the images of history and culture in the nineteenth century. Usually a distinction is made between a strong political and a weak cultural Scandinavianism.9 However, such a distinction is problematic since 6   For example in Uffe Østergård, ‘The Geopolitics of Nordic Identity – from Composite States to Nation States’, in Bo Stråth and Øystein Sørensen (eds), The Cultural Construction of Norden (Oslo, 1997), p. 38. 7   Fredrik Böök, Artur Hazelius: en levnadsteckning (Stockholm, 1923), pp. 45–108, 184–187. 8   Torkel Jansson, Rikssprängningen som kom av sig (Stockholm, 2009), pp. 117–146; Runar Johansson, Skandinavismen i Finland. Historiska och litteraturhistoriska studier 6 (Helsingfors, 1930). 9   See Henrik Becker-Christensen, Skandinaviske drømme og politiska realiteter – den politiska skandinavisme i Danmark 1830–1850 (Århus, 1981); Kari Haarder Ekman, En studie i den kulturella skandinavismen under 1800–talet (Gothenburg, 2010); Ruth

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it tends to equate the political with the dynastic constitution while regarding things like unified legal systems, monetary union, shared Lutheranism, unified spelling and common ethnic identifications as merely ‘cultural’ and thus of little political substance. Runar Johansson, who in 1930 wrote about the impact of Scandinavianism in Finland, has given a perceptive introduction to the subject: Scandinavianism occupies a significant place in the Nordic region in 19th century. It beholds the past and aims towards the future; it is a political, but just as much a cultural movement, it is based on realities, but often appeals to the sense. It offers large delicate devices to capture the image of the same. It counts affinity with both political and cultural movements of the time, and to follow it into areas that it influenced or were influenced by is synonymous to become acquainted with a variety of phenomena, such as literary currents, political radicalism and national consolidation efforts.10

The first stirrings of the idea of a culturally and historically unified Scandinavia were felt in the early nineteenth century through romantic writers in Denmark and Sweden, to whom Icelandic poetry was a great source of inspiration. Back in the seventeenth century the Icelandic sagas and the Poetic Edda played a critical role in Danish and Swedish historiography. The two royal powers competed over who had the most glorious history and genealogy. Historiographers on both sides tried to prove that they were the true descendants of the Ostrogoths. During the eighteenth century, Denmark and Sweden competed in collecting, translating and publishing the precious handwritten Icelandic parchments. In the nineteenth century the publishing of this Icelandic literature grew rapidly. A central motivation was that the Icelandic texts had been forgotten. It was time to revive the Old Norse poetry and the magnificent history of the Nordic people. Although this poetry had long been one of the grounds for rivalry in Sweden and Denmark, it was now assumed to represent a common Nordic or Scandinavian heritage. The primeval Icelandic poetry was ‘Scandinavianized’ and it offered a rich source for Scandinavianist symbolism.11 Scandinavianism grew out of liberal student circles at the universities. It all started in the 1830s when students and professors in Lund and Copenhagen spontaneously began to visit each other. These spontaneous meetings became Hemstad, Fra Indian summer til nordisk vinter: Skandinavisk samarbeid, skandinavisme og unionsøpplosningen (Oslo, 2008); Åke Holmberg, Skandinavismen i Sverige vid 1800–talets mitt 1843–1863 (Gothenburg, 1946). 10  Johansson, Skandinavismen i Finland, p. 217. 11   Anna Wallette, Sagans svenskar: synen på vikingatiden och de isländska sagorna under 300 år (Malmö, 2004).

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more organized meetings, and eventually the circle of students was extended to the Universities of Uppsala, Helsinki and Christiania. In the summer of 1843 a students’ meeting was held in Uppsala, followed by one in Copenhagen 1845.12 Politically, the movement was infused with the ideas of the leading Danish national liberals Carl Ploug (1813–1894) and Ola Lehrman (1810–1870). From 1845 onwards, the vision of a pan-Scandinavian union was linked to the Eider Programme and the Schleswig–Holstein question. After the Treaty of Kiel (1814), in which Denmark ceded Norway to Sweden, the Danish monarchy consisted of the Kingdom of Denmark (including Iceland, the Faroe Islands and Greenland) and the duchies of Schleswig, Holstein and Lauenburg. The latter two belonged to the German Confederation. Forty per cent of the Danish population lived in Schleswig and Holstein. The population in Holstein was German-speaking, while the population of Schleswig was both German- and Danish-speaking. The liberal German-speaking populations of Schleswig and Holstein were opposed to the absolute monarchy and demanded a united Schleswig–Holstein and a liberal constitution. Denmark’s southern border would then be at Kongeå. Not surprisingly, German nationalism in Schleswig and Holstein spurred a national liberal faction in Denmark. On its agenda were calls for a liberal constitution and the incorporation of Schleswig into Denmark. Denmark’s southern border should run along the river Eider, which separates Schleswig and Holstein – hence the name ‘Eider Programme’. Illustrative of how the Schleswig–Holstein question was incorporated into Scandinavianist politics is a speech that Carl Ploug made in Kalmar on the students’ journey from Copenhagen and Lund to Uppsala in 1843. In the speech, Ploug encouraged his listeners to work for the union of the Nordic peoples. If the Nordic countries were to have a future in world history, said Plough, it would be by standing united as one. It was urgent that such unity came into existence quickly since Nordic pan-nationalism was already threatened by the Germans’ quest for Schleswig. Ploug emphasized that struggling against Germanism was not only imperative for Denmark, but for all of Scandinavia, to prevent the utter downfall of Nordic pan-nationality. The River Eider marked the southern border of the Nordic nation.13 Influenced by the European revolutions of 1848, the new king, Frederick VII (1848–1863), brought an end to the absolute monarchy, and a parliament was set up according to the June Constitution in 1849. In 1848, when the government, now dominated by national liberals, officially agreed to the Eider Programme, the people of Schleswig and Holstein rebelled, with military support  Hemstad, Fra Indian summer til nordisk vinter, pp. 48–83.   Skandinaviska studenternas möte i juni 1843 (Stockholm, 1843), p. 58.

12 13

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from Prussia. The war ended with agreements in 1851 and 1852, and Denmark was forced to abandon the Eider Programme. However, it was revived in the 1860s. In 1863 the government reneged on the earlier agreements and applied the new ‘November constitution’ to Denmark and Schleswig, at the same time separating Holstein from Denmark. Schleswig was then attached to Denmark. In the beginning of 1864, war broke out between Prussia and Austria on one side and Denmark on the other. After the Danish defeat at Dybbøl, Denmark was compelled by the Treaty of Vienna to give up almost all of Schleswig and Holstein.14 Denmark’s loss in 1864 is often said to mark the end of Scandinavianism as a political movement.15 In fact, for most Scandinavianists the situation was most depressing because of Sweden’s failure to carry out its promise of armed support to Denmark during the war. Nevertheless, the movement was not dead; Denmark’s defeat in 1864 did not stop the Scandinavianists dreaming of, and working for, a pan-Scandinavian union.16 New Nordic networks were built and several initiatives were taken to strengthen both Scandinavian cooperation and efforts to influence public opinion.17 An important task for the influential post-war Scandinavianist journal Nordisk tidskrift förpolitik, vetenskap och ekonomi, published in Lund between 1866 and 187118,was the dissemination of knowledge about new and interesting Scandinavian literature, with the aim of making Nordic literature the shared property of the Nordic people. Attempts at joining the Scandinavian countries focused on language politics and transnational publishing from very early on, and articles on language politics were frequently published in the journal.19 The overriding goal was to establish a common Scandinavian public sphere, in the sense of Jürgen Habermas’s bürgerliche Öffentlichkeit.20 Artur Hazelius’s commitment to Scandinavianist ideas was expressed in his passionate engagement in Scandinavianist language politics and orthographical reforms. In 1869 a Nordic orthographic meeting was arranged in Stockholm 14   Useful introductions to Nordic history are Arnold H. Barton, Essays on Scandinavian History (Carbondale, 2009) and Harald Gustafsson, Nordens historia: en europeisk region under 1200 år (Lund, 1997). 15   Østergård, ‘The Geopolitics of Nordic Identity’, p. 42. 16   See the chapter by Jonas Harvard and Magdalena Hillström on media and Scandinavianism in Volume 2 of the current book series. 17  Hemstad, Fra Indian summer til nordisk vinter, pp. 68–84. 18   Nordisk tidskrift för politik, ekonomi och litteratur (Lund, 1866–1871). 19   Henrik Galberg Jacobsen, Ret og Skrift. Officiel dansk retskrivning 1739–2005 (Odense, 2010). 20   Jürgen Habermas, Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit: Untersuchungen zu einer Kategorie der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft (Neuwied, 1962).

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to discuss the possibilities of harmonizing the spelling of Swedish, Norwegian and Danish words. Artur Hazelius played a major role at the meeting as he was responsible for reporting the suggestions and their consequences for the Swedish language. However, Johan Eric Rydqvist, a prominent member of the Swedish Academy and the leading linguist of the time, regarded the meeting as an outrage and worked hard and successfully to refute Artur Hazelius, who was publicly humiliated. After this meeting Hazelius could no longer continue to work in public as a ‘language man’, as he had earlier been known.21 It is not clearly known what Artur Hazelius did in the years immediately following the meeting of 1869, but three years later, in 1872, an article appeared in Stockholms Dagblad, saying that he was planning to set up a museum.22 Artur Hazelius’s unexpected comeback as a museum-builder, initially with modest aims, turned out to be a big success. Within ten years he was a major challenge to many influential museum leaders in Stockholm and he seemed to be planning to establish the greatest museum in Scandinavia.23 The Scandinavian Ethnographic Collection The name of the museum was explained and interpreted in various ways. When the question of financial support to the museum was discussed in the Riksdag (Swedish parliament) in 1874 it was merely characterized as museum for Swedish ethnography.24 The year after, and without any further comments by the government, Artur Hazelius applied for state funding for intended collecting journeys to Norway and Denmark.25 One of Artur Hazelius’s allies, Nils Linder, explained in an article in Aftonbladet in 1874 that objects from Norway and Denmark were being collected because of the intimate cultural and historical relationship between the Scandinavian countries and that the Scandinavian basis of the museum made possible interesting comparative examinations. The collecting of objects from the Swedish communities in Finland and in Estonia reflected a different objective, namely to strengthen Swedish patriotism and pride.26 Christoffer Eichhorn, another promoter, wrote in Svenska FamiljJournalen in 1875 that the aim of the museum was to collect all sorts of material  Böök, Artur Hazelius, pp. 184–251; Hillström, Ansvaret för kulturarvet, pp. 163–166.   Claes Lundin, ‘Samling af svenska folkdrägter’, Stockholms Dagblad, 29 November 1872. 23  Hillström, Ansvaret för kulturarvet, pp. 155–222. 24   Riksdagens underd. Skrifvelse N:o 39, Bihang till Riksdagens protokoll 1874. 25   Stats-Utskottets Utlåtande N:o 10, Bihang till Riksdagens protokoll 1875. 26   Nils Linder, ‘Skandinavisk-etnografiska samlingen II’, Aftonbladet, 21 March 1874. 21 22

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that could shed light on the past lives of, and the contacts between, the Swedes and the ‘neighbouring tribes’.27 In 1875 the museum’s Norwegian division was opened to the public. It was presented by Frithiof Heurlin, also a friend of Hazelius, in Stockholms Dagblad in 1876. Heurlin emphasized the museum’s importance for the Swedish–Norwegian union, as well as its importance for demonstrating the cultural unity of the Nordic peoples and the necessity of their further unification.28 Heurlin obviously wanted to promote an image of the museum as loyal to the union between Sweden and Norway, as well as loyal to Scandinavianist visions and politics. In the twentieth century Artur Hazelius’s biographers have argued that the museum’s names mirrored his deep-rooted belief in the cultural unity of the Scandinavian people.29 Obviously, the promotion of the new museum employed several different strategies at the same time. This made it possible to create a broad basis for the museum’s legitimacy and illustrates well one of Artur Hazelius’s main strategies, namely to promote respect for the museum by creating extensive political and social networks. The identity and objectives of the museum were presented differently to different audiences in order to mobilize as many trustworthy followers, gift-givers and financial supporters as possible. One must keep in mind that private donations played a dominant role in the radical and unpredicted expansion of the museum. Being notoriously vague about what he collected and which country it came from, Hazelius could invite all kinds of donors and donations.30 Among the early donors was, for example, the Russian historian Karl Russwurm, at the time well known for his great work Eibofolkeoder die Schweden an den kusten Ehstlands und auf Runö (1855).31 The New Name: Nordiska Museet In 1880 the Scandinavian Ethnographic Collection was reorganized and given a new name: Nordiska museet. Artur Hazelius wrote a letter of conveyance, in which he submitted the museum to an independent institution set under a   Christoffer Eichhorn, ‘Skandinavisk-etnografiska samlingen I’, Svenska Familj– Journalen, 14, Årgång 1875, p. 55. 28   Frithiof Heurlin, ‘Skandinavisk–etnografiska samlingens norska avdelning I’, Stockholms Dagblad, 20 May 1876. 29  Böök, Artur Hazelius; Gösta Berg, Artur Hazelius: Mannen och hans verk (Stockholm, 1933). 30  Hillström, Ansvaret för kulturarvet, pp. 177–190. 31   Carl Russwurm, Eibofolke oder die Schweden an den Küsten Ehstlands und auf Runö: eine historisch–ethnographische Untersuchung (Reval, 1855). 27

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board he himself had selected. He donated to the new institution, the Anstalten Nordiska museet, every item in the collections gathered from different districts in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Estonia and other countries.32 In 1879 he had offered the museum to the Swedish state but, since the government could not accept the attached conditions, the offer was refused.33 The proposal was mainly a gesture towards those critics who questioned the ownership of the collection. Artur Hazelius had stated that the museum was a public institution in the service of the common good. From 1874 until 1880 he also declared that he considered all gifts to the museum to be state property. In fact, the critics asserted, Hazelius handled the collections as his private property. Hazelius rejected this allegation and made great, but not always successful, efforts to convince both the larger public and his critics that he was the director of a public museum and that he laid no claim to the collections as his private property.34 These were pressing issues since the sensational growth of the museum’s collections depended on its many donors. Although the new organization was legally confusing, it solved an important problem. Artur Hazelius could no longer be identified as the formal owner of the collections. Once the Anstalten Nordiska museet was set up, the collections were evidently owned by it. According to the statutes, the museum thereafter became an independent institution in perpetuity. It was to be a home for historical memories, first and foremost of the Swedish people, but also for peoples kindred with the Swedish. The museum should include all social classes, from the peasantry to the nobility. It should also preserve the memory of the prominent Swedish men and women who had contributed to patriotic cultivation and glory.35 When Hazelius offered the museum to the state in 1879 he did not speak of memorializing Swedish culture, but of memorializing Nordic culture. He also added that the museum should preserve the memory of important Nordic men and women.36 The likely reason for later replacing ‘Nordic’ with ‘Swedish’ was that the new form of ownership instituted a new and crucial source of income for the museum, namely membership fees. That paying members would mostly be Swedish made the change from Nordic to Swedish label a prudent step. As

  Artur Hazelius, Dr A Hazeliiöfverlåtelsebref af den 18 april 1880: Samt Nordiska museets stadgar, 3.uppl. (Stockholm, 1890). 33   Kungl. Maj:ts proposition om statsverket N:o 31, Bihang till Riksdagens protokoll 1880. 34   For further analyses and sources, see Hillström, Ansvaret för kulturarvet, pp. 227–244. 35  Hazelius, Dr A Hazelii öfverlåtelsebref af den 18 april 1880. 36   Riksarkivet. Ecklesiastikdepartementet. Konseljakt no. 15, 12/12, 1879. Skrivelse från A. Hazelius till Kungl. Maj:t 30 September 1879. 32

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we will see, this change of labelling had no consequences for Hazelius’s Nordic practices. In May 1880 several newspapers published an invitation to the public to sign up as members of a newly formed association, theSamfundet för Nordiska museets främjande , whose patron was King Oscar II of Sweden and Norway.37 More than 100 prominent Swedish men belonging to the political, cultural and scientific elites of the time joined. The society had no functions except to recruit new members, and it was not involved in the museum’s activities or management. Invitations to the society were addressed to ‘the public’ and successfully spread by the press and in person by Artur Hazelius’s many allies. Every person, man or woman, living in Sweden or elsewhere who wanted to financially support the museum could sign up. The editorial of the liberal Aftonbladet remarked that Artur Hazelius had now fulfilled his wish to donate Nordiska museet to the Swedish people: He has as a gift delivered the result of several years of restless, vigorous and successful efforts and great personal sacrifice, to the fatherland, without all warranties, in the hope that this fatherland’s sons and daughters would not leave his creation adrift.38

Since the very beginning, public contributions of objects and money had played a decisive role in the development of the museum. The formation of the new society organized the museum’s public interest literally and metaphorically. Inviting the public to become members of an organization attached to the museum firmly anchored it to civil society. Even more important was the money that the new organization secured, although recruiting new members was hard work. Did the new emphasis on Swedish culture change the older Scandinavianist framework of the museum? There are no indications that Hazelius gave up his Nordic visions after 1880. He travelled almost yearly to Denmark and Norway in order to find and purchase new treasures of all kinds and proudly reported his many precious findings in the museum’s annals.39 He built up a division of pharmaceutical items with the help of several Danish donors.40 He constantly expanded his Nordic networks, and the museum had agents in all   ‘Nordiska museet såsom en själfständig anstalt’, Aftonbladet, 20 May 1880.  Ibid. 39   Samfundet för Nordiska museets främjande. Meddelanden utgifvna af Artur Hazelius (1887) p. 36, p. 40; (1888) pp. 43, 47; (1889) p. 54, pp. 57–58; (1890) pp. 56, 61–62; (1891–1892), pp. 70, 91; (1893) pp. 78–79, 88; (1895–1896) pp. 120, 131. 40   Samfundet för Nordiska museets främjande (1886), pp. 37–38; (1887) pp. 58–59. 37 38

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the Nordic countries that contributed to the enlargement of the collections.41 Friends and donors in Finland, Denmark, Norway and Iceland became members of the Samfundet för Nordiska museets främjande, among them Norwegian politicians Hans Rasmus Astrup and George Sibbern,42 Hans Aall, the director of Norsk Folkemuseum,43 and the afore–mentioned famous Danish Scandinavianist Carl Ploug.44 In 1884 the Danish Crown Prince and Crown Princess were appointed honorary members of the Society.45 In 1887 the museum received a substantial monetary donation from Otto Ernst le Sage de Fontenay for the development of the Norwegian and Danish collections.46 Artur Hazelius noticed, but ignored, the rising opposition in Norway against the exportation of Norwegian artefacts to Stockholm.47 The museum’s Finnish division was presented by the anthropologist and anatomist Gustaf Retzius in an illustrated book entitled Finland i Nordiska museet, published by Artur Hazelius in 1881.48 The book was supplemented by a catalogue of the Finnish collection, including books about Finnish geography, history and culture in the museum’s library. Artur Hazelius remarked, in a short foreword, that he hoped that the volume would stimulate the public to increase the number of objects sent from Finland in the museum.49 The Icelandic collection was presented in an illustrated book in 1890.50 At the beginning of 1891 Artur Hazelius (privately) bought a piece of land at Djurgården in Stockholm, in an area called Skansen. Skansen opened as Nordiska museet’s open-air branch in October the same year. Soon after Hazelius acquired Skansen, an article appeared in Stockholms Dagblad promoting his visions for Skansen.51 According to the article, written by Claes Lundin, there would be prehistoric tombs and monuments, a hut from

  Samfundet för Nordiska museets främjande (1891–1892), p. 155.   Samfundet för Nordiska museets främjande (1884), p. 3; (1886), p. 103. 43   Samfundet för Nordiska museets främjande (1891–1892), p. 275. For an account of the relation between Norsk folkemuseum and Nordiska museet, see Tove Schmidt Galaaen, Kolleger og konkurrenter: Forholdet mellom Nordiska museet/Skansen og Norsk Folkemuseum. En undersøkelse med hovedvekt på tidsrommet 1894 til 1907 (Oslo, 2005). 44   Samfundet för Nordiska museets främjande (1886), p. 103. 45   Samfundet för Nordiska museets främjande (1884), p. 4. 46   Samfundet för Nordiska museets främjande (1887), p. 38. 47   Nordiska museets arkiv, letter from Artur Hazelius to Thure Cederström 28 September 1890. 48   Gustaf Retzius, Finland i Nordiska museet. Några bidrag till kännedom om Finnarnes gamla odling (Stockholm, 1881). 49   ‘Öfversigt af de finska föremålen i Nordiska museet’, in ibid., p. 141. 50   Afbildningar af föremål i Nordiska museet, Hft 2 & 3, Island (Stockholm, 1890). 51   Claes Lundin, Stockholms Dagblad, 19 May 1891. 41 42

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Lapland, a Finnish log cabin, an Icelandic mud house, cottages from Dalarna, Blekinge and Småland, and several Norwegian loft buildings. In spring and early summer 1886 Artur Hazelius was hard-pressed by both the illustrated humourist press and the daily newspapers in Stockholm on account of an announcement of the museum’s lottery for the benefit of the new museum building. The satirical Figaro stated that it was time that Artur Hazelius stopped collecting useless things and items that were neither Swedish nor Nordic. Why not give away some objects to other collections, Figaro suggested. Cannons could go to the artillery museum and Karl XV’s hunting coat to the armoury.52 Vikingen argued that the purpose of collecting was not to collect every item, but selected items, and objected to the geographical and thematic extension of the collections. The rumour had reached them that Hazelius collected objects highlighting the Jewish religion. Was there, then, no limit for the museum in terms of its subjects? Why not create a universal museum of cultural history, including every religion?53 Nya Dagligt Allehanda hinted that the Nordiska museet was resorting to ‘the gambling passion’ in order to fund the new museum building. The newspaper also claimed that Artur Hazelius’s fund-raising had begun to test the public’s patience and suggested that he had become something of a nuisance. Furthermore, the question was raised about the need to collect so much money for the museum. If the museum were limited to its content, government funds would be more than sufficient. And why should a Swedish museum be responsible for the other Nordic countries’ memories?54 Hazelius responded in a bitter article about all the resistance he had met from the press. He had been called zealous, but with obscure plans; energetic, but for futile purposes. He supposedly collected large numbers of duplicate objects for the uncertain benefit of science. He was accused of being greedy and sucking money out of people. Now Nya Dagligt Allehanda also contended that the public wanted neither to go to bazaars, soirees and concerts nor to purchase tickets for the benefit of the museum. In response to the magazine’s repetition of the old critique that the museum lacked the desirable limitation to Swedish history and culture, Hazelius defended his collections most eloquently: Would not Norway, would not Denmark, not Iceland, the old fairy-land, not Finland, have a justifiable place in a museum in the capital of Sweden? And where would they be preserved? In the general ethnographic museum? But this only exposes the non-European people’s creations. Is not Nordiska museet their true home, offering us countless interesting opportunities for comparison with our   Figaro, 13 February 1886.   ‘Samlingar i oändlighet’, Vikingen, 19 June 1866. 54   ‘Det nordiska museets nya lotteri’, Nya Dagligt Allehanda, 9 February 1886. 52 53

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own, filling numerous gaps in our own collections, teaching us, which place we in many respects, ought to occupy in the circuit of the Nordic people.55

Nationalizing the Nordiska Museet Artur Hazelius died unexpectedly in 1901. He had hoped that his young son Gunnar Hazelius would succeed him as keeper of the Nordiska museet, but this was not to be the case. Instead, the archaeologist Bernhard Salin was appointed head of the Nordiska museet in 1905. In the same year Gunnar Hazelius died at the age of 31. The large and heterogeneous collections in the museum, the disorder in its many overcrowded rooms and the continuously expanding and popular Skansen left Hazelius’s successors with a number of conflicts over the proper identity of the museum. Was it a folk culture museum or a general cultural history museum? Was it an institution for popular displays or first and foremost a safe archive for antique objects? Was it Swedish or Nordic? These dimensions of conflict were intricately connected. Artur Hazelius himself had made few and only vague statements about the programme. Influential friends defended him in the press and in the parliament. By the clever tactic of allying with different influential groups at different times, Hazelius had managed to keep the ambiguities and secretiveness of the project relatively unchallenged until his death. A younger generation of museum professionals was even more sceptical than Hazelius’s old opponents to the Nordiska museet, and to Artur Hazelius as a museum founder and director. In short, they argued that the ambiguous Nordiska museet was an obsolete museum in urgent need of professional care and control. The central questions that dominated the controversies over the proper identity of the museum were partially exposed in the ‘Skansen-trouble’. In the eyes of the young and self-assured museum professionals, Skansen was not a museum in the true sense of the word. Skansen was the original and indefinable outcome of a creative idea, inventively combining exhibitions of things and houses with costumed staff, music, folk dance, patriotic festivities, restaurants, cafes and a zoological garden. The popularity of Skansen, which attracted many more visitors than the Nordiska museet, did not make it a museum. A museum primarily served scientific purposes and scientists. Its professional competence was made visible through the science-based ordering and preservation of authentic objects, collected with the main purpose of knowledge production. The modern museum was an institution of science; Skansen was not, could not, and should not be such   Artur Hazelius, ‘Nordiska museet’, Nya Dagligt Allehanda, 15 March 1886.

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an institution. Skansen and the Nordiska museet should preferably be set up as two independent institutions in order to enhance the museum identity of the Nordiska museet and to remove the museum identity of Skansen. A separation would thus clarify the purpose of the museum rather than confuse it.56 Separating Skansen and the Nordiska museet did not, however, resolve the issue of whether the Nordiska museet was a Nordic or a Swedish institution. This question was discussed among the members of a committee that was formed soon after Artur Hazelius’s death. The museum’s new building was near completion when Artur Hazelius died, which meant that the issue of the museum’s interior design had to quickly be settled. The museum board decided to appoint a committee known as the ‘installation committee’, chaired by the renowned archaeologist Oscar Montelius and with Gunnar Hazelius as one of its members. However, it soon became apparent that the committee disagreed on several issues concerning the installation of the collections in the new museum building. A delicate question was whether the Nordiska museet was primarily a museum of Sweden and the Swedish people, or a Nordic museum. The committee’s report was published in 1902. It strongly stressed the Nordiska museet as a national Swedish institution, emphasizing that the museum was founded with the aim of strengthening national sentiments and patriotic values and ascribing to Artur Hazelius the original intention to create a museum for the Swedish people that would illustrate how the nation was built on original Swedish foundations.57 Gunnar Hazelius rejected this description as radically mistaken. Contradicting the report, he ascribed a twofold aim to his father. The museum was a Swedish patriotic educational institution addressing the Swedish people and a Nordic scientific institution. The origin and growth of the museum, Gunnar Hazelius argued, proved that it was firmly rooted in Scandinavianism and a feeling of Nordic affinity and community. These unmistakable intentions had to be carried out: the Nordiska museet should stay truthful to its Nordic task, displaying the common cultural development of the Nordic peoples, on which they had to build their future.58 Gunnar Hazelius accused several committee members of distorting his father’s vision. In blunt opposition to the museum’s original aim, they wanted to create a Swedish national museum with Scandinavian subdivisions. In a letter to his colleague Nils Edward Hammarstedt, Gunnar Hazelius wrote:  Hillström, Ansvaret för kulturarvet, pp. 291–295.   Handlingar rörande installationen i Nordiska museets nya byggnad bilagda nämndens protokoll af den 24 april och 6 maj 1902 (Stockholm, 1902), pp. 1–18. 58   Ibid. pp. 26–28. 56 57

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My father’s work was based on the idea that in the Swedish capital as a Swedish institution, creating a Nordic museum, which would scientifically collect and present the memories of the lives of Nordic peoples in past cultural stages … His aim was to strengthen the people’s love of the fatherland and their feelings of Nordic community.59

The committee proposed that the items were to be ordered by the various national political boundaries and that the non-Swedish objects were to be carefully kept separate from the Swedish ones. Gunnar Hazelius stressed that from the perspective of Scandinavian cultural history and ethnology, geopolitical borders played a less relevant role. They did not constitute natural cultural boundaries dividing the Nordic peoples. According to Gunnar Hazelius, this fact should be clearly articulated and easily observable in the museum. Most importantly, Swedish cultural history should be displayed in ways that emphasized its Nordic context. Separating objects according to political boundaries implied the creation of a Swedish National Museum out of Artur Hazelius’s larger and more visionary idea of a Nordic museum, showing no respect to its legacy.60 Oscar Montelius rejected Gunnar Hazelius’s view. Gunnar Hazelius’s proposal deviated from the most important scientific rule of museum exhibits: the requirement for order and rationality. Clarity and order should be the governing principles in museum exhibitions; otherwise, visitors would be confused. Countering Gunnar Hazelius, Oscar Montelius argued that the development of the museum suggested that the Nordic perspective had been subordinated to the Swedish. He added that Skansen was not perceived as an open-air museum for Nordic culture, but for Swedish culture. This debate about the spatial separation of objects with different geographical origins was not only about what kind of classification principles were best, but also about the history of the museum and about policy issues related to the geographical coverage of the museum’s collections. The kind of order that fidelity to the founder demanded was not obvious, and the ambiguity built into Artur Hazelius’s legacy – whether his museum was Nordic, Scandinavian or Swedish – left room for justifiable conclusions in completely different directions. The installation committee’s proposal can be viewed as an attempt to liberate the museum from uncertainty about Artur Hazelius’s ambitions by stressing that it was a Swedish museum of the Swedish people. The committee wanted to make it clear that the Nordiska museet was primarily a Swedish museum whose geographical coverage corresponded to the nation’s borders. Oscar Montelius’s 59   Nordiska museets arkiv, letter from Gunnar Hazelius to Nils Edward Hammarstedt, 24 February 1902. 60   Handlingar rörande installationen, p. 28.

