The Local Museum in the Global Village: Rethinking Ideas, Functions, and Practices of Local History Museums in Rapidly Changing Diverse Communities 9783839451915

Table of contents :
Contents
Preface
Summary
1. Introduction: Local history museums in changing communities
Rethinking the local history museum
2. Inspiration from museum and memory studies
3. The Norwegian context
Historical consciousness among Hitra and Frøya’s population and the local museum
4. Memory and history, historical culture, historical consciousness and the local museum
5. Historical consciousness among Hitra’s and Frøya’s population
An experiment in contemporary documentation
6. Documentation of labour immigrants’ experiences and views of the local past and present
7. Concluding remarks: The local museum as facilitator of and partner in negotiations of local history, identity and belonging
Bibliography

Citation preview

Insa Müller The Local Museum in the Global Village

Museum  | Volume 46

Insa Müller (PhD), born in 1979, is Associate Professor at the Department of Historical Studies, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). Her research and teaching is centered on cultural heritage management and museology. She also acts as a special adviser for community dialogue at Stiklestad National Culture Centre and as a researcher at Falstadsenter.

Insa Müller

The Local Museum in the Global Village Rethinking Ideas, Functions, and Practices of Local History Museums in Rapidly Changing Diverse Communities

Published with the support of the Faculty of Humanities, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU).

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http:// dnb.d-nb.de

© 2020 transcript Verlag, Bielefeld All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized 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 publisher. Cover layout: Maria Arndt, Bielefeld Printed by Majuskel Medienproduktion GmbH, Wetzlar Print-ISBN 978-3-8376-5191-1 PDF-ISBN 978-3-8394-5191-5 https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839451915 Printed on permanent acid-free text paper.

Contents

Preface................................................................................... 7 Summary ................................................................................. 9 1. 1.1. 1.2. 1.3. 1.4. 1.5.

Introduction: Local history museums in changing communities .................... 11 The islands of Hitra and Frøya .......................................................13 Museum representations of local history on Hitra and Frøya .......................... 15 Lines of investigation ............................................................... 17 Research position – theory and practice in museum studies .......................... 19 Outline of chapters ................................................................. 22

Rethinking the local history museum 2. 2.1. 2.2. 2.3.

Inspiration from museum and memory studies .................................... 29 Ideas of the museum ............................................................... 29 Museums and communities ........................................................ 36 Museums and memory ............................................................. 43

3. The Norwegian context ............................................................ 59 3.1. From identity-affirmative folk museums to spaces for polylocal history .............. 60 3.2. Ideas of the museum as expressed in Norwegian Museum policy documents (1971-2009)............................................... 68 3.3. Museum professionals’ views on the museum as a ‘dialogue institution’ .............. 87 3.4. Norwegian museums: relevant through dialogue?.................................... 90

Historical consciousness among Hitra and Frøya’s population and the local museum 4.

Memory and history, historical culture, historical consciousness and the local museum ........................................................................... 95

4.1. 4.2. 4.3. 4.4.

Memory and history................................................................. 95 Historical culture .................................................................. 98 Historical consciousness ........................................................... 101 Historical consciousness in research on museums ................................. 106

5. 5.1. 5.2. 5.3. 5.4.

Historical consciousness among Hitra’s and Frøya’s population .................. 109 Oral history theory and methodology ............................................... 109 Oral history inspires museum practice .............................................. 114 Methodology........................................................................ 118 Manifold ways of relating to the (local) past: Historical consciousness among local residents in Frøya and Hitra........................................................ 126 Three ideal types of historical consciousness ...................................... 155 Three examples: Liv, Anna and Kornelius ........................................... 163 Talk about museums .............................................................. 184 Museum practice with a focus on different types of historical consciousness: Implications for local history museums ............................................... 191

5.5. 5.6. 5.7. 5.8.

An experiment in contemporary documentation 6.

Documentation of labour immigrants’ experiences and views of the local past and present ...................................................................... 199 6.1. Contemporary collecting and documentation ....................................... 200 6.2. Interviews in contemporary documentation ........................................ 204 6.3. Dialogic interviews as a way to engage with individuals and local history during documentation processes ......................................................... 224 7.

Concluding remarks: The local museum as facilitator of and partner in negotiations of local history, identity and belonging .............................. 229 7.1. Rethinking the idea of the local history museum.................................... 229 7.2. Rethinking functions of the local history museum – starting with the local community ............................................................... 231 7.3. Practices – dialogic documentation interviews ..................................... 234 Bibliography............................................................................ 237

Preface

This book is based on my doctoral thesis which was defended at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in September 2018. The work on the thesis has been a long and tortuous path, and it would never have come to an end without the support and encouragement of a number of people and institutions. First of all, I would like to thank my supervisor Ola Svein Stugu and my cosupervisor Hanna Mellemsether. Professor Stugu’s long experience in academia and Dr. Mellemsether’s expertise in the museum field challenged and inspired me through their complementary ways of looking at museums. Their enthusiasm and advice have meant a lot to me. Thank you also to the Faculty of Humanities, NTNU and the Department of Historical Studies, NTNU for investing in the project and for support along the way. Thank you to Professor Reidar Almås, the leader of the research and development KOMOPP project which was instrumental in financing my research. I would like to thank my colleagues at the program for Cultural Heritage Studies. Tor Einar Fagerland, Line Gjermshusengen, Ingeborg Hjorth, Jon Olav Hove, Michael Kahn, Christina Næss and Aud Mikkelsen Tretvik all contributed to a stimulating work environment during the time of research and teaching. I thank Ingeborg Hjorth and Christina Næss for sharing my dedication to ‘everything museum’ and our museology discussions, which were always inspirational. This work would not have been possible without the co-operation of the Museene i Sør-Trøndelag and the Kystmuseet on Hitra in particular. Further thanks go to the Astra Museum, Sibiu. Being invited to participate in the project Open Heritage provided valuable opportunities to share ideas and receive inspiration. Thank you to all interview partners in Hitra and Frøya and to Hanna Mellemsether and Berit Johanne Vorpbukt for conducting interviews together with me. Thank you also to Norwegian museum professionals who have taken the time and answered my questions, in particular Anders Bettum, Kristin Margrethe Gaukstad and Kathrin Pabst. I am grateful to my previous fellow Ph.D. candidates, Ane Alterhaug, Heidi Anett Øvergård Beistad and Ingjerd Veiden Brakstad for being my friends.

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This thesis would not have been completed without the encouragement and patience of my family. Warm thanks to my parents Detlev and Margit and my sisters Sylke and Maren. Most of all, I am grateful to the three unique people I share my home and everyday life with: Thomas, Marlene and Lily.   Through thick and thin, this is for you, Thomas.   Insa Müller, Trondheim August 2020

Summary

Based on the observation that existing local history museums struggle to relate to rapidly changing, diverse local communities, this book proposes recasting these museums as institutions that actively engage with and in ’communicative memory’ (Assmann), that is, unstructured but shared memories that are mainly conveyed through communication between members of local communities. It argues that a museum that documents, safeguards and conveys history through the lens of communicative memory is able to include diverse audiences and to engage members of diverse demographic communities with local history in a way that both long-time residents and newcomers to the region experience as relevant and meaningful. The book is informed by both theoretical and empirical research. The problem definition and central terms, such as ‘communicative’ and ‘functional’ memory or ‘historical consciousness’, are taken from museum and memory studies and history didactics. Oral history theory and methodology has inspired the research. The Norwegian context is introduced through an analysis of Norwegian museum policies between 1970 and 2010. In these documents, the idea of the museum’s social role is promoted, and the museum is often presented as a ‘dialogue institution’. A secondary analysis of museum practitioners’ experiences of implementing dialogue in their daily work reveals uncertainty over how to operationalize the ‘dialogue institution’ in real-world museum practice. The original empirical research consists of oral history interviews with 23 informants and a museum experiment using interviews in a contemporary documentation project. Both the oral history interviews and the experiment were conducted on the Norwegian islands of Frøya and Hitra, whose local communities have undergone fast and profound change since the early 2000s, when a booming aquaculture industry led to an influx of labour immigrants from mainly Eastern European countries. In this period, the share of non-Norwegians on the islands went from three percent to almost one quarter of the population. The interviews reveal that residents of Hitra and Frøya today relate to the local history of the area in manifold ways. These ways of relating to local history can be conceptualized as three ideal types of historical consciousness. The extremes are either a high degree of ‘continuity’ (type 1) between historical events, personal

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and collective memories and present-day views on the past or ‘detachment’ (type 3) from history (be it the local history of Frøya and Hitra or of another place), ignorance of local historical events, distancing from shared memories and general lack of interest in local history. The middle between these extreme positions marks an ideal type of relating to the local past that is called ‘beginnings’ (type 2). Representatives of this type are beginning to access local shared communicative and cultural memory whilst maintaining personal and family memories from another place outside Hitra or Frøya. Based on these types, the book proposes a local history museum practice that orients itself towards the second type as a means of reconnecting to its dynamic surrounding communities. The study concludes with a summary of findings and a description of implications for practical museum work. To reach the audiences encountered in the empirical work and to support practitioners entering into dialogue with their communities, local history museums would be well served to focus on recent history; they should redefine their role as part of a ‘constituent community’ (van Mensch), which potentially includes all members of a local community, and they should actively engage in negotiations about history, for example by inviting previously neglected groups to become part of contemporary documentation projects.

1. Introduction: Local history museums in changing communities

Increasing mobility and migration change societies rapidly. They challenge and transform the identities of local communities, understandings of local history and the appeal and functions of local history museums. Traditional narratives of local history as the history of the place and its inhabitants no longer resonate with local community members’ individual biographies or their present lives. Existing narratives of the local past offer little scope for identification for newcomers, who do not find themselves represented in the stories told about the past. For longtime residents likewise, traditional narratives of the local past offer little orientation towards a present and future they experience as changing rapidly and in unprecedented ways. Demographic developments and changed views on local history furthermore challenge existing concepts of the local museum. Established ideas about local museums of history are closely linked to questions of group and individual identities. These museums are regarded as a resource for “knowing who you are”1 . In demographically diverse communities, museums of local history no longer offer answers to these questions, and museums thus find themselves in a situation in which “links to their community”2 are dissolving. This is a serious matter, as Elisabeth Crooke 1 2

Macdonald, Sharon, Memorylands: Heritage and Identity in Europe Today (London: Routledge 2013), 224. Drawing on the major research project Investigating the impact of small museums in their local communities (funded by the University of Technology, Sydney; the Australian Museum; Arts NSW; and Museums Galleries NSW), Lynda Kelly draws the following conclusion concerning the value of small museums: “Generally the qualitative findings suggested that the value of local museums were the links back to community; opportunities for people to visit, including attending events; the work opportunities (both paid & unpaid) that were available; the wealth that the museum creates in the local community leading to generate money to go back to the community. Broader outcomes were also identified, such as developing an appreciation of place and culture, community pride, museums preserving heritage, and opportunities for learning across all age levels.” Kelly, Lynda, “Measuring the Impact of Museums on Their Communities: The Role of the 21st Century Museum,” in INTERCOM conference. Taipei, Taiwan, 2006, 3.

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points out that “if a local museum is not connected with its community the rationale for the museum may come into question.”3 In sum, these observations raise questions ranging from the idea, the roles or functions of local history and museums of local history in such rapidly changing communities in general to more concrete questions concerning the practice, that is, the methods such museums apply when they work for and – as a growing demand for participatory4 museum practice implies – with their new diverse audiences. To reconnect local history museums with their transformed communities, the study at hand proposes recasting these museums as institutions that actively engage with and in ‘communicative memory’ (Assmann). ‘Communicative memory’ stands for unstructured but shared memories that are mainly conveyed through communication between members of local communities. The study at hand argues that a museum that looks at its role as local history museum through the lens of communicative memory can engage members of diverse demographic communities with local history in a way that both long-time residents and newcomers to the region experience as meaningful and relevant. Based on the idea of the local history museum as both an institution linked to communicative memory and an agent in processes of communicative memory formation, the study investigates empirically the role of local museums’ subject matter, that is the local past or local history, and the place of the local museum in the local community. Vivianne Gosselin found that in the museum field “little is known about the way museum visitor´s conception of history influences how they engage with exhibitions or historic sites.”5 Addressing this lacuna, I draw on the theory of historical consciousness and methodology taken from the discipline

3 4

5

Crooke, Elizabeth, “The Politics of Community Heritage: Motivations, Authority and Control,” International Journal of Heritage Studies 16, no. 1-2 (2010): 17. Participation is an umbrella term for a variety of museum theories and practices that in sum advocate the involvement of individuals or groups from outside the museum in different levels of decision making and museum activities. Participatory strategies can include contributory, collaborative, co-creative and hosted forms of participation and inform collecting, conservation, research, programming and exhibition preparation alike. Simon, Nina, The Participatory Museum (Santa Cruz, Calif.: Museum 2.0, 2010). Participatory museum practice has been critically evaluated and discussed by Bernadette Lynch. Lynch, Bernadette, Whose Cake Is It Anyway? A Collaborative Investigation into Engagement and Participation in 12 Museums and Galleries in the UK, Summary Report (London: Paul Hamlyn Foundation 2011). For a presentation and discussion of the now manifold terms used to describe the diverse ways museums work or interact with individuals and groups from outside the museum, see Bunning, Katy, Jen Kavanagh, Katey MacSweeney, and Richard Sandell, “Embedding Plurality: Exploring Participatory Practice in the Development of a New Permanent Gallery,” Science Museum Group Journal Spring 2015, no. 3 (2015). Gosselin, Viviane, "Open to Interpretation: Mobilizing Historical Thinking in the Museum" (PhD diss., The University of British Columbia, 2011), 1.

1 Introduction: Local history museums in changing communites

of oral history to study the relations between individual community members and (local) history at Frøya and Hitra through qualitative interviews with long-time residents and newcomers to the islands. Interviews with residents to the Norwegian islands of Hitra and Frøya reveal that today, members of the local communities on the islands relate to local history of the area in manifold ways. These ways of relating to local history can be conceptualized as three types of historical consciousness. The extremes are either a high degree of ‘continuity’ between historical events, collective and personal memories and present-day views on the past on the one hand or ‘detachment’ from history (be it the local history of Hitra or Frøya or of another place), ignorance of events in the local past, distancing from shared memories and general lack of interest in local history. The middle between these extreme positions marks an ideal type of relating to the local past that I call ‘beginnings’. Representatives of this type are beginning to access local shared communicative and cultural memory whilst maintaining personal and family memories from another place outside Hitra or Frøya.

1.1.

The islands of Hitra and Frøya

The islands of Hitra and Frøya in the region of Trøndelag in Middle Norway are perfect examples of formerly homogeneous small communities that have experienced dramatic changes in a short period of time. The face of the islands has changed from a self-sufficient fisher-farmer community to a growing highly industrialized area in which salmon farming and processing provide for jobs and prosperity. Already during the 19th century, first attempts were made to harvest fish in Norway. However, the pioneering phase of Norwegian aquaculture was between 1945 and 1973. Hitra and Frøya hold a special position in this history, notably in terms of harvesting Atlantic salmon. From a national perspective, the most important contribution to the development of aquaculture was the development of swimming fish tanks by the Grøntvedt brothers from Hitra, which moved production from land to the sea and became characteristic of Norwegian aquaculture. Salmon harvesting commenced simultaneously on Hitra and Frøya, partly in close cooperation between individuals on both islands. To begin with, during the 1960s, fish corrals where small, and often they served as collateral income that locals continued to combine with small-scale farming. Many early fish plants were established close to their owners’ homes and were operated with the help of family members. This meant that people could stay on the islands, draw on their professional expertise as fishermen and continue to earn their income locally. The emergence of aquaculture, hence, was both a continuation of cultural patterns and – as would become clear in retrospect – an industrial revolution affecting all areas of the small local communities. At that time, there were no regulations, nor was aquaculture regu-

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lated through licenses. The industry grew fast, despite setbacks resulting mainly from fish disease and lack of experience. In 1978, the Fiskeoppdretternes Salgslag AL, FOS (Norwegian Fish Farmers Sales Association) was established with the authority to regulate marked prices for salmon in Norway. Nevertheless, during the 1980s it was still uncertain whether all the effort invested in the development of salmon harvesting would pay off. The international market collapsed in the wake of the 1980s financial crisis, and as a consequence, the 1990s were characterized by overproduction and falling prices. Despite all this, many companies survived the crisis without remarkable losses by literally putting fish on ice and selling it later. Concession acts were passed (1999) that led to radical structural changes in the line of business and increased production rates significantly, leading to overproduction once more. Overproduction, in addition to diseases among farmed fish, remains a key challenge for the industry. During the 1990s many of the original small family companies were incorporated into bigger companies that control the whole value chain. Today, Hitra and Frøya stand for a quarter of the overall concession volume of Atlantic salmon in Norway. In his description and analysis of the islands’ development, Reidar Almås drew a picture of a local Frøya community with its back to the wall that, through daring innovation, managed to change the course of its history. In their history of the Hitra municipality, Sivertsen and Sæther similarly describe Hitra proudly as the cradle of “the largest technological revolution in the past century”.6 Today, each of the islands has roughly 5000 inhabitants. In 2000, immigrants presented only 1,9 percent of the population on Hitra and 2.9 percent on Frøya. Until 2007, numbers grew slowly to 3.8 percent on Hitra and 4.0 percent on Frøya respectively. Only three years later, the percentage of immigrants had risen to over 10 percent on each of the islands. At the time the data for this study were collected, in 2013 and 2015, the number of those born in other countries or with parents who were born outside Norway7 grew to 18.5 percent on Hitra and 19.9. percent on Frøya. The trend persisted, in 2019, numbers were 20.75 percent for Hitra and 26.1 for Frøya. In everyday life on Hitra and Frøya, the distinction between newcomers and long-time residents is well established and expressed in the categories of “Hitterværinger” (people of Hitra) and “Frøyværinger” (people of Frøya) on one side and the collective name “Eastern European labour migrants” on the other. 6

7

Sivertsen, Svein Inge, and Svein Bertil Sæther, Endring. Hitra Kommune – 1964-2014 (Hitra: Forlaget Vindfang, 2014), 236. For an overview over the history of Norwegian aquaculture see: Hovland, Edgar, et al. (eds.) Norges fiskeri- og kysthistorie Bind V: Over den leiken ville han rå. Norsk havbruksnæringens historie (Bergen: Fagbokforlaget, 2014). Statistics Norway (Statistisk sentralbyrå) defines immigrants as “persons born abroad of two foreign-born parents and four foreign-born grandparents” (https://www.ssb.no/en/innvbef; retrieved 02 February 2018).