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demand for orderliness and his heavy emphasis on the museum being a national Swedish museum can therefore be understood as an effort to make the museum more homogeneous in terms of which people and nation it appealed to and represented. Stating that the Nordiska museet was a museum for the Swedish people above all solved an important problem. Yet Gunnar Hazelius could not agree with such a simple solution. He defended the idea that the Nordiska museet was a museum for the Nordic people. Another reason for Oscar Montelius emphasis on the museum’s Swedishness was the crisis of the union between Sweden and Norway. Around 1890 this union had entered a lengthy period of instability that ended with its dissolution in 1905.61 Although neither Montelius nor any of the other committee members mentioned the union, it seems highly reasonable that Montelius tried to adjust the identity of the Nordiska museet to the actual political situation. Being sensitive to the political currents of the time, not least the Norwegian demand for self-government and independence, he found it imprudent to call attention to the museum’s Nordic identity, especially when the large Norwegian collection in the museum was frequently deplored in Norway. The internationally renowned archaeologist Ingvald Undset, for example, warned in 1885 that nothing in Hazelius’s museum programme would stop him from swallowing up all the museums and collections in Scandinavia.62 The efforts to ‘nationalize’ the Nordiska museet were, in view of the crisis and dissolution of the union in 1905, a rational adaptation to political realities. Gunnar Hazelius, on the other hand, had initiated a celebration of the Swedish–Norwegian union on Skansen.63 The New Museum Building In 1882 an international architectural competition for a new building for the Nordiska museet was declared. None of the proposals was accepted, and so the mission was conferred on Swedish architect Isak Gustaf Clason, who was committed to the idea of a unique Nordic renaissance style.64 Clason proposed an enormous museum palace with a quadrangular structure. The building complex enclosed a great main hall encircled by galleries, resembling the nave of a Gothic cathedral. This hall, which was originally intended for festivities,   Bo Stråth, Union och demokrati: de förenade rikena Sverige och Norge 1814–1905 (Nora, 2005), pp. 397–515. 62   Ingvald Undset, Om et norskt nationalmuseum (Christiania, 1885). 63   Meddelanden från Nordiska museet (1902), p. 56; (1903) p. 61. 64   Johan Mårtelius, Göra arkitekturen historisk: om 1800-talets arkitekturtänkande och I G Clasons Nordiska museum (Stockholm, 1987). 61

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became the museum building proper, and the larger plan was never realized. Work on the foundations of the new Nordiska museet began in 1891, and the museum was inaugurated in 1907. It also provided housing for the state-owned Swedish Royal Armoury until the 1970s. In the new museum, the galleries surrounding the ground floor contained collections and cottage interiors representing Swedish folk culture. The objects were exhibited in rooms named after various Swedish landscapes – for example, ‘Skåne’, ‘Småland’ and ‘Dalarna’. A mass of peasant objects were sorted and displayed by kind – for instance, with an exhibit illustrating ‘the use of fire’. In the galleries on the top floor the upper-class collections were displayed, arranged chronologically in successive periods from 1500 to 1900 and depicting different epochs of style. Between those floors, on the second floor, the galleries were filled with heterogeneous collections: tapestries, embroideries, jewellery, musical instruments, toys, church ritual staves and other church objects, and guild items from Sweden. Here, the visitor could also view the museum’s rich collections of peasant objects from Norway, Estonia, Finland, Denmark, Schleswig, Holstein and Iceland, all conspicuously exhibited.65 The Scandinavianist framing of Hazelius’s museum was losing ground at the beginning of the twentieth century. With the dissolution of the Swedish– Norwegian union, Scandinavianist and Nordic visions lost legitimacy, and many Nordic meetings were cancelled. Scandinavian cooperation entered a period characterized by Ruth Hemstad as a Nordic winter.66 Despite Oscar Montelius’s declaration that the Nordiska museet was a national Swedish museum and despite a new generation of museum ideology that, at the beginning of the twentieth century, strongly linked cultural history museums with the nationstate,67 the Nordic identity of the museum persisted into the twentieth century. Efforts to ‘nationalize’ the museum were not fully successful, and the museum’s Scandinavianist legacy could not be totally ignored and dismissed. Only if one ‘fails to remember’ the many non-Swedish items exhibited on the first floor can the Nordiska museet be interpreted as an exclusively national Swedish museum addressing the Swedish people. In addition, the collecting of objects from other Nordic countries continued for decades after Artur Hazelius’s death.68   Vägledning genom Nordiska museets samtliga afdelningar (Stockholm, 1919).  Hemstad, Fra Indian summer til nordisk vinter, pp. 297–359. 67   Magdalena Hillström, ‘Contested Boundaries: Nation, People and Cultural History Museums in Sweden and Norway 1862–1909’, Culture Unbound, 2 (2010): 583–607. 68   Redogörelse för Nordiska museets utveckling och förvaltning (1911) p. 11; (1912) p. 12; (1913) p. 12; (1914) p. 13; (1915) p. 11; (1916) pp. 11–12; (1917) p. 12; (1918) p. 11; (1919) p. 17; (1921) pp. 13–14; (1922) p. 14; (1923) pp. 14–16; (1924) pp. 17–20; (1925) p. 19; (1926) pp. 29–30; (1927) pp. 26–27; (1928) p. 23; (1929) p. 23. 65 66

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Old practices often survive new ideologies, and the Nordiska museet persisted as a museum without distinct geographical borders. However, the many items collected in Germany were sold more or less secretly at a German auction in 1910.69 In 1938 the Swedish government approved new statutes for the Nordiska museet. The opening paragraph was as follows: Nordiska museet, founded by Arthur Hazelius, shall forever be an independent foundation. The museum with associated establishments shall provide a home for the memories of the Swedish people, with the particular task to broaden the knowledge about Swedish cultural history through scientific research and popular education. Its goal will be to strengthen the Swedish people’s love of the fatherland and the homestead. Through its collections and its investigations, the museum should promote a deeper understanding of the cultural relationship between our and other Nordic peoples.70

The new statutes assigned no special responsibility for the neighboring Nordic countries’ cultural heritage to the Nordiska museet. However, in the same year, the researcher Sigurdur Thorarinson travelled around Iceland collecting Icelandic objects on behalf of the museum. According to the museum’s yearbook Fataburen, the vibrant and compelling Icelandic folk culture attracted surprisingly little interest from Icelanders themselves. If Icelanders were not willing, like Norwegians, to take responsibility for their own cultural treasures, the Nordiska museet needed to preserve interesting objects for the future, in the hope that Icelanders would be stimulated to collect these items for themselves.71 This staging of the Nordiska museet as a benevolent patriarchal Nordic institution that is willing to be responsible for cultural heritage at risk even outside the borders of the Swedish nation-state is remarkable, not least because it misleadingly suggests that the collecting of Norwegian objects stopped with the establishment of folk culture museums in Norway. A new story about the Nordiska museet was told – a story that was to be repeated.

69   Nordiska museets arkiv, Nämndens protokoll 5 maj 1909; Måndagen 9 maj, Interpellation, Riksdagens protokoll vid lagtima riksmötet år 1910. Andra kammaren. 70   Fataburen: Nordiska museets och Skansens ärsbok, 1939, p. 299. 71   Ibid., pp. 248–249.

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Denial and Confirmation During the Second World War, Skansen became an arena for national mobilization, large-scale patriotic displays and military defence exhibitions, in close collaboration with the royal family, leading politicians, the Swedish army and many voluntary defence organizations. Although the then director Andreas Lindblom characterized Skansen as the heritage of all Swedes, the Scandinavianist legacy of the institution was not ignored. Nordic events and ambitious Danish and Norwegian exhibitions using items from the museum’s collections were set up at both Skansen and the Nordiska museet during and immediately after the war. The institution was obviously providing the proper symbolic space not only for national defence propaganda, but also for manifestations of solidarity with Sweden’s Scandinavian neighbours.72 Most remarkable is that the then director of the museum Harald Hvarfner in the museum’s yearbook Fataburen in 1973 asserted that the Nordiska museet had in fact never been Nordic, despite its name. Collecting objects from outside Sweden ‘ceased rather quickly’, he surprisingly stated. Hvarfner explained the Hazelius’s original Nordic ambitions as a plan for ‘centralizing’ Nordic cultural history collections ‘in case of emergency’ if no competent national institutions for this purpose came into being in the other Nordic countries. Hazelius was thus prepared not only to save Sweden’s folk cultural history from oblivion, but to selflessly save the neighbouring countries’ cultural history as well. However, because such institutions were created fairly quickly in the other Nordic countries, the emergency plan was never put into action. This was why a truly Swedish cultural history museum came to be misnamed ‘Nordic’. But for its name, the Nordiska museet was in fact never Nordic, according to Hvarfner.73 There is no evidence at all in Hazelius’s publications or archive for the existence of this never-realized paternal ‘emergency plan’. That he did indeed collect large numbers of objects from other Nordic countries throughout his life clearly indicates that naming the museum ‘Scandinavian’ and ‘Nordic’ accorded with his actual plan and intentions. There is also, as mentioned earlier, plenty of proof in the museum’s acquisition catalogues that the Nordiska museet continued to collect objects from other Nordic countries throughout much of the twentieth century.   Jonas Berg, ‘Molnen hopar sig’, in Medelius, Nyström and Stavenow-Hidemark, Nordiska museet under 125 år, pp. 346–363; Stefan Bohman, Historia, museer och nationalism (Stockholm, 1997). 73   Harald Hvarfner, ‘Nordiska museet och det nordiska kulturarvet’, Fataburen 1973, all quotes from p. 9. 72

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Hvarfner’s denial of the Nordic dimension of the museum may very well reflect a strategy to improve the conditions for cooperation between cultural history museums in the Nordic countries. The fear of being branded as paternal by their Nordic neighbours has taught Swedish institutions to be very cautious about signalling any ‘centralizing’ ambition in Nordic cooperation. Perhaps this became even more important in 1972 when the Nordiska museet made a very large ‘paternal’ long-term deposition of Norwegian church objects in Oldsakmuseet in Oslo.74 It may thus have been the actual existence of Swedish paternalism in Nordic museum cooperation that made Hvarfner try to relegate it to the distant past. Concealing or, in Hvarfner’s case, bluntly denying the Nordicness of the Nordiska museet reveals a conflict between geocultural identity and the mission of the museum. Clearly, the museum’s shifting geocultural identity – between essentially Swedish and essentially Nordic – reflects the historically changing geopolitical framing of the Nordic space. Twenty-five years after Hvarfner’s attempt to rid the museum of its Nordic identity once and for all, the political conditions for Scandinavianism changed again through the downfall of the Soviet Union and the eagerness in some quarters to include the new Baltic states in a Nordic community. Once again, stressing the Nordicness of the museum became politically convenient, as expressed by Lars Löfgren, then director of the museum, in 1998: Hazelius saw the Nordic countries as a cultural entity. Our museum has collections from the whole Nordic region and also from Estonia, unique because they were collected so early on. By linking up once more with the countries of the Baltic we wish to change and renew the image of a common Nordic culture.75

The story could have ended here, but it did not. Contrary to Löfgren’s vision, the process of nationalizing the museum regained force, this time not only rhetorically but also in practice. In 2005, a century after the dissolution of the Swedish–Norwegian union, the collections of Norwegian objects in the Nordiska museet were deposited in the Norsk Folkemuseum, and in 2007 the Icelandic objects were deposited in the National Museum of Iceland. In its 2010 annual report, the Nordiska museet is defined as a national museum for Swedish cultural history.76 And, one could add, as a memorial of an original Nordic museum, since around 10 per cent of the Norwegian and Icelandic collections   Fataburen, 1973, p. 173.   Medelius, Nyström and Stavenow-Hidemark, Nordiska museet under 125 år, p. 492. 76   Årsredovisning, Stiftelsen Nordiska museet (2010). 74 75

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are kept in the Nordiska museet as a remembrance of times past, when the museum collected from the whole Nordic area. Despite the museum’s current assertive Swedishness, one may, judging from the long history of ambivalence about its Swedishness or Nordicness, guess that the performance of the Nordiska museet as a Nordic space will rise again. Bibliography Manuscript Sources Nordiska museets arkiv Artur Hazelius, Nordiska museets och Skansens tidiga arkiv, letter from Artur Hazelius to Thure Cederström, 28 September 1890. Gunnar Hazelius arkiv, letter from Gunnar Hazelius to Nils Edward Hammarstedt, 24 February 1902. Nordiska museets ämbetsarkiv, Nämndens protokoll, 1909. Riksarkivet Ecklesiastikdepartementets konseljakter, 12/12, 1879, no. 15. Printed Primary Sources Afbildningar af föremål i Nordiska museet, Hft 2 and 3, Island (Stockholm: Nordiska museet, 1890). Aftonbladet, 21 March 1874, 20 May 1880. Årsredovisning, Stiftelsen Nordiska museet (2010). Fataburen: Kulturhistorisk tidskrift, 1912–1930. Fataburen: Nordiska museets och Skansens årsbok, 1939, 1973. Figaro, 13 February 1886. Handlingar rörande installationen i Nordiska museets nya byggnad bilagda nämndens protokoll af den 24 april och 6 maj 1902 (Stockholm, 1902). Hazelius, Artur, Dr A Hazelii öfverlåtelsebref af den 18 april 1880: Samt Nordiska museets stadgar (Stockholm: Nordiska museet, 1890). Hazelius, Artur, Guide to the Collections of the Northern Museum in Stockholm: With 5 Plans and 89 Illustr. (Stockholm: Nordiska museet, 1889). Hvarfner, Harald, ‘Nordiska museet och det nordiska kulturarvet’, Fataburen, 1973.

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Kungl. Maj:ts proposition om statsverket N:o 31, Bihang till Riksdagens protokoll 1880. Meddelanden från Nordiska museet, 1902–1903. Nordisk tidskrift för politik, ekonomi och litteratur, 1866–1871. Nya Dagligt Allehanda, 9 February and 15 March 1886. Redogörelse för Nordiska museets utveckling och förvaltning, annual appendix to Fataburen: Kulturhistorisk tidskrift, 1912–1930. Retzius, Gustaf, Finland i Nordiska museet. Några bidrag till kännedom om Finnarnes gamla odling (Stockholm: Nordiska museet, 1881). Riksdagens underd. Skrifvelse N:o 39, Bihang till Riksdagens protokoll 1874. Samfundet för Nordiska museets främjande. Meddelanden utgifvna af Artur Hazelius, 1884–1896. Skandinaviska studenternas möte i juni 1843 (Stockholm, 1843). Stats-Utskottets Utlåtande N:o 10, Bihang till Riksdagens protokoll 1875. Stockholms Dagblad, 29 November 1872, 20 May 1876, 19 May 1891. Svenska Familj–Journalen, 1875. Undset, Ingvald, Om et norskt nationalmuseum (Christiania, 1885). Vägledning genom Nordiska museets samtliga afdelningar (Stockholm: Nordiska museet, 1919). Vikingen, 19 June 1886. Secondary Sources Bann, Stephen, Romanticism and the Rise of History (New York: Twayne, 1995). Barton, H. Arnold, Essays on Scandinavian History (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2009). Becker-Christensen, Henrik, Skandinaviske drømme og politiska realiteter – den politiska skandinavisme i Danmark 1830–1850 (Århus: Arusia, 1981). Bennett, Tony, The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics (London: Routledge, 1995). Berg, Gösta Artur Hazelius: Mannen och hans verk (Stockholm: Natur och kultur, 1933). Berg, Jonas, ‘Molnen hopar sig’, in Hans Medelius, Bengt Nyström and Elisabet Stavenow-Hidemark (eds), Nordiska museet under 125 år (Stockholm: Nordiska museet, 1998). Bohman, Stefan, Historia, museer och nationalism (Stockholm: Carlssons, 1997). Böök, Fredrik, Artur Hazelius: en levnadsteckning (Stockholm: Norstedt, 1923). Carbonell, Bettina Messias (ed.), Museum Studies: An Anthology of Contexts (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004).

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Duelund, Peter (ed.), The Nordic Cultural Model (Copenhagen: Nordic Cultural Institute, 2003). Galberg Jacobsen, Henrik, Ret og Skrift. Officiel dansk retskrivning 1739–2005 (Odense: Syddansk Universitetsforlag, 2010). Gustafsson, Harald, Nordens historia: en europeisk region under 1200 år (Lund: Studentlitteratur, 1997). Haarder Ekman, Kari, En studie i den kulturella skandinavismen under 1800–talet (Gothenburg: Makadam, 2010). Habermas, Jürgen, Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit: Untersuchungen zu einer Kategorie der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft (Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1962). Hegard, Tonte, Romantikk og fortidsvern: historien om de første friluftsmuseene i Norge (Oslo: Universitetsforlag, 1984). Hegard, Tonte, Hans Aall: mannen, visjonen og verket (Oslo: Norsk folkemuseum, 1994). Hemstad, Ruth, Fra Indian summer til nordisk vinter: Skandinavisk samarbeid, skandinavisme og unionsøpplosningen (Oslo: Akademisk Publisering, 2008). Hillström, Magdalena, Ansvaret för kulturarvet: Studier i det kulturhistoriska museiväsendets formering med särskild inriktning på Nordiska museets etablering 1872–1919 (Linköping: Linköpings universitet, 2006). Accessible at Linköping University Electronic Press. Hillström, Magdalena. ‘Contested Boundaries: Nation, People and Cultural History Museums in Sweden and Norway 1862–1909’, Culture Unbound, 2 (2010): 583–607. Hosted by Linköping University Electronic Press: http:// www.cultureunbound.ep.liu.se. Holmberg, Åke, Skandinavismen i Sverige vid 1800-talets mitt 1843–1863 (Gothenburg: Gothenburg University, 1946). Jansson, Torkel, Rikssprängningen som kom av sig (Stockholm: Atlantis, 2009). Johansson, Runar, Skandinavismen i Finland. Historiska och litteraturhistoriska studier 6 (Helsinki, 1930). Knell, Simon J. (ed.), National Museums: New Studies from Around the World (Abingdon: Routledge, 2011). Macdonald, Sharon (ed.), A Companion to Museum Studies (Oxford: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., 2007). Mårtelius, Johan, Göra arkitekturen historisk: om 1800–talets arkitekturtänkande och I G Clasons Nordiska museum (Stockholm: Arkitekturmuseet, 1987). Medelius, Hans, Nyström, Bengt and Stavenow-Hidemark, Elisabet (eds), Nordiska museet under 125 år (Stockholm: Nordiska museet, 1998). Pettersson, Susanna and Kinanen, Pauliina (eds), Suomenmuseohistoria (Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 2010).

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Rasmussen, Holger, Bernhard Olsen: virke og vœrker (Copenhagen: Nationalmuseet, 1979). Rentzhog, Sten, Friluftsmuseerna: en skandinavisk idé erövrar världen (Stockholm: Carlsson, 2007). Russwurm, Carl, Eibofolke oder die Schweden an den Küsten Ehstlands und auf Runö: eine historisch–ethnographische Untersuchung (Reval: Fleischer, 1855). Schmidt Galaaen, Tove, Kolleger og konkurrenter: Forholdetmellom Nordiska museet/Skansen og Norsk Folkemuseum. En undersøkelse med hovedvekt på tidsrommet 1894 til 1907 (Oslo: University of Oslo, 2005). Stråth, Bo and Sørensen, Øystein (eds), The Cultural Construction of Norden (Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, 1997). Stråth, Bo, Union och demokrati: de förenade rikena Sverige och Norge 1814–1905 (Nora: Nya Doxa, 2005). Wallette, Anna, Sagans svenskar: Synen på vikingatiden och de isländska sagorna under 300 år (Malmö: Sekel, 2004). Årsredovisning, Stiftelsen Nordiska museet (2010).

Chapter 11

Performing the Nordic in Museums: Changing Ideas of Norden and their Political Implications Peter Aronsson

How have ideas of a shared Nordic experience and culture permeated the creation of national presentations of history in the Nordic region? This chapter argues that their role in the shaping of the most prestigious of these – that is, the national museums – has been instrumental. These ideas have helped nations avoid solving conflicts by violence, making strategies of collaboration within the Nordic region both the first choice in peacetime and the last transnational haven in times of turmoil. However, as always, this creation of community also contains a parallel process of exclusion and suppression of compromising elements. There is no doubt that for centuries the national framework has been the primary formatting heritage in the Nordic region, as elsewhere in the world – and this remains the case. Nor is the existence of competing regional and transnational ideas of community unique: Germanic, Slavic, Roman, Arabic, Chinese, Sami and Celtic heritages are examples of ideas of community beyond the nationstate put into play throughout history and in contemporary society. Transnational ideologies have often been tools with which to pursue goals of unification or reclamation of territories, with the use of force if necessary. This held true for Nordic and Scandinavian ideas in the early modern era. In both Sweden and Denmark the traditional assembling and interpretation of Nordic cultural heritage glorified violence and was utterly expansionist. The two conglomerate states goaded each other into ever more extensive collections, research and representation of their glory, competing over the resource of Nordic cultural history while simultaneously striving for Nordic military, economic and political hegemony. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, however, the transnational ideas of Nordicness transformed into politically significant and characterizing ideas of a naturally peaceful, democratic and egalitarian community. Resolving conflicts with force became increasingly hard to justify after the turmoil of the

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Napoleonic Wars. Hopes for a rejuvenated Nordic union sparked a cultural renaissance, reorganized royal collections and inspired new representations of the past. The future opened, marked by an unparalleled modernization which brought into being the concept and implementation of the welfare state. The darker sides of this process were virtually eclipsed by the Nordic light of modern enlightenment. Values identified as Nordic have ranged from rustic, courageous, heathen and violent to Protestant ethics, secularism, social egalitarianism, individualism, democratic culture, pragmatism and the welfare state. These values might look arbitrary and liable to shift according to the prevailing political wind, but they do have several durable elements that provide themes and scenes for negotiating relations within and between nations and states in the North. These values can be related to both historic identity and contemporary mentality. In the battle between claims that national identity is a recent construction and those who argue for the perseverance of primordial values, this chapter takes the middle ground.1 Some age-old themes persist, but combining them with contemporary value systems dramatically changes their prescriptive moral and political message. Their role is not only as a slave to the hegemonic power of the day, but also as an active force in shaping history. Our argument challenges the conception of radical change in the working of collective memory over time. There is no radical move from spontaneous popular memory to modern institutional history and postmodern fragmented commemoration as claimed by most theorists, from Pierre Nora to Jan and Aleida Assmann.2 Instead, the content of what is regarded as the core of Nordic culture has been surprisingly persistent for four centuries and has been constantly transported between popular and institutional performances in changing settings. Furthermore, history and heritage have a constant political value because they theme and stage the past in a set of performances that beseech the future. They negotiate diversities to mobilize political community as efficiently as possible, from the sixteenth century to the twenty-first. What does change, though, is the narrative format, due to changing means of communication and shifting sensitivities and interpretations of why a call for action is needed. We will consider in turn the shape and legacies at work at the high tide of national romanticism and in the late-modern welfare state by analysing how   Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London, 1983); Anthony D. Smith, Nationalism and Modernism; A Critical Survey of Recent Theories of Nations and Nationalism (London, 1998). 2   Jan Assmann, Das kulturelle Gedächtnis. Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen (Munich, 1997); Pierre Nora and Lawrence D. Kritzman (eds), Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past, European Perspectives (New York, 1996). 1

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certain themes and scenes have been activated. The first stage of this argument consists in mapping the establishment of national museums with Nordic labels and content. When it comes to themes, we will start with the story of Ice Age origins and the development of Scandinavian maps that are presented in most museums. These are among the widest frames for naturalizing Nordic ideas. The prehistoric heathen period, the Viking era, the mediaeval Nordic union, the battle over the Baltic Sea in the early modern period, the rural heritage, and the egalitarian, peaceful, welfare state have all become part of the Nordic self-image. Performances of re-presentation of these themes are open to both national and Nordic thematization. Some themes have survived essentially unaltered over centuries because of their plastic and prosaic or banal character. The Birth of Nordic Museums Denmark, shocked by threats to Copenhagen in the first decade of the nineteenth century, was the first to react decisively in creating national museums. It was the absolute monarch who commissioned an investigation into the need to mobilize heritage and museums. In 1819 the Royal Museum for Nordic Antiquities (Det Kgl. Museum for Nordiske Oldsager) opened in Copenhagen, in the aftermath of the Napoleonic bombardments of the city in 1801 and 1807. In Norway, moving within Norden from being a part of Denmark to a union with Sweden in 1814, the university became an important carrier of a growing collection of Nordic antiquities. Sweden had to come to terms with legitimizing a new dynasty and reconciling to military defeat and the loss of Finland in 1809. In a complex response, royal cultural investments created what constituted, in effect, a national portrait gallery at Gripsholm, putting the new monarch not only into a historical national setting but also as the first among other renowned citizens, thus combining a conservative and revolutionary element. Other museum ideas referred to the heathen gods and suggested that the new king was a reincarnation of Oden.3   Per Widén, ‘Dynastic Histories: Art Museums in the Service of Charles XIV’, in Mikael Alm and Britt-Inger Johansson (eds), Scripts of Kingship: Essays on Bernadotte and Dynastic Formation in an Age of Revolution (Uppsala, 2008), pp. 79–96; Per Widén, Från kungligt galleri till nationellt museum. Aktörer, praktik och argument i svensk konstmuseal diskurs ca 1814–1845 (Hedemora, 2009); Per Widén, ‘National Museums in Sweden: A History of Denied Empire and a Neutral State’, in Peter Aronsson and Gabriella Elgenius (eds), Building National Museums in Europe 1750–2010: Conference Proceedings from EuNaMus, European National Museums: Identity Politics, the Uses of the Past and the European Citizen, Bologna 28–30 April 2011 (Linköping, 2011), pp. 1039–1066. 3

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Oppositional elite associations were formed to re-enact the Nordic heathen past and ensure meticulous preservation of the archaeological and ethnological foundations of Swedish and Nordic culture. The formation of a more ambitious national museum of art and history took longer in parliamentary Sweden than in Denmark’s absolute monarchy and was challenged by successful private initiatives. The most prominent civic institution successfully claiming public legitimacy as a national museum in Sweden, was the Scandinavian Ethnographic Collection (Skandinavisk-etnografiska samlingen) founded by linguist and scholar Artur Hazelius in 1873. In 1880, it was renamed the Nordic Museum (Nordiska museet) and in 1907 it was enshrined in a purpose-built romantic palace.4 The widely copied open-air museum named Skansen was born out of the same movement in 1891, and the agrarian legacy and peasant culture became prominent components in national movements elsewhere.5 These institutions united Scandinavianism and state nationalism as ideologies in a productive manner until the union between Norway and Sweden was dissolved in 1905. The leading archaeologist Oscar Montelius’s speech at the Hazelius’s funeral at Skansen on 4 June 1901 stated: It was a great and true idea by Artur Hazelius to create a museum not only for the Swedish people but for the memories of all the Nordic peoples. For the culture, which grew up on a Scandinavian foundation, is in principle one and the same, whether it is called Swedish or Finnish, Norwegian or Danish. They are the branches of a tree spreading out in different directions, but growing from the same stem and forming a coherent entity.6

In these two countries we can see a strong and explicit reference to a shared Nordic past and culture. Other Nordic nations took a more ambivalent stance to the idea of a shared culture. In Finland, which moved from being an integrated province of Sweden 4   Peter Aronsson, ‘Exhibiting Scandinavian Culture: The National Museums of Denmark and Sweden’, in Stefan Berger, Chris Lorenz and Billie Melman (eds), Popularizing National Pasts. 1800 to the Present (London, 2012); Magdalena Hillström, Ansvaret för kulturarvet. Studier i det kulturhistoriska museiväsendets formering med särskild inriktning på Nordiska museets etablering 1872–1919 (Linköping, 2006); Magdalena Hillström, ‘Contested Boundaries: Nation, People and Cultural History Museums in Sweden and Norway 1862–1909’, Culture Unbound, 2 (2010): 583–607. 5   Stefan Berger and Chris Lorenz (eds), The Contested Nation: Ethnicity, Class, Religion and Gender in National Histories (New York, 2008); Sten Rentzhog, Open Air Museums; The History and Future of a Visionary Idea (Stockholm, 2007). 6   Johan Levart, Skansen och Arhur Hazelius. En skiss- och minnesbok (Stockholm, 1901), p. 90.

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to becoming the Grand Duchy of Finland in the Russian Empire in 1809, national institutions were created and expressed national ambitions long before the state was established as an autonomous body in 1918. The national art gallery named Ateneum, which was already open to the public in 1888, sprang from the European classical tradition.7 The national cultural historical museum opened in 1916 and explicitly focused on Finland’s history as having originated before the mediaeval Swedish Crusades made the country part of the Swedish realm. The architecture, however, shows definite affinities with Nordic religious and baroque secular aesthetics and distances itself from both Russian and classic tradition.8 Here, we see a nation making use of both European and Nordic elements to promote and negotiate the direction of its political aspirations. A similar process was carried out in Iceland, where the central legacy identified the birth and essence of the nation with the saga literature and the early settlement. From the nineteenth century onwards Iceland struggled with Denmark to define its autonomy and reclaim relics, gradually evolving into a state and finally declaring independence in 1944. Museums and cultural heritage were instrumental in this process of national self-definition that was also firmly rooted in the need to relate to Nordic heritage.9 A more spiritual battle, fought with arguments about the family tree, was waged with Norway, which looked upon Icelanders as descendants.10 The Norwegian historical claim was eventually overturned by DNA analyses showing that Norse men coupled with Celtic women to form a new genetic mix on the island, which also mobilized a more gendered national argument to boost autonomy. In the Baltic states, the communities to be negotiated were constructed out of a greater multitude of languages, religions and distinct cultures. During the nineteenth century there was a fundamental division between the urban culture of Jews and Baltic Germans and vernacular ethnic diversity in rural areas of the western Russian provinces. This divide had to be negotiated to clear the way   Susanna Pettersson, ‘National Museums in Finland’, in Aronsson and Elgenius, Building National Museums in Europe 1750–2010, pp. 315–348. 8   Derek Fewster, Visions of Past Glory: Nationalism and the Construction of Early Finnish History (Helsinki, 2006). 9   Arne Bugge Amundsen, ‘National Museums in Iceland’, in Aronsson and Elgenius, Building National Museums in Europe 1750–2010, pp. 425–433; Guđmundur Hálfdanarson, ‘Interpreting the Nordic Past: Icelandic Medieval Manuscripts and the Construction of a Modern Nation’, in Robert John Weston Evans and Guy P. Marchal (eds), The Uses of the Middle Ages in Modern European states: History, Nationhood and the Search for Origins (New York, 2011), pp. 52–71, available from http://overviewheritageconflictseurope.wikispaces. com/Denmark#Manuscripts. 10   A. Helgason et al., ‘Estimating Scandinavian and Gaelic Ancestry in the Male Settlers of Iceland’, American Journal of Human Genetics, 67/3 (2000): 697–717. 7

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for a mobilizing national movement. Individual aristocrats, literary societies and civic academies instituted museums promoting these conflicting ideals. Tartu (Dorpat) was the cultural and scientific centre for ethnic Estonian nationalism, and its vaterländische Museum zu Dorpat was answered by Tallin Estländische Provinzial-Museum in the 1860s. The Baltic German culture dominated Tallin until the Second World War with this museum, designed on the model of the newly opened Germanische nationalmuseum in Nuremberg. Already in the decade before autonomy, the Tartu museum was declared the National Museum, while at the same time the open-air museum reached more clearly out to its Nordic sister institutions. The overarching national homogenization of Baltic museums came with Soviet occupation. This prepared the ground for a switch of labels and meta-framing after 1989: the concept ‘Baltic’ can now be used without reference to German culture, but instead relate to neighbours in the post-Soviet community and secure links to the Viking past and the Nordic community.11 The intensive phases of museum-founding were all characterized by the exchange of objects and ideas among Nordic intellectuals and, later, by the professional organization of museum disciplines and museum institutions. During the first phase in the early nineteenth century, commissions helped transform royal assets into national and public exhibitions in Denmark and Sweden, while academic collections continued to grow. In the second phase, civic support for (national) popular culture organized as metaphorical and literal national rescue expeditions to preserve the past in the wake of modernization aroused engagement, both in conservative or reactionary quarters and in liberal or Scandinavianist circles. The foremost proponent for the latter was Artur Hazelius, whose collections and projects fit better in a more open Nordic identity framework than a narrow state-nationalistic programme. The way in which the Nordicness of the Nordiska museet has been framed varies interestingly with the professional ideals and politics that directors have to address. The first high-water mark in terms of suppressing the Nordic character of collections came when Oscar Montelius, a prominent archaeologist, was made director of the competing state-run Historiska museet housed in the Nationalmuseum. Montelius argued that a firm national framing was the only scientific way to run   Peter Aronsson and Emma Bentz, ‘National Museums in Germany: Anchoring Competing Communities’, in Aronsson and Elgenius, Building National Museums in Europe 1750–2010, pp. 327–362; Tom Kencis and Kristin Kuutma, ‘National Museums in Latvia’, in ibid., pp. 497–519; Kristin Kuutma, ‘National Museums in Estonia’, in ibid., pp. 231–259; Egle Rindzeviciute, ‘National Museums in Lithuania: A Story of State Building (1855–2010)’, in ibid., pp. 521–552; Eglė Rindzevičiūtė, ‘Soviet Lithuanians, Amber and the “New Balts”: Historical Narratives of National and Regional Identities in Lithuanian Museums, 1940–2009’, Culture Unbound, 2 (2010): 665–694. 11

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a museum. Surprisingly, this was reiterated, if in a more moderate voice, by the director of the Nordiska museet during the 1970s.12 The interpretation of this perhaps unexpected modern nationalist framing in the otherwise expressly anti-nationalist and modernist Swedish political culture is interesting. Is this due to a nationalist agenda, or is it instead a way of toning down the Nordic mission to avoid the suspicion of cultural imperialism at a time when Sweden was still the prime economic power, the big brother of Norden? The latter is more in tune with the low-profile but homogenous non-romantic nationalism in cultural policy that was developing in Sweden at that time. The motive was to facilitate Nordic cooperation within a conception of Nordic welfare states as no longer competing against each other with grand histories and hostility, but instead as united in striving for broad welfare provisions.13 At this time, explicit nationalism was already obsolete in Sweden, whereas it was, and still is, much more acceptable in Norway.14 Since the 1990s it has again been the national dimensions that needed to be toned down to avoid the accusation of nationalism in the predominantly multicultural political setting of Sweden. The jubilees marking 1905 and 1809 have also been carefully framed so as not to create hostility but instead underscore the shared culture and the happy solutions of peaceful conflict resolution that all parties contributed to.15 A Nordic dimension was central to cultural policy and identity on several scenes in all Nordic countries in the twentieth century. After the temporary setback of the dissolution of the union between Sweden and Norway, the civil war in Finland and tensions within the Danish realm, professional organizations on the Nordic level regained their strength. This made room for voluntary exchange of material and perspectives rather than hostile demands for repatriation – but with a few exceptions. The Saga manuscripts was very important to several nations but most important to Iceland, and so several of these have been successively returned, and several other collections earlier defined as comparative or shared Nordic material have been repatriated as well.16

  See Hillström, Chapter 10 in this volume.   Tobias Harding, Nationalising Culture: The Reorganisation of National Culture in Swedish Cultural Policy 1970–2002 (Linköping, 2007). 14   Barbro Blehr, En norsk besvärjelse: 17 maj-firande vid 1900-talets slut (Nora, 2000); Anette Warring, Historie, magt og identitet: grundlovsfejringer gennem 150 år (Århus, 2004). Explicit nationalism is more often performed outside the museum institution. 15   See Lindaräng and Eng, Chapter 5 in this volume. 16   Hillström, ‘Contested Boundaries’, and http://overviewheritageconflictseurope. wikispaces.com. 12 13

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Restructuring the heritage of Danish colonies and the Sami heritage has led to more national museums – but also to a new and stronger pan-Scandinavian understanding of the Sápmi nation.17 The fall of the Soviet empire has evoked ideas of a larger Norden once again, mainly in the Baltic states eager to secure their Western identity to safeguard against their powerful neighbour. The borders of Norden are not set once and for all, but vary with the need for alliances to meet national threats and hopes. It is now time to examine some of the themes that have travelled between, and been played out at, these stages. The last fifty years’ research has questioned evolutionary ideas of progress as well as naturalized ideas of the nation. We will, however, use the chronological order because it is still vital for museums to organize and present a persistent complex argument for the genesis, evolution and legitimacy of the nation, even when challenged on a rhetorical level. Norden in Contemporary Museums: Irrefutable Continuity or Ice-Age Nordism? Around the same time that Darwin presented his theory of evolution, establishing geology and glacial theory illuminated the history of natural space.18 Historical analyses expanded temporality far beyond history of mankind and also became a constitutional aspect of the natural and material world. It represented a shift from a biblical chronology to a scientific one based on geology and evolution, and it helped resolve an old issue in Scandinavian debate. How can one explain observations on changes in shorelines? Is water still subsiding after the biblical Flood, or is land rising due to natural forces? The solution gave, and still gives, a strong starting-point for Nordic narratives on prehistorical genesis. The land was covered with ice for 100,000 years. As the ice receded, our hunter-and-gatherer forefathers followed nature’s recovery into the northern virgin lands, thereby establishing the strongest possible continuous link between land and people. This imagery connects seamlessly to archaeological and historical theory in which the melting ice gave way to the first adventurous settlers in the North some 13,000 years ago. The mundane power of maps is here at work. In many Nordic museums, a map of Scandinavia is a useful starting-point, showing by stages how the ice withdrew from this part of northern Europe, and imagining how the current 17   Amundsen, ‘National Museums in Sapmi’; Christina Westergren and Eva Silvén (eds), För Sápmi i tiden. Nordiska museets och Skansens årsbok 2008 (Stockholm, 2008). 18   Sverker Sörlin, Europas idéhistoria: 1492–1918, Världens ordning (Stockholm, 2004), p. 466.

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Nordic states lay under the ice awaiting mystical resurrection, 10,000 years before they came into existence. A national exhibition at Lillehammer, entitled ‘Slowly the Country Became our Own’, opened at the time of the Olympic Games in 1992.19 At the entrance, a movie solemnly tracks the first Nordic arrivals in their canoe, showing nature itself forming what is now Norway, accompanied by the following poem: The Land under the Ice The glacier – the cold giant – was the first to plough the land. Scrubbed and scoured, shaped and moved, until the sun came. Then it cracked and crashed into the falls like the Troll in the fairy tale. And the newly ploughed land lifted its head, drew a breath and filled with life. History could now begin.

The presentation of Swedish prehistory at the then new museum in Stockholm in 1943 connected Swedish culture with the discovery of the first fully preserved skeleton of a person who had inhabited the land shortly after the ice retreated, thus seamlessly moving between local, regional, national and Nordic concepts. In the same paragraph in the catalogue, the skeleton is labelled to represent respectively Barum (local society), Scania (province), and the Swedish and Nordic community.20 Today museum visitors are met first by the Ice Age and a chronological road through prehistory, but marked as a ‘foreign country’ where they can meet not their ancient forefathers, but people with needs, desires and fears similar to their own.21 This is not the only possible way of interpreting cultural and archaeological variation. In the early nineteenth century the idea of Great Migrations was   Visited 19 October 2009.   Sigurd Curman, Birger Nerman and Dagmar Selling (eds), Tiotusen år i Sverige (Stockholm, 1945), p. 36. 21   Aronsson, ‘Exhibiting Scandinavian Culture’. 19 20

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used to explain linguistic differences and eventually to define archaeological cultures.22 In the Nordic context, this could mean identifying waves of migration as an explanation of both spatial differences and cultural evolution; more advanced tribes conquered and replaced the less advanced, who were then marginalized. Since then, the movement of peoples has been in decline as an explanatory variable, whereas the exchange of cultural artefacts is on the rise. The change in explanatory frameworks follows dominant modes of self-understanding, where evolutionary thought, imperialism, liberal economy, trade and migration were projected on the traces available. Today, denationalizing and regionalizing interpretations of hybrid cultures, and exchange among them, are more prevalent in general academic discourse than a naive nationalistic framing.23 The ways in which Nordic museums deal with these possibilities vary greatly. Finland presents the earliest timeframe. The first item one sees in the National Museum is a piece of stone with manmade marks, presented as pre-Ice Age, thus making Finnish culture the oldest in the Nordic realm. In Finnish discourse there have been marked swings in the interpretation of Finns as belonging to the Finno-Ugric language group, possibly to stress Nordic uniqueness, or eastern Slavic or European origin. To the unresolved tensions surrounding the Sami culture, which spans Finland, Sweden, Norway and Russia, is added the later complexity of incorporating the Swedish-speaking minority into the Finnish national narrative. In Iceland this story doesn’t exist, since the island was colonized around ad 870, but in Greenland, still mostly covered with ice, the question of origins is part of the Inuit struggle for recognition as the indigenous people and the political subjects of Greenland in their own right and not as Danish citizens. In the historical narrative of the National Museum, the issue is not whether the Inuit were the first inhabitants. The ancient Dorset people and Norsemen were already there in the thirteenth century when the Inuit arrived at Thule. But the Inuit survived, whereas the other inhabitants disappeared during the Little Ice Age. It was only from the early eighteenth century that Danish colonization began to expand. Here, the national museum was created in 1991 out of the provincial museum founded in 1968, with the declaration of home rule coming in between, in 1979.24

  Bruce G. Trigger, A History of Archaeological Thought (Cambridge, 1989).   Fredrik Svanberg, Decolonizing the Viking Age 1 (Stockholm, 2003). 24   Henrik Zipsane, ‘On the Development of National Museums in Denmark,’ in Aronsson and Elgenius, Building National Museums in Europe 1750–2010, pp. 257–278. 22 23

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Heathen Norden The Icelandic sagas were rediscovered in the seventeenth century and gave a rejuvenating boost to the contemporary idea of a Nordic genesis built on classical and biblical texts, with the addition of indigenous material of various kinds. Texts produced in the thirteenth century described the pre-Christian era, evoking ideas of an archaic, rustic, face-to-face society of egalitarian men and patriarchal households, running their affairs without a state, but under the power of their communal forum, called the Thing, and the heathen gods, resembling the Golden Age of Greece.25 The power of heathen imagery is illustrated by the Götiska Förbundet (Gothic League), founded in 1811, an association of and ‘angry young men’ in Sweden who gave themselves Old Norse names. At the same time, the Napoleonic officer Jean Bernadotte, to become the new Swedish king Karl XIV Johan, planned several manifestations of himself, incarnating both the heathen pantheon and the new civic virtues in a complex heritage plan for national museums at Gripsholm Palace and in Stockholm, as mentioned above.26 Later, in the nineteenth century, this type of Nordism was institutionalized in and by museums and penetrated everyday language, national romantic architecture, and the naming of children and associations.27 The pronounced strategy of making political statements through monuments around 1900 was not only national, but had a wide variety of Nordic elements. Wilhelm II donated a twelve-metre high statue of Frithiof, a heathen hero created in 1825 in a very popular poem written by Esaias Tégner, a member of the Götiska Förbundet. The statue was inaugurated in 1913 at Vangsnes, Norway, to “be a sign of the community of all Scandinavian and Germanic tribes. As Frithiof stand here supported by a sword…’.28 A year later – and worlds apart in terms of politics and direction – the joint peace movements in Norway   J.W. Burrow, A History of Histories. Epics, Chronicles, Romances and Inquiries from Herodotus and Thucydides to the Twentieth Century (London, 2007); Catharina Raudvere, Anders Andrén and Kristina Jennbert (eds), Myter om det nordiska: mellan romantik och politik (Lund, 2001); Catharina Raudvere, Anders Andrén and Kristina Jennbert (eds), Hedendomen i historiens spegel. Bilder av det förkristna Norden (Lund, 2009). 26   Samuel Edquist, Lars Hermanson and Stefan Johansson (eds), Tankar om ursprung. Forntiden och medeltiden i nordisk historieanvändning (Stockholm, 2009); Torkel Molin, Den rätta tidens mått. Göthiska förbundet, fornforskningen och det antikvariska landskapet (Umeå, 2003); Widén, ‘National Museums in Sweden’. 27   Bo Grandien, Rönndruvans glöd: nygöticistiskt i tanke, konst och miljö under 1800-talet (Stockholm, 1987). 28   Allan Ellenius, Den offentliga konsten och ideologierna. Studier över verk från 1800- och 1900-talen (Stockholm, 1971): p. 59, 89. 25

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and Sweden inaugurated a peace monument, celebrating 100 years of not being at war, referring, of course, to the peaceful dissolution of the union between the two countries in 1905. Erected on the border between the two nations, the monument consists of a large statue portraying two men of equal footing, standing on a common ground of granite, and exchanging crops for mutual benefit.29 The Sami people could be interpreted either as a pan-Nordic indigenous tribe conquered by more successful Germanic descendants of Oden or as latecomers pushed to the periphery by the Nordic ethnic groups who were the first settlers and had been there since the Stone Age. The issue of who was the first to settle Norden is still contested in our own time, with vigorous argument on all sides, and with implications for rights issues, indigenous cultural representations and political organization, especially for what is referred to as Sápmi, the nation of the Sami people who inhabit the northernmost parts of four nations.30 Viking Norden The Viking burial ships in Norway and Denmark are aesthetic objects signalling the craft, skill and bravery, exhibited in national institutions. There are also many reconstructions of Viking sites in all the Nordic countries, and this pre-state Scandinavian culture negotiates distinct national images of the typical Viking. In Norway they are high-sea adventurers, foreshadowing later heroes like Fridtjof Nansen. The Viking museum in Oslo was placed between the Folkemuseum and the modern maritime museum, a location that implicitly links modern seafarers to their Viking ancestors. In Sweden, the Viking is represented as less adventurous and more industrious, like the craftsmen and tradesmen of the late but rapidly industrialized and neutral Sweden. In Denmark, the Vikings are depicted as farmers making Denmark what it is today by toiling on the land and breeding livestock. Finland invented the Finnish Viking in its nation-building process, taking advantage of the shared Scandinavian heritage so that the young nation could create a suitably distant past to legitimize the state-making process as a   Peter Aronsson, ‘1905 – unionsupplösning att glömma eller att stoltsera med?’, in Torbjörn Nilsson and Øystein Sørensen (eds), Goda grannar eller morska motståndare? Sverige och Norge från 1814 till idag (Stockholm, 2005). 30   David Loeffler, Contested Landscapes/Contested Heritage: History and Heritage in Sweden and their Archaeological Implications Concerning the Interpretation of the Norrlandian Past (Umeå, 2005). 29

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renaissance rather than an innovation.31 Vikings are also presented in the Baltic states, both as a shared Baltic heritage and as part of a shared Nordic heritage, all in tune with the opening up of economic and political spaces.32 There are good reasons why the Viking heritage plays slightly different roles tailored to its place in a particular nation-making trajectory. In Denmark, the tenth-century Jelling stones, sacred because the larger of the two stones is inscribed with a statement about Denmark and Norway being united and Christianized, are iconic. They have formed part of a UNESCO world heritage site (along with Jelling church) since 1994 and are part of the official Danish canon, even being represented on the Danish passport.33 In Norway, the timely discovery of Viking ships in the late nineteenth century bolstered the call for sovereignty. The Viking burial ship excavated at Oseberg, presented to the museum in 1904, brought a definite national dimension into the scientific museum just in time for the dissolution of the union in 1905.34 In Iceland the founding story is not about the glacial ice, but instead about the first ship arriving. The National Museum opens with a Viking ship, and the mediaeval Landnámabók tells the story of Ingólfur and Hallveig as the first settlers. What is possibly their house is featured in the museum Reykjavik 871+-2, with the ‘Settlement Exhibition’. A statue of Ingólfur stands outside the presidential palace, overlooking the capital and the harbour where his carved chair pillars, attributes of a chieftain, floated ashore and were interpreted as a sign for choosing that site for settlement.35 The Viking Age was a successful invention for export made by Nordic historians in the early nineteenth century. A people who could also be described – and, indeed, were described by Christian monks – as ravaging, brutal, criminal gangs were thus transformed to one of the best known and admired features of Nordic culture. All nations that wished to be regarded as Nordic claimed to be part of Viking culture, including Finland and the Baltic states. In the twentieth century this strand of Nordic community-building has been marginalized, not 31  Fewster, Visions of Past Glory; Bodil Petersson, Föreställningar om det förflutna. Arkeologi och rekonstruktion (Lund, 2003); Anna Wallette, Sagans svenskar: synen på vikingatiden och de isländska sagorna under 300 år (Malmö, 2004). 32   Rindzevičiūtė, ‘Soviet Lithuanians’. 33   Jes Wienberg, ‘Kanon, mindesmærker og oldtidsfund’, in Lars-Eric Jönsson, Anna Wallette and Jens Wienberg (eds), Kanon och kulturarv. Historia och samtid i Danmark och Sverige (Göteborg, 2008), pp. 237–282. 34   Aronsson, ‘1905’. 35   Visited 25 August 2008; photography not allowed, however. See Peter Aronsson, ‘Medeltiden i montern’, in Jenny Björkman, Björn Fjæstad and Jonas Harvard (eds), Ett nordiskt rum. Historiska och framtida gemenskaper från Baltikum till Barents hav. RJ:s årsbok (Stockholm, 2011), pp. 60–83.

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only because modernity became part of Nordic core values, but also because of the association with conservatism and right-wing radicalism, if not outright Nazism, has restrained the use of the heathen and Viking heritage. It has survived in very different contexts, from that of right-wing activism to that of indigenous rights claims in the far North. Places with dubious or ambivalent Nordic heritage are to be found in a wide-ranging area from Russia in the east to England, France, Ireland and the United States in the west. The Viking heritage probably represents the most prominent transnational success story of Nordic culture, apparent in the United Kingdom, Germany and parts of the United States.36 The principal source of its vitality is not exhibitions in museums but more vernacular uses in living history museums in both Scandinavia and the United States, as well as its success in attracting commercial revenue. Viking culture is represented and performed to promote sales of a wide range of products, from Mexican hamburgers to Australian pizzas.37 The Viking heritage is subject to quite varied uses, all of them with Nordic resonances, but it is never the sole reference point. Existential, local, regional and national implications are blended into the foundational Nordic myth that took form in the seventeenth century and is still very much alive. Moving from the more general prehistoric, pre-state context thus far presented, we shall turn now to the national historical museums to see how the beginning of history proper is staged in the Scandinavian countries. To what extent is the traditional search for the earliest possible beginning of a naturally evolving nation-state balanced by recognition of the idea of a shared Nordic culture, and even state-making attempts at the Nordic level? The Nordic Union: Mediaeval Norden in National Museums The Kalmar Union, which united the Nordic countries between 1397 and 1523, is a reasonable point of departure. It was a long period of political union of peoples who mostly spoke very similar languages and shared transnational elites, religion and external enemies, such as the Hanseatic League.38 In Iceland, an independent state since 1944, the National Museum presents a strong narrative about a clear beginning with the Norse settlement. In the new exhibition mounted in 2004, the past represented in the saga era has become somewhat less heroic and more marked by internal warfare. The political dimension of growing dependence, starting when Iceland came under   See Larsen and Gradén, Chapters 4 and 8 in this volume.   Martin Djupdraet, Billeder af vikingen (Copenhagen, 1998). 38   Aronsson, ‘Medeltiden’. National museum; visited 19 October 2010. 36 37

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Norwegian rule in 1262 and then followed Norway into Danish custody, forms a minor part of the narrative. National continuity has to be located in other dimensions, such as religious and cultural history where sea-trade is emphasized. Hence there is no need or room to contemplate the consequences of the Kalmar Union.39 The similarities with Norway are striking. The early mediaeval era makes a grand starting-point, followed by a long night of unions in various shades of grey. This image has been nuanced by meticulous historical research, but that has not really affected the popular notion that unions are evil – a notion revived whenever a new one comes into view. Getting out of the Danish and Swedish unions was such a relief for Iceland and Norway that it makes the EU an unattractive option for the future and the Kalmar Union a marginal part of the past.40 Finland in the nineteenth century needed to clearly distinguish itself as a nation from Sweden, of which it was an integral part until 1809, and also from Russia, to which it belonged from then until 1918. Hence several strategies have been tried over time, from stressing the unique eastern migration of origin to playing on the shared European and Nordic cultural community. The Nordic connection is emphasized by using 800–1025 as the Viking Age and creating a unique period of Swedish Crusades in 1025–1300, making Christianization a matter of colonization. This could, of course, be a true story for any part of the heathen Swedish realm in the making, but it becomes a defining concept in the Finnish context. The real Finnish culture is lurking in prehistory, which fortunately begins before the last Ice Age, as indicated above. There is little need to complicate the separation of existing Finnish- and Swedish-speaking cultures in the nation by emphasizing the prior existence of a Nordic union, and it is only mentioned in passing. The desire to differentiate Finnish cultural utterance from its Swedish counterpart is nicely captured by the different symbolism attached to similar statues in the two nations. The statue of St George and the dragon in Stockholm symbolizes the Battle of Brunkeberg over leadership of the 39   Brynhildur Ingvarsdóttir (ed.), Making of a Nation: Heritage and History in Iceland: A Guide Book for the National Museum of Iceland’s Permanent Exhibiton (Reykjavík, 2005). 40   Aronsson, ‘1905’; Erik Axelsson, Historien i politiken: Historieanvändning i norsk och svensk EU-debatt 1990–1994 (Uppsala, 2006); Anne Helene Høyland Mork, Unionen i historieundervisningen. Synet på den svensk–norske union (1814–1905) i svenske og norske laerebøker for folkeskolen i perioden 1860–1920 (Oslo, 2005); Lars Kjetil Köber, ‘verre enn unionen med Sverige’ – om bruken av unionsbegrepet og historiske sammenligninger med unionen med Sverige i EEC/EF/EU-debattene 1961–1994 (Oslo, 2001); Jan Eivind Myhre, ‘The “Decline of Norway”: Grief and Fascination in Norwegian Historiography on the Middle Ages’, in Evans and Marchal, The Uses of the Middle Ages, pp. 18–30.