1 Introduction: Local history museums in changing communites

The speed and extent of the ongoing demographic change is quite unique. The islands have changed from homogeneous to multicultural communities within a short period of time, and therefore, old community constellations – and with them ideas about the local past, local history and the role of museums of local history – have not slowly evolved and adapted to the situation, but are challenged by shifting demographics rather abruptly during the period under study. As such, the cases offer a picture rich in contrast of the encounter between well-established, traditional understandings of local history, local museums and the challenges that result from radical and ongoing change.

1.2.

Museum representations of local history on Hitra and Frøya

The Kystmuseet (Coastal Museum of Sør-Trøndelag) is located in Fillan on the island of Hitra. The museum is a member of the museum organization Museene i Sør-Trøndelag (MiST) (Museums in Sør-Trøndelag)8 and a member of the Norges Museumsforbund (Norwegian Museum Association) and hence subject to national and regional museum policy. The subject of the Coastal Museum is coastal culture, the recent past and contemporary documentation, and its motto is “Vi forteller historien”9 (“We tell the story” or “We tell history”). Even though it is a local museum covering the region of Hitra, Frøya and Snillfjord, the museum also bears national responsibility for documentation and the collection of items related to the growth and development of modern Norwegian aquaculture. The museum was given this responsibility by Fiskeriog Havbruksnæringens landsforening, FHL (Norwegian Seafood Federation), Fiskeridirektoratet (Directorate of Fisheries) and Fiskeri- og Kystdepartemententet (Norwegian Ministry of Fisheries and Coastal Affairs).10 The museum is relatively young: it was established in 1981, moved to its current location in 1995 and opened its first exhibition in 1997. The permanent exhibition Folket i Flatvika (The people of Flatvika) opened in 2001, depicting life in the coastal region around 1920 with the help of dioramas staging scenes from everyday family life at Hitra. In 2003, an archaeological exhibition was opened, but closed 13 years later to make space for a new exhibition. The Russian shipwreck about the Russian 8

9

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I base my description of the Coastal museum on Sæther, Svein Bertil, and Lene Strøm, “Kystmuseet i Sør-Trøndelag,” in ‘En smuk fremtid’ Trøndelag Folkemuseum Sverresborg 100 År, edited by Hanna Mellemsether, Elsa Reiersen and Petter I. Søholt (Trondheim: tapir akademisk forlag, 2009), 223-32. In Norwegian, the word ‘historie’ means both ‘story’ and ‘history’. Hence, the slogan can be read as a play with words, stating that the museum tells a story and disseminates history at the same time. The double meaning is lost in the English translation. Sæther and Strøm, “Kystmuseet I Sør-Trøndelag”, 227.

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War ship Jedinorog that shipwrecked at Hitra in 1760 opened in the autumn of 2016. Besides exhibitions the museum has a modern theatre with 106 seats. The room is used for movie screenings and can be used by local volunteer groups for free. The museum also houses shifting art exhibitions in its foyer and contains the tourist information bureau for Hitra and, to a certain extent, Frøya. Besides the museum building itself, the museum also owns an open-air area at Dolm Prestegård (Dolm rectory). Dolm church, built during the 1400s is the only medieval building in the region, on request the Coastal Museum offers guidet tours at Dolm rectory. Every second year, in co-operation with local volunteers, the museum stages the historical play Maren dømt til døden (Maren, sentenced to death), which is popular among local residents. In 2014, the Coastal Museum opened a second location in a new building at the speed-boat terminal in Sandstad. Here, an exhibition on the history of aquaculture is on display. In addition, visitors can join guided group visits to a fish farm. In 2015 the Coastal Museum participated in the EEA-grant project Open Heritage11 with the project Change, which resulted in a co-produced exhibition in Hitra and the Astra museum in Sibiu, Romania. As one part of the project, the development department of MiST and the Coastal Museum of South Trøndelag on Hitra worked together on contemporary documentation and an exhibition project focused on how working immigration has changed the island of Hitra. The perspective given precedence in the exhibition was that of newcomers to the island. The Coastal Museum on Hitra is the cultural history museum for the whole region, and even has a national mandate when it comes to the history of aquaculture. There is no professional museum on Frøya today. This was not always the case: Frøya used to have a collection of buildings, objects, and some archives for clubs and associations (700 holdings in total, including several boats). An exhibition was created and opened to the public in 1998. Titled Frøya gjennom tidene (Frøya over the course of time), the exhibition spanned the time from the earliest settlements on Frøya to the time around 1980. Mainly due to a financial shortfall that resulted from the restructuring of the administrative level responsible for local museums, the museum on Frøya was gradually phased out. Today, the exhibition is languishing in the basement of the town hall in the municipality centre Sistranda.12 The newly established Frøya Kultur- og kompetansesenter (Frøya culture and competency centre), which opened in 2015, and houses among other functions a cinema

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Open Heritage. Increased Public Accessibility to multi-ethnic heritage values in Astra Museum: https://eeagrants.org/project-portal/project/RO12-0001 (retrieved 26 February 2018). For an overview of the history of the museum on Frøya, see: Foss, Johan G., “Museum,” in Frøya Kommune 50 år (1964-2014). Stolt fortid - lys framtid, edited by Hans U. Hammer, Jorun Skarsvåg, Øyvind E. Johansen and Jan Otto Fredagsvik (Hitra: Vindfang AS, 2014) 157-62.

1 Introduction: Local history museums in changing communites

and a library, contains a number of depictions of local history. On screens in the entrance space, visitors to the centre can watch short clips taken from interviews with citizens of the islands sharing personal memories and information about historical events on the island, as well as digital stories about traditional food, lighthouses, nature and names of places or dialects on Frøya.

1.3.

Lines of investigation

Against the background of migration, cultural diversity and the new heterogeneity in formerly homogeneous local communities like Hitra and Frøya, I ask the following overarching questions: What is the idea of the local history museum in today’s diverse communities? Which roles can small museums play in this context? In terms of practice, which methods can smaller museums of local history develop to strengthen their links to their communities again? To answer these questions, I find it necessary to turn to the case and ask a number of subquestions: What are the roles ascribed to the museum by official Norwegian museum policy? Which role does local history play in the lives of the people on Hitra and Frøya? And what are the implications of this for museum practice? The basic assumption that museums need to be aware of the local context they are part of informs my approach. The islands of Hitra and Frøya serve as a case study through which to learn more about the roles of local history and the potential roles of local museums in a given community. I consider shifting demographics, guiding ideas expressed in cultural policies and local residents’ relations to local history and the past to be the most salient factors affecting small museums of local history and of high importance when it comes to rethinking the museum. Within the context of my research, I define ‘small museums of local history’ as those museums that are rooted in a local or regional area and collect, preserve, and communicate predominantly the history of the region or local area. These museums are small in the sense that they are defined by limited economic resources and staff. They are, however, professionally driven as they are members both of the International Council of Museums (ICOM) and are part of the Norwegian museum field organized in the Norsk Museumsforbund (Norwegian Museum Association). As such they are partly state funded. The challenge to museums in this category is hence that they have to respond to a defined programme as expressed in public policy documents, but have to do this with all the limitations the real world entails.13

13

I first pointed out this challenge in the conference paper “Enaging with Members of Migrant Communities through Interviews,” Paper presented at the ICOM 24th general conference Museums and Cultural Landscapes, CECA activities beyond the museum walls. Proceedings, edited by Cinzia Angelini, 2017, 49-53.

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Even though this type of museum represents the most common type of museum in Norway, it is often ignored by museum researchers.14 In line with their larger counterparts, small regional museums need a nuanced theoretical but at the same time empirically grounded understanding of their position, role, and function in the contemporary context of history, heritage, and memory if they are to develop their self-understanding and the ways in which they work in accordance with the shifting terrain they are a part of. For this reason, I will investigate the topic from different angles that complement each other: museum studies, cultural theory and national museum politics form one angle, local residents’ individual relations to the past and local history a second. Through building upon findings from these lines of investigation, I am able to examine the relations that unfold between local history, an increasingly diverse community and the museum. This multiperspectivity comes with the risk of inhibiting depth of analysis in some areas; I acknowledge this and hope this disadvantage is made up for by the variety of perspectives, which lead to innovative ways of looking at small museums of local history. In the first line of investigation, I address the question of the idea of the museum in a rapidly changing community by taking a step back and investigating existing theory. Museum studies literature offers a number of redefinitions of the museum. I will explore four of them (the ‘post-museum’, the museum as ‘contact zone’, the idea of the museum as ‘third space’, and the ‘active museum’) for their relevance for the local history museum in a diverse community. In a second step, I will revisit theory on cultural memory and ask what this theory can tell us about the position of contemporary museums in fast-changing diverse communities. Drawing on theories of collective and cultural memory, I will identify the place of the museum as localized within the sphere of ‘communicative’ or ‘functional memory’. Such a definition of museums of local and regional history emphasizes the recent past and present, constantly ongoing re-negotiations of history and the past, and the (potential) participation of all members of a given community. Moving to the Norwegian context, I study Norwegian museum policy documents, employing the method of close reading to enquire which idea of the museum these documents represent. The rationale behind this choice is that even small museums are part of a national museum field and have to define and fill their role in accordance with national museum politics. Whilst the idea of the ‘social role’ of museums has gained recognition internationally,15 national and local 14

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Gosselin and Livingstone make the same observation for the international context. Gosselin, Viviane, and Phaedra Livingstone, “Introduction: Pespectives on Museums and Historical Consciousness in Canada,” in Museums and the Past. Constructing Historical Consciousness, edited by Viviane Gosselin and Phaedra Livingstone (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2016), 3-17, 4. The ICOM definition of museum can serve as an indication. Since 2007, “in the service of society and its development” marks an important defining moment for museums among mu-

1 Introduction: Local history museums in changing communites

understandings of how to implement such a role remain. The chapter focuses on how the museum’s social role is described in Norway, particularly in Norwegian cultural and museum policy documents. As I will show, the notion of the museum as a ‘dialogue institution’ is central to this context, but remains vague. Adding to the picture, a secondary analysis of museum professionals’ answers to a survey conducted by ICOM Norway and Vest-Agder Museum reveals how Norwegian museum professionals interpret the official demand for museums as dialogue institutions. Taken together, the theoretical deliberations and these analyses offer some first answers to the question of how to rethink small local museums in changing communities. Based on the idea of the local history museum as both an institution linked to communicative memory and an agent in processes of communicative memory, the second line of study is to investigate empirically the role local history plays for longtime residents and newcomers to the islands, and to ask about the idea, functions and practices of the local museum in this context.

1.4.

Research position – theory and practice in museum studies

Although the main focus of this book is a Norwegian case, international literature will be consulted. The project builds on the idea of the socially inclusive and engaged museum16 and is inspired by work carried out by Leicester University: Research Centre for Museums and Galleries on the idea of the museum as a social agent. In the Scandinavian context, similar ideas on museums and heritage are advocated by NCK – Nordisk Centrum för Kulturarvspedagogik (The Nordic Centre of Heritage Learning and Creativity) in Östersund, Sweden.17 In Norway, questions concerning the social role of the museum have played a role in museum politics since the 1990s, and Kulturrådet (Arts Council Norway) established three large projects that addressed the issue by concentrating on different main points. The project BRUDD focused on difficult and marginalized her-

16

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seum professionals internationally. (http://icom.museum/the-vision/museum-definition/ retrieved 10 March 2017). During the Extraordinary General Assembly on 7 Septemer 2019 a new museum definition was discussed, but the vote was postponed and a new Standing Committee on Museum Definition, Prospects and Potentials (MDPP2) was appointed for the term 2020-2022. For the time being, the current definition remains. Sandell, Richard, Museums, Society, Inequality (London: Routledge, 2002). More recently: Sandell, Richard, and Eithne Nightingale, Museums, Equality and Social Justice (London, Oxon: Routledge, 2012). The Nordic Centre of Heritage Learning and Creativity AB (Nordisk Centrum för Kulturarvspedagogikk NCK); http://nckultur.org/english/ (retrieved 2 February 2018).

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itage and history.18 In the social role program (samfunnsrolleprogrammet), museum projects were undertaken during the period 2015-2017 (2018). In 2018, a new program has been initiated, dedicated to museum development projects addressing museums’ social role and issues of power and responsibility.19 The social role of the museum was addressed in the annual professionals’ development course Det relevante museum (The relevant museum) 2013-2016, a collaboration between Arts Council Norway and Museum Association Norway. Recently, ICOM Norway published a collection of articles on the issue. Furthermore, a website Museumogsamfunn20 (museumandsociety, previously museumsetikk (museumethics)) collects Norwegian projects and publications on the topic. Academic literature on the subject continues to be scarce in Norway, and Kathrin Pabst’s Museumsetikk i praksis (2016) and Bettum, Anders, Kaisa Maliniemi, and Thomas Michael Walle (eds.) Et inkluderende museum. Kulturelt mangfold i praksis stand out.21 The present study contributes to the Norwegian discussion on the social role of the museum; in addition, it is indebted to the ongoing international discourse on ‘new museum ethics’. The idea of ‘new museum ethics’ is based upon the conviction that museums have moral agency22 and thus can and should contribute to a more just society. ‘New museum ethics’ do not represent a professional code of ethics, but are a widerreaching “dynamic social practice”.23 Janet Marstine has identified three strands

18

19 20 21 22

23

ABM utvikling, Brudd: Om Det Ubehagelige, Tabubelagte, Marginale, Usynlige, Kontroversielle. Abm-Skrift 26 (Oslo: ABM-utvikling, 2006); Ramskjær, Liv, “Break! On the Unpleasant, the Marginal, the Taboos, and the Invisible or Controversial in Norwegian Museum Exhibitions,” Open Arts Journal 3 (2014). http://www.kulturradet.no/museum/museumsprogrammene/vis-program/-/faktamuseumsprogram-samfunnsrolle-2018-2020 (retrieved 14 March 2018). http://museumogsamfunn.no/index.php/front-page-in-english/ (retrieved 14 March 2018). Bettum, Anders, Kaisa Maliniemi, and Thomas Michael Walle (eds.), Et inkluderende Museum. Kulturelt Mangfold i Praksis (Trondheim: Museumsforlaget 2018). Hilde Hein argues that museums have an ‘institutional morality’ and ‘moral agency’ and hence have both capacity and responsibility to contribute to social change. Hein, Hilde, The Museum in Transition: A Philosophical Perspective (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2000), 102/103. More recently, Richard Sandell and Jocelyn Dodd have argued for a view of museums as sites of ‘moral activism’. Sandell, Richard, and Jocelyn Dodd, “Activist Practice,” in Re-Presenting Disability: Activism and Agency in the Museum, edited by Richard Sandell, Jocelyn Dodd and Rosemarie Garland-Thomson (London and New York: Routledge, 2010). Sandell has further studied the museum within a human rights framework in Sandell, Richard, “Museums and the Human Rights Frame,” in Museums, Equality and Social Justice, edited by Richard Sandell and Eithne Nightingale (London and New York: Routledge, 2012) and Sandell, Richard. Museums, Moralities and Human Rights (London and New York: Routledge, 2017). Marstine, Janet, “The Contingent Nature of New Museum Ethics,” in The Routledge Companion to Museum Ethics. Redefining Museum Ethics for the Twenty-First Century Museum, edited by Janet Marstine (London and New York: Routledge, 2011), 20.

1 Introduction: Local history museums in changing communites

in which ‘new museum ethics’ are practiced: ‘social responsibility’, ‘radical transparency’ and ‘ethics of guardianship’. Social responsibility relies on the attempt to develop museum practice that allows for more democratic participation and a sharing of authority and power. Radical transparency is best understood as a way of communicating with audiences that is “declarative” and “self-reflexive” as opposed to authority based.24 Finally, ‘ethics of guardianship’ are particularly relevant. Marstine describes them as “a means towards respecting the dynamic, experiential and contingent quality of heritage and towards sharing in new ways the rights and responsibilities to this heritage.”25 Considering the local museum as an institution commissioned with the task of (safe)guarding local history, the questions raised in my research are at their heart questions of ‘ethics of guardianship’ within the broader discussion of ‘new museum ethics’. In addition to museum studies, I also draw on theory from disciplines that are not primarily concerned with museums. I do so to establish a research position that enables me to interrogate and extend museological perspectives. The theoretical approach is only a first step as my research interest lies in the intersection between theory and practice: what happens when theory informs and is transformed into practice in a real-world museum setting? And vice versa, how does theory help us to understand the practices unfolding in real-world museum settings? In this endeavour, I follow Rhiannon Mason, who argues that when it comes to museum studies, research that is grounded in both theory and practice is “best suited to the complexity of museums as cultural phenomena.”26 Mason continues: “recognition of the importance of research to practice and vice versa will only enrich both academics’ and practitioners’ understanding of museums”.27 Similar thoughts have been expressed by Sharon Macdonald, who calls for expanded museum studies which “reconnect the critical study of the museum with some of those ‘how to’ concerns that the ‘new museology’ saw itself as having superseded.”28 While the breadth of the argument makes it difficult to disagree with, translating it into an understanding of the interrelatedness of theory and practice in particular research projects – and, based on such, a research design – is more problematic. I chose a problem-oriented approach, and selected theory and research methods that effectively explained the phenomenon under study.

24 25 26 27 28

Ibid., 15. Ibid., 17. Mason, Rhiannon, “Cultural Theory and Museum Studies,” in A Companion to Museum Studies, edited by Sharon Macdonald (Malden, Mass: Wiley-Blackwell, 2006), 29. Ibid., 30. Macdonald, Sharon, “Expanding Museum Studies: An Introduction,” in A Companion to Museum Studies, edited by Sharon Macdonald (Malden, MA and Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2006), 8.

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The term ‘museum practice’ requires further clarification. In the present research, it refers to a comparatively broad understanding of practice. Thus museum practice does not refer to an established working method formally described for certain museum professions; instead, the understanding of museum practice underpinning the research at hand is, in Conal McCarthy’s words, that of “a messy process of modeling, planning, failures, compromises and solutions […]”29 . Museum practice is also the perspective that guides the last part of the research, where I focus on the things people – that is museum employees and members of the local community – do. Brita Brenna argues the benefit of such a processual perspective, writing: “Criticism is often about analysis of finished products, seen from the outside and afterwards. A process-perspective can, in its best moments at least, seize the particular and the complex in more interesting and more pursuable ways.”30 I apply a process-perspective after having conducted a theoretical and empirical investigation of the broader context. Findings from my investigation of the theoretical place of local museums in shifting communities and results from studying the historical consciousness of residents of Hitra and Frøya can be reconciled and offer a new lens through which to examine the well-established museum practice of interviews during contemporary documentation.

1.5.

Outline of chapters

On the most basic level this book is organized into three parts. After the introduction, the first part (chapter 2 and 3) is about rethinking the small local history museum on a theoretical level, the second part (chapter 4 and 5) comprises an empirical study and the third part (chapter 6) presents results from an experiment in museum practice. The book ends with a conclusion that combines threads from all parts. After the introductory chapter, chapter 2 aims at developing a theoretically inspired understanding of the particular place filled by small museums of regional and local history in the context of rapidly changing local communities. Questions

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McCarthy, Conal, “Introduction. Grounding Museum Studies: Introducing Practice,” in Museum Practice, edited by Ibid., The International Handbooks of Museum Studies (Malden, MA and Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2015), xlvi. All translations from Norwegian, Danish, Swedish and German are made by the author, unless otherwise noted. Quotes in the original language are presented in footnootes. “Kritikk handler ofte om analyse av ferdige produkter, sett utenfra og i ettertid. Prosessperspektiver kan, i alle fall i sine beste stunder, gripe det partikulære og det komplekse på mer interessante og handlingsrettede måter.” Brenna, Brita, “Gjort er gjort. Universitetsmuseene post factum,” in Universitetsmuseenes gjøren. Museologi på norsk, edited by Marita Maurstad and Anne Marit Hauan (Trondheim: Akademika forlag, 2012), 233.

1 Introduction: Local history museums in changing communites

of what characterizes museums and their relations to surrounding society in general or communities in particular have occupied museum researchers for a number of years and have increasingly affected established museums since the 1990s, especially following the breakthrough of ‘new museology’. I explore different contemporary positions on the idea of the museum, namely the ‘post-museum’, the museum as ‘contact zone’, the idea of the museum as a ‘third space’, and the ‘active museum’, to enrich the understanding of the institution in the present context. While the chapter does not offer a general discussion, even less a comparison of all notions, its perspective enquires into what these concepts have to offer for small local history museums in shifting communities. In addition, the chapter provides a short overview of the way that different ideas of what constitutes museum communities have evolved and shaped the understanding of the relations between museums and communities. The chapter also presents the definition of community that guides the research at hand, that is community as “an open-ended system of communication about belonging”.31 The chapter concludes by turning to memory studies. Here, I ask what the place of a museum of local history is in the sphere of cultural memory. I will argue that conceptualizing the museum as part of ‘communicative’ or ‘functional memory’ as elaborated by Jan and Aleida Assmann respectively calls attention to how the functions and roles of small museums change in order to adapt to constantly changing communities. The chapter ends with a presentation of what I identify as the implications that such a re-definition has for museum practice. The third chapter starts by outlining the historical background in which ideas about museums have evolved in Norway. Based on the assumption that rethinking an institution demands an awareness of the emergence and development of the same institution, the chapter focuses on how the idea of the Scandinavian folk museum has shaped – and still shapes – peoples’ expectations towards small local museums of cultural history. While these expectations rely on conformity between who is represented and who visits the museum, this relation no longer corresponds to today’s multicultural communities. The second point of interest in this chapter is local history in Norway. I make the point that local history has a strong standing and high level of academic recognition in Norway. Nevertheless, it is tied to the aim of identity stabilization and has a blind spot concerning the recent past. Both traits have contributed to local history’s difficulties in acknowledging diverse communities. The real-world context museums act within is defined by a number of fields. One of them is cultural and museum politics. Even smaller museums are part of the Norwegian museum landscape and respond to current cultural politics, which

31

Delanty, Gerard, Community, Key Ideas (London: Routledge, 2003), 187.

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assign a ‘social role’ to museums. State and public institutions call upon museums to play an active role in public life and contribute positively to social justice as well as address social needs. Worldwide museums are ascribed important roles in terms of social inclusion32 and intercultural learning and dialogue.33 In Norway, these demands are summarized in the idea of ‘the social role’ of the museum often presented as the idea of museums as ‘dialogue institutions’. The original official document introducing the notion of the museum as dialogue institution states: “The idea of the museum as dialogue institution incorporates something basic to museums as institutions. They are actors on behalf of and for the benefit of society.”34 Chapter 3 offers a close reading of Norwegian policy documents for the purpose of gaining a better understanding of which idea of the museum institution is expressed in national museum politics. The notion of the ‘dialogue institution’ is central to this understanding and will therefore be scrutinized in detail. Theory from museum studies and cultural studies offers renewed conceptual understandings of the position of museums in dynamic diverse communities. However, in order to render these deliberations applicable to and useful for the real-world case at hand, a better understanding of how members of the community relate to their local museums’ subject matters – that is, the local past and cultural heritage without the intervention of the museum – is necessary. The fourth chapter therefore introduces the theory of historical consciousness, which will serve as the theoretical background for the interview study presenting my original research in chapter five. Qualitative interviews with local residents in Hitra and Frøya reveal which roles the past, (local) history and museums play in the lives of individuals, both longterm residents and newcomers to the area. Insight into different types of relation to local history offers museums a more appropriate understanding of community members’ dispositions concerning the museum’s subject matter than predefined categories reliant on national, social or other parameters. I therefore develop a model of three types of historical consciousness to systematize my findings and to further illustrate differences between various ways of relating to local history.

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Sandell, Richard, “Museums as Agents of Social Inclusion,” Museum Management and Curatorship 17, no. 4 (1998); Sandell, Richard, “Museums and the Combating of Social Inequality. Roles, Responsibilities, Resistance,” in Museums, Society, Inequality edited by Richard Sandell (London: Routledge, 2002); Sandell, Richard, “Social Inclusion, the Museum and the Dynamics of Sectoral Change,” Museum and Society 1, no. 1 (2003). Bodo, Simona, Kirsten Gibbs, and Margherita Sani, eds., Museums as Places for Intercultural Dialogue: Selected Practices from Europe (MAP for ID, 2009); Bodo, Simona, “Museums as Intercultural Spaces,” in Museums, Equality and Social Justice, edited by Richard Sandell and Eithne Nightingale (London and New York: Routledge, 2012). Norwegian Official Report (1996: 7) Museum. Diversity, Memory, Meeting Place, Oslo: Ministry of Culture, 40. (Italics in original).

1 Introduction: Local history museums in changing communites

Having gained a more nuanced understanding of the complex relations between residents and local history, I turn to the museum and ask what informants say about museums, what their experiences, attitudes, ideas and wishes concerning museums are. The final section of the chapter combines findings from the interview analysis and suggests implications for small local history museums in dynamic communities. In my presentation of findings, I devote much space to original quotes from the interviews; this is a deliberate choice that stems from my goal to give a voice to those individuals who have seldom been heard within the museum studies conversation about the contents, purposes and roles of museums. Based on the findings from the previous chapters, chapter 6 turns to real-world museum practice. Here, I present my analysis of an experimental approach to conducting interviews for the purpose of contemporary documentation. Building on my analysis of the interviews with labour immigrants that were conducted as part of the Change project, I argue that if slight modifications are made to how museum professionals conduct interviews for documentation purposes, these encounters can allow communication about local history to take place. As a consequence, interviews have potential to facilitate communication about history, identity and belonging in line with the theoretical idea of the museum as a place and actor in communicative memory.

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Rethinking the local history museum

2. Inspiration from museum and memory studies

2.1.

Ideas of the museum

In museum studies, theoretical deliberations on the question “what is a museum?”1 have attracted increased interest since the mid-1980s in the wake of ‘new museology’.2 Peter Vergo’s (1989) anthology The New Museology3 proclaimed a change in perspective from a preoccupation with methods to an increased focus on the purposes of museums and the relations between museums and society. Sharon Macdonald identifies three key aspects of the paradigmatic shift that ‘new museology’ set in motion: the first is the acknowledgement of setting and context as defining the meaning that museum objects and exhibitions convey; the second is that ‘mundane’ issues such as marketing or entertainment become the subject of scholarly interest; and last but not least, ‘new museology’ is highly interested in visitors.4 Stephen Weil followed the same line of thought when he famously coined the phrase that

1

2

3 4

Besides the ICOM definition of the museum, Joachim Baur offers an illuminating approach to understanding the wide range of different institutions. He does this by highlighting a number of contradictory positions (very big or very small museums, museums can be based on scientific disciplines or specific themes, they can be local, regional or national, museums can have universal aspirations or be dedicated to very specific narrow subject matters, museums can be in private or public ownership, etc.) Baur, Joachim, “Was ist ein Museum? Zur Umkreisung eines widerspenstigen Gegenstandes,” in Museumsanalyse. Methoden und Konturen eines neuen Forschungsfeldes, edited by Joachim Baur (Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2010). Alternative discussions of ‘new museology’ are possible. For instance, Kerstin Smeds identifies three waves of ‘new museology’. The first wave of ‘new museology’ is represented by the works of Georg Henri Rivière (1897–1985) who brought museums’ role in public education to the fore. A second wave of ‘new museology’ gained ground in Eastern Europe and France during the 1970s and formed part of a broader discussion of the position and roles of heritage in local communities and society in general. Eco-museum thought finds its forerunner in this context. Finally, for Smeds, the strand of ‘new museology’ developed in the wake of Vergo’s publication represents a third version of the ‘new museology’. Smeds, Kerstin, “Vad Är Museologi?” RIG Kulturhistorisk tidsskrift 90, no. 2 (2007). Vergo, Peter, The New Museology (London: Reaktion Books, 1989). Macdonald, “Expanding Museum Studies,” 2.

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museums and museum studies went “[f]rom being about something to being for somebody”.5 New Museology has been interpreted in several different ways.6 Peter Davis, for instance, stresses the parallels between societal concerns, sustainability and environmentalism that demanded that museums be “more responsive to the needs of society and required that they step beyond a comfort zone demarcated by buildings, collections and scholarship.”7 Davis develops this idea further into the idea of the eco-museum8 that can take the form of a “building, a musealized landscape, or simply a mechanism for change” and is always preoccupied with empowerment and local responsibility for local heritage. The eco-museum represents just one new way of thinking about museums. Rhiannon Mason considers the most important change in perspective brought about by ‘new museology’ to be an awareness of the “political nature of museums [that has] led to increased attention to questions about the relationship between government, museums, and cultural policy.”9 All these aspects touch upon important issues as they relate to the question of how the museum relates to its community. In museum studies, reconsiderations of what characterizes the institution with a focus on how museums relate to their surroundings and contexts have taken place under a number of different names. Below, I will discuss four influential ideas about museums and their relations to context and communities. The overall aim is to identify features that respond to the situation of museums in rapidly changing local communities such as those found in Hitra and Frøya, and that offer answers to the question of to how to reimagine small museums of local and regional history in such diverse and fast-changing communities.

2.1.1.

The ‘post-museum’

Eilean Hooper-Greenhill’s seminal notion of the ‘post-museum’, first presented in 2000, followed the ideas of the ‘new museology’ and brought about a significant shift in focus from collections and objects towards audiences. With the ‘post-museum’ as a contrast to the ‘modern museum’ of the 19th and 20th century, HooperGreenhill moves away from museum communication as knowledge transmission

5 6 7 8 9

Weil, Stephen E., “From Being About Something to Being for Somebody: The Ongoing Transformation of the American Museum,” Daedalus 128, no. 3 (1999). For an overview of the main strands of research since the breakthrough of ‘new museology’, see: Macdonald, “Expanding Museum Studies”. Davis, Peter, Ecomuseums: A Sense of Place, 2nd ed. (London: Continuum, 2011), 9. Davis acknowledges the central role played by the main proponents of eco-museum thought in France, Hugues de Varine and Georges Henri Riviére. Mason, “Cultural Theory and Museum Studies”, 23.

2 Inspiration from museum and memory studies

and grounds her concept of a ‘post-museum’ on a constructivist perspective of culture and learning. Such a perspective demands that museums break down institutional walls, consider themselves an experience rather than buildings with objects and artefacts, and engage actively with their diverse audiences.10 The concept of the ‘post-museum’, according to Hooper-Greenhill, considers museums to constitute “a form of cultural politics”. She continues that “museum workers can bring together the concepts of narrative, difference, identity and interpretive strategies in such a way as to create strategies for negotiating these practices. In the post-museum, multiple subjectivities and identities can exist as part of a cultural practice that provides the potential to expand the politics of democratic community and solidarity. By being able to listen critically, museum workers can become border-crossers by making different narratives available, by bridging between disciplines, by working in the liminal spaces that modernist museum practices have produced.”11 In Hooper-Greenhill’s idea of the ‘post-museum’, education is integrated into all modes of museum practice. In the learning processes unfolding in the ‘post-museum’, the knowledge of the specialist (that is, the curator) remains significant, but the everyday experiences and expertise of visitors are considered equally important.12 Learning goes both ways. Furthermore, in the ‘post-museum’ the emotions and imaginations of visitors are considered to constitute relevant knowledge.13 While the notion of the ‘post-museum’ arguably provides further nuances to the museum institution, e.g. questions of identity, interpretative strategies, and consideration of emotions and imagination, the ‘post-museum’ remains general and abstract; in fact, Hooper-Greenhill has been criticized for giving little indication of how the post-museum would actually look in the real world.14 Neither does

10

11 12 13 14

Janet Marstine points to the “changing nature of the relationships between institution and audience” as the “most significant indicator of the rise of the post-museum.” Marstine, Janet, “Introduction,” in New Museum Theory and Practice: An Introduction, edited by Janet Marstine (Malden, MA and Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006). See especially page 19 for Marstine’s accentuated representation of what she considers the most significant characteristics of the post-museum are: to share power, regard visitors as active, get to know its constituencies, encourage groups from outside the museum to participate in museum discourse, take responsibility, dare to engage with difficult issues, in sum presenting a “site from which to redress social inequalities.” Hooper-Greenhill, Eilean, Museums and the Interpretation of Visual Culture (London: Routledge, 2000), 140. Ibid., 142/143. Ibid., 143. Marilena Alivizatou criticizes the ‘post-museum’ as “poorly-defined” and “under-analysed” in terms of actual museum practice. Alivizatou, Marilena, “Museums and Intangible Heritage: The Dynamics of an 'Unconventional' Relationship,” Papers from the Institute of Archaeology 17

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the notion of the ‘post-museum’ explicitly address issues of cultural diversity. By contrast, questions of how museums can engage with members of different cultural communities stand at the centre of James Clifford’s notion of the museum as a ‘contact zone’.

2.1.2.

The museum as ‘contact zone’

The idea of a ‘contact zone’ was originally developed by the literature and linguistics researcher Mary Louise Pratt to describe colonial conditions.15 Pratt describes those as characterized by: “[...] the spatial and temporal copresence of subjects previously separated by geographic and historical disjunctures, and whose trajectories now intersect. By using the term ‘contact’ I aim to foreground the interactive, improvisational dimensions of colonial encounters so easily ignored or suppressed by diffusionist accounts of conquest and domination. A ‘contact’ perspective emphasizes how subjects are constituted in and by their relations to each other. [It stresses] copresence, interaction, interlocking understandings and practices, often within radically asymmetrical relations of power.”16 Anthropologist James Clifford transferred this concept to the museum, promoting an idea of the museum as a ‘contact zone’ – a space of encounters between different communities, stakeholders, cultures and the museum itself.17 Those whose culture is collected and represented in the museum are then part of the dynamics of collecting, researching and representing. In his own words, Clifford describes the museum as contact zone as a processual relationship: “When museums are seen as contact zones, their organizing structure as a collection becomes an ongoing historical, political, moral relationship – a power-charged set of exchanges, of push and pull.”18

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17 18

(2009). While such criticism is seemingly justified when limited to Hooper-Greenhill’s 2000 introduction of the notion, a number of museum projects inspired by the concept of the postmuseum have been conducted over the last 17 years and are discussed in museum literature. For a recent example that discusses a “flourishing post-museum“, see: Smith, Carly, “PostModernising the Museum: The Ration Shed Museum,” Historical encounters 1, no. 1 (2014). Pratt, Mary Louise, “Arts of the Contact Zone,” in Profession (1991), 34: “I use this term to refer to social spaces where cultures meet, clash and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power, such as colonialism, slavery, or their aftermath as they are lived out in many parts of the world today.” Pratt, Mary Louise, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (London: Routledge, 1992). Quoted in Clifford, James, Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1997), 192. Ibid., 188-219. Ibid., 192.