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Kalmar Union, but that symbolism does not carry over to a similar statue from Hinnerjoki in Finland, which is believed to offer protection from wolves.41 And it need not be spelled out that wolves come in many disguises. A 1919 agreement charged the Swedish Historiska museet with collecting and representing prehistory and ecclesiastical culture from the Middle Ages, while the Nordiska museet should present cultural history from 1523 onwards. Hence, political history in the Middle Ages was not an issue. This should not be looked upon as a mistake, but as a consequence of the timing of the birth of the nation, rooted in heathen Scandinavian culture and achieving political sovereignty only in the sixteenth century with Gustav Vasa. His role as Sweden’s ‘founding father’ is implied by a huge statue of the ruler on his throne which has been greeting visitors to the Nordiska museet since it opened in 1907. In 2010, however, the Historiska museet opened a new historical exhibition that narrates political and cultural history from Olof Skötkonung around the year 1000 to the death of Olof Palme in 1986 in a chronological and progressive fashion. The Kalmar Union and Queen Margareta are, together with St Birgitta of Vadstena, the leading figures for the fourteenth century, which, however, leads to the political anarchy of the fifteenth century, resolved only by violent centralization and the Reformation in the early sixteenth century. Female power is the virtue hailed, more than a Nordic federation.42 The National Museum of Denmark follows a similar logic, although the museum as such has a more comprehensive representation of Danish history in the world from the very beginning to contemporary society. Its logic is unequivocally nationalistic, whereas its Swedish sister institution keeps that interpretation at a distance by declaring that prehistory is not about Sweden and Swedes, since these did not exist at the time. When Queen Margareta is represented, it is as a powerful Danish monarch who manages to master the aristocracy. She is not presented as a ruler over a Nordic realm, which indeed she was. The period is, as in all other Nordic countries, mostly represented through exhibits of cultural history and religious art, which keeps political interpretation at a distance and can negotiate an implicit national message of territorial social history with a universalized discourse of art history. The comparative outlook is sporadic and occasionally brings mediaeval territory into the narrative, as in the case of Scania in Denmark, but then only   Visited 19 October 2010. See also Peter Aronsson, ‘National Cultural Heritage ­ Nordic Cultural Memory: Negotiating Politics, Identity and Knowledge’, in Bernd – Henningsen, Kliemann-Geisinger and Stefan Troebst (eds), Transnationale Erinnerungsorte: Nord- und Südeuropeische Perspektiven (Berlin, 2009), pp. 71–90. 42   Aronsson, ‘Medeltiden’. 41

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as part of a greater national story and not as recognition of the complicated mediaeval federal structure of the Kalmar Union. The narratives in museums diverge in interesting ways from history in popular culture and academic historiography. In the latter, political developments are central but not easy to represent visually, as they are in object-oriented museography. In the museum, a replica of Queen Margareta’s dress is presented as evidence of fantastic craftsmanship and is used to emphasize the possibility for strong women to take on a prominent role in history – not as a part of the political history of the Kalmar Union. This might be partly due to the medium itself, but the effect is an example of a structural division of labour that often leads museum exhibitions to culturalize narratives in a way that de-politicizes them, whereas historiography, taking the opposite tack, underlines the role actions have in promoting national history and tends to ignore other dynamics of cultural history. Furthermore, political history was a known framework for earlier audiences, and objects might then illustrate other dimensions of that framework without the need for explication. Today’s much more diverse audience needs to be told the whole story at the outset. Therefore, an exhibition might – contrary to the assumed supremacy of cosmopolitan and post-national values – be read as much more national today than at the end of nineteenth century, when a Scandinavian conception of history was more vivid in the audience’s perception. Catholic Church items dominate the early collections of mediaeval culture in Nordic museums, complemented later by items illustrating traditional crafts and everyday life. Musealizing Catholic culture performs in a Protestant context the double trick of neutralizing traces of a heretical cult by putting it at a safe distance and still revering it as part of a continuous history that moves from pagan superstition to Catholicism to the pure Protestant faith. The consequence, if not the objective, was to keep religious objects safely musealized as art objects and crafts. The mediaeval era was long conceptualized mainly as the origin of the modern state, but with the growing tendency to see it as a real antithesis to modernity, religion explicitly comes back into the exhibitions. This new element of interpretation is themed with, and gets a strong boost from, its performance in modern media, popular culture and tourism. As pointed out earlier, Iceland is the only Nordic country where not only the Vikings, but also early mediaeval history, was crucial to defining the very existence of national culture. Next in line comes Norway, where the existence of an independent state in early mediaeval times was a golden age, and the decline was marked by successive unions with Denmark and Sweden.43 For Denmark,   Myhre, ‘The “Decline of Norway”’.

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which was the dominant political power in Norden during the Middle Ages, it was a golden epoch.44 Finland became part of civilized Europe as it was Christianized – unfortunately, by Sweden, which left an ambiguous legacy for state-making on the ground of Finnish ethnicity, but also an important link for the Swedish-speaking minority to uphold. In Sweden, the traditional historiography is that of a violent period of recurrent crisis before Gustav Vasa took the throne, cleared the country of foreigners (Danes and Germans) and became the father of modern Sweden.45 As for other eras, the mediaeval epoch as conceptualized by museums draws part of its meaning from interaction with other media such as tourism, markets, music, role-playing games, books and film. Pseudo-mediaeval settings like the ones in the The Lord of the Rings or the Harry Potter books add to the imagery of contrast with the contemporary world, rather than genesis. The mediaeval epoch that once stood for the beginning of the modern age, especially important for states north of the Alps which lacked Roman prehistory, is currently undergoing a shift in interpretation. Today it can also be seen as an analogy with a ‘second’ mediaeval epoch in the post-national, post-industrial society dominated by powerful transnational corporations, a similarity enhanced by the pseudofeudal dimension of globalization.46 In times when the Nordic project is to be rejuvenated as a political project, the mediaeval period is narrated as a golden age, with the emergence of new states out of it seen as a failure to maintain a strong state and the successive national stories seen as tragedies rather than progressive stories of liberation. However, taking this counterfactual, but not irrelevant, perspective on history to its logical conclusion, one can see that it probably would have produced stronger resentments in the age of nationalism and possibly even have triggered long-standing nationalistic, religious or ethnic violence in Scandinavia – as in the British Isles or the Balkans.

  Ole Feldbaek, Dansk identitetshistorie (Copenhagen, 1991).   Peter Aronsson et al., ‘Nordic National Histories’, in Stefan Berger and Chris Lorenz (eds), The Contested Nation: Ethnicity, Class, Religion and Gender in National Histories (Basingstoke, 2008), pp. 256–282. 46   Robert John Weston Evans and Guy P. Marchal (eds), The Uses of the Middle Ages in Modern European States: History, Nationhood and the Search for Origins (New York, 2011); Lotten Gustafsson, Den förtrollade zonen: lekar med tid, rum och identitet under Medeltidsveckan på Gotland (Nora, 2002); Erika Sandström, På den tiden, i dessa dagar. Föreställningar om och bruk av historia vid Medeltidsveckan på Gotland och Jamtli historieland (Östersund, 2005). 44 45

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War and Nordic Memory The dominant element of most Nordic countries’ ethnographic performances and reverence of the past is peasant culture – a culture of peaceful work, Protestant faith, traditional customs, endurance and the collective victory over occupation and defusing of external threats.47 In stark contrast to this theme is the treatment of internal Nordic warfare – the battlefield is one of the most common places where elites met their peers in mediaeval and early modern times, with the cry for Dominium Mare Baltici, the aspiration for hegemony around the Baltic Sea, ringing in their ears. The most problematic issue that cultural representation must deal with is how a particular country’s power politics affected its neighbouring states. Only civil war is more difficult to handle, as illustrated by the way in which the ‘events of 1918’ in Finland and the collaboration with occupying German forces during the First World War are treated with great caution and tension. The more distant past can be treated more explicitly, in a more relaxed and even adventurous mode than is possible with recent or highly charged atrocities; hence the treatment of war provides a test of the role of conflicts in the creation of community. The decline of the empires and the implications of the wars in the seventeenth century are treated differently in the Nordic countries. In Denmark, they have a central place in the Danish National Museum’s exhibitions on what are called the Swedish wars, in which Denmark lost its upper hand in terms of power politics in Norden to Sweden. Contemporary Swedish institutions in turn do not take the triumphal attitude that was so salient around 1905. Between 1809 when it lost Finland and 1905 when the union with Norway was dissolved, Sweden adjusted to the loss of its Age of Greatness using nostalgia, commemoration, statues and heritage production, history paintings and artefacts of royal bravery at the Livrustkammaren (Royal Armoury), and shifted its narrative towards tragedy rather than triumph. In Denmark, the foundation of a Museum of National History in Frederiksborg Castle was a direct response to the German wars of 1864.48 For Swedish-speaking Finns and for the Baltic countries later under Russian and Soviet rule, the Swedish empire became the good old days worthy of   Claus Bryld and Anette Warring, Besaettelsestiden som kollektiv erindring (Roskilde, 1999); Billy Ehn, Jonas Frykman and Orvar Löfgren, Försvenskningen av Sverige: det nationellas förvandlingar (Stockholm, 1993); Anne Eriksen, Det var noe annet under krigen: 2. verdenskrig i norsk kollektivtradisjon (Oslo, 1995). 48   Peter Aronsson, ‘Representing Community: National Museums Negotiating Differences and Community in Nordic Countries,’ in Katherine J. Goodnow and Haci Akman (eds), Scandinavian Museums and Cultural Diversity (New York, 2008), pp. xx. 47

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commemoration, while in welfare-state Social Democratic Sweden it became a clear signifier of the bad old days, happily overcome. A clear political and national dimension is discernible when the seventeenthcentury struggle for hegemony in the Baltic comes up, but the dimension most in evidence in Stockholm is a more social historical counterpart. The then victorious, but today neutral, Sweden must keep a lower profile than the defeated party, Denmark, needs to do. In recent years the Army Museum in Stockholm also treats this era as a period of great suffering rather than triumph, and hence pays homage to the idea of an outdated and overcome history with which to contrast, rather than draw inspiration from, the current improved society. The Vasa ship provides the perfect opportunity to explore this feeling without challenging official political understanding and the generally accepted Swedish mindset. It is a well-preserved, fully-equipped warship that sank on its maiden voyage in 1628, without ever firing a shot. In 1961 it was salvaged – a triumph for Swedish engineering skill – and it can now be admired in its own museum in Stockholm.49 Taken together, all these shifting stances combine to create a balanced equation, making it possible for the contemporary Nordic consensus to flourish in the midst of sometimes open, but mainly implicit, nationalistic discourses and even partly contradictory practices. Egalitarian and Rural Norden The effect of culturalization on both imagining community and neutralizing political conflicts is evident in the ways in which museums in Norden are dealing with internal regional differences, reinforced by the temporal differences in the modernization process. The main role of these performances has been to negotiate social, regional and gendered differences into a frame of unity, community and stability in the midst of rapid change. The prime example for representing regional diversity, sometimes across national borders, with a national framing was formatted by the open-air museum, first set up in Norway and, with the help of the Swedish king, transformed into the Norsk Folkemuseum. The rhetorical presentation of the collection at Skansen tightened its focus on the peasantry all the more as the nineteenth century drew to a close.50 Skansen 49   Peter Aronsson, ‘From Viking Community to Welfare State – Swedish Histories’, in Peter Furtado (ed.), Babel: The Histories of the World (London, 2009). 50   Artur Hazelius, Nordiska museets tjugufemårsminne 1873–1898 (Stockholm, 1900); Mattias Bäckström, ‘Loading Guns with Patriotic Love: Artur Hazelius’s Attempts

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is a tribute to, and a sanctuary for, the last-minute rescue of precious historical buildings that were decaying and traditional rural customs that were dying out, the careful reproduction of the material culture of a way of life threatened by modernization, and the desire to rejuvenate skills and attitudes towards life that were increasingly threatened by urban civilization, not to say general cultural degeneration. This open-air museum was – and still is – not just an exhibition, but also a site for many role-play performances and community. Around 1900, high-ranking women from polite society could dress and perform as Sami or peasants at rural fiestas at Skansen, negotiating both the distinctions and the fundamental unity of national culture in a Nordic setting.51 Skansen was open to fostering national communal feelings and joyful celebrations with living-history performances and live re-enactments, historical role-plays and festivals – in much the same way it does today with Allsång på Skansen (Sing-along at Skansen) – the closest Sweden gets to the Baltic song festivals. Display could tap samples from Nordic neighbours to highlight unity in diversity across state borders, but it could also be transposed to local settings to present a repertoire, a grammar, of a museum representation of culture recognizable to everyone. The old narrative of the prehistoric egalitarian Thing society took on new relevance early in the nineteenth century with the popularizing of the national romantic ideas of odalbonde (the freeholder), promoting democratization in Denmark and Norway, and the stabilization of the political role of farmers in the Swedish parliamentary system. This is a good example of how the idea of a common Nordic heritage plays a role and how the idea of a strong democratic and egalitarian society provides nineteenth-century democratization with ambivalent imagery. The welfare state, the Middle Way rhetoric of Nordic policy, has been both a consequence of these historical ideals and a boost for regenerating these histories in modern society.52 Sweden in particular, which, unlike the rest of Scandinavia, has stayed out of NATO and was not as close to the Soviet Union as Finland, tried to argue for the pre-eminence of its Third Way during the Cold War era. These modern presentations rarely found their way into museums proper during the Cold War, but were part of the wider exhibition complex, for instance, at the modernist Stockholm exhibition at Skansen to Remake Swedish Society’, in S.J. Knell, P. Aronsson and A. Amundsen (eds), National Museums: New Studies From Around the World (London, 2011), pp. 69–87. 51   Peter Aronsson, ‘The Image of the Peasant within National Museums in the Nordic Countries’, in Piotr Wawrzeniuk (ed.), Societal Change and Ideological Formation among the Rural Population of the Baltic Area 1880–1939 (Huddinge, 2008), pp. 187–212. 52   Marquis William Childs, Sweden: The Middle Way (New Haven, 1936).

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of 1930.53 Today, however, ethnological exhibitions take their narrative up to the welfare state era which, in the neoliberal age, is rapidly becoming history, and is used for the purpose of contrast, comparison or as a general reference point. These performances helped create a framework for getting to know one’s country through such practices as tourism or Nordic Walking, far outside the confines of the museum.54 Together, museums, education and popular culture set a frame of Nordic values located in the landscape and hence experienced and performed in a very broad range of practices. Performing Nordic Communities by Voice and Silence in the Museum This chapter has argued for a continuity of the use and performance of the Nordic for political goals and for the power of changing conceptualization in order to influence politics. Nordic culture has come a long way during the four centuries in question. It was mainly invoked as a motivation for military and political hegemony in the seventeenth century, but by the nineteenth century it had become the foundation of a shared culture among the Nordic nation-states, and by the twentieth the explicit defender of democratic values. The idea of Norden has survived over centuries, and is revitalized now and then. The Nordic images used in contemporary societies are often heavily nationalized, and yet reference to the European context and exchange are more frequent than overt Nordic references as the major mode of opening up a comprehensive transnational conception. Interesting variations do exist, in tune with variations in political culture in the Nordic countries. In the same way as ideas of history have adjusted to contemporary realities in earlier epochs, the historical narrative relating to globalization and contemporary challenges can develop differently today. In the early twenty-first century, right-wing nationalist parties have entered parliament in all the Nordic countries, with up to a quarter of the votes. State nationalism is their most common response to multiculturalism, but these groups often incorporate Nordism, too. According to these parties, Nordic migrants do not count as foreigners, but the borders of Norden should be tightened as a defence against what they perceive as mass migration. At the long-contested border in southern Denmark, the right- wing party displays the flags of all Nordic countries in a museum and maintains a consistent policy of struggling 53   Annika Alzén, ‘Framtidstro i Svea Rike. Historia och framtid på Stockholmsutställningen 1930’, in Svante Beckman and Lennart Palmqvist (eds), Museer och framtidstro (Stockholm, 2003). 54   Susanne Österlund-Pötzsch, Chapter 2 in this volume.

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against non-European immigrants.55 As Stuart Burch argues in Chapter 6 of this volume, some contemporary uses of Norden are also employed as a cover-up for an aggressive and successful marketing of weapons to the global market. Ethnic nationalism was given free rein in the 2009 prehistoric exhibition in Denmark, for instance, while its parallel Swedish exhibition is universalist in its approach to the audience as individuals rather than fellow citizens, inviting them to meet prehistoric peoples on equal terms for an existential dialogue. As these examples show, prehistoric Nordicness can result in very different contemporary ideals of community, which demonstrates how strongly contemporary politics can influence the ways in which even prehistory is configured to legitimatize cultural policy. The explicit rhetorical level of competition and envy that forms part of many national narratives does not contradict the existence of a Nordic framing of the narrative. On the contrary, it helps prove the persistence of an idea of a shared Nordic culture as a family of nations, despite their national differences and, since the 1980s, increased reliance on Europe as a shared context. Europe is, however, not the only relevant context, and in times of trouble the Nordic idea is becoming more attractive once again. On the other hand, Gunnar Wetterberg’s recent attempt to argue for a Nordic union is based in power politics but not on military power. He argues that the possibility of Nordic values playing a larger role in world power politics depends on Norden acting as one player. It would then be transformed from a cluster of small states to the world’s tenth-largest economy.56 There are several ways of connecting the currently entangled national and Nordic framings: 1. Explicit Nordic political utopias. These belong mostly to the mid-

nineteenth century, with occasional upsurges in connection with other projects of large-scale cooperation among the small countries of northern Europe, such as immediately after 1945 and 1989. Such utopias can remain culturally viable in the diaspora in terms of marking the distinctiveness of the Nordic in a multicultural environment. It remains to be seen whether new crises and threats will give these alternatives new impetus. 2. Dominant national narrative but pro-Nordic content and images. This is a prevalent mode in which the balance between national and Nordic elements shifts between countries. Denmark is more openly nation  Christensen, Chapter 7 in this volume.   Peter Aronsson, ‘Swedish Rural Society and Political Culture: The Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Experience’, Rural History, 3/1 (1992): 41–57; Gunnar Wetterberg, Förbundsstaten Norden (Stockholm, 2010). 55 56

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centred than Sweden, but both refer openly to some shared history. Occasionally, countries in distress, like Estonia, Finland and Iceland, or the Swedish-speaking Finns, use this model. The most reluctant to acknowledge Scandinavian culture are the Norwegians, who abhor anything that smacks of a union. 3. Silent or banal pro-Scandinavianism. To keep the Nordic peace and maintain close political and practical collaboration, setting a national frame that does not interfere with the stories of neighbouring countries might be the most effective mode of Nordicism. Most museums deal explicitly only with the national culture as framed by current state borders, silencing or repressing the conflicting historical connections that exist in reality. 4. Explicit anti-Nordic rhetoric. Instances of this framing are scarce. The Finnish or Baltic strategy of sharply differentiating their nations might be considered an example of such rhetoric, but instances where malevolence is attributed to another country to distance their own from the Nordic repertoire are very rare. The idea of Norden thus also becomes useful for covering up more sordid moments and elements in history. To conclude, the performances that make up discourse on Norden in the Nordic countries are, as for any narrative, an interplay among such factors as silencing disturbing elements or events, identifying with or reacting against an event or phenomenon, and reducing complex realities to such black-and-white notions as ‘us versus them’ or ‘virtue versus vice’. The most common strategy is not to talk about the territories or peoples once part of the nation but now part of another polity. In the few instances where a museum takes up the political dynamics of war, they tend to be marginalized and kept at a safe historical distance. Very few museums claim to tell the story of the realm as it once looked, and yet a historical lie is perpetrated when a retrospective exhibition adheres to current borders and ignores previous borders that are historically significant. Danish museums rarely speak of Scania, Iceland and Norway, while their Swedish counterparts keep silent about Finland, and both neglect their Baltic history. Instead, museums seem happy to part with the material once brought together to mirror the Nordic and to ‘return’ it to its ‘proper home’ of origin, interpreted as the state now existing in the location in question. When explicit values are addressed, they are often identified as national and typically Nordic. The Nordic model is Swedish in Sweden and Danish in Denmark. Among the vices of the mainly positive idea of Nordic culture is its capacity to obscure or play down the impact of contradictory and problematic values or actions in the present or recent past. Reference to Norden helps to paper over

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an expansive military export industry and asylum policies that are becoming increasingly restrictive. Less obvious perhaps is the reluctance to let the Baltic states into the community, especially the Estonians, who are most openly knocking on the door. Among the virtues of the performance of this transnational imagined community is its capacity to anchor peace and egalitarian values within the historical culture of the Nordic countries. The image of a peaceful and just Norden is achieved by several means, among which the capacity of museums to tone down disputes is as important as their role as the explicit narrators of the unique and naturalized unilinear destiny of the nation. Bibliography Alzén, Annika, ‘Framtidstro i Svea Rike. Historia och framtid på Stockholmsutställningen 1930’, in Svante Beckman and Lennart Palmqvist (eds), Museer och framtidstro (Stockholm: Carlsson, 2003). Amundsen, Arne Bugge, ‘National Museums in Iceland’, in Peter Aronsson and Gabriella Elgenius (eds), Building National Museums in Europe 1750–2010. Conference Proceedings from EuNaMus, European National Museums: Identity Politics, the Uses of the Past and the European Citizen, Bologna 28–30 April 2011 (Linköping: Linköping University Electronic Press, 2011). Amundsen, Arne Bugge, ‘National Museums in Sapmi’, in Peter Aronsson and Gabriella Elgenius (eds), Building National Museums in Europe 1750–2010. Conference Proceedings from EuNaMus, European National Museums: Identity Politics, the Uses of the Past and the European Citizen, Bologna 28–30 April 2011 (Linköping: Linköping University Electronic Press, 2011). Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983). Aronsson, Peter, ‘Swedish Rural Society and Political Culture: The Eighteenthand Nineteenth-Century Experience’, Rural History, 3/1 (1992): 41–57. Aronsson, Peter, ‘1905 – unionsupplösning att glömma eller att stoltsera med?’, in Torbjörn Nilsson and Øystein Sørensen (eds), Goda grannar eller morska motståndare? Sverige och Norge från 1814 till idag (Stockholm: Carlsson, 2005). Aronsson, Peter, ‘The Image of the Peasant within National Museums in the Nordic Countries’, in Piotr Wawrzeniuk (ed.), Societal Change and Ideological Formation among the Rural Population of the Baltic Area 1880–1939 (Huddinge: Södertörns högskola, 2008), pp. 187–212.

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Aronsson, Peter, ‘Representing Community: National Museums Negotiating Differences and Community in Nordic Countries’, in Katherine J. Goodnow and Haci Akman (eds), Scandinavian Museums and Cultural Diversity (New York: Berghahn Books, 2008), pp. 195–211. Aronsson, Peter, ‘From Viking Community to Welfare State – Swedish Histories’, in Peter Furtado (ed.), Babel: The Histories of the World (London: Thames & Hudson, 2009). Aronsson, Peter, ‘National Cultural Heritage – Nordic Cultural Memory: Negotiating Politics, Identity and Knowledge’, in Bernd Henningsen, Kliemann-Geisinger, and Stefan Troebst (eds), Transnationale Erinnerungsorte: Nord- und Südeuropeische Perspektiven (Berlin: Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, 2009), pp. 71–90. Aronsson, Peter, ‘Medeltiden i montern’, in Jenny Björkman, Björn Fjæstad and Jonas Harvard (eds), Ett nordiskt rum. Historiska och framtida gemenskaper från Baltikum till Barents hav. RJ:s årsbok (Stockholm: Makadam, 2011), pp. 60–83. Aronsson, Peter, ‘Exhibiting Scandinavian Culture: The National Museums of Denmark and Sweden’, in Stefan Berger, Chris Lorenz and Billie Melman (eds), Popularizing National Pasts: 1800 to the Present (London: Routledge, 2012), pp. 169–195. Aronsson, Peter and Emma Bentz, ‘National Museums in Germany: Anchoring Competing Communities’, in Peter Aronsson and Gabriella Elgenius (eds), Building National Museums in Europe 1750–2010. Conference Proceedings from EuNaMus, European National Museums: Identity Politics, the Uses of the Past and the European Citizen, Bologna 28–30 April 2011 (Linköping: Linköping University Electronic Press, 2011), pp. 327–362. Aronsson, Peter, Narve Fulsås, Pertti Haapala and Bernard Eric Jensen, ‘Nordic National Histories’, in Stefan Berger and Chris Lorenz (eds), The Contested Nation: Ethnicity, Class, Religion and Gender in National Histories (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), pp. 256–82. Assmann, Jan, Das kulturelle Gedächtnis. Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen (Munich: Beck, 1997). Axelsson, Erik, Historien i politiken. Historieanvändning i norsk och svensk EU-debatt 1990–1994. (Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, Universitetsbiblioteket, 2006). Bäckström, Mattias, ‘Loading Guns with Patriotic Love: Artur Hazelius’s Attempts at Skansen to Remake Swedish Society’, in S.J. Knell, P. Aronsson and A. Amundsen (eds), National Museums: New Studies from around the World (London: Routledge, 2011), pp. 69­–87.

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Berger, Stefan and Chris Lorenz (eds), The Contested Nation: Ethnicity, Class, Religion and Gender in National Histories (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008). Blehr, Barbro, En norsk besvärjelse: 17 maj-firande vid 1900-talets slut (Nora: Nya Doxa, 2000). Bryld, Claus and Anette Warring, Besaettelsestiden som kollektiv erindring (Roskilde: Roskilde University Forlag, 1999). Burrow, J.W., A History of Histories: Epics, Chronicles, Romances and Inquiries from Herodotus and Thucydides to the Twentieth Century (London: Allen Lane, 2007). Childs, Marquis William, Sweden: The Middle Way (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1936). Curman, Sigurd, Birger Nerman and Dagmar Selling (eds), Tiotusen år i Sverige (Stockholm: Statens historiska museum, 1945). Djupdraet, Martin, Billeder af vikingen (Copenhagen: Skoletjenesten, 1998). Edquist, Samuel, Lars Hermanson and Stefan Johansson (eds), Tankar om ursprung. Forntiden och medeltiden i nordisk historieanvändning (Stockholm: Statens historiska museum, 2009). Ehn, Billy, Jonas Frykman and Orvar Löfgren, Försvenskningen av Sverige: det nationellas förvandlingar (Stockholm: Natur och kultur, 1993). Ellenius, Allan, Den offentliga konsten och ideologierna. Studier över verk från 1800- och 1900-talen (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1971). Eriksen, Anne, Det var noe annet under krigen: 2. verdenskrig i norsk kollektivtradisjon (Oslo: Pax, 1995). Evans, Robert John Weston and Guy P. Marchal (eds), The Uses of the Middle Ages in Modern European States: History, Nationhood and the Search for Origins (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). Feldbaek, Ole, Dansk identitetshistorie (Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzel, 1991). Fewster, Derek, Visions of Past Glory: Nationalism and the Construction of Early Finnish History (Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society, 2006). Grandien, Bo, Rönndruvans glöd: nygöticistiskt i tanke, konst och miljö under 1800-talet (Stockholm: Nordiska museet, 1987). Gustafsson, Lotten, Den förtrollade zonen: lekar med tid, rum och identitet under Medeltidsveckan på Gotland (Nora: Nya Doxa, 2002). Hálfdanarson, Guđmundur, ‘Interpreting the Nordic Past: Icelandic Medieval Manuscripts and the Construction of a Modern Nation’, in Robert John Weston Evans and Guy P. Marchal (eds), The Uses of the Middle Ages in Modern European States: History, Nationhood and the Search for Origins (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), pp. 52–71.