2 Inspiration from museum and memory studies

The notion of the museum as ‘contact zone’ has been widely received in museum studies, inspiring museological debate19 and practice.20 How the ‘contact zone’ unfolds in real-world museum practice forms the topic of Laura Peers and Alison K. Brown’s edited volume Museums and Source Communities, in which they suggest looking at museum objects as the centre of ‘contact zones’. “Artifacts”, Peers and Brown write, “function as ‘contact zones’ – as sources of knowledge and as catalysts for new relationships – both within and between these communities.”21 When museums act as ‘contact zones’, they invite the source community22 to work with collections and objects belonging to the group. While there are many benefits to this kind of museum work, such practices have also been criticized on various sides for maintaining asymmetrical relations and keeping the museum at the centre.23 Robin Boast hence observes: “Thus, always, is the contact zone an asymmetric space where the periphery comes to win some small, momentary, and strategic advantage, but where the centre ultimately gains.”24 In his original concept, Clifford, on the other hand, develops an understanding in which the museum does not stand in opposition to a community, but, as Andrea Witcomb explains, is itself conceptualized as a community with inherent values and conventions that are challenged and renegotiated in ‘contact zone’ encounters.25 Rhiannon Mason builds further on Witcomb’s interpretation of Clifford’s work and comes to an understanding of the museum as a “much more flexible and expansive way of describing a whole range of relations and activities which surround the valuation, collection, and display of cultures and histories.”26 I agree with Witcomb, who considers the strength

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20 21 22 23 24 25 26

Tony Bennett takes a critical stance towards the reformatory potential of the museum as ‘contact zone’ and tends to regard it as belonging to a governmentalist framing; nevertheless, he considers it possible for the museum to be reformed by other means. Bennett, Tony, “Exhibition, Difference, and the Logic of Culture,” in Museum Frictions. Public Cultures/Global Transformations, edited by Ivan Karp, Corinne A. Kratz, Lynn Szwaja, Tomás Ybarro-Frausto and Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett with Gustavo Buntinx, Ciraj Rassool (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2006). For a Norwegian example see: Johansen, Eva D., “Gjenstander og meninger i det post-koloniale museet. Kontaktsoner og autoetnografi,” Nordisk Museologi, no. 2 (2012). Brown, Alison K., and Laura Peers, “Introduction,” in Museums and Source Communities, edited by Alison K. Brown and Laura Peers (London: Routledge, 2003), 1. Source communities are “the communities from which museum collections originate”. Brown, Alison K., and Laura Peers, “Introduction,” 1. Boast, Robin, “Neocolonial Collaboration: Museum as Contact Zone Revisited,” Museum Anthropology 34, no. 1 (2011). Ibid., 66. Witcomb, Andrea, Re-Imagining the Museum: Beyond the Mausoleum (London: Routledge, 2003), 91. Mason, “Cultural Theory and Museum Studies,” 25.

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of Clifford’s ‘contact zone’ to be the recognition of different experiences of culture and history associated with the diversity of the community.27 Clifford asks: “What would be different if major regional and national museums loosened their sense of centrality and saw themselves as specific places of transit, intercultural borders, contexts of struggle and communication between discrepant communities? What does it mean to work within these entanglements rather than striving to transcend them?”28 This goes straight to the heart of the question of the room to manoeuvre and the methods small museums of local and regional history have and can apply in diverse communities such as Frøya or Hitra. Taken together, Clifford, Witcomb and Mason argue for an understanding of the museum as a ‘contact zone’ that is a space for manifold exchange and negotiations of history, identity, culture and cultural heritage in which the museum acts as a community and thus as an equal partner in the communicative processes that unfold. In my opinion, there is no reason why the experience of the museum as ‘contact zone’ should be limited to different indigenous groups or diaspora communities only; inter-generational engagement or the engagement between members of different hobby groups in a museum could just as well constitute a ‘contact zone’. The facilitation of a ‘contact zone’ does not depend on the objects of a source community either, but could equally centre on the everyday objects or the local history of a community. Despite its broad reception within museum theory and practice, even today a need remains for empirical studies scrutinizing what actually happens in realworld museums that act as ‘contact zones’, and even less is known about what the encounter looks like through participants’ eyes. This observation motivated Philipp Schorch to direct his attention to museum visitors’ experiences of the ‘contact zone’ in an attempt to, as he writes, “humanize” the concept.29

2.1.3.

The Museum as ‘third space’

According to Schorch, in the museum as ‘contact zone’, meaning is negotiated between different actors and across cultural divides in a ‘third space’. For Schorch, the ‘contact zone’ represents a physical encounter, which leads him to further distinguish this physical encounter from what he (referring to Bhabha) calls a dialogic ‘third space’ in which meaning is established.30 Schorch’s analysis of visitors to 27 28 29 30

Witcomb, Re-Imagining the Museum: Beyond the Mausoleum, 88-91. Clifford, Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century, 213. Schorch, Philipp, “Contact Zones, Third Spaces, and the Act of Interpretation,” Museum and Society 11, no. 1 (2013), 68. Bhabha, Homi K., The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994).

2 Inspiration from museum and memory studies

the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa (Te Papa) shows that meaning making moves from “bicultural meanings to cross-cultural dialogue” and finally leads to a “pluralist cosmopolitan space” in which national or limited cultural backgrounds recede, while visitors have a ‘cosmopolitanized’ museum experience. Schorch’s argument that the museum as ‘contact zone’ simultaneously opens up ‘third spaces’, thus helping to overcome limitations that go along with the idea of biculturality, is central to my research. In the case of everyday life on Frøya and Hitra, the distinction between newcomers and long-time residents as “Frøyværinger” or “Hitterværinger” on one side and “Eastern European labour migrants” on the other is well established. The local museum of history is traditionally expected to be part of and represent the dominant majority culture, in this case that of Hitra or Frøya’s coastal culture and history. The idea of the local history museum as a place that opens a ‘third space’ as a space in which new meanings are established offers a conceptual new understanding of the role that the museum can take on in such a context. Instead of ‘speaking on behalf of’ and representing local history from the speaking position of an insider and representative of majority culture, museums that actively facilitate communication across existing binaries of long-time residents and newcomers allow for ‘third spaces’ to open up and make possible new, more diverse, perspectives on local history and culture as well as new group designations based on shared new meanings established in ‘third spaces’. Ideas concerning the relations between museums and their communities have been discussed in museum studies for several decades, and I will come back to the shifting focuses and understandings of museums’ communities below. The next section presents the idea of the active museum as a museum closely connected to its surrounding community.

2.1.4.

The ‘active museum’

Elizabeth Crooke provides a nuanced account of the ways in which “concern with community”31 has transformed the idea of the museum. She does this by interrogating the phenomenon from three perspectives. First, “the idea of the museum as a symbol of community; second, the connections between museums and community policy; and third, the use of museums for community action”.32 Drawing on new museum ethics that incorporate a shift towards the significance of ideas such as equality, diversity, and human rights in the museum and that emphasize

31

32

Crooke, Elizabeth, “The 'Active Museum'. How Concern with Community Transformed the Museum,” in Museum Practice, edited by Conal McCarthy. The International Handbooks of Museum Studies (Malden, MA and Oxford: John Wiley & Sons, 2015). Ibid., 482.

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the museum’s social role, Crooke calls for an ‘active museum’. According to Crooke, an ‘active museum’ “is revealed as an active participant. The museum is not passive; rather, it is an active agent that has been equipped with the authority to effect change.”33 The notion of the museum as an ‘active museum’ presents a particularly relevant view on the institution for the case at hand, not least because, according to Crooke, the active museum earns significance when “place and people are recognized via the inclusion of stories, histories, artefacts, and engagement.”34 It is the ability to recognize diverse understandings of the local past and history that makes the notion of the ‘active museum’ relevant for the present case.   The concepts of the ‘post-museum’, ‘contact zone’, ‘third space’, and finally the ‘active museum’ outline how museums adjust to changing contexts and establish new understandings of their relations to individuals and groups outside the museum. The redefinitions of the museum institution outlined above offer a number of significant changes in perspective, most notably the view on ‘audiences’ as active agents and an awareness of the two-way character of the communicative relationship between museum and visitors with transformative potential on both sides. In addition, the idea of the museum as ‘contact zone’ established the museum as a place in which representatives of different cultures meet, and the idea of a ‘third space’ established that communication can exceed given binaries. What remains unaccounted for, however, is the notion of community itself. Given my interest in how a museum of local history can be relevant for its local community, the term community requires further attention. For this reason, the aim of the following section is to develop an understanding of community appropriate for the research at hand.

2.2.

Museums and communities

Relationships between museums and their public – their audiences, visitors, users or communities – are the result of a long line of development. The same applies for museum studies’ perspectives on these relations, different denominations (public, audience, visitors, etc.) represent varying understandings of the relations between museums and people in general. From the 1980s onwards, theory from the social and cultural sciences was increasingly incorporated into the study of museums. Kylie Message and Andrea Witcomb differentiate between three phases in the development of museum theory. According to Message and Witcomb, during the first phase of museum studies, 33 34

Ibid., 496. Ibid., 497.

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special attention was paid to the emergence of the modern public museum during the second half of the 19th century. Theory “affiliated with history, art history, sociology, cultural studies, and Foucauldian cultural theory, addressed the process of nation building that had motivated the development of mid-nineteenth-century public museums.”35 In this context, the work of Tony Bennett is seminal, in particular his The Birth of the Museum (1995), in which he places the emergence of the public museum in the context of the state’s growing awareness and use of culture for the purpose of exercising power and forms of governance. Taking a slightly different perspective, Eilean Hooper-Greenhill highlights the role museums have played for the imagination and implementation of the nation state. These early studies on museums’ relations to the public highlighted that the public was understood as an audience, as a group of passive receivers of the ideologies the museum transmitted.36 ‘New Museology’ constitutes a reaction to such criticism and a second phase of research in museum studies. Message and Witcomb underline the desire to “counteract or challenge the image of museums as governmental apparatuses”,37 thus emphasizing a movement from academic critique towards researchers’ increasing efforts to change both museums’ positions in society as well as museum practice. Criticism of the way that museums see communities – that is, as audiences – has led museum studies to critically interrogate the relations between museums and communities. Karp, Kreamer and Lavin’s Museums and Communities: The Politics of Public Culture constitutes a landmark in the discussion of museums’ relations to communities.38 In this volume, contributions not only reveal the political nature of museums; the book’s numerous examples from museum practice illustrate that communities are better understood as ‘active agents’ with whom museums co-operate in processes of meaning making. Ivan Karp articulates the change in perspective clearly: “The best way to think about the changing relations between museums

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Message, Kylie and Andrea Witcomb, “Introduction: Museum Theory. An Expanded Field,” in Museum Theory, edited by Kylie Message and Andrea Witcomb, The International Handbook of Museum Studies (Malden, MA and Oxford: John Wiley & Sons, 2015). Bennett, Tony, The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics (London and New York: Routledge, 1995. Also Hooper-Greenhill, Museums and the Interpretation of Visual Culture, 28. With reference to the National Portrait Gallery, London, Hooper-Greenhill explains the success of museums in picturing and legitimizing the nation and to “construct its past” as follows: “It [the museum, author’s remark] achieved this, in part, through the depiction of an ‘imagined community’, a community that drew its constituents from the past (those who were to be viewed), and from a present (those who were to be the viewers).” Message and Witcomb, “Introduction. Museum Theory. An Expanded Field,” xxxvii. Karp, Ivan, Christine Mullen Kreamer, and Steven D. Lavine, eds. Museums and Communities: The Politics of Public Culture (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992).

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and communities it to think about how the audience [italic in orig.], a passive entity, becomes the community [italic in orig.], an active agent.”39 Especially in museums of anthropology and ethnology, the term ‘communities’ predominantly refers to groups from minority cultures. In participatory projects collaborating with museums, these groups are often called ‘source communities’, denominating the group from which objects in a collection originate. In the 2003 publication Museums and Source Communities, volume editors Laura Peers and Alison K. Brown gathered a selection of international case studies. The book presents many new models of curatorial practice associated with power sharing and inclusivity. Peers and Brown’s volume has inspired much work on museums and communities; however, the focus only on source communities limits the transferability of findings and discussions to the case of Hitra and Frøya. Since my focus is on the people who constitute the present-day local community, the notion of the ‘source community’ is not really appropriate to my research. Further, the phenomenon under study demands a shift in perspective from collections and objects towards the group of living individuals that constitute a community. The notion of the ‘source community’ not only limits the understanding of community; Modest and Mears in fact criticize the idea of source community as one that upholds “fixed cultural markers for historically unchanging, visibly ‘different’ homogeneous groups”.40 Another influential work on the changing relationships between anthropological museums and source communities is Christina F. Kreps’ 2003 Liberating Culture: Cross-cultural Perspectives on Museums, Curation, and Heritage Preservation. By means of a comparative analysis of Western anthropology museums and non-Western (in particular Indonesian) museums, Kreps demonstrates how curating practices are social practices that not only are defined by relationships between people and objects, but also are embedded into wider social and cultural contexts.41 While the research at hand neither shares the focus on anthropology museums nor looks at source communities or indigenous communities, Kreps’ understanding of curatorial practices as situated in certain cultural, social – and, we can add, historical – contexts has made a highly relevant contribution to the research at hand. Kreps further advocates cross-cultural approaches to curation, which according to her “are inherently about sharing curatorial authority and power, and mak39

40

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Karp, Ivan, “Introduction: Museums and Communities: The Politics of Public Culture,” in Museums and Communities. The Politics of Public Culture, edited by Ivan Karp, Christine Mullen Kreamer and Steven D. Lavine (Washington and London: Smithonian Institution Press, 1992), 12. Mears, Helen, and Wayne Modest, “Museums, African Collections and Social Justice,” in Museums, Equality and Social Justice, edited by Richard Sandell and Eithne Nightingale (London and New York: Routledge, 2012), 300. Kreps develops this argument in more depth in Kreps, Christina, “Curatorship as Social Practice,” Curator: The Museum Journal 46, no. 3 (2003).

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ing room for the inclusion of multiple forms of knowledge and expertise.”42 Kreps’ research on curating practices is centred around objects; for the study at hand, however, I propose widening that focus to include what are considered “multiple forms of knowledge and expertise” (cf. above), multiple views on history and multiple forms of historical consciousness as making sense of the past, present and future. Such a view follows another point that Kreps makes. Kreps emphasizes that museum curation in Western countries has been based almost exclusively on Western knowledge systems,43 and sees critical and comparative museology as contributing to “’liberate’ culture – its collections, interpretation, representation, and preservation – from the management regimes of Eurocentric museology.”44 Western knowledge systems are closely related to ideas of scientific standards, such as objectivity or neutrality, representability and verifiability, which inform how, among other tasks, museums conduct local historical research. The same principles inform how museums conduct contemporary documentation interviews. Not taking such criteria as an indisputable given, allows to rethink and test how the sharing of curatorial authority and power can take place during interviews for the purpose of documenting the present against the background of increasingly diverse local communities like Hitra and Frøya. The relations between museums and their public have attracted growing interest in research on museums beyond purely anthropological museum institutions. Sheila Watson’s reader on Museums and their Communities45 (2007) is concerned with the “complexities of the relationship between museums and the societies they serve”46 and bears witness to the diverse approaches and issues associated with museums’ relations to communities. Viv Golding and Wayne Modest’s Museums and Communities47 (2013) does the same. The examples given in both edited volumes suggest that museums do not interact with source communities only, but are embedded into a network of different communities linked to the museum through different forms of relations. Rhiannon Mason differentiates between six different concepts of communities: communities defined by shared historical or cultural experience; communities defined by specialist knowledge; communities

42

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Kreps, Christina, “Non-Western Models of Museums and Curation in Cross-Cultural Perspective,” in A Companion to Museum Studies, edited by Sharon Macdonald (Malden, MA and Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2006), 469. Ibid., 459. Ibid. Watson, Sheila E. R. ed., Museums and Their Communities (London and New York: Routledge, 2007). Watson, Sheila, “Museums and Their Communities,” in Museums and Their Communities, edited by Sheila Watson (London and New York: Routledge, 2007), 2. Golding, Viv, and Wayne Modest, eds., Museums and Communities: Curators, Collections, and Collaboration (London: Bloomsbury, 2013).

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defined by demographic/socio-economic factors; communities defined by identities (national, regional, local or relating to sexuality, disability, age and gender); communities defined by their visiting practices; and communities defined by their exclusion from other communities.48 Such myriad definitions of what constitutes communities implies that communities are more than cultural groups from which objects originate and that hold knowledge and expertise on these objects; communities are also receivers of museums’ messages, and are increasingly involved in the production of meaning. Watson adds one more category to the list: communities defined by location,49 that is, a community that is constituted by people “who associate themselves with the place in which they currently live”.50 Often, as Watson points out, this kind of community is linked to a certain duration of stay in the location. However, it is reasonable to assume that being part of this community is not necessarily bound to length of stay. Individuals can live in a place for a long time and still associate themselves with another place, while others might associate themselves with a ‘place identity’51 soon after they move to a certain place. Watson comments further that working for (and with) such communities challenges museums’ traditional collecting policies and practices.52 While community and museum remain two independent entities in Watson’s and earlier ideas of the museum community, Léontijne Meijer-van Mensch’s notion of “constituent communities’ goes a significant step further as she regards all those who participate in making decisions about what is important enough to be collected, conserved and exhibited in present-day museums to be members of a ‘constituent community’53 . The term ‘constituent community’ has also been incorporated into the newest version of the ICOM code of ethics: “4. Museums provide opportunities for the appreciation, understanding and promotion of the natural and cultural heritage. Principle: Museums have an impor-

48

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Mason, Rhiannon, “Museums, Galleries and Heritage: Sites of Meaning Making and Communication,” in Heritage, Museums and Galleries, edited by Gerard Corsane (London and New York: Routledge, 2005), 206/207. Sheila Watson discusses Mason’s different types of museum communities in more detail in Watson, “Museums and Their Communities,” 4-8. Watson, “Museums and Their Communities,” 7/8. Watson, “Museums and Their Communities,” 8. Ashworth, G. J., Brian Graham and J.E. Tunbridge, eds., Pluralising Pasts. Heritage, Identity and Place in Multicultural Societies (London and Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Press, 2007), 54. Watson, „Museums and their Communities,” 8. Meijer-van Mensch, Léontine, “Von Zielgruppen zu Communities. Ein Plädoyer für das Museum als Agora einer vielschichtigen Constituent Community,” in Das Partizipative Museum. Zwischen Teilhabe und User Generated Content. Neue Anforderungen an kulturhistorische Ausstellungen, edited by Susanne Gesser, Martin Handschin, Angela Jannelli and Sibylle Lichtensteiger (Bielefeld: transcript, 2012), 86.

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tant duty to develop their educational role and attract wider audiences from the community, locality, or group they serve. Interaction with the constituent community [emphasis added by author] and promotion of their heritage is an integral part of the educational role of the museum.”54 Such views of museum-community relations necessarily draw attention to the museum processes through which these communities emerge. Rather than attempting to predetermine different groups with whom the museum engages, the museum turns into a space that allows for the formation of new communities around discussions and negotiations of history, heritage and identity.55 Practices of curating56 have shifted towards a greater emphasis on communities, in line with the museum institution’s movement towards greater people orientation. The real-world expression of this development are the mushrooming examples of collaborative museum practices. Nina Simon’s work on the ‘participatory museum’57 has proven highly influential for museums’ work with audiences. Sometimes referred to as a ‘participatory turn’, collaboration with audiences brings to the fore questions not only of how, but why museums should open up to participatory modes of operation .58 Where does one start and where does one put a stop to participation?59 Simon’s work is located at a community gallery, and there are slight changes of emphasis when transferring her ideas to museums of local history. One aspect of participatory museum practice is the prominent role it gives to the present time. Gesser, Jannelli, Handschin and Lichtensteiger describe the cause 54 55

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ICOM code of ethics (2006) (http://archives.icom.museum/ethics.html) (retrieved 9 March 2018). Crooke, “The Politics of Community Heritage: Motivations, Authority and Control,” 16: “Community is a multi-layered and politically charged concept that, with a change in context, alters in meaning and consequence. According to the situation, different priorities will come to the fore and the purpose of community-heritage engagement will differ.” I refer to a broad understanding of the term curating, which adds to the traditional task of curators (taking care of a collection) the tasks not only of researching, interpreting, and presenting collections, but also of education and possibly administration. According to Kreps, “Curatorship as Social Practice,” 312: “curatorial work has become so encompassing that it is now difficult to define precisely what a curator is and does.” This observation applies particularly to small museums, in which individual employees often work across departments and are responsible for manifold tasks. Simon, The Participatory Museum. This is done, for instance, by Lynch, Bernadette, “’Good for You, but I Don't Care!’ Critical Museum Pedagogy in Educational and Curatorial Practice,” in Contemporary Curating and Museum Education, edited by Carmen Mörsch, Angeli Sachs and Thomas Sieber (Bielefeld: transcript, 2017), 255-68. 258. Gesser, Susanne, Angela Jannelli, Martin Handschin, and Sibylle Lichtensteiger, “Das Partizipative Museum.” In Das Partizipative Museum. Zwischen Teilhabe und User Generated Content. Neue Anforderungen an Kulturhistorische Ausstellungen, edited by Susanne Gesser, Martin Handschin, Angela Jannelli and Sibylle Lichtensteiger (Bielefeld: transcript, 2012), 10.

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and effect relation as one in which visitors – their experiences, opinions, views, move into the centre of exhibition production. As a consequence, the focus of participatory museum exhibitions turns to the present and the current views visitors hold on a historical or current topic. The museum thus not only increasingly involves visitors; it also turns to subjects that allow for the participation of visitors, namely the present time.60 While contemporaneity is one key feature in museums’ participatory work with communities, Gesser et al. bring a second aspect to the fore: participatory museum work addresses individuals, represented not as groups or communities, but as individual people, that is, ‘the visitor’ and ‘visitors’. These individuals then involve in processes that define community. Sociologist Gerard Delanty proposes we understand community as “an openended system of communication about belonging. Belonging today is participation in communication.”61 Membership in a community is not rooted in place of origin, nor in a shared history or cultural heritage. Instead, such a definition allows people from different backgrounds to participate equally in the processes that constitute a community. Delanty’s processual and communication-based definition of community inspires the approach taken in my research and corresponds to Crookes’s description of how community and heritage relate to each other: “Both the community concept and the idea of heritage become intertwined with the lived experience and expression of community. The community group is defined and justified because of its heritage and that heritage is fostered and sustained by the creation of community.”62 A local museum that follows Delanty’s notion of community will not consider itself exclusively defined by its collections and the history of the local territory, but instead will understand itself as a space in which community as “participation in communication” takes place and is actively performed. In addition, the definition suggests that museums can be conceptualized as one of the many voices that participate actively in the communication processes constituting the local community.

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“Gerät der Besucher – seine Erfahrungen, Meinungen, Ansichten – in den Mittelpunkt der Ausstellungsarbeit, so geht es im Rahmen von partizipativ angelegten Ausstellungsprojekten immer auch um die (Besucher-) Gegenwart, um die (heutige) Sicht des Besuchers auf ein – historisches oder die Gegenwart verhandelndes – Thema. Die Verschiebung, die das partizipative Museum mitmacht, ist folglich eine doppelte: zum einen hin zu mehr Involvierung (oder eben Partizipation) der Besucher, zum anderen hin zu Themen, die Partizipation überhaupt zulassen – also hin zu mehr Gegenwart.” Gesser et al., „Das Partizipative Museum,“ 11/12. Delanty, Community, 187. Crooke, “The Politics of Community Heritage: Motivations, Authority and Control,” 17.

2 Inspiration from museum and memory studies

Such a view furthermore makes it possible for both the museum and the community to be thought of as active agents; together, the museum and others from outside the museum participate in negotiations about history, heritage and identity in general and are involved in making decisions about which objects and stories to collect, preserve and represent in the museum.

2.3.

Museums and memory

The previous chapter established the understanding of local community that underlies my discussion of the role of the local history museum. I will now turn to broader theories of memory and history to discuss the place of today’s local museum within the shifting terrain of changing communities, history and memory. Based on a discussion of a number of key contributions from scholars in the field of memory studies, I argue that the notions of ‘communicative’ and ‘functional’ memory as elaborated by Jan and Aleida Assmann respectively in their theory on cultural memory offer fruitful perspectives, leading to a renewed concept of the local history museum. Moving away from the idea of regional museums as storage institutions, the notions of communicative and functional memory provide a language with which the museum can be re-conceptualized as an arena for ongoing negotiations of cultural memory. Furthermore, it helps to identify the specific traits of museums of regional history in the context of fast-changing communities. Over the last decades, various academic fields have experienced a ‘memory boom’.63 Migration and its consequences have been identified as one of numerous reasons for this growing scholarly interest in processes of remembering.64 Literature and memory studies scholar Astrid Erll describes the influence migration has on memory culture and, correspondingly, our views on history, as follows: “as a result of decolonization and migration, the increasingly multi (-memory-) cultural nature of modern societies comes into focus. A diversity of ethnic groups and religious affiliations in a society brings with it a diversity of traditions and views of history.”65 Triggered by these changes, research on how individuals and societies

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In greater detail: Macdonald, Memorylands: Heritage and Identity in Europe Today, 3. Alternative explanations are: changes in media technology and the role of popular media and developments within academia. For more detail, see Erll, Astrid, Memory in Culture, transl. by Sara B. Young (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 4. The death of eye-witnesses of the atrocities of the Holocaust and Second World War are also given as reasons for the growing interest in memory and its relations to historiography. Other scholars cite the political upheavals in Eastern Europe towards the end of the 20th century. Cf. Pieper, Katrin, “Das Museum im Forschungsfeld Erinnerungskultur,” in Museumsanalyse. Methoden und Konturen eines neuen Forschungsfeldes, edited by Joachim Baur (Bielefeld: transcript, 2013). Erll, Memory in Culture, 4.

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make sense of the past has increased significantly, and today the field of contemporary memory studies is best described as “a vast, heterogeneous, and constantly evolving research field”66 and “not merely a multidisciplinary field, but fundamentally [...] an interdisciplinary project”.67 As scholars from different academic fields, with different epistemological interests and different theoretical backgrounds, investigate related questions, the use of terms and concepts describing both individual and collective processes of remembering, forgetting and making sense of the past have become difficult to oversee.68 For this reason, there is no single theory with appurtenant concepts that could be applied one-to-one to the case at hand, and therefore a discussion of the different terms’ potential explanatory power for the phenomenon under study is of great importance.

2.3.1.

Memory as a collective cultural practice

My theoretical discussion of the institution of the small local museum of history is particularly interested in memory as a collective cultural practice, not as an individual cognitive process.69 As a starting point, I draw on Maurice Halbwachs’s influential theory of ‘collective memory’, asking how it can help us to understand processes of collective identity formation taking place in rapidly changing small communities like Hitra and Frøya today. Halbwachs’s work has been continued and elaborated further by Aleida and Jan Assmann in their theory of ‘cultural memory’. While Halbwachs limits himself to a sociological perspective, the Assmanns’ theories offer vantage points onto more general discussions of the position and role of the museum institution in contemporary culture. Their distinctions between different categories of ‘cultural memory’ help both to position local history museums in their wider cultural context and to accentuate particular features with potential to stimulate museum method development.

2.3.2.

The local history museum entangled in Maurice Halbwachs’s ‘social frames of memory’

Even though contemporary academic uses of the notion of ‘memory’ are diverse, many recent theoretical developments can be traced back to Maurice Halbwachs’s influential concept of ‘collective memory’.70 Halbwachs’s central contribution was 66 67 68 69 70

Ibid., viii. Ibid., 38. Cf. Warring, Anette Elisabeth, ”Erindring og historiebrug: Introduktion til et forskningsfelt,” TEMP - tidsskrift for historie 2, no. 2 (2011), 6. The latter is better understood with help of the theory of historical consciousness. In 1925 Maurice Halbwachs published Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire (translated as On collective memory, English translation first published in 1992). The collective memory (La Mémoire

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to show that memory is not an intrinsically individual phenomenon but instead is socially constructed and mediated. According to Halbwachs, through reference to ‘social frames’ (‘cadres sociaux’) individuals partake in the ‘collective memory’ of a given group as, very basically, “it is in society that people normally acquire their memories. It is also in society that they recall, recognize, and localize their memories”.71 According to Halbwachs, remembering cannot take place independently of some sort of social frame. In this way, ‘collective memory’ plays a pivotal role in identity formations, both on an individual and a collective level. As I am interested in processes of belonging and the role of (local) history in these processes, Halbwachs’s emphasis on the social embeddedness of ‘collective memory’ is essential for my study. Halbwachs also speaks of ‘social frames’ in a broader, more metaphorical sense when he describes memory not only as mediated by ‘social frames’ (that is, in social interaction), but also as structured by social frameworks, that is, “a collective symbolic order”.72 Both processes are intrinsically connected to one another and require each other: “One may say that the individual remembers by placing himself in the perspective of the group, but one may also affirm that the memory of the group realizes and manifests itself in individual memories.”73 Halbwachs further describes memory as a selective and interest-led construction of the past that is always embedded in the present. He thus stands for a ‘presentist approach’ (the past is a social construction mainly shaped by the concerns of the present), and for him memory is a living and individual, yet socially formed, way of engaging with the past in the present. Halbwachs’s emphasis on presentism is a second important principle for my study, as it shows that current demographic and cultural changes have an impact on how groups perceive the past and how they use it in processes of group formation. As museums of (local) history are my main focus, Halbwachs’s view on relations between memory and history are instructive. For Halbwachs, history is the opposite of memory: history is located where memory ceases to exist. It is an abstract knowledge of the past, a knowledge of not much more than “a list of dates”.74 As Halbwachs regards history as exclusively devoted to the past, he believes history

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collective) was published posthumously in 1950 (with the English translation published in 1980). Halbwachs, Maurice, On Collective Memory, edited by Lewis A. Coser (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 38. Erll, Memory in Culture, 15. Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, 40. Russell, Nicolas, “Collective Memory Before and After Halbwachs,” The French Review 79, no. 4 (2006), 797. Or in Halbwachs’s own words: “General history starts only when tradition ends and the social memory is fading or breaking up.” Halbwachs, The Collective Memory, 78.

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offers only little to the workings of contemporary societies. Such an understanding of the notion of history reduces the role of history in negotiations of collective identity. If we accept Halbwachs’s distinction between memory and history,75 ‘collective memory’ is not accessible to outsiders in a local community. It is, however, relatively easy for people without access to ‘collective memory’ to gain knowledge about the history of the region. But even though they can read about the region’s history or visit their local museum,76 according to Halbwachs, acquired knowledge of ‘history’ does not provide membership of collective memory, and it is participation in ‘collective memory’ that is crucial for the development of feelings of belonging to a local community. In cases where individuals know about historical facts but do not gain access to collective memory, they experience exclusion. Looking at the small local history museum institution from Halbwachs’s perspective, two aspects emerge. First, arguably, museums combine memory and history, and the institution thus bridges what Halbwachs has called an “ultimate opposition between collective memory and history”.77 The institution and the practices it performs are thus shaped by identity-related memory work on the one hand and history as a record of events on the other. With regard to local history museums, which, due to their link to local space,78 are linked to ‘collective memory’ and personal feelings of belonging and local identity more than most other museum types, the balancing act between memory and history determines museums’ selfunderstanding and the expectations audiences have of them. Furthermore, it also impacts upon the methods that can be applied in museum practice, as these have to carefully balance academic standards, scientific knowledge about the local past, awareness of collective memories, and the ‘social frames’ of the present.

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This distinction is maintained for reasons of clarity of argumentation. Nowadays, there is a broad consensus in the field that history and memory cannot be delineated from each other, but are mutually dependent. Below, I present Aleida Assmann’s argument of history and memory as complementary concepts. For further discussions on the relation between history and memory, see for instance Stugu, Ola Svein, Historie i bruk (Oslo: Samlaget, 2008), 28-44. There are nevertheless some obstacles to overcome, and one of the most profound is the language barrier. Very few of the history products on the islands are translated into the immigrants’ native languages; even English translations are rare. Halbwachs, Maurice, The Collective Memory (New York: Harper & Row, 1980), 78. I here quote the title of the paragraph in which Halbwachs differentiates between collective memory and formal history. Doreen Massey’s For Space offers a philosophical and theoretical approach to thinking space as a product of interrelations, a sphere in which the existence of multiplicity and heterogeneity are possible. Space is hence under construction at all times. Massey, Doreen, For Space (London: Sage, 2005), 9.

2 Inspiration from museum and memory studies

A second important inspiration I draw from Halbwachs’ theory is the focus on the social component of the museum visit. As research has shown, only few museum visitors come to the museum on their own.79 For most visitors, engaging with a museum exhibition or participating in museum projects is fundamentally a social activity, as they engage not only with history, objects, and museum narratives, but also with other visitors or museum staff. Each visitor experiences an exhibition differently. Some visitors might find a resemblance between their own life and life as depicted by the exhibition. In these cases, what they see matches what they knew before or expected to encounter in the museum. Some visitors might feel alienated by the past presented, because it clashes with their prior knowledge or expectations.80 And finally, some might not find themselves or their history represented at all and remain relatively untouched by the museum visit. In the case of the traditional museum of local history, newcomers would presumably experience the latter. Nevertheless, even though each visitor experiences the past represented in the museum differently, visitors are simultaneously united by the experience of contemporaneity as they walk through an exhibition at the same time, look at the same objects, and read the same texts. Intense social contact takes place when people who did not know each other previously engage in conversation about an object, and there is more indirect social interaction, such as stepping aside so that somebody else can get a better look at an object, supporting the social dimension inherent in any museum visit. Social encounters take place, even if unconsciously or mediated through objects. Temporal and spatial commonality is further strengthened through each individual’s embeddedness in contemporary cultural frames (which the visit to the museum again contributes to). Thus, when it comes to museums, both physical as well as metaphorical ‘social frames’ connect individuals with each other. It is important to be aware that different views of the museum experience and different opinions on local history can lead to disagreement, but even disagreement presupposes a social relation with others. As this example indicates, shared experiences in museum locations enable at times subtle encounters between individuals that

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See for instance Falk, John H., Identity and the Museum Visitor Experience (Walnut Creek, Calif: Left Coast Press, 2009) or Falk, John H., and Lynn D. Dierking, The Museum Experience Revisited (Walnut Creek, Calif: Left Coast Press, 2013), especially the chapter “The sociocultural context in the museum”, pages 146-172. Susan Crane writes of ‘distortion of expectation’ in order to describe that which happens when “what the visitor expected was not what was received” during the encounter with the museum. Crane, Susan A., “Memory, Distortion, and History in the Museum,” History and Theory 36, no. 4 (1997), 45.

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are unlikely to happen elsewhere, and the experience of commonality can serve as a first step towards bridging gaps between groups that seldom meet elsewhere.81

2.3.3.