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Harding, Tobias, Nationalising Culture: The Reorganisation of National Culture in Swedish Cultural Policy 1970-2002 (Linköping: Department for Studies of Social Change and Culture, Linköping University, 2007). Hazelius, Artur, Nordiska museets tjugufemårsminne 1873–1898 (Stockholm: Nordiska museet, 1900). Helgason, A., S. Sigurethardottir, J. Nicholson, B. Sykes, E.W. Hill, D.G. Bradley, V. Bosnes, J. R. Gulcher, R. Ward and K. Stefansson, ‘Estimating Scandinavian and Gaelic Ancestry in the Male Settlers of Iceland’, American Journal of Human Genetics, 67/3 (2000): 697–717. Hillström, Magdalena, Ansvaret för kulturarvet. Studier i det kulturhistoriska museiväsendets formering med särskild inriktning på Nordiska museets etablering 1872–1919 (Linköping: Department of Culture Studies Linköping University, 2006). Hillström, Magdalena, ‘Contested Boundaries: Nation, People and Cultural History Museums in Sweden and Norway 1862–1909’, Culture Unbound, 2 (2010): 583–607. Høyland Mork, Anne Helene, Unionen i historieundervisningen. Synet på den svensk-norske union (1814–1905) i svenske og norske laerebøker for folkeskolen i perioden 1860–1920 (Oslo, 2005). Ingvarsdóttir, Brynhildur (ed.), Making of a Nation: Heritage and History in Iceland: A Guide Book for the National Museum of Iceland’s Permanent Exhibiton (Reykjavík: Þjóðminjasafn Íslands, 2005). Kencis, Tom and Kristin Kuutma, ‘National Museums in Latvia’, in Peter Aronsson and Gabriella Elgenius (eds), Building National Museums in Europe 1750–2010. Conference Proceedings from EuNaMus, European National Museums: Identity Politics, the Uses of the Past and the European Citizen, Bologna 28–30 April 2011 (Linköping: Linköping University Electronic Press, 2011), pp. 497–519. Köber, Lars Kjetil, ‘verre enn unionen med Sverige’ - om bruken av unionsbegrepet og historiske sammenligninger med unionen med Sverige i EEC/EF/EUdebattene 1961–1994 (Oslo: Hovedoppgave i historie, Universitetet i Oslo, 2001). Kuutma, Kristin, ‘National Museums in Estonia’, in Peter Aronsson and Gabriella Elgenius (eds), Building National Museums in Europe 1750–2010. Conference Proceedings from EuNaMus, European National Museums: Identity Politics, the Uses of the Past and the European Citizen, Bologna 28–30 April 2011 (Linköping: Linköping University Electronic Press, 2011), pp. 231–259. Levart, Johan, Skansen och Arhur Hazelius. Enn skiss- och minnesbok (Stockholm: Geber, 1901).

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Loeffler, David, Contested Landscapes/Contested Heritage. History and Heritage in Sweden and their Archaeological Implications Concerning the Interpretation of the Norrlandian Past (Umeå: Institute of Archaeology and Sami Studies, 2005). Molin, Torkel, Den rätta tidens mått. Göthiska förbundet, fornforskningen och det antikvariska landskapet (Umeå: Institute of History Studies, 2003). Myhre, Jan Eivind, ‘The “Decline of Norway”: Grief and Fascination in Norwegian Historiography on the Middle Ages’, in Robert John Weston Evans and Guy P. Marchal (eds), The Uses of the Middle Ages in Modern European States: History, Nationhood and the Search for Origins (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), pp. 18–30. Nora, Pierre and Lawrence D. Kritzman (eds), Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past: European perspectives (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996). Petersson, Bodil, Föreställningar om det förflutna. Arkeologi och rekonstruktion (Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2003). Pettersson, Susanna, ‘National Museums in Finland’, in Peter Aronsson and Gabriella Elgenius (eds), Building National Museums in Europe 1750–2010. Conference Proceedings from EuNaMus, European National Museums: Identity Politics, the Uses of the Past and the European Citizen, Bologna 28–30 April 2011 (Linköping: Linköping University Electronic Press, 2011), pp. 315–348. Raudvere, Catharina, Anders Andrén and Kristina Jennbert (eds), Hedendomen i historiens spegel. Bilder av det förkristna Norden (Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2009). Raudvere, Catharina, Anders Andrén and Kristina Jennbert (eds), Myter om det nordiska: mellan romantik och politik, (Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2001). Rentzhog, Sten, Open Air Museums: The History and Future of a Visionary Idea (Stockholm and Östersund: Carlsson/Jamtli förlag, 2007). Rindzevičiūtė, Eglė, ‘Soviet Lithuanians, Amber and the “New Balts”: Historical Narratives of National and Regional Identities in Lithuanian Museums, 1940–2009’, Culture Unbound, 2 (2010): 665–694. Rindzevičiūtė, Eglė, ‘National Museums in Lithuania: A Story of State Building (1855–2010)’, in Peter Aronsson and Gabriella Elgenius (eds), Building National Museums in Europe 1750–2010. Conference Proceedings from EuNaMus, European National Museums: Identity Politics, the Uses of the Past and the European Citizen, Bologna 28–30 April 2011 (Linköping: Linköping University Electronic Press, 2011), pp. 521–552.

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Sandström, Erika, På den tiden, i dessa dagar. Föreställningar om och bruk av historia vid Medeltidsveckan på Gotland och Jamtli historieland, (Östersund: Jamtli, 2005). Smith, Anthony D., Nationalism and Modernism. A Critical Survey of Recent Theories of Nations and Nationalism (London: Routledge, 1998). Sörlin, Sverker, Europas idéhistoria. 1492–1918, Världens ordning (Stockholm: Natur och kultur, 2004). Svanberg, Fredrik, Decolonizing the Viking Age 1 (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 2003). Trigger, Bruce G., A History of Archaeological Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). Wallette, Anna, Sagans svenskar: synen på vikingatiden och de isländska sagorna under 300 år (Malmö: Sekel, 2004). Warring, Anette, Historie, magt og identitet: grundlovsfejringer gennem 150 år (Århus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag, 2004). Westergren, Christina and Eva Silvén (eds), För Sápmi i tiden. Nordiska museets och Skansens årsbok 2008 (Stockholm: Nordiska museets förlag, 2008). Wetterberg, Gunnar, Förbundsstaten Norden (Stockholm: Föreningen Norden, 2010). Widén, Per, ’Dynastic Histories: Art Museums in the Service of Charles XIV’, in Mikael Alm and Britt-Inger Johansson (eds), Scripts of Kingship: Essays on Bernadotte and Dynastic Formation in an Age of Revolution (Uppsala: Swedish Science Press, 2008), pp. 79–96. Widén, Per, Från kungligt galleri till nationellt museum. Aktörer, praktik och argument i svensk konstmuseal diskurs ca 1814–1845 (Hedemora: Gidlund, 2009). Widén, Per, ‘National Museums in Sweden: A History of Denied Empire and a Neutral State’, in Peter Aronsson and Gabriella Elgenius (eds), Building National Museums in Europe 1750–2010. Conference Proceedings from EuNaMus, European National Museums: Identity Politics, the Uses of the Past and the European Citizen, Bologna 28–30 April 2011 (Linköping: Linköping University Electronic Press, 2011), pp. 1039–1066. Wienberg, Jes, ‘Kanon, mindesmærker og oldtidsfund’, Kanon och kulturarv. Historia och samtid i Danmark och Sverige (Gothenburg: Makadam, 2008). Zipsane, Henrik, ‘On the Development of National Museums in Denmark’, in Peter Aronsson and Gabriella Elgenius (eds), Building National Museums in Europe 1750–2010. Conference Proceedings from EuNaMus, European National Museums: Identity Politics, the Uses of the Past and the European Citizen, Bologna 28–30 April 2011 (Linköping: Linköping University Electronic Press, 2011), pp. 257–278.

Chapter 12

Conclusion: Performing Nordic Spaces in Everyday Life and Museums Peter Aronsson and Lizette Gradén

This volume has investigated how images of Norden as a supranational identity have provided, and continue to provide, arenas for negotiating cultural understandings of community beyond the national in specific public contexts. More specifically, it has shown how a transnational dimension of identity has become an asset for negotiating collaboration and consensus rather than feeding conflicts and legitimizing claims on territorial realms. As with all identity projects, this one pinpoints new distinctions and delimits boundaries, while it may simultaneously conceal certain disturbing acts, facts and perspectives. Nordic Spaces in the Nordic Countries and Beyond Arguing that Nordic spaces, and real and imagined Nordic places, also emerge outside the Nordic countries, the chapters of this book bring to the fore places in northern Europe, the Baltic states and the United States. Besides showing how Nordic places and Nordic heritage is imagined and used differently in these various settings, the study illuminates the degrees to which Nordic community is created out of a shared historical and contemporary experience. A study of contemporary Norden is combined with historical depth. Norden can be understood as both a physical phenomenon and an intangible concept. People in search of a Nordic space might opt to make a pilgrimage to the historical plaques, a landmark displayed in the ceremonial square outside the Självstyrelsegården, the Åland Islands parliament building, or travel far north to experience the aurora borealis, the northern lights. But these seekers could far more easily reach out for this book on a library shelf, for Norden is here, between the covers of this publication. Its words and images invoke Norden and make it real. It does not matter whether its authors agree with or contradict one another. Indeed, many of the contributors have sought to problematize Norden – or even

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to disavow it. Yet in the very process they have given it analytical attention and ensured its continuation. This volume takes as its historical point of departure the Napoleonic Wars, which pushed major changes in Europe, including its northern periphery, and led to the restructuring of states and the mobilization of national ideologies in the cultural sphere. These ideologies had an impact on the newly established nation-states as territorial entities and on how individual actors reimagined and performed Nordic heritage as a cultural community. Consequently, individual nation-states enhanced Nordic culture as a basis for collaboration in an attempt to counteract the emerging superpowers. Thus, the political agenda resonated with artistic and scholarly endeavours. The first perceived threats were imperial France and England, followed by Germany, Russia and the Soviet Union. These countries have all played the role of ‘the Other’ on the European political, social and cultural stage. As a result, the Scandinavian countries constructed the supranational entity Norden both on an institutional level and in everyday life. Along the coasts in particular, the shared Baltic Sea space was a social, economic and cultural reality until the Second World War, which destroyed that space and made the Iron Curtain a reality. After 1989 resurgent ideas of a broader and more closely linked Norden competed with an expanding European Union in organizing the transnational dimensions of Nordic societies. In the nineteenth century, the overarching world-views of historicism and nationalism juxtaposed forcefully in the making of cultural policy, cultural politics and the cultural sciences taught at universities. Disciplines such as archaeology, history, ethnology, folkloristics and art history played key roles when new conceptions of Norden came into being and they continue to interact or contribute when Norden is re-created academically and artistically. This book may be understood as a contemporary addition to these performances, showing that scholars continue to take part in contemporary debate, offer a critical and reflexive contribution to the concept of Norden, and as such play their part in shaping the Nordic sphere and influencing its community. Historically, there are many examples of scholarly involvement in shaping Norden through performance. In the mid-nineteenth century, Scandinavian student movements became a major source of pro-Norden ideas and engagement and could accordingly lend themselves to a political project both as a strong liberal force among students at home and as cross-national implications on community. During the same period, symbolic epochs such as the Viking era were framed nationally. An emphasis on vernacular egalitarian peasant cultures and on a proto-democratic society rich in material resources was part of the cultural interpretation of history paving the way for democratization, reaching out for radical action and stressing Nordic similarities. It could, however, also

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motivate organic and conservative visions in tune with an ambition to stabilize a perspective of the national that verged on essentialism. All political ideologies could use historical reference to Nordic legacies to motivate their support for political utopias, hoping for entirely different futures. Hence the ideas of a Nordic heritage became a common ground for negotiating both regional and national divisions into a possible asset for cooperative measures in domestic as well as foreign policy. Directly after the Second World War a Nordic union once more seemed to be a viable option, this time institutionalized in common markets for people and goods. As some of the Nordic countries successively joined NATO and/or the EU, pan-Nordic cooperation has survived, albeit diminished in power and initiative. New challenges to the EU might again prove the Nordic to be a viable, if not decisive, resource in times of turmoil. When we look at groups from the Nordic countries in diaspora, both Nordic and ethnic identities have been, and continue to be, mobilized as assets. This is true to a varying degree for Finnish-speaking groups in Sweden, Swedishspeaking groups in Finland, groups of Swedish–Estonian heritage in Estonia, Sami populations connecting across national borders and Danish-speaking minorities in northern Germany. In Finland and the Baltic states, vernacular or popular culture and local language became a tool in the struggle to negotiate a foundation for state-making in the face of a multicultural society in the second half of the nineteenth century. Large groups of fairly cosmopolitan urban Jews and culturally powerful Baltic Germans were confronted by ethnic nationalism. The Baltic and the Nordic became resources for cooperation later on, first in the 1920s and again in the late 1980s. Emigrants from the Nordic countries to the United States offer a prime example of how culture is transplanted and transformed. Having created an infrastructure comprising schools, universities, hospitals, churches and newspapers in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, these groups merged with their new societies through community-building and cultural negotiation, often both making use of and competing with their Scandinavian and Nordic neighbours in defence of security and their position in the new environment. These communities also served as gateways to America for the new arrivals. The strong emphasis on assimilation in the early twentieth century relegated foreign languages, rituals and cultural forms to the home and close-knit immigrant communities, where they were retained and transformed. Some of these communities met demands for assimilation by establishing museums to ensure that material and other forms of culture from their homelands were preserved. The American Swedish Historical Museum, established in 1926, is one example. The ethnic dimensions of the 1960s civil rights movement inspired

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cultural brokers such as festival committees, artists, businesses, city councils and individual museum-creators to look towards Nordic settlers and ethnic neighbourhoods in a heritage process that would transform American small towns settled by people from the Nordic countries into ethnicized destinations, as well as provide urban citizens with places for collections and activities. This framing of culture into something Scandinavian or ethnic produces what it enacts, whilst this framing as ethnic Scandinavian, in turn, produces material culture. In the last two decades the Nordic profile has been mobilized within the American museum sphere in permanent locations such as the Nordic Heritage Museum and temporary spaces such as the Nordic Christmas displays at the American Swedish Institute in Minneapolis. Since 1945 that process has been mirrored in the Nordic countries in the wake of these countries receiving, instead of sending, waves of migrants, some of them political refugees and others with a desire to make a better life for themselves and their families. These processes are similar to the push and pull factors of the great emigration from the Nordic countries to the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. But, in the individual countries and at the Nordic level, these processes of immigration are met differently from the way in which immigration has been, and still is, met in the United States. Unlike the situation in the United States, few immigrant groups in the Nordic countries have had the opportunity to develop museums of their own. Within the Nordic countries, as well as abroad, the real and imagined Norden is a matter of negotiation, which has been, and continues to be, performed on diverse scenes, involving various actors and dealing with several themes. One example is transnational jubilees that attempt to create a sense of Nordicness, tapping the areas of trade, tourism and popular culture. Institutionalized images in history books and museums are also important, not only for the impact of narratives but also as symbols of community in themselves. In addition, the making of Norden through performances and performative action is evident in mundane contexts such as commercial trade, the press and television, as well as in prosaic activities such as walking in a physical place, viewing art, browsing the Internet or listening to the radio. Nordic Heritage and Culture – The Plasticity of Preservation Certain recurrent themes from these institutional, civic and mundane performances stand out. Several of these were already formulated in the early modern period but changed their ethical and political implications in tune with modernization. If the pagan past was particularly important as an identifier in

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the nineteenth century, the welfare state dominated the twentieth, bridging the ideas of democracy, social and gender equality and peace, and then supplemented by images of Nordic nature, a healthy lifestyle, and design in the early twentyfirst century. Museums and everyday practice play important roles in performing Nordic spaces. Museums should be understood not only as collections, institutions and places to visit, but also as practices by which heritage is shaped. Referred to as museums of cultural history in the Nordic countries, similar museums showcasing Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish and Icelandic heritage in the United States are more clearly branded as ethnic museums where Scandinavian and Nordic identity often overlap. In the Baltic states as elsewhere, museums dealing with culture may be characterized as art museums or even natural history museums, reaching out for different defining relationships. Both within and outside Norden, museums are part of the wider perspective of cultural performance, such as commemorative practices and scholarly exchange. Together, these performances offer insight into the complexity of meanings that form Nordic culture and demonstrate how the plasticity of transnational identities is contextual and situational. Nature has, arguably to a greater degree than in many other nations, become a central element in expressions of nationalism in the Nordic countries. In Chapter 2, Susanne Österlund-Pötzsch demonstrates how Nordic Walking and pilgrimage fit into a tradition of outdoor life. Idealization of nature is a key aspect in both activities, and, in both cases, nature is linked not only to ideas of health, whether physical or spiritual, but also to the founding of folkloristics in Finland and neighbouring countries. The themes of nature and outdoor activities have evolved into a central mythology and a common Nordic stereotype. Part and parcel of this paradigm are ideals and ideas concerning health, soundness and (national) identity. The nature walk is a Nordic stereotype and ideal, but it is also a common practice that is part of many people’s lifestyle and self-image. As Österlund-Pötzsch points out, a simultaneous awareness of these two aspects brings out the ritual and performative aspect of everyday patterns of movement. In situations where these practices are highlighted – for example, in rhetoric – and when contrasted with cultural practices elsewhere, they are frequently framed specifically as Nordic. Precisely because of their mundaneness, popular patterns of movement have an integral role in the processes of creating, negotiating and performing Nordic identities. These practices can easily be integrated into discourses of patriotic tourism or into the more modern values of health and ecologic concerns. They thereby interact not only with identitymaking on other scenes, but also through physical activities which involve the sensory, more than the cognitive, aspects of institutional heritage.

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In a similar vein, Kjartansdóttir and Schram (Chapter 3) argue that postcolonial or crypto-colonial discourses are apparent among Icelanders in Copenhagen, where they highlight the countries’ intertwined histories as well as Iceland’s economic expansion and economic difficulties. However, the vernacular version of these discourses, quoted from interviews conducted in situ, did not have a negative impact on the image of Icelanders. The borealistic image of Icelanders seems to still be thriving, and this continues to benefit entrepreneurs and artists in Denmark as they reappropriate media interest in their national background. With a focus on the small town of Elk Horn in US state of Iowa, Hanne Pico Larsen (Chapter 4) argues that the place-making process through which Elk Horn became a heritage site succeeded largely by negotiating its way through the differing opinions and agendas of the local inhabitants, and that visual markers increase the representation of Danishness of such places. Moreover, as her study demonstrates, some actors in this negotiation might discard a sense of authenticity as inauthentic, a process that Larsen, as a native Dane, is drawn into, as well. Therefore, compromises might be sought when it comes to new structures with reference to Denmark, such as the Vikinghjem (Viking home). The driving force in Elk Horn is to do something good for the town, and the project is becoming more important as an identity-confirming construction in its own right than as an authentic reference to a Viking past. In line with other studies of collective community processes in Midwestern towns settled by immigrants from the Nordic countries, Larsen argues that attachments to these structures are therefore as important as the structures themselves. The construction of the Danish Windmill and the Vikinghjem in Elk Horn were team efforts, which demonstrates the importance of popular initiative, however heavily influenced by several entrepreneurs’ private agendas. However, these are places where people deal with their own sense of alienation, which may well include the scholar who is trying to look into and understand this Midwestern community process, where locals volunteer time and money, tourists visit, and ersatz Vikings from afar gather. Heritage processes are often triggered by popular engagement with a common heritage or with perceived threats to a traditional lifestyle in precarious situations. This can be true both on a global scale and on the micro-level of a local community. In the diaspora, a particular need to articulate and perform heritage is evident. Commemorations need to be simultaneously localized and universalized to achieve the maximum engagement and relevance. By studying an extensive sample of jubilees, not only of personalities but also of historical events, in Norden, Lindaräng and Eng (Chapter 5) manage to provide a nuanced answer

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to the variable ability of commemoration to combine territories and values. The fact that there are strong national contexts even when trans-Nordic events are celebrated is, of course, no surprise. However, these national elements are presented in the context of performing the Nordic in several dimensions. From the nineteenth-century Scandinavianist movement and the joint efforts to manifest the shift to a peaceful Nordic culture to the Kalmar Union and the separation of Finland and Norway from Sweden – all are celebrated with the aim of emphasizing the legitimacy of the present-day political order and the underlying community between sovereign states in Norden. Events that do not fit this double message are downplayed. By their very nature, these kinds of commemorations are celebratory. When a place, historical event, group or individual is highlighted as heritage, doing so overshadows other possibilities. But too much light focused on a single-minded interpretation of certain aspects of Nordicness can strike people blind. The open aggressiveness of both earlier events and right-wing appropriation of Nordic ideology will then be regarded as a perverse use of the concept of Norden. In Chapter 6, Stuart Burch challenges this order of things, starting with his own amazement at how the traditional (positive but very plastic) values associated with Norden can live side by side with a very expansionist armament industry embodied by the success of the Carl Gustaf automatic weapon, named after the reigning king of Sweden. Instead of critically examining the positive Swedish myth, he finds a structure of heritage institutions and academic thought that reinforces only positive imagery, which has the effect of legitimizing political and economic actions that contradict the marketed Nordic cultural values. The idea of Norden works as the ‘Muzak … of “banal nationalism”’. The part played by Norden’s borderlands in struggles over heritage is the central theme of Olav Christensen’s chapter. These borderlands become more intensely engaged when high-key heritage wars and battles over representation break out. In the far north the Sami challenge to both the nation-state and conventional Nordic maps is the most evident example. Christensen delineates how borderlands in the very south of Scandinavia also perform conflicting heritage more intensely then elsewhere. Unresolved conflicts at the border between Germany and Denmark led to personal memories and tragedies that can virtually make every name on every memorial contested. Denmark’s loss of its eastern parts to Sweden was already finalized in the late seventeenth century, so the process of making this conflict a heritage of the past, even a shared Nordic past, could be institutionalized much earlier than the conflict with Germany. The latter continued until 1920s and was revived by the German occupation during the Second World War. The factitiousness of the political border is overlapped by the gradual shift of lived cultures and demonstrative

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performances of memory in museums and monuments. In his investigation of these sites, Christensen shows how understanding of these battles and new conflicts can be negotiated through heritage. Reflexive modes of historical culture in official museums do not dominate the landscape. The performative production of traitors and compatriots in the museum casts Norden as an urgent asset to mobilize cultural forces in the south. Guarding the border in the south of Norden coincides with the increasingly harsh Danish policy towards asylum-seekers and the emphasis on a canonical Danish historical culture as the most important tool of integration. A tension between Norden as a symbol of openness, peace and tolerance and Norden as a defence for a gated community becomes evident. Nowhere are there more borders to be defined and transgressed than for people in the diaspora. For both individuals and local institutions, the need to do this becomes an entangled endeavour to negotiate identity. Contributing to a growing field of research on how national or ethnic identities are carved out and positioned in transnational and regional areas outside the Nordic countries themselves, the authors in the volume analyse how the use of transnational labels such as Nordic, Baltic, Scandinavian, Swedish–American and Danish– American illustrates the plasticity and capacity of these framings in different global political settings. In delineating the other end of the territorial boundaries drawn within the Nordic countries, three chapters stand out. With a focus on the museums established by late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century immigrants from the Nordic countries and their descendants, as well as expatriates in the United States, Lizette Gradén (Chapter 8) shows how Nordic culture produces material culture and how material culture framed as Nordic produces Nordic culture even outside the Nordic countries. Building on the ideas that museums are sites of heritage politics and that a museum should emerge out of the contexts in which it exists, Gradén focuses on the interaction between institutions and community, professionals and volunteers. Whereas a transnational form may further culture, by making everyone seem equal, it also stresses the democratization of museum practices in the construction of museum displays. As Gradén shows, these are malleable and take on a certain local form. In recent years the major cultural history museums in the Nordic countries have returned gifts and collections to their neighbours, thus staking out a national route for themselves rather than taking on a shared responsibility for the Nordic past. In the United States, however, the situation appears more complex; the national, Scandinavian and Nordic aspects interrelate, often in overlapping ways, and thereby reflect a multicultural society in ways that do not seem to be possible in Norden today. While museum leaders strive to professionalize their institutions and revamp exhibitions, there has also been a push over the

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last decade for museums worldwide to develop strategies to engage community members more thoroughly in all areas of museum work. This particular study of Nordic spaces at museums in the United States demonstrates that by being sensitive to community desires in terms of ethnic, Scandinavian or Nordic culture and gifts framed as such, while at the same time committing to enhancing community education by introducing their members to a wider understanding of the sphere of material culture, museums simultaneously survive and reinvent not only themselves, but also the communities they serve. The challenges for the Baltic states are more momentous, given the radical changes they have undergone in the last century, and since 1989 in particular, these changes have spurred much active creation of heritage and overlapping interpretations of the values carried by its performance. Eglė Rindzevičiūtė’s presentation of regional framing by museums in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in Chapter 9 investigates several different options in performing transnational allegiances: a shared German art historical legacy could bind Estonia and Latvia together, for instance, or Baltic space could be nationalized in a similar mode to Scandinavia in western Norden. Rindzevičiūtė offers a leading-edge example of such transnational arrangements in museums, which in the post1989 era relaxed tensions with Russia by treating Russian art as part of the legacy of European modernism in its exhibition hall. Norden could be invoked as an anchor to Europe, especially by Estonia, whereas the Baltic as a region was historically more open to claims from many nations, but has negotiated a cultural shift towards indigenous connotations during the past twenty years. The many options that remain open for a joint Baltic identity project embody so many differing elements that an eventual attempt to negotiate a common path forward would be the work of many years. A range of Nordic museums established in the nineteenth century expressed the most elaborate and explicit statements of cultural Scandinavianism and Nordic community. In Chapter 10 Magdalena Hillström shows how formative the idea of a Scandinavian culture was for many museum founders midway through the century. She goes on to examine in detail the history of the Nordiska museet and Skansen open-air museum, founded by Artur Hazelius, and how they turned from being a contested legacy after his death to a manifested idea in the next century. Hazelius’s collection had a wide scope, and he was particularly eager to represent the whole of Norden. When the Scandinavianist political movement died down, the first reaction was to nationalize the museum by making it work according to modern scientific categories in which one could compare cultures, but only after they had been defined as national. Interestingly, Hillström demonstrates how the rhetorical performance of the Nordic legacy in the Nordiska museet has shifted continually from its founding to the present

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day. That the national aspect of a museum should come to the fore during a world war is understandable, but a similar denial of the museum’s Nordic heritage in the 1970s invites the interpretation that the Nordic heritage was toned down during that period because Sweden, as the strongest economic power in Norden, needed to downplay ambitions that could be interpreted as ‘imperialist’. This example demonstrates how a museum’s rhetoric can adapt to challenging situations, negotiate various demands and rearrange its performance of heritage. Nordic dimensions established in other museums during the nineteenth century were also toned down, but they remained viable, if weakened, in the twentieth century. It is not, as usually claimed, the nineteenth century that is the century of nationalism, but the twentieth century. As discussed by Peter Aronsson in Chapter 11, the treatment of trans-Nordic processes vary in various national museums. New nation-states such as Iceland, Norway and Finland are less prone to address these elements in their history. Norway is perhaps the most reluctant to explicitly acknowledge belonging to a Nordic community as this is a painful reminder of the union with Denmark and, later, Sweden. ‘Never more a union!’ was the cry evoked to turn opinion against joining the EU, echoing a historic experience and a late nineteenth-century interpretation very different from the emphatically remembered glory days of old Scandinavian empires in Sweden and Denmark. The construction of a coherent history starting in the distant past and pointing to the contemporary order of things is a high priority. For Iceland, it is a narrative of new beginnings with the colonization of the virgin Iceland that downplays relations to both Norway and Denmark. Icelandic museums do, however, use symbols and tropes from the Nordic toolbox, hence contributing implicitly and, for most outside visitors, even explicitly to the idea of the Nordic. The old empires of Denmark and Sweden share a somewhat wider interest, but this is reimagined to accommodate contemporary borders. However, this does not simply indicate chauvinism; it is also a mode of narrating the nation’s history in a way that does not offend their Nordic neighbours. In this sense, it performs a weak form of cultural Nordism. Nordic Spaces – Creating Diversity and Defence The studies presented in this book demonstrate the value of a cross-disciplinary approach and an investigation of Nordic performances beyond the Scandinavian peninsula. As such, the book has the capacity to encompass results affirming the productivity of Nordic ideas for better or for worse, as has been mapped in detail for some themes and scenes not discussed in tandem in earlier literature.