The local history museum and various ‘sites of memory’

French historian Pierre Nora shares Halbwachs’s understanding of history and memory as two fundamentally different concepts. In deviation from Halbwachs, Nora argues that modernity has led to individuals’ experience of a fragmentation of the past in which living collective memories cease to exist and are substituted by ‘sites of memory’ (‘lieux de mémoire’). In Nora’s own words: “There are lieux de mémoire, sites of memory, because there are no longer milieux de mémoire, real environments of memory.”82 Nora develops ‘sites of memory’ as “a sort of artificial placeholder for the no longer existent, natural collective memory”.83 Nora closely connects his scholarly project to the idea of the (French) nation, but projects conducted by others have shown that other units also share ‘sites of memory’.84 In the context of the phenomenon under study here, it is important to bear in mind that there is reason to suppose that immigrants from different countries bring with them mental ‘sites of memory’. These can be national, regional or linked to social or political groups. In Hitra and Frøya, immigrants encounter a diversity of local ‘sites of memory’, including ones belonging to the history of each of the islands. As Nora draws attention from memory’s relation to interactive group processes – from memory as the result of social reproduction – towards a more abstract community that defines itself through symbols, he prepares the ground for Jan and Aleida Assmann’s large-scale research on ‘cultural memory’.

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One example of such encounters that has gained significant recognition is the project Multaka - Treffpunkt Museum. Flüchtlinge als Museumsguides (Multaka – The Museum as Meeting Point. Refugees as Museum Guides) at the Pergamon Museum in Berlin. For more information about the project (only in German) see: https://www.preussischer-kulturbesitz.de/en/ actual-news-detail-page/news/2015/12/10/multaka-treffpunkt-museum-fluechtlinge-alsmuseumsguides.html. Nora, Pierre, and Marc Roudebush, “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire,” Representations 26 (1989), 7. Erll, Memory in Culture, 23. The notion of ‘site of memory’ has been transferred to both larger and smaller units. Two examples illustrate the wide range of work inspired by Nora’s theory. Hahn, Hans Henning and Robert Traba, eds., Deutsch-Polnische Erinnerungsorte (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2015) collect German-Polish ‘sites of memory‘, wheras Lena Aarekol (Aarekol, Lena, „Kvenske minnesteder 1970–2001. Materialitet og minne“ (PhD diss., University of Tromsø, 2009)) studied ‘sites of memory‘ of the Kven population in Norway.

2 Inspiration from museum and memory studies

2.3.4.

Jan and Aleida Assmann on ‘cultural’ and ‘communicative memory’

Jan and Aleida Assmann’s research aims at developing a systematic theory that explains relations between social groups, memory, and culture.85 Based on Halbwachs’s concept of collective memory, Jan Assmann’s Cultural Memory and Early Civilization: Writing, Remembrance, and Political Imagination offers a distinction between two different modes of remembering. He describes them as ‘communicative’ and ‘cultural’ memory. According to Jan Assmann, ‘communicative memory’ is concerned with memories of the recent past. These are memories that individuals share with their contemporaries;86 accordingly, carriers of ‘communicative memory’ are all “eyewitnesses within a memory community”.87 Communicative memory’s content is made up of historical experiences within the framework of individual biographies. Communicative memory is characterized as informal, loosely shaped, natural, and created through interaction and everyday experience; it is mediated through living memories in individual minds, experience and hearsay.88 Communicative memory shows similarities with Halbwachs’s notion of ‘collective memory’, most notably because of its ‘presentism’, its rootedness in the present. Assmann’s term ‘communicative memory’ hones in upon the communicative process through which individuals reach a shared understanding about meanings of the past. This communicative process is framed by personal experiences in the past and by socialization, much like the processes within Halbwachs’s ‘social frames of memory’. Jan Assmann coined the term ‘communicative memory’ primarily to contrast with ‘cultural memory’, as it is ‘cultural memory’ that is his original focus of interest. The concept of ‘cultural memory’ is also the part of his theory that has been widely received and discussed in memory studies. Assmann presents ‘cultural memory’ as a matter of institutionalized mnemotechnics89 with distinct carriers. 85

86 87 88

89

The project started in 1988 with Jan Assmann, “Kollektives Gedächtnis und kulturelle Identität,” in Kultur und Gedächtnis, edited by Jan Assmann and Tonio Hölscher (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1988) followed in 1992 by Das kulturelle Gedächtnis: Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in Frühen Hochkulturen (München: C. H. Beck, 1992). The book was translated into English as Cultural Memory and Early Civilization: Writing, Remembrance, and Political Imagination (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). Aleida Assmann published in 1999 Erinnerungsräume: Formen und Wandlungen des kulturellen Gedächtnisses. The book was published in English in 2011 as Cultural Memory and Western Civilization: Functions, Media, Archives. Assmann, Cultural Memory and Early Civilization: Writing, Remembrance, and Political Imagination, 36. Erll, Memory in Culture, 29. An overview of features of ‘communicative memory’ and ‘cultural memory’ is given in Assmann, Cultural Memory and Early Civilization: Writing, Remembrance, and Political Imagination, 41. Ibid., 37.

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However, cultural memory should not be mistaken for history as “[w]hat counts for cultural memory is not factual but remembered history.”90 Cultural memory as described by Jan Assmann is the process through which history is transformed into memory. Accordingly, cultural memory contributes to the establishment of a shared group identity that exceeds individual lifetimes. This transcendence of the limits of individual or generational memory is the most important difference to ‘communicative memory’. Despite the broad reception and important work based on Jan Assmann’s concept of ‘cultural memory’ in the field of memory studies and, to a certain extent, in museum studies, I suggest that it is the somewhat overlooked notion of ‘communicative memory’ that offers the most fruitful vantage points for discussing today’s local museums in diverse communities. To strengthen this argument, I would add a second sub-category of ‘cultural memory’ to ‘communicative memory’, namely ‘functional memory’ as elaborated by Aleida Assmann. In her 1999 contribution to the theory of cultural memory, Cultural Memory and Western Civilization,91 Aleida Assmann draws on Halbwachs and Nora and develops the notions of ‘functional’ and ‘storage memory’ as responses to Halbwachs’s and Nora’s rigid juxtaposition of history and memory.92 Assmann suggests that history and memory should be regarded as “two complementary modes of cultural memory”.93 For her, that which Halbwachs and Nora described in terms of memory is an ‘inhabited memory’, while history corresponds to what Assmann designates as ‘uninhabited memory’. She continues by nuancing this differentiation further into the categories of ‘functional’ (inhabited) and ‘storage’ (uninhabited) memory. Functional memory thus presents itself as “group related, selective, normative, and future-oriented”.94 Storage memory, on the other hand, contains “what is unusable, obsolete, or dated; it has no vital ties to the present and no bearing on identity formation.”95 Assmann further describes ‘functional memory’ as consisting of vital recollections that emerge from a process of selection, connection, and meaningful configuration; they are – to use Halbwachs’s terms – socially framed. When describing the connections between ‘storage memory’ and ‘functional memory’, Assmann refers to the image of a halo: ‘storage memory’ surrounds ‘functional memory’ like a halo; even though its contents are unknown and unconscious

90 91 92

93 94 95

Ibid., 38. Assmann, Cultural Memory and Western Civilization: Functions, Media, Archives. Within Halbwachs’s and Nora’s work, “memory belongs to living beings with prejudicial perspectives, whereas history, because it ‘belongs to everyone and no-one,’ is considered to be objective and hence without identity.” Assmann, Cultural Memory and Western Civilization: Functions, Media, Archives, 122. Assmann, Cultural Memory and Western Civilization: Functions, Media, Archives, 123. Ibid. Ibid., 127.

2 Inspiration from museum and memory studies

layers of memory, at all times they serve as the background against which functional memory is established. It is in the dynamics between ‘functional’ and ‘storage’ memory that we can find the relevance of this theory to museums in fastchanging communities. Aleida Assmann’s description of memory dynamics as interactions between ‘functional’ and ‘storage’ memory is relevant for the situation in Frøya and Hitra, in which unprecedented new elements of collective and cultural memory from outside the established community are moving into the community. As a consequence, long established narratives of who the members of the community are, how the community has developed historically into what it is, and which narratives of the past are significant, are losing their persuasive power. In sum, the ongoing changes demand new versions of how the past is put into the context of the present. Assmann writes: “This structure of foreground/background can account for the dynamics of change in personal and cultural memory: as soon as the dominant configurations break up, current elements may lose their unquestioned relevance and give place to latent and formerly excluded elements that may resurface and enter into new connections and narratives.”96 Although Assmann’s description responds well to ongoing processes in which master narratives about local history are challenged and ideas of a homogeneous local community are questioned, her approach comes with one shortcoming in terms of local history, cultural heritage, and the roles of the museum in the case of Hitra and Frøya: Assmann does not differentiate between different ‘storage memories’. Although Assmann’s writings imply that elements of storage memory can be manifold, in the case of a local community that is undergoing rapid demographic changes, it is reasonable to expect ‘clusters’ of memory elements that can be ascribed to specific groups. Thus, in a case like Hitra or Frøya, a local history museum not only acts at the intersection of the functional and storage memory of one memory group. As newcomers add to both ‘functional’ and ‘storage memory’ the museum is in fact challenged to react to a plurality of storage memories and functional memories. Jan and Aleida Assmann’s theory of ‘cultural memory’ has been especially influential in German-speaking academia,97 but has only found limited reception in international museum studies. Most work produced in the wake of Jan and Aleida 96 97

Assmann, Cultural Memory and Western Civilization: Functions, Media, Archives, 125/126. This is partly due to language barriers and to the fact that both Jan and Aleida Assmann’s main works on cultural memory have been translated with almost twenty years’ delay. Carruthers (2014) points out the “bad timing” in terms of the publication date, which coincided with Paul Connerton’s How Societies remember (1989), James Young’s The Texture of Memory (1993) and Pierre Nora’s English article „Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire“ (1989).

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Assmann’s theory of cultural memory shares an outside perspective on the museum in which the museum is often linked to the notion of ‘storage memory’. This focus derives partly from the perspectives on museums that Aleida Assmann advances in her work. Museums are mentioned surprisingly seldom in her texts about cultural memory, and when she does touch upon them, Assmann describes the museum as an institution in the realm of ‘storage memory’.98 More explicitly, she describes the museum – in line with institutions such as archives, libraries and memorial sites – as owning a “special license to relieve memory from its direct social usages”.99 In the same text, museums are placed in the context of the ‘afterlife’ of things that otherwise have lost their function.100 For Assmann, a detachment from “direct social usages” by no means implies that museums do not fulfil important cultural functions. Far from it: she argues that detachment from direct social usages guarantees that liberal communities can remain open, creative and democratic. Assmann writes: “These institutions [archives, museums, libraries, and memorial sites] all play their part in this task, as do research institutes and universities, by resisting the automatic expulsion of the past from everyday memory just as they resist its deliberate exclusion from the functional memory. These institutions have a special license to relieve memory of its direct social usages. A culture that does not value the ‘otherness’ of the past for its own sake does not create those open spaces in which the arts, the sciences, and the imagination can flourish. Built into these domains is a detachment from the immediate purposes and needs of the present, and this allows for exploration and innovation. It is precisely because of this detachment that storage memory is so vital for society – it creates a context in which different functional memories are embedded, and so to a certain degree it represents their external background, from where the restricted view of the past may be relativized, criticized, and ultimately even changed. Both functional and storage memory interact in a dialectical relationship that is to be found in liberal, literate cultures; and their future is to a large extent dependent on this ongoing intercourse.”101 Assmann, Cultural Memory and Western Civilization: Functions, Media, Archives, 329. Assmann reiterates the link between museum and storage memory in her 2016 Shadows of Trauma: Memory and the Politics of Postwar Identity, translated by Sarah Clift (New York: Fordham University Press, 2016), 38-42. 99 Assmann, Cultural Memory and Western Civilization: Functions, Media, Archives, 130. 100 Ibid., 369. 101 Assmann, Cultural Memory and Western Civilization: Functions, Media, Archives, 130/131. This section does not have the space for an extensive analysis of Assmann’s thoughts about the role of museums in cultural politics. However, it should be mentioned at this point that a certain hesitation towards instrumental cultural politics, especially with regards to cultural heritage, is grounded in the German historical experience. This point was made by Susannah Eckers98

2 Inspiration from museum and memory studies

Aleida Assmann’s utterances seemingly stand in direct opposition to contemporary museum development, prominently represented by the Leicester School of Museum Studies, who advocate a socially engaged museum102 or a growing awareness and emphasis on the social role of the museum promoted in Norwegian museum politics. Nevertheless, upon scrutiny it becomes clear that the contradiction is not an absolute one. Instead, it is (at least partly) resolved when referring to what I, with the Frøya and Hitra case in mind, regard as a key sentence in Aleida Assmann’s work on cultural memory: “The dynamics of cultural memory evolve in a process of interaction between the active functional memory and the potential but as yet inactive storage memory.”103 In terms of museums, their portrayal as places of storage memory then only holds true in part. Today, many museums address contemporary issues; they continuously display a high level of awareness of ongoing changes in their surroundings and are increasingly called upon to fulfil a social role, to create a positive social impact. Despite the abovementioned caveats, a closer look at the implications Aleida Assmann’s ideas can have for local museums in dynamic and diverse communities is worthwhile. There is little academic discussion of museums’ potential position in the overlap between ‘communicative’ and ‘functional memory’ on the one hand and ‘storage memory’ on the other. The fundamental first implication of a ‘communicative’/‘functional’ memory perspective on museums is that once the museum moves from being an institution in the ‘background’ to taking centre stage and no longer contents itself with ‘storing’ that which has no social relevance in contemporary contexts, it turns into a place for and a facilitator, possibly even an agent in contemporary negotiations about memory, history, belonging and identity. The museum is hence given a different, more openly visible agency; it is given a speaking position, a ‘voice’. Placing the museum in the sphere of ‘communicative’ and ‘functional memory’ suggests a number of implications for museum practice. Below, I will discuss the implications for content, carriers and procedure for practical work in a small museum of local history in a rapidly changing community.

2.3.5.

Implications for museum practice

Content As ‘communicative memory’ is the memory of contemporaries, a generational memory that encompasses three to four generations (corresponding to 80-100 ley during the “The Museum in the Global Contemporary - Conference” at Leicester School of Museum Studies in April 2016. 102 In this context the School of Museum Studies offers among other things training programs on socially purposeful museums (https://le.ac.uk/courses/socially-engaged-practice-in-museums-and-galleries-ma-msc-dl) (retrieved 24 March 2018). 103 Assmann, Cultural Memory and Western Civilization: Functions, Media, Archives, 397.

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years in time), its main content is made up of individual memories, experiences and hearsay.104 In museums, this kind of memory is the focus of contemporary collecting and documentation. It also forms the topic of oral history – understood as a history ‘from below’ and a history of the everyday. Local history museums have experience in this kind of work, collecting lifetime interviews for instance. Nevertheless, when collecting and documentation are inspired by the idea of ‘storage memory’, in most cases, informants are chosen as representatives of a dying cultural or social group, as members of professions that are dying out or as eyewitnesses to historical events or historical changes.105 The leading idea behind collecting and documentation efforts thus often was – and still is – to secure information before it disappears, and to ensure that it is represented in museums’ archives as well as in potential future exhibitions. In museum practice that is dedicated to ‘communicative’ and ‘functional’ memory, on the other hand, the character of documentation changes slightly, as the process of information gathering itself comes into focus. Looking at the museum from a ‘communicative’ or ‘functional memory’ angle means to recognize documentation and collection processes as time-dependent, contemporary contributions to ongoing negotiations of memory and history. The process of information gathering, often in the form of interviews, must hence be regarded as having an immediate impact on communicative memory and thus constitutes an end in itself. The focus then shifts to the interpretation of what is said, of experiences and understandings shared during an interview, and museums do not act as gatherers of ‘unspoiled’ data, saving and storing what otherwise would be lost. Far from it: museums of local history acknowledge that they are actively involved in the process of data generation and the production of meaning.

Carriers Jan Assmann describes the ‘forms of communicative memory’ as “[i]nformal, without much form, natural growth, arising from interaction”.106 As communicative memory is informal and not shaped by specific carriers, there is seemingly no need for museums to facilitate these interactions as they flow without guidance anyway. Furthermore, according to Jan Assmann, basically anybody can contribute

104 Assmann, Cultural Memory and Early Civilization: Writing, Remembrance, and Political Imagination, 41. 105 Norwegian examples in this context are the encompassing collection of arbeiderminne (worker’s memory) collected by historian Edvard Bull from the Norwegian Folk Museum and the work done by Norsk folkeminneinnsamling (Norwegian Folklore Archives), established in 1914 at the University of Oslo. 106 Assmann, Cultural Memory and Early Civilization: Writing, Remembrance, and Political Imagination, 41.

2 Inspiration from museum and memory studies

to ‘communicative memory’, and no one has privileged access to it.107 Nevertheless, as Assmann continues, “the relevant knowledge is acquired at the same time as language and other forms of everyday knowledge. Everybody has equal competence.”108 Jan Assmann presupposes linguistically and culturally homogeneous communities; he acknowledges categories such as gender or religion as factors109 that shape individuals’ involvement in communicative memory. Looking at the situation in Hitra and Frøya, Assmann seemingly fails to acknowledge that not all members of a community may have gained access to the knowledge he refers to by means of acquiring a language and everyday communication. What can be considered a blind spot in Assmann’s conceptualization might at the same time be identified as a space where the museum can contribute to an otherwise unguided flow of communication: the museum has the potential to invite groups that otherwise have no access into discussions about communicative or functional memory content. Access can be provided by means of exhibitions that consider ‘outsiders’ as potential audiences and contributors, through translating exhibition texts into several languages, as well as through museum projects that facilitate the knowledge exchange necessary for participating in ‘communicative memory’. Furthermore, the museum itself engages in negotiations as it speaks with a voice that is equal to others. Stepping away from the ideals of a neutral or an omniscient, authoritative voice, the museum engages in negotiations of meaning about the past and cultural memory as one among many interlocutors. By actively participating in communicative memory through negotiations instead of limiting themselves to either documenting or representing closed discussions, museums are able to move into a position that has considerable implications for their ability to engage in dialogue with audiences, and makes it possible for them to evolve through these interactions into significant places of ‘communicative memory’ and ‘functional memory’.

Procedure Museums that see their field of activity as primarily connected to ‘functional’ and ‘communicative’ memory are highly concerned with participation and relevance.110 107 “The group’s participation in communicative memory varies considerably: some people know more than others, and the memories of the old reach further back than those of the young. But even though some individuals are better informed than others, there are no specialists, no experts in this informal tradition […]” Ibid., 38. 108 Ibid., 38/39. 109 Ibid., 40. 110 For an overview and a discussion of the multifaceted concept of relevance in terms of museums and museology, see Nielsen, Jane K., “The Relevant Museum: Defining Relevance in Museological Practices,” Museum Management and Curatorship 30, no. 5 (2015).

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In line with Nina Simon, I consider relevance to be more than the recognition of familiarity; relevance is defined by adding some value to the museum experience that enriches the individual.111 Museums of cultural history’s main strategy for establishing relevance is to build bridges between the past and the present (at times this also encompasses the future). But this is only the first step; relevance cannot actually be achieved by the museum itself, but is instead attained through reflection processes within the individual interacting with museum objects, exhibitions or museum employees. Only in cases in which the past is brought into contact with contemporary museum visitors in a way that sustains experiences of relevance can the institution remain politically and socially relevant on a higher level. Deirdre Stam highlights the individual’s “[i]ntellectual, aesthetic, sensory, spiritual or emotional”112 experience as the most important value the museum offers, measured against how much this experience can be used “for subsequent decisionmaking in everyday life.”113 Processes of selecting, forgetting and making meaning of the past always involve value assessments. In museum activity devoted to the idea of ‘communicative’ and ‘functional memory’, these meaning-making processes will be at the foreground of institutional work. In cases where different memories coexist or interpretations of past events diverge, they can take the form of discussions and disputes. Disagreement and conflict should not be regarded as a failure or problem a priori; instead, they are crucial to free, unbound mechanisms of group identification (as group identification is not necessarily dependent on agreement). Museum programming can contribute by offering space for discussion and debate, and within such a participatory paradigm can contribute to making the museum a place that is experienced as socially relevant to members of diverse communities. Furthermore, by embracing this participatory ideal the museum itself can actively engage in dialogue. Museums constitute only one node in the cultural web that makes up ‘communicative’ and ‘functional memory’. A focus on the function of the museum institution within this context leads to three major changes in perspective: first, the recent past becomes a core subject. Second, the museum participates in and facilitates discussions of contemporary views on the past and history. Finally, the museum offers a wide range of voices – in principle every member of the local community – the opportunity to speak about the topic of history, leading to indi-

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Simon, Nina, The Art of Relevance (Santa Cruz, Calif.: Museum 2.0, 2016), 29. Stam, Deirdre C., “The Informed Muse: The Implications of ‘the New Museology’ for Museum Practice,” in Heritage, Museums and Galleries, edited by Gerard Corsane (London and New York: Routledge, 2005), 60. Ibid., 23.

2 Inspiration from museum and memory studies

viduals’ experience of relevance by which the museum benefits the community and society surrounding it. The abovementioned shift towards the museum as an institution of the ‘communicative memory’ and ‘functional memory’ modes of cultural memory corresponds to key aspects of the shift from collections towards visitors that characterizes the ‘new museology’. While ‘communicative memory’ aptly describes the cultural frame that surrounds the museum and shapes the museum’s roles and functions in the context of the islands, the idea of the museum as a ‘contact zone’ and the opening of a ‘third space’ as a space in which new meanings are established adds complexity to a conceptual understanding of the role that the museum can take on in this context. The notions of ‘contact zone’ and ‘third space’ not only home in on actual interactions, they also give prominence to different cultural backgrounds as factors that shape processes unfolding in the museum within the field of ‘communicative memory’. With the additional nuance of the idea of the ‘active museum’, we gain a picture of the possible shape a museum of local history could take in a place like Hitra or Frøya.

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3. The Norwegian context

The main trends that have shaped the Norwegian museum field and museum politics in Norway during the last decade form the topic of this section. The chapter starts by offering a diachronic perspective extending longer back in Norwegian museum history in order to establish the background against which museums politics of recent years must be understood. In Norway, the idea of the folk museum has had, and still has, a tremendous impact on cultural history museums’ self-understanding and how Norwegians look at cultural history museums. Norwegian local history research and dissemination forms a significant, second point of interest as it has implications for Norwegians’ ideas about museums of local history. Museums in Norway are more than 65 percent reliant on public funding.1 This is quite a high percentage compared with other countries and puts Norwegian museums in a special position in the European context.2 Being reliant on public grants, most museums have to actively cater to and follow up museum politics as outlined by the Ministry of Culture and the incentives set by Arts Council Norway.3 Arts Council Norway was established in 1965 as an advisory body for the government on cultural affairs in the public sector. The Council is fully financed by the Ministry of Culture

1

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3

Museum statistics for 2015 offer the following numbers: in 2015, 71 museums received subsidies from the Ministry of Culture. 45 received funding from other sources, among them counties or regional municipalities, other departments, universities or own revenues through e.g. ticket sales. In all, 65% of museums’ operating grant was public; if project-based allocations from public sponsors are added, the total amount is even 71%. A copy of the 2015 statistics can be downloaded from: http://www.kulturradet.no/vis-publikasjon/-/statistikkfor-museum-2015. (retrieved 03 April 2018) Østby, Jon Birger, “Museene og myndighetene. Hovedtrekk i museumspolitikken fra Hoveutvalget til museumsreformen,” in “En smuk fremtid”: Trøndelag Folkemuseum Sverresborg 100 år, edited by Hanna Mellemsether, Elsa Reiersen and Petter I. Søholt (Trondheim: Tapir akademisk forlag, 2009), 163. Not all museums are under the Ministry of Culture. Some museums belong to universities or other ministries, like the Museum of Justice that is subject to the Ministry of Justice and Public Defence.

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and one of the Council’s central functions is the implementation of Norwegian cultural politics. Concerning museums, the Arts Council today fulfils tasks previously falling under the remit of ABM (Norwegian archive, library, museum authority) which in turn was a successor to Norsk museumsutvikling (Norwegian museum development). Program-based calls for proposals for project funding are central to the Arts Council’s measures in terms of museums. Despite the ‘arm’s length principle’4 , museums are thus forced to act in accordance with political guidelines.5 Arguably, wider social and political changes play into how culture and museum politics develop; however, these are not the section’s primary interest.6 Instead, I will investigate which ideas of the museum institution are formulated in Norwegian public documents. Most prominent is the idea of the museum as ‘dialogue institution’. In a move from policy to practice, I will conclude this section by presenting different views on museums as dialogue institutions from Norwegian museum practitioners.

3.1.

From identity-affirmative folk museums to spaces for polylocal history

In his study on early open-air museums in Norway, Svein Gynnild equated folk museums (“folkemuseum”) and open-air museums (“friluftsmuseum”), defining both as “[...] institutions that collect buildings, things, and documentation in order to conserve and disseminate knowledge about the pre-industrial peasant and rural culture.”7 While this definition of open-air and folk museums is centred on the ma4

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For a discussion of the principle of ‘arm’s length’ in Norwegian cultural politics, see: Mangset, Per, “En Armlengdes avstand eller statens forlengede arm? Om armlengdesprinsippet i norsk og internasjonal kulturpolitikk,” TF-rapport 314. (Bø: Telemarksforskning, 2013). In her Ph.D. research, Åshild Andrea Brekke studies how museums rely on cultural politics to understand and define their roles in society. She further discusses which other philosophical and theoretical positions museums could base their work on. Åshild Andrea Brekke, “Changing Practices: A Qualitative Study of Drivers for Change in Norwegian Museums and Archives,” (PhD diss. University of Leicester, 2018). Lise Emilie Fosmo Talleraas’s 2009 doctoral thesis deals in depth with the period prior to that of interest in this chapter. Fosmo Talleras, Lise Emilie, “Et uregjerlig mangfold? Lokale og regionale museer som saksfelt i norsk kulturpolitikk 1900 - cirka 1970,” (PhD diss., Umeå University, 2009). For an overview of Norwegian cultural politics see Dahl, Hans Fredrik, and Tore Helseth, To knurrende løver: Kulturpolitikkens historie 1814-2014 (Oslo: Universitetsforl., 2006). “I denne oppgaven vil jeg bruke begrepene folkemuseum og friluftsmuseum synonymt. Begge skal i denne oppgaven betegne institusjoner som samler bygninger, ting og dokumenterende opplysninger for å bevare og formidle kunnskap om den førindustrielle bondeog bygdekulturen.” Gynnild, Svein, “Vern og visjon: Rørosmuseet og Trøndelag Folkemuseum: Bakgrunn, formål og utvikling,” (Hovedoppgave i historie, NTNU, 1993), 7. The same overlap between open-air museum and folk museum is stressed by Gjestrum, who wrote that both

3 The Norwegian context

terial collected and shown, Sten Rentzhog’s 2007 definition of open-air museums continued to stress the content but added the museum audience to the definition. According to Rentzhog, open-air museums were most precisely defined as “[...] a site mainly comprising translocated buildings, and established for educational purposes.”8 While the overlap between folk museums and open-air museums consists primarily in the material – buildings and objects of pre-industrial rural culture – the overlap between folk museums and eco-museums lies mainly in their links to people and the human need to connect with space and history.9 The most significant difference between the institutions of the folk museum and the eco-museum is, however, that eco-museums are driven by the idea that a community develops and manages its own heritage, and museum activities are not necessarily limited to a museum area. While most of today’s open-air museums and folk museums are bounded spaces, often with an entrance where visitors have to pay to enter, and are driven by professionals, the eco-museum is “a building or a musealized landscape, or simply a mechanism for change”10 to which volunteers actively contribute. Due to the focus on the active role of the community, eco-museums are also often called ‘community museums’. This is especially the case in the United States and Englishspeaking countries. Scandinavian folk museums differ from both open-air museums and eco-museums in that they are not defined by buildings or their embeddedness in the community that surrounds them, although these are important aspects. Folk museums are fundamentally defined by the correspondence between what they show, that is, the historical narrative they disseminate, and those for whom they do so. They are, as their name already implies, about people for people. The idea behind the folk museum is prominently expressed by Arthur Hazelius’ Kjänn dig själv (‘Know yourself’) written at the entrance of Skansen, the open-air area of Sweden’s prototype of the folkemuseum, the Nordiska Museet in Stockholm.

8 9 10

names “[...] have to high degree been commingled and understood as different terms for the same thing: a collection of original buildings with ties to ordinary social classes – that is to say peasants – are moved together into a park and furnished with furniture and an inventory from the same milieu.” (“[...] i stor grad blitt brukt om hverandre, og i stor grad forstått som det samme: en utvalgt samling av originale bygninger med tilknytning til folkelige samfunnsklasser. – som vil si bønder; – blir flyttet sammen til en park, og innredet med møbler og inventar fra samme miljø.”) Gjestrum, John Aage, “Fra Folkemuseum Til Økomuseum. Økomuseumsbegrepet – En fornyelse av museumsinstitusjonen og et viktig instrument for lokalsamfunnet,” Nordisk Museologi, no. 1-2 (2001), 35. Rentzhog, Sten, Open Air Museums: The History and Future of a Visionary Idea, transl. from Swedish (Östersund: Jamtli Förlag, 2007), 2. Gjestrum, “Fra folkemuseum til økomuseum,” 37. Davis, Peter, “Places, 'Cultural Touchstones' and the Ecomuseum,” in Heritage, Museums and Galleries, edited by Gerard Corsane (London and New Yorks: Routledge, 2005), 374.

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Folk museums and the thoughts that underpin them have been a major influence on how museum professionals, governing bodies, and the public have thought and still think about regional and local museums of cultural history in Norway. In fact, Hans-Jakob Ågotnes goes as far as to identify a Norwegian “folk museum paradigm” that still shapes understandings of what a museum of cultural history is, how it operates and, not least, what audiences and the public consider its roles and functions to be. The so-called folk museums emerged in Norway during the 1890s and quickly established themselves as a distinct type of museum.11 Today, these museums – both national and local versions of them – are considered outmoded and traditional by many; they are associated with an image of rural wooden buildings, paintings of roses and everyday objects from the peasant culture of the 18th and 19th century. Hanna Mellemsether, however, reminds us that at the beginning, these museums were (in contrast to our current perception) very much in touch with their time. They were politically engaged and participated actively in shaping society.12 Norwegian folk museums emerged against the backdrop of national romanticism and nation building, establishing a relation between these phenomena.13 At their time of origin, folk museums differed fundamentally from earlier collections and museums in terms of what they collected and what they presented to the public. Generally speaking, previously, natural history museums and universal museums had presented a universal, general view on knowledge and their collections and exhibitions were reserved for the educated few. Now, the new type of the folk museum collected and presented ordinary objects from the life of the Norwegian peasants to show them to a broader public. The majority of collected buildings and objects belonged to the world of mountain and inland farmers as those were considered the most ‘purely’ Norwegian, whereas cities were atypical for Norway. Coastal cul-

11

12

13

Hegard, Tonte, Romantikk og Fortidsvern: Historien om de første friluftsmuseene i Norge (Oslo: Universitetsforl., 1984); Pedersen, Ragnar, “Noen trekk av museenes historie i Norge frem til tidlig 1900-tallet,” in Museer i fortid og nåtid. Essays i museumskunnskap, edited by Arne Bugge Amundsen, Bjarne Rogan and Margrethe C. Stang (Oslo: Novus forlag, 2003). Mellemsether, Hanna, “Folkemuseum - Vår Tids Museum for Vår Tids Folk,” in ‘En Smuk Framtid’. Trøndelag Folkemuseum Sverresborg 100 År, edited by Hanna Mellemsether, Elsa Reiersen and Petter I. Søholt (Trondheim: Tapir akademisk forlag, 2009). Pedersen highlights the same: Pedersen, “Noen trekk av museenes historie i Norge frem til tidlig 1900-tallet,” 25. Vaessen also asserts that open-air museums are considered stuffy and traditional despite the fact that they once represented new, innovative and progressive institutions. Vaessen, Jan, “Know Thy Neighbour,” in On the Future of Open Air Museums, edited by Henrik Zipsane and Inger Jensen (Östersund: Jamtli förlag, 2008), 27. Pedersen, “Noen trekk av museenes historie i Norge frem til tidlig 1900-tallet,” 37. Eriksen, Anne, Museum: En kulturhistorie (Oslo: Pax, 2009), 75ff.

3 The Norwegian context

ture was omitted because it was considered tainted by international contact and too similar to Danish culture.14 In Norway, the idea of the national relied15 (and to a certain extent still relies) heavily on the regional and the local.16 In the context of cultural nation building, regional and local cultures were considered expressions of national culture and at the same time were seen as perspectives through which to better understand it. The underlying logic was that whereas the national represented an ‘imagined community’,17 the local was a real ‘experienced’ community; local practices were manifest in traditions and the material culture of everyday life, and so “by becoming acquainted with one’s home place, one would in the end also develop a sense for the national.”18 Folk museums supported and strengthened the tie between national culture and local/regional history and heritage from the very beginning and hence played a seminal role in establishing national identity as based on local identity. The second intellectual trend that shaped early folk museums concerned a change in how history was conceptualized. Eriksen stresses the importance of the breakthrough of a modern understanding of history for ideas of cultural heritage in general19 and for folk museums in particular.20 Only after the idea of history as a process, and hence the understanding that the past was irrecoverable, had gained recognition did collecting and preserving traces of the past become a meaningful endeavour. Historical objects presented direct links to the past and could help audiences to better understand that which had been. In addition, in universities, a growing interest in cultural history made common everyday objects legitimate sources for historical study. Museums thus were given the task of safeguarding objects and sources that were in the process of being lost for the benefit both of

14

15

16

17 18 19 20

Stugu, Ola Svein, “Lokalhistoria og den nasjonale identiteten,” in Det nasjonale i det lokale, det lokale i det nasjonale, edited by Slettan, Dagfinn, and Stugu, Ola Svein (Oslo: Norges forskningsråd, 1997), 147. On the local dimension in the context of national identity building in a historical context, see: Slettan, Dagfinn, and Ola Svein Stugu, Det nasjonale i det lokale - det lokale i det nasjonale (Oslo: Norges forskningsråd, 1997). Aronsson, Peter, “Representing Community: National Museums Negotiating Differences and Community in the Nordic Countries,” in Scandinavian Museums and Cultural Diversity, edited by Katherine Goodnow and Haci Akman (London: Museum of London and Berghahn Books, 2008), 198. Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed. (London: Verso, 1991). “Ved å bli kjent med sin hjembygd, utviklet man sansen også for det nasjonale.” Pedersen, “Noen trekk av museenes historie i Norge frem til tidlig 1900-tallet,” 54. Eriksen, Anne, Historie, minne og myte (Oslo: Pax, 1999). Especially chapter 10: Må vi kjenne våre røtter? Historie som mentalitet, 153-161. Eriksen, Museum. En kulturhistorie, 72-77.