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Gradén, together with Aronsson and others, can demonstrate how the viability of Nordic heritage is malleable with time and how it is being played out differently according to the needs of the actors, be they national museums or associations in diaspora. Larsen and Hillström, along with Burch, prove the power of heritage to both highlight and obscure part of contemporary power relations; hence the relevance of heritage to the legitimacy of the present state of affairs. On a more detailed level there is also an abundance of comparative reflections to draw on. The place of Nordic references in German–Danish negotiations, mapped by Christensen, resembles the Swedish–Finnish struggle in Finland, but their uses differ. In the first case, the Nordic is mobilized to support a majority, whereas in the second it is used to support the minority. The interplay of changing power relations and the uses of heritage in the Baltic states is much greater, given the ways in which German immigrants, German and Soviet occupations and Jewish migration have added to the tribal complexity and conglomerate state history of the region. Although not immediately apparent in the previous chapters, it should be noted that the history and legacies performed in southern Denmark further add to the performance of Danishness in the United States, as explored by Larsen: Dybbøl Mølle, for example, has a strong standing in both the Danish historical canon and institutionalized memory as a heroic disaster. This means that a Danish Windmill, even in the United States, points to peasant culture as a Nordic/Danish characteristic, or even mentality, and to the historic drama. Another reference point that emerges as Nordic in the twentieth century is the Right of Public Access (Allemansrätten), which is peculiar to the Nordic states. As Österlund-Pötzsch points out, this traditional unwritten law is claimed as regional in such venues as the Nordic Council’s statement that ‘Allemansrätten is a Nordic concept’. Well-established in several countries, the right to public access may be understood as a national creation recently turned into a Nordic resource and a way of positioning the region internationally in relation to areas of tourism, health and sustainability. With a sharp focus on how Nordic spaces are created through repeated performances, gift-exchange emerges as a strong feature that creates bonds between personal and institutional affiliation and identification. Focusing on the inception of the Nordiska museet in Stockholm, Hillström demonstrates how the way in which gifts to the museum are described in the media becomes a mediator between Hazelius and the people who submitted objects to the museum. Gradén expands this topic by showing how gifts and gift exchange have run through curatorial practice at the Nordiska museet from the time of Hazelius’s interaction with donors to the present. This practice is even more prominent in museums

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in the United States, which were influenced by the Nordiska museet and its counterparts in Denmark and Norway and which affiliate themselves with the Nordic countries more today than during their earlier decades. In a society where volunteer involvement is key to the success of an institution, gifts and gift exchange provide the tie that binds individual, community and institutions together. Performances of Norden are set in many different situations, and the making of heritage framed as Nordic negotiates values far beyond any specific level. For a provincial emigrant from southern Sweden, a Nordic approach might do the double trick of creating a link to the Old Country while at the same time promoting new alliances in the new setting. The overlapping provincial, ethnic, national and Nordic affiliation as performed beyond the Nordic territory provides a stellar example of the flexible and malleable character of Nordic heritage. Generalized as part of an international exchange of cultural capital, prestigious presentations of culture and art are tools for performing and demonstrating cultural relations and differences, adjusting and acting, as need be, to keep pace with historical change. Cultural diplomacy is a standing field of performance, complementing open political action, especially urgent in times of rapid change, whether military as in the 1810s, modernizing as in the late nineteenth century or the complex political–economic changes since 1989. We have argued that Nordic heritage links various actors and invites them to renegotiate the possible meaning of why performing these heritages is relevant. The levels of utility might range from new visions of a Nordic union to a conscious choice of a strategic-weapon-exporting entrepreneur to the banal evocation of the need to start collaborating with Nordic neighbours, experience nature as Nordic in an art experience or actually perform a Nordic walk. No one person can construct an exhaustive overview or manipulate the interrelatedness of these diverse uses of the Nordic. That very lack of transparency and manipulability might add up to an idea of the existence of a solid and stable Norden. This book argues that the power of Norden lies in its malleability – how certain features are reselected and restaged in the present and adapted to new situations. By such performances Nordic heritage is carried forward into the future rather than being stifled or conserved as a mere remnant of the past. Are images of Norden mainly a tool to plaster over illicit or malevolent actions by power elites in the Nordic countries or do they mainly provide models for the world on conflict resolution and the building of a good society? The reinterpretation of a belligerent heritage to one of democratic culture has largely had positive effects internally in promoting a peaceful culture of pragmatic conflict resolution, but it has also served to obscure darker sides: the roles played by Sweden in devastating Germany in the seventeenth century, colonialism especially towards the Sami, the extensive Danish slave trade, right-wing use of

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Nordic heritage, the problematic legacies of civil wars in Finland, collaboration with the Nazi regime, asylum politics and the expansive armament industry. It is our hope that, together, the joint contributions of this book can contribute to a more general debate on how to strike a balance between twentieth-century history in general and the Nordic welfare states in particular. In addition to what we may refer to as real Nordic spaces, myth has an impact on, and delineates, how actions can be legitimized and justified. By providing a reflexive mapping of the use of myth in performing the Nordic identity, our research aims to provide a critical stance towards heritage-making in everyday life and museums. In our view there is no doubt that the rearrangement and performance of a Nordic identity did contribute to a peaceful and productive negotiation of many conflicts in and between the Nordic states. This provided, and still provides, cultural capital that can be utilized for less democratic and more cynical uses of heritage. Hence there is a need for increased reflexive research on the political implications of museum display and also on the concept of Norden. Expanding on Nordic Spaces As this book demonstrates, the performance of Nordicness has changed over time in everyday life, as well as in museums, in order to keep pace with contemporary circumstances. Clearly, cultural institutions today must reinterpret their own heritage in order to remain relevant and reflect the current population of Norden, even in spaces outside the Nordic countries themselves. What adjustments will be made in coming decades? Will we see increased cooperation between institutions in the Nordic countries, the Baltic states and the Nordic institutions in North America? If so, which symbols will be included to communicate within this New Norden and which ones will be discarded? The authors hope that this book will reach beyond the academic domain and enter a genuine public space, sparking debate, discussion and (hopefully) dissent. One venue for this might be Norden’s museums or galleries, another of the Nordic spaces created beyond this territorial realm. This book is innovative in bringing together performance of heritage in the making of Nordic spaces from several disciplines. Read as part of the Nordic Experience book series, this volume fits into a greater whole. Bringing out new perspectives opens new territory that begs to be explored. Exploration of the critical points where heritage performances reinforce the positive values of creativity, trust and tolerance to the detriment of the excluding and suppressing parameters that are always simultaneously at hand deserves a more comprehensive and comparative treatment.

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Index Note: An italicized page number indicates an illustration. An italicized n following a page number indicates a footnote.

1809 commemoration 104–107, 123 Aall, Hans 190n5, 257 Abrahams, Roger D. 60 academic discourse (scholarship) 10, 15, 226n21, 280, 287, 302–303, 305, 306; see also specific disciplines Actaeon 237, 238 Adelung, J.C. 178 Adotoberbo (Turku) 108 Aestii tribe 233 Africa and Africans 112, 146–149, 185 Aftenposten 118 Ahl, Zandra 143–144 aircraft 146–147, 146–148, 147, 149, 156, 157 Aivazovsky, Ivan 232 Åland Islands as autonomous region of Finland 137, 192 Norden and 137, 301 Norden Association and 10 Nordic Council membership 137 public access rights on 34 Swedish minority and 7 Allemansrätten, see public access rights Allsång på Skansen (Sing-along at Skansen) 291 amber 222, 233–235, 241 Amber Museum (Lithuania) 234–235 American Association of Museums (AAM) 86

American bicentennial 79 American Nordic museums 189–197 ‘American Plus’ identity 76 American Swedish Historical Museum (Philadelphia) 195, 303–304 American Swedish Institute (Minneapolis) community involvement in 214 displays 207–213 gifts for 205 holdings of 195n21 Nordic dimensions of 194, 214, 304 Turnblad home as 195, 197 volunteers and 192–193 Amundsen, Roald and jubileeba 99, 100 Andersen, Hans Christian and jubilee 100, 115–116, 120, 122, 202–203 Anderson, Benedict 177 Anna of Russia 239 Annan, Kofi 114, 140, 141, 153 Annan, Nane Maria 141–142 Appadurai, Arjun 190, 215 Arab identity 1, 271 Arab spring 129, 134, 155–157 archaeology 20, 274, 278, 279–280, 302; see also individual archaeologists architecture; see also windmills; individual architects Danish 81–82 Finland and 29, 30, 275 Kadriorg and 237, 238n76 national identities and 240 Norden and 281

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Rudāle Palace 240 Skansen Open Air Museum and 191 the vernacular and 84, 199 Viking 74 of Vikinghjem 84–85 Armadillo (documentary) 154–155 Armémuseum (Sweden) 130, 148, 149, 151–152, 153 armoured vehicles 132, 150 arms trade 129–132, 131, 146–155, 156–157 Army Museum (Stockholm) 19, 290 art 133, 152, 302, 304, 309, 312; see also specific art museums art history 222, 228–232, 237, 241, 286, 302 Art Museum of Estonia 237 art museums 305; see also specific museums Art of Balts, The (Lithuanian Art Museum) 234 artefacts 2, 280; see also material affordance Arwidsson, A.I. 28 Asbjørnsen, Peter Christen 29 assimilation 303 Assmann, Jan and Aleida 272 Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies 226n21 Association for Men and Youths (Forening for Mænd og Ynglinge) (Denmark) 172 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award 122 Astrup, Hans Rasmus 257 asylum 295, 308, 313 Ateneum Art Museum (Helsinki) 232, 275 audiences 17, 18 Aurifaber, Andreas 234 Aurorasällskapet (the Aurora Society) 28 Australian pizza 284 Austria 40, 179, 252 authenticity 57, 86–91, 306 authority 61

Backåkra 110 Badstena 108 Balkans 288 ‘Baltic’ 9, 226n17, 228, 229, 233 Baltic Council of Ministers 227n24 Baltic countries, see Baltic states (countries) Baltic Entente 226 Baltic Germans Amber museum and 233–235 art museums and 224n12, 228–232, 231n49, 236–237, 237n71, 239–240 Baltic space and 223–235, 275–276 Estonia and 230, 233, 237n71, 241 ethnic nationalism and 303 Latvia and 222–223, 223n7, 224, 224n12, 241 Lithuania and 223–235, 240 Nordic countries and 229 political history of 9, 224–226, 236 University of Tartu and 230 Baltic identity 226–227, 233, 240, 309 Baltic languages 226n18 ‘Baltic republics’ 226–227 Baltic Sea region 227–228, 227n26, 234, 273, 289, 302 Baltic space; see also Baltic identity 17th century 8 art and 228–232, 241, 309 Birgitta of Vadstena and 109 cooperation and 303 Denmark and Sweden and 294 Germans and 222 (see also Baltic Germans) Lithuania and 226 museums and 221–242 national identities and 223–228, 275–276 Nordic heritage and 6–7, 14, 278 Nordic identity and 9 Nordic space and 225 public opinion and 10

Index Russia and 224, 224n12, 235–236, 309 Vikings and 283 Baltic states (countries); see also specific states academic discourse and 226n21 Finns and 289–290 Germany and 311 heritage and 309 multiculturalism and 303 museums and 266, 305 national identities 276 (see also specific countries) Nordic identity and 266, 294 Nordic spaces and 301 baltische Kunst (‘Baltic art’) 228–232 der baltische Landestaat 225 Balto-Scandian region 226n19 Balto-Slavic languages 9 Balts 225–226, 227, 227n22, 233, 234–235 banal Nordism about 132–138 Arab spring and 129, 155 arms trade and 129–132, 146–155, 156–157 bridges to peace and 138–142 entrepreneurship and 132–133 flags and 135–136 myths of 142–146 nationalism and 307 South Africa and 147 banal pro-Scandinavianism 294 Bangladesh 117 Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation (Riksbankens Jubileumsfond) 10, 103, 142 Barum (local society) 279 Battle of Brunkeberg 285–286 bazookas (rifles), see Carl-Gustaf Multipurpose Weapon System Belarus 225 Belgium 180 Benois, Alexander 232 Bergen (Norway) 117

317

Bernadotte, Jean (Karl XIV Johan) 281 Bible, The 278, 281 bilateralism; see also collaboration and consensus; cooperation Baltic space and 228–232 death of 119–120 Estonia-Russia 239 national identities and 240 Sweden and 119–120 transnationalism and 222–223, 228–233, 240 Bildt, Carl 105, 156 Billig, Michael 135, 136 Birgitta of Vadstena and jubilee 107–109, 122, 286 Birgittine abbey 41, 42 Biron of Courland, Ernst Johann von 239 Björk, Anders 111 Björling, Jussi, jubilee 100, 113, 121, 122 Bjørnson, Bjørnstjerne 100, 118–119 Bjørnstad, Ketil 117 Body Armour (exhibit) 151–152, 152 Bojtár, Endre 234n59 Boldt, Ove 210 Border Association (Bomlaug) (Grænseforeningen) (Denmark) 183 Border and Reunification Museum (Genforenings- ot Grænsemuseet) (Christiansfeld) 181–182 borders, territorial (boundaries); see also immigrants and immigration; transnational identity banal pro-Scandinavianism and 294 changes in 5–9, 28, 82, 249, 251–252 commemorations and 307 Danish versus German 82, 163–186 heritage and 20, 307 identities and 184, 286 maps and 307 migrations and 185, 292–293 museums and 183

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Norden and 7, 9–12, 17, 278, 308 performance and 18 spaces versus 16 borealism 53, 65–68, 69, 306 boundaries, see borders, territorial Bov Museum (Denmark) 183 branding, Nordic Estonia and 140 Iceland and 63 jubilees and 116, 122 Nordic Walking and 39–40 outside Nordic Countries 193 peace and 19, 130, 139 pilgrimages and 42 transnational 14 U.S. and 195, 199, 207, 305 Breckenridge, Carol 190, 215 Breivik, Anders Behring 145 bribery 146 bridges to peace 138–142 Brinckmann, Justus 174 Britain 113, 167, 288 British language 233; see also English language Bronze Soldier of Tallinn 241 Brown, Denise Scott (Learning from Las Vegas) 199 Brubaker, Rogers 60, 132, 142 Brulov, Karl 232 Budapest 114 Bulduri conference 226n20 Bulgaria 185 Burch, Stuart 293 bureaucracies 61 business 55, 57; see also economic factors; specific businesses calendar customs 59; see also specific holidays Callisto 237 Cameron, David 155 Canada 114 capitalism 4

Carl-Gustaf Multi-purpose Weapon System described 129–132 marketing literature for 131 in military history collections 130 museum funding and 153 Norden and 151, 307 status quo challenges 144, 149 Swedish heritage and 19 U.S. military use of 132 Carl XVI Gustaf 131–132, 138 Catherine I (Harta Helena Skowrońska) (Russia) 236 Catherine II 239 Catholic Church 107–109, 287 celebrations 120, 307; see also commemorations; jubilees; specific celebrations Celsius AB 150 Celts 271, 275 censorship 152 census, U.S. 201 Centennial Anniversary Norway 2005 102–103 Certeau, Michel de 16, 61 Chadwell, John 83 change 14, 16, 20, 272, 290, 312, 313 Charles X Gustavus 104 chauvinism 102, 104, 310 Chinese national identity 271 Christian X (Denmark) 181–182 Christianity 107–109, 172, 283, 285, 287, 288, 289 Christiansfeld 181–182 Christmas and displays 59, 207, 207, 208–213 civil rights 186 Clason, Isak Gustaf 262 clergy 42–44 climate 99, 165 Cold War 291–292 collaboration (wartime) 289, 313

Index collaboration and consensus; see also bilateralism; cooperation academic discourse and 10 Kadriorg Palace and 238 Norden and 1, 2 Nordic culture and 302 Nordic experience and 271 Nordic heritage and 14, 312 Nordic identity and 301 Norway and Sweden and 9 transnational identity and 1 collections, museum Artur Hazelius on 258–259 curation of 198, 214 Gunnar Hazelius on 260–261 as museum donations 195 with museums 194 at Nordiska museet 255, 256–257, 263–264 paternal emergency plan 265–266 return to neighbouring countries 215, 216, 266 visitor interactions with 197 colonialism; see also crypto-colonialism art and 241 Christianity and 285 heritage and 19, 312 Iceland and 310 Kadriorg Palace and 237 Lakolk and 174 Latvia and 232 Prussia and 234 Soviet Union and 229 commemorations 99–124, 272, 305, 306– 307; see also specific commemorations communities conflict and 289 exclusion and 271 imagined 177 museum involvement of 192, 202, 215–216 public context and 1

319

reciprocal gift-giving 196 as themed places 73, 76–77, 86–87 voice and silence and 292–295 conservatism 303 controversy 224, 276, 289 Conzen, Michael P. 77 Cooper, F. 60 cooperation; see also bilateralism; collaboration and consensus academic discourse and 10 Baltic space and 303 commemoration/jubilees and 103, 115, 120 EU/NATO and 303 future and 313 museums and 215, 266 NGOs and 137–138 Norden and 3 Norden’s day and 135 pilgrimages and 42 Scandinavianism and 252, 263 Sweden and 103, 104, 106, 107, 115, 119, 134n22, 277 symbols and 101, 313 utopias and 293 Copenhagen 54–69, 116, 167, 169, 273; see also specific museums corporations, transnational 288 corruption 146, 147, 151, 154 cosmopolitanism 64–65, 68–69, 177, 287, 303 Council of the Baltic Sea States 227n24 Council of Europe 41–42, 153–154 Council of State in Åbo (Turku) 105 Courland 224, 239 crafts 84, 175–176, 195n21, 213, 282, 287; see also vernacular culture Creditbank Scherrebek (Denmark) 172, 174 Crimean Wars 236 crusaders 224 Crusades, Swedish 285

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crypto-colonialism 65–68, 69, 306 cultural activities as mask for arms sales 146–147 Cultural Construction of Norden (Sørensen & Stråth) 142 cultural foundations 121–122; see also specific foundations culture; see also religion heritage and 12, 14 outside Nordic countries 9–11, 190 politics and 287, 289, 290, 302 practices and 12, 16 spatial differences and 280 territorial borders and 5, 164, 166 curation of museum collections 198, 214 customs barriers 183, 185 Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation 110 Dag Hammarskjöld International Youth Peace Assembly, The 110 Dalecarlia (Dalarna) landscape 30 Danielsson, Staffan 156 Danish-American heritage authenticity/entrepreneurship 86–91 Danish places 74–79, 91–92 Dream of America (exhibit) 202 visual icons Vikinghjem 74, 82–86, 85–86, 88, 91–92 windmill 73–74, 75–76, 79–82, 80, 91–92 Danish Constitution Day 100, 101 Danish flag (Dannebrog) 170 Danish identity; see also Danish-American heritage; Denmark commemorations and 101–102, 116, 120 Germans and 169 Kimballton (Iowa) village and 74, 75, 91, 92 museums and 176, 184, 286 Nordic identity and 293–294

prehistory and 293 religion and 74–75 self-images 164–165, 171 themed evironments and 76 tropes 78, 82 U.S. and 306, 311 Danish Immigrant Museum 74, 86, 196 Danish language 169, 178, 179 Danish Mill Corporation 81, 83 Danish Museum of Art and Design (Copenhagen) 176 Danish National Day 101 Danish National Museum 215 Danish People’s Party (Dansk Folkeparti) 166, 183, 185 Danish places 74–79, 91–92 ‘Danish Villages’ 74, 76 Danish Windmill (Dybbøl Mølle) 170–171, 306, 311 Danishness (Danskhed) 169; see also Danish identity Dannebrog (Danish flag) 170 Dannevirke earthworks 184 Dansk Folkeparti (Danish People’s Party) 166, 183, 185 Danskhed (Danishness) 169; see also Danish identity Davos meeting (2011) 2 democracy art and 133 Danish identity and 101 museums and 193, 215, 308 Norden and 292, 302, 312 Nordic heritage and 2–3, 6, 11, 19, 272, 291, 292, 302 Nordic identity and 305, 313 Sweden and 147, 153, 154, 291 transnationalism and 271, 308 Deneken, Friedrich 175 Denmark; see also Danish identity; Elk Horn (Iowa); Scania; SchleswigHolstein; specific museums

Index asylum and 308 Austria and Prussia and 179 Baltic space and 294 borders and 28, 82, 163–186, 249, 251–252, 292–293 Christmas displays 210, 213 commemorations and 123 (see also individual cultural figures) cultural foundations and 121–122 education and 116, 169, 172, 178, 179, 180 Estonia and Latvia and 224 Faroe Islands and 192, 251 folklore documentation 30 funding and 276 Germany and 163–186, 165, 170–171, 303, 307, 311 Iceland and 59, 65–66, 166, 170, 249, 251, 275, 280, 285, 294, 310 immigration and 3 literature 250 in mid-19th century wars 252 Middle Ages and 286, 287–288 museums 167, 170–174 (see also specific museums) national museums and 273, 274 nationalism in 29 Norden and 21, 165 Nordic Council membership 137 Nordic heritage and 6 Nordic identity and 294 Norway and 165, 166, 167, 169, 170, 283, 285, 287, 310 return of Flateyjarbók 197 Scandinavian state and 10 slave trade and 3 sovereignty and 5–6 Sweden and 6, 103–104, 120, 123, 166, 288, 289, 307 tensions within 277 Vikings and 282, 283 war and 289–290

321

women and 175 World War I and 180–181, 184 Denmark, Norway and Sweden three-state union 100–101 design history 143 dialects 28 Diet of Borgå (Poorvo) 104, 105 diplomacy, cultural 312 discourse analysis 223 distinction, geopolitics of 221–242 Dlugosz, Jan 225 donations, see funding Dons, Katrine 175, 176 Dorpat (Tartu) 276 Dorset people 280 Dream of America (exhibit) 202 ‘drive-through history’ 73 Dublin (Ireland) 55 Dutch language 179 Dybbøl (Denmark) 82, 252 Dybbøl Mølle (Danish Windmill) 170–171, 306, 311 dynamite as synonymous with peace 144 eastern Europe 225nn13–14, 227 Ecolabel, Nordic 136–37 economic crises 2, 58; see also Icelandic raid (íslenska útrásin) economic factors; see also funding and donations; specific factors cultural diplomacy and 312 Elk Horn and 306 jubilees and 122 Nordic union and 293 Scandianavian state and 10 Sweden and 121, 277, 310 Edda (poem) 174, 174n28, 196, 250 Edda (Sturlusson) 174, 174n28 education; see also specific countries; specific schools borders and 180

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commemorations/jubilees and 107, 115, 116 folk 182 museums and 83, 175–176, 201, 216, 260, 264, 309 NGOs and 137 Norden and 8, 9, 11 Nordic spaces and 12, 303 Nordic values and 151, 163, 292 Nordic Walking and 33, 43 Eeckhout, Frank van 39 egalitarianism 281, 290–292, 302 Egyptians 185 Eichhorn, Christoffer 253–254 Eide, Arthur 205 Eider Programme 251–252 Eiriksson, Leifur 202–203, 204 Elk Horn (Iowa) 73–79, 91, 92, 306 Engdahl, Horace 106 England 112, 117, 178, 284, 302 Engler, Mira 76 English language 178, 179, 233 entrepreneurship 86–91, 92, 132–133; see also weapons industry Eriksen, Thomas Hylland 145 ‘ersatz ethnicity’ 77 Estland 224 Estonia; see also Baltic space; specific museums art museums 222, 223, 228, 237 Baltic identity and 227, 233 Birgitta of Vadstena and 108, 109 education and 229 Europe and 236n65 Finno-Ugric speakers 226 folk art 229 historiography 236n64 national identity and 236, 237, 238, 241, 276 Nordic countries and 227, 229, 236, 295 Nordic region and 7, 22, 294

political history of 224, 226 Russia and 222–223, 236n65, 238 Soviet past of 140–141 Sweden and 16 Swedish and 303 transnationalism and 221–242, 309 Estonian Museum 236–237 ethnicity; see also specific ethnicities insensitivity to 191 multiculturalism and 303 museums and 163–164 power relationships and 65 for sale 87–88 themed environments and 76–77 United States and 303–304 ethnology 15, 274, 302 EU, see European Union (EU) Europe; see also European Union (EU); specific countries art of 237 Baltic space and 230, 231, 309 differentiating Nordic nations from 133–134 eastern Europe 225nn13–14, 227 Finland and 275, 280 Nordic heritage and 13–14, 292 Nordic identity and 293 ‘northern’ 225n14, 227, 236, 301 northwestern 178 revolutions of 1848 251 southern European economies 10 transnationalism and 221–222 ‘European’ 240 European Council 227 European Union (EU) Baltic space and 227 Baltic states and 221, 221n1 Denmark and 183, 185 Iceland and Norway and 285 Norden and 14, 21, 302 Nordic countries and 303 Nordic culture and 10

Index Norway and 139, 310 public access rights in 34 Sweden and 139 Europeanization 238 everyday practices; see also specific practices borealism and 69 heritage and 53 Icelandic raid and 66–67 identity and 60–63 mediaeval 287 Norden and 21, 304 Nordic identities and 305 Scandianvia and 302 evolution 279–280 exclusion/inclusion (outsider status); see also Other, the borders and 183 community and 271 heritage and 313 illicit behavior and 61–62 museums and 164 Norden and 3 Nordic culture and 2 Nordic heritage and 13–14 ‘exegetical meaning’ 78 Exel Oyj 36–37, 39–40 exercise 31–33, 37; see also Nordic walking exerstriding (pole walking) 27, 35–41, 36, 36n28, 38, 47–48 exhibitions 18 exoticization 54–57, 62, 64, 65 ‘experience economy’ 87–88 Fallan, Kjetil 143 Falsen, Enevold de 170 Family History and Genealogy Center 74 Faroe Islands 7, 10, 137, 166, 192, 251 feminism (female power) 108, 109, 286, 287; see also gender; women ferris wheel 78 Figaro (newspaper) (Stockholm) 258

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fighter planes, JAS 39 Gripen 146–148, 147, 149, 156, 157 Finland; see also Kalevala (Lönnrot); Nordic countries 20th century and 313 Baltic space and 232, 236 Birgitta of Vadstena and 108 borders and 7 boundary changes 28, 249 Christmas displays 210–211, 213 civil wars 277, 313 collaboration and 10 commemorations/jubilees and 115, 123 cooperation and 107 cultural figures and 120–121 cultural foundations and 121–122 Denmark and 170 education and 106, 109, 115 Europe and 275, 280 folk culture 29, 305 Germany and 289 Icelanders and 55 immigration and 3 local involvement and 123 Middle Ages and 288 multiculturalism and 303 nation building and 105, 107, 120 national identity and 6, 105, 115, 121, 275, 280 nationalism and 28–29, 30, 107 Nordic Council membership 137 Nordic identity and 274–275, 294, 310 pole walking 27, 36–37 on public access rights 34 regional unification and 226n20 Runeberg and 114, 122 Russia and 6, 285 Scandinavianism in 249 Soviet Union and 291 Sweden and 100, 104–107, 120, 273, 274–275, 285–286, 288–290, 294, 307, 311

324

Performing Nordic Heritage

Swedish-speakers and 303 transnationalism and 123 Vikings and 282, 283 World War I and 289 Finland and Sweden, separation of 100 Finnish Grand Duchy 104 Finnish identity 6, 31, 115 Finnish language 285, 303 Finno-Ugric Estonians 226 Finno-Ugric language groups 280 Finns, Swedish-speaking 201, 209, 289, 294 fitness facilities 39–40 flags banal Nordism and 135–136, 137 commemorations and 59, 102, 106 Danish/German border and 170, 183, 184, 292 pilgrimages and 42 in U.S. 199, 203 Flateyjarbók 197 Flensborg Avis (newspaper) 185 folk art and culture; see also crafts; exoticization; peasant culture; rural heritage Estonian 229 folk (volk) songs 177 folk soul 177 folklore 28–30, 57, 177, 182, 302, 305 identity and 60–61 poetry collecting 29–30 regional 190 research on 193 Skærbæk Weaving School 175–176 Folkemuseum (Oslo) 282 Folklore Fellows Communications series 10 food Christmas 207, 208–213 gathering 35 Icelanders and 54–56, 59, 67–68 identity and 59, 64 museums and 11 New Nordic cuisine 40

Forening for Mænd og Ynglinge (Association for Men and Youths) (Denmark) 172 Föreningen Norden (the Nordic Society) (Minneapolis) 11, 137–138 forest roamers (walking) 44–47 Forssblad, Marianne 201, 205 Forsvarsmuseet (Defence Museum) (Norway) 151–152, 152 France French language 168, 178 Germany and 185 Nordic heritage and 284 Norway and 117 as threat 302 Frederick VII, King 251 Frederik, Danish Crown Prince 103 Frederiksborg Castle (Denmark) 289 freedom 44, 46, 165, 172 freeholder (odalbonde) 291 Freeman, Cathy 116 Freivalds, Laila 102 French language 168, 178 Frithiof statue 281 Frøslev (German prison camp) 170–171 funding and donations; see also gifts; volunteers American museums and 84, 85 Elk Horn and 306 of fighter planes 146 government 13, 116, 117, 119, 146–147, 258 jubilees and 112, 113, 115, 116, 117, 119, 121–122 Norden and 151 by Nordic Council of Ministers 143 Nordiska museet and 254–259 royalty and 273, 276 Saab AB and 153, 154, 154n110 Sæd museum and 183 Scandianavian Ethnographic Collection and 253–254

Index future celebrations and 112, 120 cooperation and 105, 107, 215 Denmark and 182, 184 heritage and 9, 12, 191, 206, 272, 312 Jacobsen and 172 Kalmar and 101 Langbehn and 180 museums and 13, 14–15, 194, 206, 216 Nordic spaces and 313 Nordic union and 272 the past and 19, 88 Gaddafi, Muammar 155 Gallén-Kallela, Akseli 30 Gans, Herbert J. 78 garden routes (garðaleið) 61–62 GDL (Grand Duchy of Lithuania) 224n11, 225 Geijer, Erik Gustav 115 gender 290; see also feminism (female power); women Nordic identity and 305 generational differences at Nordic Heritage Museum 206–207 sensitivity to 216 genforening (reunification) 181 geographical Norden 20–21 geopolitical borders in museum installations 261 geopolitical spaces 221–242 German Association for North Schleswig (Tyske forening for Nordslesvig) (Denmark) 172 German identity 1, 177, 271; see also Baltic Germans German language 168, 169, 170, 178, 179 German Warrior Association (Tyske Krigerforening) (Denmark) 172, 174 Germana (Tacitus) 5 Germania (Tacitus) 233

325

Germanic tribes 281 Germanische nationalmuseum (Nuremberg) 276 Germanization 170–180, 224, 229 Germany; see also Baltic Germans; Germanization; Nazism; individual Germans; specific museums Baltic space and 222, 224, 240, 241, 276, 309, 311 borders and 82, 163–186 Denmark and 163–186, 165, 170–171, 303, 307, 311 education and 180 Europe and 240 Finland and 289 militarism and 177 Norden and 22 Nordic identity and 170 northwestern Europe and 178 Norway and 117, 167, 169 Scandinavian state and 8 Sweden and 288, 312 threat from 251, 302 Viking heritage and 284 Wallenberg and 114 Geschichte der deutschen Sprache (History of the German Languages) 179 gifts as community involvement 215 exchange of 197, 311–312 to museums 195–198, 205–206, 214, 215 as Nordic-American practice 213–214 return to neighbouring countries 215, 216 Gimbutas, Marija 234, 234n59 Glerá Berg (glass) 211 globalization; see also cosmopolitanism; international impacts; transnational identity feudal dimension of 288 historical narrative and 292

326

Performing Nordic Heritage

identity and 60 the local and 4 Norden and 2 Nordic heritage and 14 gods 273 Goffman, Erving 17 Golden Age of Finnish art 30 Göransson, Mia E. 143 Gothic, the 6 Gothic League (Götiska Förbundet) 281 Goths 5 Götiska Förbundet (Gothic League) 281 Grand Duchy of Lithuania (GDL) 224n11, 225 granite column 182 Grænseforeningen (Border Association) (Denmark) 183 Great Britain 35, 111–112, 117, 122, 136, 179, 284; see also specific countries Great Migrations 279–280 Great Northern War 6 GRECO (Group of States against Corruption) 154 Greece 66, 221, 281 Greenland collaboration and 10 Denmark and 7, 137, 166, 249, 251 Ice-Age origins and 280 Grensemuseet i Sæd (Sæd Border Museum) 166, 183–186 grief 8 Grieg, Edvard (1907) 100, 116, 117–118 Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm 178, 179 Grimstad 118 Gripsholm Palace (Stockholm) 273, 281 Group of States against Corruption (GRECO) 154 Guðmundsdóttir, Björk 64–65 Gustav II Adolf 16, 229 Gustavus II Adolphus 109 gymnastics 33

Habermas, Jürgen 252 Habsburg Empire 225 Hædersminde (Memorial to Glory) 170 HÆRWERK 151–152, 152 Hall, Patricia 206 Hallveig 283 Hamarøy 118 Hämeenlinna (Tavastehus) 107 Hammar, K.G. 147 Hammarskjöld, Dag, jubilee 100, 110–111, 121 Hammarstedt, Nils Edward 260–261 Hamsun, Knut 118, 119 Hamsun, Knut (1859) 100 Hamsun Society 118 Hanaholmen (Hanasaari) Swedish-Finnish Cultural Centre 107 Hanseatic League 284 Hansen, Frida 175 Hansen, Fritz 210 Harry Potter (book) 288 Hazelius, Artur; see also Nordiska museet (Nordic Museum); Skansen Open Air Museum (Sweden) business model of 215 cultural heritage model 191, 212–213 death of 259 gift-exchange and 311 museums established by 193 Norden and 309 Nordic identity and 274, 276 orthographics and 252–253 Scandinavian Ethnographic Collection 253–254, 274 Scandinavian Ethnographic Collection and 247–248, 276 Scandinavianism and 249 Skansen Open Air Museum 257–258 Swedish countryside exploration 30 Hazelius, Gunnar 259, 260–262 health 31, 33, 37, 305, 311 health spa tourism 31

Index heathens 273–274, 281–282, 285, 286 Helsinki 232 Hemstad, Ruth 263 Herder, Johan Gottfrid 177 heritage; see also folklore; food; Nordic heritage; past, the; traditions borders and 20, 307 commemorations and 307 defined 4 everyday life and 53, 305 Icelanders in Copenhagen and 68 museums and 308 national identity and 271 Norden and 13 Nordic spaces and 15–17, 20 obscure 57 the past and 12–15 performance and 17–18, 19–20, 312 pioneer museums and 200–201 politics and 18–20, 308 popular engagement and 306 power relationships and 311 practices 89 present and 313 preservation of 191 sites 88, 91, 306 ‘heritage envy’ 75–76 heritage sites 306 Hermitage (Saint Petersburg) 232, 239 Herzfeld, Michael 66 Heurlin, Frithiof 254 Hill-Festa, Lisa 204 Hinnerjoki (Finland) 286 historical consciousness and narrative 19, 163, 273, 278, 292; see also commemorations historicism 302 historiography 225, 229, 236, 239, 250, 287, 288 Historiska museet (Sweden) 276, 286 history; see also historical consciousness and narrative; past, the; political history

327

diplomacy and 102 future and 272 heritage and performance and 4, 19 Nordic spaces and 301 silenced 294 spaces and places and 15 traditions and 15–16 history (discipline) 302 history books 304 History of Estonian Art (Vaga) 228–229 History of the German Languages (Geschichte der deutschen Sprache) 179 Hohenzolleren (ship) 174 Holland (Netherlands) 40, 111, 178, 180 Holocaust Memorial Day 114 Holstein, see Schleswig-Holstein homes as museums 195, 197 Homestead Act (1862) 74 horizon of expectations 19–20 Howard, Jeremy 238 Huitfeldt, Anniken 119 Hungary 114 Hvarfner, Harald 265–266 hyphenated cultures 194 Ibsen, Henrik, jubilee 100, 113, 116–117, 118, 122 Ice Age origins 273, 278–280, 285; see also prehistory Iceland; see also entries beginning Icelandic...; specific museums Baltic space and 227n24 borders and 7 Christmas displays 211, 213 collaboration and 10 commemorations and 123 Denmark and 59, 65–66, 166, 170, 249, 251, 275, 280, 285, 294, 310 education and 66 Medieval 284–285 Nordic Council membership 137

328

Performing Nordic Heritage

Nordic identity and 294, 310 Norway and 294, 310 poetry 250 return of Flateyjarbók 197 Icelanders 58, 59, 61–65, 68–69, 306 Icelandic Association in Denmark 59, 67 Icelandic Congregation in Copenhagen 59 Icelandic Day of Independence 59 Icelandic identity Denmark and 306 economic crisis and 53–54, 63–65 irony and 54–58, 64 Middle Ages and 287 national identity and 275 nature and music and 64–65 Norden and 21 Nordic culture and 6 Nordic heritage and 275 Norway and 275, 285 political history of 284–285 Scandinavian state and 10 Sweden and 285 Vikings and 283 Icelandic raid (íslenska útrásin) (economic crisis) 3, 53–54, 58, 63–65, 66–67, 69, 145, 306 Icelandic sagas 5–6, 29, 202, 250, 275, 277, 281 Icesave (bank) 145 identities 18, 20; see also national identities; Nordic identity; stereotypes; transnational identity; specific national identities Ilves, Toomas Hendrik 140–141 immigrants and immigration; see also borders, territorial (boundaries) Danish-American 74 Denmark and 3, 183, 185 as driver for museums 193 employment of 202 Finland and 3 integration of 46

later generations of 78 Midwest to Pacific Northwest (U.S.) 202 Norden and 292–293, 308 Nordic heritage and 312 within the U.S. 202 imperialism 3, 310 inauthenticiy 306; see also authenticity inclusion, see exclusion/inclusion Indfødsrett (Native Right) 168 indigenous peoples 284, 309; see also specific peoples Ingólfur 283 Innovation of the Year award 36–37 institutionalized spaces 59 international impacts; see also globalization; Norden; transnational identity cultural figures and 121, 124 economic factors and 122 Nordic Romanticism and 170 Norway and 117, 118 Sweden and 121 transnational identity and 14 International Nordic Walking Association (INWA), see International Nordic Walking Federation International Nordic Walking Federation 36 Inuit 280 Iowa (U.S.) 73–79, 81–82, 86, 91, 92, 306 Ireland 284 ironic performances 54–58, 64–65, 66, 68, 69 Israel 114 Italy 117, 221 Izenour, Steven (Learning from Las Vegas) 199 Jackson, Maria Rosario 192 Jacobsen, Johannes 171–175, 176 Japan 117 Jarl, Birger Magnusson (1210) 100, 112

Index Jelling stones 283 Jews 142, 275–276, 303, 311 Johansson, Eva 39 Johansson, Runar 250 John Paul II 108 Johnson, Amandus 195 Jönköping (Sweden) 110, 111 Jónshús 59 jubilees 18, 21–22, 99–124, 277, 304, 306–307; see also specific jubilees julefrokost 59 June Constitution (Schleswig and Holstein) 251 Jussi Björling Society 113 Jutland 22; see also South Jutland (Sønderjylland) Kadriorg (Ekaterintal) Palace (Estonia) 223–224, 236–238, 237n72, 240, 241 Kalevala (Lönnrot) 29, 30, 196, 202–203, 206 Kaliningrad Amber Museum 234 Kalmar Union 134, 284–285, 286, 287, 307 Kalmar Union commemorations 8, 100–101, 120, 123 Karelia (Russia/Sweden) 29, 30, 213 Karl XIV Johan ( Jean Bernadotte) 281 Karstadt, Bruce 208, 209 Kent (rock group) 157 Kgl. Museum for Nordiske Oldsager (Royal Museum for Nordic Antiquities) (Copenhagen) 273 Kierkegaard, Søren 57 Kimballton (Iowa) 74, 75, 91, 92 King, Alexander D. 132 Kirby, David 227–228 Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara 12–15, 191–192 Kjærsgaard, Pia 183, 185 Klein, Barbro 191

329

Klucis, Gustavs 232 Kodres 229, 236n65 Köller, Matthias von 172 Kongeåen 176, 179, 181, 182–183 Kongsberg Gruppen 150–151 Kongsberg Protech Systems 150–151 Königsberg 234 Kristensen, Evald Tang 30 Kristensen, Henrik Dam 134, 134n25 Kristow, Erik 113 Kulturvolk 29 Kumu Art Museum 231n49 Kustodiyev, Boris 232 Lagergren, Nane Maria, see Annan, Nane Maria Lakolk 173–174, 176 Landnámabók 283 landscapes 30, 48; see also nature Langbehn, Julius 180 language politics 252 languages; see also specific languages Baltic 226 discourse analysis 223 documentation of 28 German nationalism and 177, 178 Great Migrations and 279–280 Icelanders in Copenhagen and 59, 68 identity and 64 national identities and 226 reunification and 181 terrorism and 185–186 wars and 170 L’Anse aux Meadows 84–85 Latour, Bruno 194, 206–207, 214 Latvia; see also Baltic space amber and 235 art and 230–231 Baltic identity and 233, 240 Birgitta of Vadstena and 108, 109 museums 223n7, 240 (see also specific museums)

330

Performing Nordic Heritage

national identity and 236, 240, 241 political history of 224, 226 regions and 22 Rundāle Palace and 239, 240 Russia and 222–223 transnationalism and 221–242, 309 Latvian language 226 Latvian National Museum of Art (Riga City Museum of Art) (LNMA) 222, 230, 231, 232 Latvian Open Air Museum 223n7 Lauenburg 167 Lauenburg (south of Holstein) 251 lay practices in museums 192 le Sage de Fontenay, Otto Ernst 257 Learning from Las Vegas (Venturi et al.) 199 Leavenworth (Washington state) 76–77 Lehrman, Ola 251 leisure activities 21 Lennon, John 141 Leskien, August 226n17 liberalism 302 Libya and Libyans 134, 155–157, 185 license 61–62 Lichtenstein 180 Like, Timothy W. 163–186 Liljeroth, Lena Adelsohn 113 Lillehammer 279 Lindblom, Andreas 265 Linder, Nils 253 Lindgren, Astrid, jubilee 100, 111, 112, 122 Lindsborg, KS 76–77, 199 Lindström, Hans-Erik 44 Lindstrom (Minnesota) 199 Lindstrom, MN, vernacular culture in 200 Linnaeus, Carl von (Linné), jubilee 100, 111, 112, 121, 122 literature 28–30, 29–30, 196, 250, 252; see also specific countries; specific pieces of literature

Lithuania; see also Baltic space; PolandLithuania amber and 234 Baltic identity and 227, 233, 240 museums 222 national identity and 234, 235, 241 political history of 224–226 transnationalism and 22, 221–242, 233, 309 Lithuanian Art Museum 222 Lithuanian language 226 Lithuanian School of Archaeology 234, 234n59 Little Mermaid (Kimballton, Iowa) 75 Livonia 224, 228, 236, 239 Livonian Order 225, 234 Livrustkammaren (Royal Armoury) (Sweden) 289 LNMA (Latvian National Museum of Art) (Riga City Museum of Art) 222, 230, 231, 232 local, the 4, 279, 284, 291 local engagement 122–123, 163, 306, 308 Löfgren, Lars 266 Löfgren, Orvar 46 Løland, Rasmus 118 Lom 118 Lönnrot, Elias 29 The Lord of the Rings (book) 288 Lund (Sweden) 10, 112 Lundell, Fjalar 43 Lundestad, Geir 140 Lundin, Claes 257–258 Lutheran Church 107–109 Luxemburg 180 Madson, Thorald 210 Magnusson, Arn 112 malleability of Nordic culture 216 maps 273, 278–279, 307 Mare Balticum 225

Index Margareta I of Denmark 100–101, 286, 287 marginalization 57, 65, 69, 280, 283, 285, 294 Margrethe II of Denmark 138 Marimekko textiles 206 maritime museum (Oslo) 282 Märkesåret 1809 104, 106 marketing exercise and 31, 33, 37 Norden and 136–137 Nordic walking and 36–39 sports and 61 of weapons (see arms trade) Marxism-Leninism 234 material affordance 241–242, 277; see also artefacts material culture 308, 309 Mauss, Marcel 196–197 Medevi (Sweden) 31 media; see also specific newspapers and periodicals commemorations/jubilees and 101, 108, 116, 119 Danish language and 178 Germanization and 176 Icelanders and 54, 306 Middle Ages and 288 museums and 185 Norden and 304 religion and 287 medieval period (Middle Ages) 34, 41, 43–44, 81, 108, 112, 284–288, 289 Memorial to Glory (Hædersminde) 170 memorials 166; see also monuments memory 19, 106, 289–290 Merkkivuosi 1809 104 Mexican hamburgers 284 Michetti, Niccolo 236 Middle Ages (medieval period) 34, 41, 43–44, 81, 108, 112, 284–288, 289 Middle Way 4, 291

331

migrations 279–280, 285, 292–293, 303–304; see also immigrants and immigration militarism; see also wars; weapons Danish-German border and 170–171 Germany and 177 Gustav II Adolf and 16 Norden and 12 Sweden and 104 military equipment production 129–132, 131, 146–155, 156–157 military non-alignment policy 139 Minerva (periodical) 168 Ministry of Culture and Church Affairs (Norway) 118 Ministry of Education (Sweden) 114 Minneapolis (U.S.) 11 Mittnorden 6–7 modernist exhibition 291–292 Moe, Jørgen 29 Moller, N.O. 210 Montelius, Oscar 260, 261–262, 263, 274, 276–277 Montesquieu 165–166 monuments 101, 110, 164–165, 182–183, 308; see also memorials; specific monuments moral supremacy 144 multiculturalism 292, 293, 303, 308 Munch, Edvard 144 Munthe, Gerhard 175 murders at Utøya 3 murders, Oslo 8 Museum of Antiquity 4 Museum of National History (Denmark) 289 Museum of Nordic Antiquity 190 museum of Vasa 6 museums; see also American Nordic museums; specific museums acquisitions 191, 197–198, 205–206 American Association of Museums 86

332

Performing Nordic Heritage

Baltic 221–242 Birgitta of Vadstena and 109 borders and 308 community involvement in 192, 202, 216 controversy and 224, 276 democracy and 308 ethnic sensitivity 191 funding (see funding) gifts (see gifts) heritage and 308 lay practices in 192 local influence on 191 local involvement and 308–309 media and 185 membership fees 255–256 Middle Ages and 284–288 national identities and 164, 222, 228–232, 240, 273, 280 nations and 22 natural history 305 Norden and 278–288 Nordic 11, 22–23, 271, 273–278 Nordic heritage and 13, 308 performance and 18, 305 politics and 163, 313 Scandinavianism contributions to 248 stereotypes and 191 terrorism and 185–186 urban 194 music 64–65, 66, 113, 117–118, 288 myths 142–146, 173, 174, 176, 181, 313; see also spaces, real and imagined Naantali (Nådendal) 108, 109 Nammo (arms manufacturer) 151 Nansen, Fridtjof and commemoration 99, 100, 282 Napoleonic Wars 6, 22, 28, 167, 177, 178, 239, 272, 302 nation building 31, 33, 105, 107, 112, 120, 282–283; see also sovereignty

national defense 33; see also weapons industry national identities; see also chauvinism; jubilees; nation building; nationalism; politics; specific national identities commemorations and 99 evolution of 28–30 heritage and 271 jubilees and 120 museums and 164, 222, 228–232, 309 nation building 123 Norden and 133–135, 293–294 Nordic experience and 271–295 Nordic identity and 292–295 performances and 18 science and 309 transnationalism and 221–222, 228–232, 233–235 Viking heritage and 302 National Library (Norway) 118 National Museum (Copenhagen) (Denmark) 184, 286, 289 National Museum (Finland) 280 National Museum (Denmark) 280 National Museum (Iceland) 266, 283, 284–285 National Museum (Tartu) (Dorpat) (Estonia) 276 national origin 75–76 National Swedish Museums of Military History (SFHM) 153, 154 nationalism; see also chauvinism; nation building; national identities; specific national identities academic discourse and 302 Baltic Germans and 303 cosmopolitanism and 177 Denmark and 169–170, 293–294 exercise and 31–33 Finland and 28–29, 30, 107 German 178

Index Lithuanian 225 nature and 305 Norden and 4, 302 Nordic countries and 28–30, 293–294 Norway and 277 Romanticism and 28, 30 Sweden and 277 volk and 177 Nationalmuseum 130, 151 nationalmuseum, Germanische (Nuremberg) (Germany) 276 nations 5–6, 15, 22; see also borders, territorial; specific nations Native Right (Indfødsrett) 168 NATO 10, 21, 134, 139, 156, 291, 303 natural history museums 305 nature; see also landscapes art and 312 Danish identity and 180 folklore and 305 Icelanders and 64–65, 66 idealization of 305 national identities and 222, 241 nationalism and 305 Nordic stereotypes and 48 temporality and 278 Nazism 3, 7, 118, 224, 284, 313; see also neo-Nazism Nelson, Eric 202 neo-Nazism 1, 29n4 neoliberalism 292 Nesselman, George 226n17 Netherlands (Holland) 40, 111, 178, 180 Neumann, Wilhelm 228, 230 New Glarus, WI, as ethnically themed place 76–77 NGOs 108, 110, 137 Nidaros Cathedral 41 Nietzsche, Friedrich 23, 180 Nobel Peace Center 139–140 non-profit organizations 13 Non-Violence (Reuterswärd) 141, 142, 151

333

Non-Violence Project (Stockholm) 141, 151 Nora, Pierre 99, 272 Nord-Schleswig 181 Nordatlantens Brygge 59, 67 Norden; see also banal Nordism; myths; Nordic heritage; Nordic identity; Nordic spaces; transnational identity defined 1, 5–8, 11 first settlers 282 history of 301–313 museums and 271–295 national identities and 133–135, 293–294 (see also specific countries) performance and 18 sinister reading of 144, 145 Norden Association 10, 137–138, 155n113 Nordenfjeldske Kunstindustrimuseum (Trondheim) 175 Nordens dag (Norden’s day) (23 March) 135, 135n31, 137, 138 ‘Nordic’ 240 Nordic Council 60th anniversary of 138, 142 borders and 9 on foreign policy 134, 134n25 logo for 137 Nordic union and 10 parallel organizations 137 public access rights and 34 Reuterswärd sculpture and 141 Nordic Council of Ministers 9, 137–138, 143 Nordic countries; see also specific countries Baltic space and 228, 229–230, 236 borders and 7, 184 celebrations and 123 Cold War and 227n26 Estonia and 227 Montesquieu and 165 national differences among 138

334

Performing Nordic Heritage

Nordic spaces and 5–8 Norway and 117 performative space and 5 Nordic Cultural Foundation 9 Nordic culture 6, 189, 308 Nordic heritage; see also heritage democracy and 291 immigrants and 312 maleability of 311, 312 museums and 308 performance and 17–20 politics and 292 regions and 303 spaces and places and 15–17 volunteers and 192–193, 197, 206, 207, 207, 208–210, 213–216, 312 Nordic Heritage Museum (Seattle) about 201–207 displays 203, 214 gifts 196, 205, 214 holdings of 196n23 naming of 40 Nordic profile of 194, 304 Oslo murders and 8 pan-Nordic dimension 214 volunteer efforts at 192–193 Nordic identity; see also Norden; Nordic heritage Baltic space and 228–232, 229–230 change and 313 cultural networks and 11 Danish flag and 170 Denmark and 169, 175–176, 179–180, 287–288 Europe and 293 everyday practices and 305 exercise and 31 Finland and 310 Germany and 176, 178, 179 Great Migrations and 280 Hazelius on 274 history of 8–12

Ice-Age origins and 279 Iceland and 275, 310 Lakolk and 173–174 Margareta of Denmark and 286 Medieval 284–288 museums and 273–278, 305 national identities and 271–295, 293–295 (see also specific national identities) Norway and 169, 310 Norway and Sweden and 175 peace and 271–272, 295, 313 performance and 18 politics and 292, 307 prehistory and 293 Scandinavia and 192, 308 science and 276–277 stereotypes and 47 Sweden and 277, 293 trade and 285 transnationalism and 222 United States and 7–8 U.S. diaspora and 7–8 Vikings and 282–284, 285 walking and 27–48 war and 290 Nordic Museum, see Nordiska museet Nordic museums 11, 22–23, 271, 273–278; see also museums Nordic Pavilion at Venice Biennale 134, 134n22, 148 Nordic region 7 Nordic Romanticism 170 Nordic/Scandinavian terminology 192 Nordic Society 3 Nordic spaces; see also regions; specific Nordic spaces; specific performances cultural artefacts and 2 everyday life and museums and 301–316 future of 313 heritage and 15–17, 20

Index history and 301 Norden and 2, 5–8, 7, 11–12, 20–21 Nordic countries and 5–8 Nordic culture and 189 Nordic heritage and 15–17, 20 performances and 11–12, 16, 17, 20, 196–197 politics and 14, 18–20, 266–267 real and imagined 3–5 territorial borders and 8–12 ‘Nordic Spaces’ project 20, 142 Nordic Standard Helicopter Programme 149–150 Nordic union 303, 312 Nordic walking 35–44, 38, 47–48, 292, 305, 312; see also walking Nordiska museet (Nordic Museum) (Stockholm); see also Scandinavian Ethnographic Collection acquisitions and collections 254–262, 263–264 buildings for 262–264 chauvinism and 104 collaboration and 10 denial of Nordicness 265–267, 276–277 funding 254–259 gifts 197–198, 215, 311–312 Hazelius death and 259–262 history of 40, 247–248, 274 as model 191 name change of 254–259 pioneering role of 190 political history and 286 Scandinavia and 23, 309–310 Nordism, see banal Nordism; Norden Nordkalotten 6–7 Nordseebad Lakolk Gmbh 172 Norse 275, 280, 284–285 Norsemen Brewing Company 92, 92 Norsk Folkemuseum (Norwegian Folk Museum) 190, 190n5, 193, 266, 290

335

Norske folkeeventyr 29 North Africans 185 ‘North, the’ 53, 240 Northern countries 229 Northern Dimension 227 northern Europe Baltic space and 9, 222–223, 225, 225n13, 227, 236 Norden and 17, 133 Nordic Walking and 37, 47 Scandianavia and 5 Sweden and 121 U.S. and 77 northern lights (aurora borealis) 301 Norway; see also entries beginning Norwegian...; Oslo; Utøya murders; individual Norwegians; specific museums Baltic space and 227n24 Birgitta of Vadstena and 109n31 birth of 102n10 boundary changes 28, 249, 251 chauvinism and 102 Christmas displays 212, 213 collaboration and 10 commemorations and 99, 123 cultural figures and 120–121 cultural foundations and 121–122 democracy and 291 Denmark and 165, 166, 167, 169, 170, 283, 287, 310 domestic terror and 185 education and 118 EU and 310 folklore documentation 29 Germany and 167, 180 heritage and 118 Ice-Age origins and 279 Iceland and 275, 285, 294, 310 international impacts 117 jubilees and 117 local involvement and 123

336

Performing Nordic Heritage

medieval 285 museums 193 (see also specific museums) music and 117–118 national history and 139 nationalism and 28–29, 277 Nobel Peace Prize and 139–140 Nordic Council membership 137 Nordic identity and 175, 274, 294, 310 peace and 281–282 power relationships and 123 Sami culture and 280 self-image of 121 Sweden and 6, 9, 102–104, 102n10, 274, 281–282, 285, 287, 289, 307, 310 (see also Swedish-Norwegian Union/dissolution/jubilee) Swedish-Norwegian Union 139 transnationalism and 123 Vikings and 282, 283 weapons work in 149, 150, 151 Norway House 208 Norwegian Bank 119 Norwegian Code of Practice for Corporate Governance 150–151 Norwegian Directorate for Nature Management 34 Norwegian Folk Museum (Norsk Folkemuseum) (Oslo) 190, 190n5, 193, 266, 290 Norwegian identity 6, 102, 120, 173–174, 287 November Constitution (1863) 252 Nuremberg (Germany) 276 Nya Dagligt Allehanda (Swedish newspaper) 258 Nyerup, Rasmus 167 Oden 273, 282 Odense 116 Old Norse poetry 250 Olympic Games 113, 279 open-air museum (Estonia) 276

Open Air Museum, Latvian 223n7 open-air museum (Norsk Folkemuseum) (Norway) 190, 190n5, 193, 266, 290 open-air museum (Sweden), see Skansen Open Air Museum (Sweden) open-air museums 290 Opstad loom 175, 176 Orange City (Iowa) 81–82 Öresund 6–7 Øresundsbron (bridge) 138 Orkney Islands 7 orthographics 252–253 Oscar II, King 256 Oseberg 283 Oslo murders 8 Oslo (Norway) 118, 282; see also specific museums Östergötland 112 Ostrogoth ancestry 250 Other, the 57, 165, 302; see also exclusion/ inclusion (outsider status) outdoor activities 31–33, 305 Øystein, Sørensen 5 Paasi, Anssi 15 paganism 287, 304–305 Pakštas, Kazys 226n19 Palanga Amber Museum (Lithuania) 222, 233 Palme, Olof 286 pan-Scandinavian nation-state movement 249, 251, 252, 278 Pantzar, Mika 37 parliamentary system 251 past, the 12–15, 13, 19, 186; see also heritage; history paternal emergency plan 265–266 Patria Industries Oyj 150 patriotism 184, 305; see also chauvinism; nationalism peace; see also violence; wars; weapons

Index dynamite and 144 jubilees and 18, 277 monuments and 282 Norden and 3, 12, 138–142, 312 Nordic heritage and 6 Nordic identity and 295, 305, 313 peasant culture and 289 Sweden and 6, 121 peasant culture 6, 133, 193, 289, 311; see also folk art and culture; rural heritage; vernacular culture Pedersen, Hans Hartvig 137 Pedersen, Peder K. 82 Pederson, Curt 208 Pelé 116 Pella (Iowa) 81–82 Peredvizhniki group 232 performances; see also specific performances audiences and 17, 18 business and 55 change and 312 in gift exchange 197 heritage and 17–18 heritage as 4, 19–20 identity and 56–57 institutions and 14–15 ironic 54 museums and 11, 305 Norden and 17 Nordic heritage and 14, 17–20 Nordic spaces and 196–197 politics and 11 spaces and 16 Persson, Göran 110, 147 persuasion 18; see also rhetoric Peter I (Russia) 237, 238 Petersen, Jan H. 102 pilgrimages 27, 40–45, 47–48 pioneer museums 194, 200–201 Pirita (Estonia) 109 Pivle, Per 118 places; see also spaces; specific places

337

concreteness of 16 creation of 189–190 Danish 74–79, 91–92 gift-giving role in 196 of memory 16 regions and nations and 15 themed 73, 76–77, 86–87 plasticity of preservation 304–310, 308 Ploug, Carl 251, 257 pluralism 241 Poland 226n20, 232 Poland, Kingdom of 225 Poland-Lithuania 224, 225, 239 pole walking (exerstriding) 27, 35–41, 36, 36n28, 38, 38–39, 47–48 political history art history and 286 of Baltic space 224–225, 228, 241 Kadroirg Palace and 238 Rundāle Palace and 240 Swedish museums and 286, 287, 291 politics; see also nationalism; individual parties and politicians academic and artistic discourse and 302 anonymity of donations 153–154 art and 302 Baltic space and 228–232 cultural diplomacy and 312 cultural networks and 10 culture and 166, 287, 289, 302 distinction and 221–242 funding and 276 heritage and 18–20, 308 identity and 63 jubilees and 277 language and 252 liberal 250–251 monuments and 281–282 museums and 163, 166, 313 Norden and 142, 302–303 Nordic heritage and 14, 18–20, 271–295, 292

338

Performing Nordic Heritage

Nordic identity and 292, 293, 307 performance and 11 prehistory and 293 Swedish-Norwegian union in museum decisions 262 Viking heritage and 284 post-colonialism 66, 69, 306 post-Soviet countries 225n13 Potebnia, Aleksandr O. 226n17 power relationships; see also colonialism; crypto-colonialism; nationalism; politics Baltic space and 227n26 Denmark and 166–167 ethnicity and 55 heritage and 311 identities and 53, 60 ironic performances and 58 museum rhetoric and 163–186 Norden and 312 Sweden and 121, 123 transcultural performances and 61 Practice of Everyday Life, The (Certeau) 61 practices, cultural 12, 16 Pram, Christen 168 Pramann, Ulrich 38–39 prehistory 279, 285, 286, 288, 293; see also Ice Age origins present, the 19, 186, 313 preservation, plasticity of 304–310 Pribaltika (Baltic) 226 private settings 14 professional value systems 222, 228–232, 236, 240–241 Project 1809 – The New Finland, the New Sweden 107 promotion, see marketing prophecies 181 protected geographical status 140 Protector Remote Weapon Station (RWS) 150 Protestantism 287, 289

Prussia 178, 179, 225, 234, 251–252 public access rights 33–35, 33n19, 42, 47–48, 311 public awareness 106–107; see also historical consciousness and narrative Purvītis, Vilhelms 230 Pushkin, Aleksandr 239n80 racism 4, 145 Raoul Wallenberg Square 114 Rasmussen, Poul Nyrup 102 Rastrelli, Francesco Bartolomeo 239 Raufoss ASA 150 re-imaginations 12–13, 19 reality, perceptions of 163 Reformation 286 regions; see also Baltic Space; Scandinavia academic discourse and 280 Baltic museums and 221–242 community and 271 identity and 308 Nordic heritage and 303 places and nations and 15 rural Norden and 290–292 transnationalism and 221–222 unity and 226n20 relationships through reciprocity 196, 197–198 religion 41–44, 74–75, 287; see also specific religions Rembrandt als Erzieher (Rembrandt as Educator) (Langbehn) 180 repatriation of materials 215, 216, 277 Resare, Nils 146–147 research methods 193 Retzius, Gustaf 257 reunification, see Border and Reunification Museum (Genforenings- ot Grænsemuseet) (Christiansfeld) Reuterswärd, Carl Fredrik 141, 142, 151 Reventlow, L.R. 169

Index Reykjavik 871+-2 283, 283n35 rhetoric 18, 23, 278, 294, 305, 310 rifle production, see Carl-Gustaf Multipurpose Weapon System Riga City Museum of Art (Latvian National Museum of Art) (LNMA) 222, 230, 231, 232 right-wing parties 292, 307, 312–313 Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (The Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation) 10, 103, 142 rituals 305 Röd (Red) 157 Roed, Ingeborg 212 Roerich, Nikolai 232 roles, performances and 17 Romania 117, 185 Romans 1, 233, 271, 288 romanticism 28, 30, 170, 272–273, 274, 281 Rominten 172–173 Rømø 172–173 Roots 200 Rothe, Tyge 169 Royal Armoury (Livrustkammaren) (Sweden) 289 Royal Museum for Nordic Antiquities (Det Kgl. Museum for Nordiske Oldsager) (Copenhagen) 273 royalty celebrations and 103, 108 Danish identity and 103, 116, 169, 177, 181, 184, 210, 213, 250 funding and 273, 276 museums and 276 Norden and 104, 272, 273, 276 Norwegian identity and 139 sexual exploits of 131–132 Swedish identity and 19, 103, 104, 139, 209, 213, 250 war and 19, 265, 289

339

Rundāle Palace (Ruhenthal) (Latvia) 223, 223n7, 236, 239–240, 241 Runeberg, Johan Ludvig, jubilee 100, 114–115, 120–121, 122 rural heritage 273, 274, 290–292; see also folk art and culture; peasant culture Russia amber and 234 art and 232, 241 art of 237 Baltic space and 9, 224–225, 224n12, 227n24, 232, 235–236, 240, 309 boundary changes 28 Estonia and 222–223, 226, 238, 238n76 Europe and 240 Finland and 104, 275, 285 Latvia and 222–223, 226 Lithuania and 226 Nordic heritage and 284 Nordic identity and 9 Norway and 117 Rundāle Palace and 239–240, 239n80 Sami culture and 280 Sweden and 6, 16, 104–105, 123, 238 as threat 302 Three Years’ War and 179 University of Tartu and 230 Wallenberg and 114 Russwurm, Karl 254 Rutlin, Tom 36n28 Rydåker, Ewa 208, 209 Rydqvist, Johan Eric 253 Saab AB 19, 130, 131, 146, 149, 153, 154 Sæd Border Museum (Grensemuseet i Sæd) 166, 183–186 Said, Edward 65 Saint Birgitta of Sweden (1303) 100 Saint George and the dragon statue 285–286

340

Performing Nordic Heritage

Saint Hans, evening of 174 Saint Olav pilgrimage 41–42 Saint Petersburg 232, 236, 239 Salin, Bernhard 259 Sami culture 271, 278, 280, 282, 291, 303, 307, 312 Sápmi nation 278, 282 Sarmatian Sea 225 Scandinavia; see also specific countries English-speaking world and 8 Germany and 178 J. Grimm and 179 heathens and 286 maps of 273 monuments and 281 nationalism and 274 Norden and 249, 302 Nordic identity and 192, 294, 305, 308 Nordic museums and 22–23, 309–310 Nordic states and 7, 8 Nordiska museet and 23, 309–310 perfomative space and 5 Sápmi nation and 278 state 8–12 United States and 303–304 Viking heritage and 284 Scandinavia House (New York) 8 Scandinavian culture 190, 192, 194 Scandinavian Design Beyond the Myth 142–143 Scandinavian Ethnographic Collection (Skandinavisk-etnografiska samlinger) 10, 190, 191, 247–248, 253–254, 274; see also Nordiska museet (Nordic Museum) (Stockholm) Scandinavianism 248–253, 263, 294, 309 Scandinavist movement 8–12, 307 Scania (Danish province) 279, 286–287, 294 scenes 273 Schäufle, Bernd 38–39

Schechner, Richard 17 Scherrebeker Rhederei 173 Schlank und Fit mit Nordic Walking (Slim and Fit with Nordic Walking) 38–39 Schleswig-Holstein; see also specific locations boundary changes 82, 252 Denmark and 166, 167, 184 folk art 175–176 genforening and 181 German funding and 174 Germanization and 179, 180 Germanness and 169, 172, 173, 178 rebellion 178–179, 251 Scandinavia and 7 Versailles Treaty of 1919 and 180–181 war 82 scholarship (academic discourse) 10, 15, 226n21, 280, 287, 302–303, 305, 306; see also specific disciplines School Commission (Denmark) 169 Schule für Kunstweberei (weaving school) 175–176 science 222, 229, 234, 276–277, 278, 309 Scotland 7 Scream, The (Munch) 144 scrutiny, challenges of 145 Seattle 205; see also Nordic Heritage Museum Second Schleswig War 82 secularism 2, 108, 109, 138, 272, 275 security 110 Shetland Islands 7 Shishkin, Ivan 232 shortcuts (walking) 61 Shove, Elizabeth 37 Sibbern, George 257 silence 292–295 Sinding-Larsen, Henrik 174 Självstyrelsegården 301 Skærbaek Museum 171, 172, 174, 175–176 Skagen ( Jutland) 179, 180

Index Skamlingsbanken (Denmark) 182 Skåne (Denmark/Sweden) 103, 104, 110, 138, 166, 263 Skansen Open Air Museum (Sweden) beginnings of 30, 257–258, 274, 309 as ‘museum’ 259–260 Nordic unity and 290–291 pioneering role of 190, 191, 309 Swedish culture and 260, 261, 265 during World War II 265 Skiblund Krat 182–183 skiing 32, 35 Skötkonung, Olof 286 Skowrońska, Harta Helena (Catherine I) (Russia) 236 slave trade 3, 312 Slavic language 9, 226, 226n18 Slavs 1, 224–225, 271, 280 Slim and Fit with Nordic Walking (Schlank und Fit mit Nordic Walking) 38–39 Småland 111, 112, 122 Smithsonian Folklife Festival 200 Smithsonian Institution (U.S.) 13 Social Democrats (Denmark) 185 social science 15 social stratification 238–239, 240 Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Studies 11 Society for Swedish Literature in Finland (SLS) 114 solidarity, Nordic declaration of 134, 134n25 Solvang (California) 75–76, 91 Sønderborg Slot (Castle) 171n17, 181 Sønderjylland (South Jutland) 6–7, 22, 164–186 Sons of Norway 208 Sørensen, Øystein 5, 142 Sornson, Harvey 79, 81, 88 South Africa 146, 149 South Jutland (Sønderjylland) 6–7, 22, 164–186

341

sovereignty 6, 134, 181, 225, 283, 286, 307; see also nation building Soviet Union Baltic republics and 109, 227, 276, 311 Baltic space and 234 dissolution of 109, 266 Estonia and 109, 237n72 Finland and 291 Germany and Scandinavia and 229 Kadriorg Palace and 238n76 Latvian art and 230, 231 Lithuania and 225 Nordic identity and 278 Rundāle Palace and 239 Sweden and 291 spaces; see also Nordic spaces; places; specific spaces culture and 280 of experiences 19 national and transnational 221–242 natural 278 (see also nature) of performance 58–59 real and imagined 182 (see also myths) regional 221–242 spas 317 sports 33, 39–40, 136; see also specific sports Die Sprache der alten Preussen (Nesselman) 226n17 Stadius, Peter 135n31 stamps 105, 109 State Museum of History (Latvia) 239 State Museum of Latvian and Russian Art (Latvia) 231 State Museum of Western European Art (Latvia) 231 statues 104; see also specific statues statutes 255, 264 stereotypes 22, 27, 40, 47, 48, 191, 305 Stockholm (Sweden) 6, 111, 112, 113, 281, 285–286, 291–292; see also specific museums Stoltenberg, Jens 99

342

Performing Nordic Heritage

Stone Age 4, 282 strategy 61 Stråth, Bo 5, 142 Strindberg, August, jubilee 100, 113–114, 121, 122 Strindberg Museum 113 Stryjkowski, Maciej 225 student circles at universities 249, 250–251 Succini Historia (Aurifaber) 234 Suecia Antiqua et Hodierna (Dahlbergh) 6 Suomen Latu (organization) 36 sustainability 311 Svarstad, Valgerd 102 Svenskarnas Dag 11 Svinesund sound 138 swan logo 137 Sweden; see also Nordic countries; Stockholm; Swedish identity; specific museums Age of Greatness 3 Baltic space and 229–230, 236, 241, 294 bilateralism and 103 boundary changes 28, 249, 251 chauvinism and 104 Christmas displays 209, 212–213 cooperation and 107 cultural figures and 120–221 cultural foundations and 121–122 Danish battles and 252 democracy and 291 Denmark and 103–104, 120, 123, 165, 166, 170, 288, 289, 307 design quality 130 economic factors and 121, 277, 310 education and 106, 115 Estonia and 141 Estonia and Latvia and 224, 229 EU and 139 Europe and 240 Finland and 100, 104–107, 120, 273, 274–275, 285–288, 289–290, 294, 307, 311

Finnish-speakers and 303 funding and 276 Germanization and 180 Germans and 288 Germany and 312 Hammarskjöld and 110–111 heathen Norden and 281 heritage and 115 Ice-Age origins and 279 Iceland and 285 imperialism and 310 Kalmar Union and 101 landscapes 30 literature 250 local involvement and 123 museums 193 (see also specific museums) nation building and 112 national identity and 104, 111–112, 115, 276–277, 279 national museums and 273–274 nationalism and 277 nationalism in 29 NATO and 134 Nordic Council membership 137 Nordic heritage and 6 Nordic identity and 175, 274, 293, 294, 307 Norway and 6, 9, 102–104, 102n10, 274, 281–282, 285, 287, 289, 307, 310 (see also Swedish-Norwegian Union/dissolution/jubilee) occupation of Estonia 16 peace and 6, 282 political history and 291 power relationships and 123–124 racism and 4 religion and 107–109 Runeberg and 114–115, 122 Russia and 6, 238 Sami culture and 280 Scandinavian state and 8, 10 self-image of 121

Index sovereignty and 5–6 Soviet Union and 229 transnationalism and 123 Vikings and 282 war and 289–290 weapons and 3 Sweden and Finland, separation of 100 Swedish Air Force Museum 153 Swedish American Museum 196 Swedish Arts Council 113 Swedish Crusades 285 Swedish Cultural Foundation 114 Swedish Environmental Protection Agency 34 Swedish-Finnish Cultural Foundation 107 Swedish Historiska museet 286 Swedish identity Baltic space and 228–232 borders and 104 cultural figures and 120–121 diplomacy and 102 jubilees and 115 museums and 286 Nordic identity and 294 Nordic space and 266–267 self-image and 121 Swedish language 179, 280, 285; see also Finns, Swedish-speaking Swedish Museum of the Year (2011) 153 Swedish-Norwegian Union/dissolution/ jubilee 100, 119, 139, 140, 262, 277 Swedish-Norwegian War (1814) 141 Swedish Royal Armoury 263 Swedish State Trophy Collection 153 Swedish wars 289 Switzerland 180 Sydow, Björn von 149–150 ‘symbolic ethnicity’ 78 symbols 16, 78, 82, 250, 313; see also specific symbols szlachta 224n11

343

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius 5, 233 Tallin Estländische Provinzial-Museum 276 Tallinn (Estonia) 236; see also specific museums Den tapre Landsoldat (victory of Unknown Soldier) 178–179 Tartu (Dorpat) 276 Tavastehus (Hämeenlinna) 107 Tegnér, Esaias 115, 281 Telenor 136 temporality 278 terrorism 185–186 Teutonic Order 224 Thailand 66 themed places 73, 76–77, 86–87, 202 themes 273 thermal springs 31 Thiis, Jens 175 Thing, the 281, 291 Third Way 291 Thirsty Mermaids Brewhaus 92, 92 Thorarinson, Sigurdur 264 three-state union (Denmark, Norway, Sweden) 100–101 Three Years’ War 179 Tondernsche Zeitung (newspaper) 173 Top Gun 147 Tordsson, Björn 47 totalitarianism 1, 4 tourism Andersen and 116 everyday practices and 305 exo-museum 292 Icelandic in Denmark 58–59 Iowa and 86 jubilees and 304 Middle Ages and 288 public access and 311 religion and 287 Vikings and 306 Traavik, Morten 151–152, 152

344

Performing Nordic Heritage

trade 285, 288, 304; see also economic factors traditions 11, 15–16, 56, 289, 306, 307; see also heritage transculturalism 61 transnational identity; see also globalization; international impacts; Norden academic discourse and 221 Baltic space and 22, 221–242, 309 celebrations and 123 commemorations and 99, 119 exclusion/inclusion and 1 feudal dimension of 288 Hammarskjöld and 111 heritage and 4 identities and 53, 60–61, 301, 308 international impacts 14 Kalmar Union and 101 museums and 224 national identities and 222, 233–235, 240, 307 Norden and 18 Nordic culture and 305 other categories of 225n13 pluralism and 241 power relations and 65 Viking heritage and 284 Wallenberg and 114 Treaty of Fredrikshamn (Hamina) 104 Treaty of Hamina (Frederikshamn) 104 Treaty of Kiel 251 Treaty of Roskilde commemoration 100, 103, 120 Treaty of Versailles (1919) 180–181 Treaty of Vienna 252 Trondheim 175 Turaida Castle and Manor 223n7 Turk identity 1 Turku (Adotoberbo) 108 Turnblad, Swan J. 195 Turner, Victor 78

Tutu, Desmond 147 Tydskeri (Tydskeriet) (Germanness) 168, 169 Tyske forening for Nordslesvig (German Association for North Schleswig) (Denmark) 172 Tyske Krigerforening (German Warrior Association) (Denmark) 172, 174 Ukraine 225 U.N. Security Council Resolution (1973) 155–156 Unckel, Per 142–143 Undset, Ingvald 262 UNESCO 14, 283 unification/unity; see also Border and Reunification Museum; Kalmar Union; regions; Scandinavia; Schleswig-Holstein; transnational identity Baltic states and 140–141, 226, 226nn20, 21, 227, 234 Libya and 156 museums and 190, 214, 254, 274, 290–291 myth of 133–135 sports and 136 Sweden and 149 symbols and 78 Vikings and 283 welfare states and 277 United Kingdom 7, 284 United Nordic Federation 135 United States; see also entries beginning American...; specific museums Björling and 113 census figures 201 cultural networks and 9, 11 Danish identity and 311 diaspora 21 ethnic museums and 305 gift-exchange and 312

Index heritage sites and 306 local involvement and 309 multiculturalism and 308 Nordic heritage and 13–14, 17, 284, 303 Nordic identity and 7–8, 8n8 Nordic spaces and 7–8, 189–216, 301 Norway and 117 Wallenberg and 114 unity, see cooperation; Kalmar Union University of Kiel 178 University of Tartu History Museum 222, 229–230 Unknown Soldier, victory of (Den tapre Landsoldat) 178–179 ‘Unpredictable Sweden: Beyond the Myth’ 143, 144, 151 Uppsala 110–111 U.S. government 132, 150 uses of the past 13 utopias 293 Utøya murders 3, 8 Vaga, Alfred 228–229 Vägmärken (Markings) (Hammarskjöld) 110 Väinemöinen (storyteller) 202–203 Vangsnes (Norway) 281 Vanhanen, Matti 104, 105–106 Vasa (warship) 6, 290 Vasa, Gustav 286, 288 Västergötland 112 vaterländische Museum zu Dorpat 276 Vatican 108 Venturi, Robert 199 vernacular culture 84, 198–201, 200, 206, 214 Vesterheim Norwegian-American Museum 195 Victoria, Princess 146, 147, 209 Vierumäki Sport Institute 36 Viking heritage ambivalence toward 3 archeological site 84–85

345

Baltic space and 276 Denmark and 184 food and 55 Lakolk and 172 national identities and 302 neo-Nazism and 29n4 Norden and 21 Nordic identity and 273, 282–284, 285 popularization of 29 Viking museum (Oslo) 282 Vikingen (Swedish newspaper) 258 Vikinghjem (Viking home) (Iowa) 21, 74, 82–87, 85–86, 88, 89–94, 306 Vilnius 235 Vimmerby 112 violence 288; see also peace; war; weapons; specific crimes Vogel Mill 81–82 voice 292–295 ‘A Voice of Our Own’ 139 volk 177 Volkslieder (Herder) 177 volunteers American Museums and 22, 189, 201–216, 308 Bov Museum and 183 Elk Horn and 81, 84, 85, 87, 88, 92, 306, 308 museum success and 312 Nordic heritage and 14, 192–193, 197, 206, 207, 207, 208–210, 213–216, 312 visibility and 13–14 Waever, Ole 227, 227n26 walking about 27 forest roamers 44–47 history of 28–33 Norden and 304 Nordic 35–41, 38, 47–48, 292, 305, 312 pilgrimages 40–44, 47–48

346

Performing Nordic Heritage

public access rights 33–35 shortcuts 61 speed of 44–45 summer expeditions 30 Wallenberg foundations 154 Wallenberg, Raoul 100, 114, 141–142 Warring, Anette 101 wars 28, 153, 154–155, 251–252, 289–290, 292, 294; see also peace; violence; weapons; specific wars Norden and 146–155 Warsaw (Poland) 232 weapons 293, 295, 307, 312, 313 weapons industry 129–132, 131, 146–155, 156–157 weaving school (Schule für Kunstweberei) 175–176 welfare states 272–273, 277, 290, 291, 292, 305, 313 Welhaven 118 Wergelend, Henrik 118, 119 Werner, August 202–203 Werner, Jens 39 Western identity 278 Westling, Daniel 146, 147, 209 Wetterberg, Gunnar 10, 293 Wettermark, Tomas 43 white horse 181–182 Wickman, Kerstin 143–144 Wilhelm II (Germany) 172–173, 174, 175, 281

Wilson, Woodrow 224 Windmill Corporation, The 89 windmills 21, 73–74, 75–76, 79–82, 80, 91–92, 306 wolves 286 women 175, 291; see also feminism; gender; individual women World Economic Forum Meeting (2011) 2 World War I 170–171, 180–181, 184, 289, 310 World War II Baltic Germans and 224 Baltic space and 302 Carl-Gustaf guns and 19 Denmark and 170–171, 184, 307 Estonia and 237n71 Kadriorg Palace and 237 museums and 194, 310 Norway and 139 Skansen Open Air Museum and 265 transnationalism and 221 Wallenberg’s efforts for Jews 142 World’s Fair (Seattle) (1962) 205 xenophobia 184–186 Zacheta National Gallery of Art (Warsaw) 232 zealous patriotism 145 Zubov, Platon 239 Zubov, Valerian 239