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historians and of ‘ordinary’ people. Objects were not only to be collected for research reasons; in addition, they were to be presented to the public. While this was supposed to contribute to better knowledge about the past, it was at least equally important for the museum to offer individuals the experience of being represented in the museum.21 This interplay between the processes of democratization and identity formation presented in folk museums like Norsk Folkemuseum in Oslo, De Sandvigske Samlinger in Lillehammer and Nordiska Museet in Stockholm, Sweden, characterizes what Ågotnes calls the ‘folk museum paradigm’22 . According to Ågotnes, folk museums are shaped by their collections of local or regional objects, but more importantly, they are characterized by what they show and by their relation to audiences: folk museums are, in sum, about people and for people.23 Folk museums are best understood within the context of nation building and a new understanding of history. They are, however, as outlined above, closely linked to regional and local dimensions of history and heritage. It is hence no coincidence that the Norwegian folk museums had their breakthrough at the same time as local and regional history societies mushroomed. For instance, Bergen historical society was established in 1894, Trondheim historical association in 1897. Individual members or the societies as a whole were often involved in the establishment of local folk museums.24 In Norway, a broader interest in local history emerged at the same time the first folk museums opened. When identifying what led to this unprecedented interest in local history, Ola Alsvik referred to the same three historical developments that formed the background for the emergence of folk museums. According to Alsvik, local history as a reaction to modernization led to a demand to preserve the traditional, even an “ideological defense of the traditional structure of soci-

21

22

23 24

Pedersen, “Noen trekk av museenes historie i Norge frem til tidlig 1900-tallet,” 37 and Eriksen, Museum: En Kulturhistorie, 78/79. The idea of who was to be represented in the folk museums did not include industrial workers. Ågotnes, Hans-Jakob, “Lokalmuseet i det sosiale landskapet. Fortidsformidling i Hordaland gjennom hundre år,” in Kulturelle landskap. Sted, fortelling og materiell kultur, edited by Torunn Selberg and Nils Gilje (Bergen: Fagbokforlaget, 2007), 51. Ibid., 51. For the case of Trøndelag Folkemuseum Sverresborg, see: Mellemsether, “Folkemuseum - Vår Tids Museum for Vår Tids Folk.” For a more general account of the establishments of local museums in Norway, see Eriksen, Museum: En Kulturhistorie, 93-97. Individual examples of written historical accounts of local museums of cultural history are among others Ågotnes, “Lokalmuseet i det sosiale landskapet. Fortidsformidling i Hordaland gjennom hundre år,” or Amundsen, Kari, Odd Are Berkaak, and Camilla Maartmann, I skyggen av nasjonen: Musealiseringen i Akershus (Oslo: Akademika forl., 2013) on the development of the different museums that today are part of the larger museum organization, the Museums of Akershus.

3 The Norwegian context

ety”25 . The second factor was the political processes unfolding, in particular the end of the union with Denmark in 1905. The Norwegian narrative that described the union with Danmark as a ‘400 year long night’ ascribed to local history the purpose of bringing to the light the ‘real Norwegian’ identity which had been suppressed during the time of the union, but which survived in the Norwegian people and in the local communities. Finally, a third reason was, according to Alsvik, that historical research was shifting its focus from political and national questions towards social and economic ones, which were better studied on a local and regional level.26 Local history is defined as the history of a local space and its inhabitants. In an attempt to add further nuances to this definition, Aud Mikkelsen Tretvik suggests a number of possible additional delineations. According to Tretvik, for the purposes of local history research, the ‘local’ can be understood by reference to geographic boundaries; alternatively, the local can be defined by political, administrative, economic or cultural unity.27 An emerging definition for local community is, then, “a geographically limited area of settlement with a number of shared political/administrative primary institutions in which residents have significant contact with each other. The area can be socially, economically or culturally diverse. Contact is normally more frequent within the boundaries of the area and inhabitants experience communality with both its positive and negative facets.”28 This definition uses boundaries to define the local, turning the abstract entity in a selection suitable for historical study. However, as Tretvik highlights in the same quote, this definition risks giving rise to the impression that today’s local community overlaps with the past local community.29 Moreover, using external factors – such as administrative or political structures – as the main criteria for defining the local fails to take into consideration the dynamics and changes that unfold within a local area, at its margins, or in contact, interrelation, and exchange with people from the outside. Furthermore, while ideas about local history fall into the trap of presuming a continuity between a local community in the past and a present local

25

26 27 28

29

“forsvar for den tradisjonelle samfunnsorden.” Alsvik, Ola, “Lokalhistorie I Norge,” in Norsk Lokalhistorisk Institutt og Lokalhistorie i Norge, edited by Ola Alsvik (Oslo: Norsk lokalhistorisk institutt, NLI, 1998). Alsvik, “Lokalhistorie I Norge”. Tretvik, Aud Mikkelsen, Lokal og regional historie (Oslo: Samlaget, 2004), 7. “Lokalsamfunn er eit geografisk avgrensa busetnadsområde med visse felles politisk/administrative primærinstitusjonar der innbyggjarane har mangesidig kontakt med kvarandre. Området kan være samansett sosialt, økonomisk og kulturelt. Kontakten er normalt hyppigare internt enn på tvers av områdegrensene, og mellom innbyggjarane finst det eit opplevd felleskap med både positive og negative forteikn.” Tretvik, Lokal og regional historie, 9. Ibid., 12.

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community, cultural diversity poses a major challenge for local history research in general30 and local historical museums in particular. With regards to culturally diverse local communities, Tretvik characterizes individuals as ‘polylocal’, since they refer to more than one place as their homes. The idea that the local community should encounter its own culture and history in the local museum is impossible to fulfil for members of the group of polylocal inhabitants, because a divide opens up between local history as the history of a region or administrative entity and local history as the family or personal history of new and polylocal residents. Accordingly, Ola Svein Stugu observes that where the purposes of local history are concerned, the focus has primarily been on stabilizing or reconstructing identities; local history has seldom been used to construct new identities.31 Local history has been described as Janus-faced32 , referring to the two groups of actors involved: on the one hand, local amateur enthusiasts, often organized in history groups, research and write history with a local basis. They typically concentrate on family history or the history of individual estates or villages. On the other hand, local history is also a field of academic research in universities. In practice, both sides meet frequently and contribute to each other’s work,33 albeit not always without tension. Both groups have legitimate claims to the field, but their approaches are based on different assumptions, ideas and expectations. While amateurs’ work is characterized by a sense of ownership and closeness and a genuinely individual interest, for the professional historian, quality standards that are based on theory, sources and method prevail. This is not to state, however, that professional historians are not able to feel close to people in the past or are not genuinely interested in their study objects. While acknowledging these differences, Alsvik underlines that the collaboration between professional historians and amateurs is closer in Norway than in other countries.34 Its impact leads to another characteristic of local history in Norway, which is the broad access amateurs have to academic training, which helps to secure high standards, strengthens the good reputation of volunteer-driven local history35 and in the end gives it a status and level of credibility in 30 31 32 33

34 35

Ibid., 99. Stugu, “Lokalhistoria og den nasjonale identiteten,” 133. Alsvik, “Lokalhistorie i Norge”. In my discussion of local history, I apply a Norwegian perspective only and hence keep to the term ‘local history’, the direct translation of the Norwegian lokalhistorie. I do this despite the fact that the interest in and engagement with local history is an international phenomenon. Much of what is discussed in the text accordingly corresponds to what is called ‘public history’ in the English-speaking world. In nevertheless choosing to use the term ‘local history’, my aim is to accentuate the specific Norwegian approach to local history, which impacts on Norwegian museum practice. Alsvik, “Lokalhistorie i Norge”, 8. Tretvik, Lokal og regional historie, 77/78.

3 The Norwegian context

society that is generally high.36 Furthermore, local history is supported by generous public funding for local history research and projects.37 We can easily identify regional and local history museums as places where the two faces of local history meet. Due to their collections and archives, museums are important locations where local history is researched by professional historians and communicated through exhibitions or programming. In addition, local history clubs and professionals work far more closely together in local and regional museums than in national museums. The question of how local history and local history museums can contribute to a perspective on local history that also includes new, ‘polylocal’ identities remains unanswered hitherto. One way of approaching the challenge of correspondence between a past community and a present community in the museum is to completely negate continuity. This is the case when local museums give those who are not members of the dominant local community the opportunity to present their history and their culture. Even though such an approach has a number of positive effects, for instance redressing discrimination and giving a voice to otherwise silent minorities, it prevents the representation of changing or hybrid polylocal identities. Instead, such representations reinforce established group boundaries by dividing a community into “us and them”38 and thereby continue to contribute to a “discourse of difference”39 . A solution to this problem might be to concentrate on the recent past, as this is a period of time that members of the contemporary local community might have experienced. As such, what Tretvik identifies as a blind spot in local history is instructive. According to her, the recent past seldom catches local historians’ interest.40 The recent past hence marks a crossroads for local history and museums. Museums, even though local history is their topic, are bound to the present as that is where they find their audience and the reality they have to act upon. Nowadays, museums collect and document contemporary culture and they collect objects that earlier might have been considered too ‘new’, too ‘young’ or too ‘modern’ for a history museum. This is where contemporary practice in museums of cultural history

36 37

38 39 40

Ibid., 83. Ibid., 79. The Norwegian Institute of Local history (Norsk lokalhistorisk Institutt, NLI) was established in 1955 as an independent governmental institution under the Ministry of Culture. Since 1 January 2017 it has been a division of the Norwegian National Library. The purpose of the NLI is to “promote local and regional historical activity in Norway.” [author’s transl.] http://www.lokalhistorie.no/om-nli (retrieved 12 March 2018). Pieterse, Jan Nederveen, “Multiculturalism and Museums: Discourse About Others in the Age of Globalization,” Theory, Culture & Society 14, no. 4 (1997). Bennett, “Exhibition, Difference, and the Logic of Culture,” 59. Tretvik, Lokal og regional historie, 115.

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moves away from the work of local historians and the traditional idea of the folk museum. Having described the historical background that shaped the present in which the museum of local history is located, as well as the dominant notion of the ‘folk museum’ and the concepts of local history as the museums’ ‘subject matter’, a third influence limiting local museums’ room for manoeuver remains unaccounted for. As Norwegian museums receive public subsidies, they have to react to cultural politics in general and museum politics in particular. These politics, and the ideas of a museum, they represent, will form the topic of the next section.

3.2.

Ideas of the museum as expressed in Norwegian Museum policy documents (1971-2009)

In Norway, political guidelines are documented in White Papers (Meldinger til Stortinget, Meld. St.)41 and Norwegian Official Reports (Norges offentlige utredninger, NOU). Norwegian Official Reports are written by expert committees appointed by the government and represent the committee’s point of view. They are, however, often followed up by White Papers in which the government informs parliament about the policies it wants to implement in a certain period. Both groups of documents are written by political expert groups and must be read as expressions of intentions with a normative character; they formulate political intentions, and as such do not necessarily describe a (future) reality. With this caveat in mind, a close reading42 of these texts still allows for insight into ideas and arguments that underpin political processes and decisions that influence how museums consider

41

42

Before October 2009, the term was Stortingsmeldinger (St. meld.). There are other relevant public documents such as annual budget propositions or the Ministry of Culture’s tildelingsbrev (allocation letter) which follows allocations from Arts Council Norway and each of the museums that receive public subsidies. These documents are not as detailed as White Papers and Norwegian Official Reports and follow mainly the argumentation and content presented in White Papers and Norwegian Official Reports. They are therefore not studied in detail in this chapter. Inspired by new criticism in literature studies, close reading signifies an analysis of texts that is oriented towards details and the deep organization of details in a text. Close reading scrutinizes the use of single words; it identifies symbols and different levels of meaning established within the text. The argument in favour of this analytical approach is that in the case of policy documents, the question of authorship is of little relevance. Public documents develop a history of impact that does not depend on their authors but instead on how the documents are interpreted and transferred into individual museum contexts. However, even though the emphasis is on meaning established in the text itself, some context and background are necessary to reveal trends and developments in the documents, as well as in actual museum policy and finally museum practice.

3 The Norwegian context

and fill their ascribed societal roles. My reading of the documents focuses on the notion of ‘dialogue institution’ and its possible inspiration for museum practice.43 The time frame 1971 to 2009 is chosen here because in 1971 the first White Paper dedicated to museums was published, while in 2009 the last policy document referring to museums in particular was published.44 In order to fully comprehend the changes the 1971 document manifested, a short glance back at the years before 1971 is necessary.

3.2.1.

The Hove committee and public funding for museums

In her detailed study of Norwegian museum politics on the subject of local and regional museums, Lise Emilie Talleraas shows that at the beginning of the 20th century, museums were completely nonexistent in governmental cultural politics, whereas by the 1970s they had become a marked feature.45 In the years after the Second World War, the issue of the relation between museums and society had been discussed among museum professionals, and the debate gained momentum during the 1960s.46 According to Talleraas, who among other sources studied Museumsnytt, the periodical for museum professionals organized in the Norske museers landsforbund (today Norges Museumsforbund, Norwegian Museum Association), the debate among museum professionals focused on museums’ lacking ability to address a wider public. Particularly where local museums were concerned, professionals in the museum field believed that museums “had to change into something other than repositories for futile objects and gathering places for old buildings”,47 and that they were in need of finding new ways to legitimize their existence. According to Talleraas, the criteria brought up in the debate included the extent to which museums “managed to participate in social debate, to which extent they lived up to their pedagogical functions in an expedient manner, and whether

43

44 45 46 47

In 2017, Ole Marius Hylland published an article on the societal role of Norwegian museums in Norsk Museumstidsskrift. He chose a similar approach and studied official policy papers on museums with a focus on the years since 2000. His argument is that museums might have met their “institutional carrying capacity” and are in danger of being torn between rhetoric and the practical level. For him, the question emerges whether museums should abandon some of the roles ascribed throughout the institution’s lifetime and leave those to other institutions. Hylland, Ole Marius, “Museenes samfunnsrolle – et kritisk perspektiv,” Norsk museumstidsskrift 3, no. 2 (2017). A new White Paper on Museums is expected in 2020/2021. Fosmo Talleras, “Et uregjerlig mangfold?,” 344. Fosmo Talleraas, “Et uregjerlig mangfold?,” 288/289. “Overført på lokale og regionale museer gikk budskapet ut på at også disse museene måtte bli noe annet enn oppbevaringssteder for avlagte gjenstander og samlingssteder for gamle bygninger.” Fosmo Talleraas, “Et uregjerlig mangfold?”, 290.

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and how they were able to access new knowledge in their subject areas.”48 I highlight Talleraas’s findings here to emphasize that discussions of relations between museums and their public role, in particular the social role of the museum, was not something imposed on museums from the 1990s onward, but had concerned museum professionals a good while ahead of national politics’ recognition of the issue. In terms of economy and organization, one of the most profound changes within the Norwegian museum sector49 was initiated by the work of the Hove committee50 and White Paper no. 93 (1971-72) On the museum issue (St.meld. nr. 93 (197172) Om Museumssaken). The White Paper was submitted to the Stortinget in 1973.51 Based on its observation that the Norwegian museum sector was fragmented and suffered from lack of professionalism, the government established subsidies for semi-public museums (tilskuddsordning for halvoffentlige museer). The rationale behind the funding was that through financial stability, museums would be able to employ museum professionals, and hence improve the quality of museums in all parts of Norway. This White Paper should be seen in the context of a growing acceptance of a broader notion of culture52 with a focus on democratization and with it a growing recognition of amateur and popular culture that developed in Norwegian politics on a general level.53 For museums, a broader notion of culture also meant more local activity. The direct results of the subsidy included an increase in the numbers of museums and a decentralized museum structure, both of which characterize the Norwegian museum landscape to this day.54 48

49

50

51 52 53 54

“Vurderingskriterier for museenes berettigelse var i hvilken grad de maktet å være deltakere i samfunnsdebatten, fylle sin pedagogiske funksjon på en hensiktsmessig måte og evne til å framskaffe ny kunnskap innenfor sine områder.” Fosmo Talleraas, “Et uregjerlig mangfold?”, 290. The importance of subsidies is stressed by Eriksen. She writes that “subsidy for semi-public museums represents one of the most important turning points in Norwegian museum history.” (“Tilskuddsordningen for halvoffentlige museer representerer et av de viktigste vendepunktene i norsk museumshistorie.”) Eriksen, Museum. En kulturhistorie, 104. Instilling om de halvoffentlige museers virksomhet og drift. (Report on semi-public museums activities and operations) Committee appointed by Church- and Education dep. (Hove-committee), 1970. For a detailed description of the process up until the passing of the White Paper, see Fosmo Talleras, “Et uregjerlig mangfold?”, 317-335. For a discussion of the term ‘culture’ in Norwegian cultural politics, see: Larsen, Håkon, “Kulturbegrepets historie i den nye kulturpolitikken,” Tidsskrift for kulturforskning 11, no. 4 (2012). Dahl and Helseth, To knurrende løver, 232-234. For an in-depth analysis of the impact of subsidies on the Norwegian museum landscape, see Eriksen, Museum. En kulturhistorie, 104-109. Eriksen emphasizes that subsidies were given first and foremost to open-air museums and cultural history museums, which hence became part of social welfare policy targeting local communities and selected groups like children. In the case of cultural history museums, this led to an emphasis on identity building as museums’

3 The Norwegian context

3.2.2.

White Paper no. 61 (1991-1992) Culture in the time

As a reaction to the increasingly fragmented museum landscape in the wake of the tilskuddsordning 20 years earlier, White Paper no. 61 (1991-1992) Culture in the time (St.meld. Nr. 61 (1991-1992) Kultur i tiden) put a stop to the establishment of new museums. Instead, the White Paper demanded that museums co-ordinate and collaborate more. Furthermore, for the first time, this White Paper explicitly articulated the topics that museums were supposed to pay more attention to, and hence was the first public document to explicitly give directions concerning museum content. Based on the observation that most museums had a focus on cities and inland areas, the White Paper indicated a need for the documentation and dissemination of a number of previously neglected areas. Among those relevant for the scope of the present study were coastal culture, the recent past, and contemporary collecting and documentation.55 Another change in the structure of the Norwegian museum sector was brought about by the establishment of Norges Museumsutvikling, NMU (Norwegian Museum Development) in 1994. The intention behind this was to further co-ordinate museum activities on a national scale. Museum professionals considered NMU a “tool for the implementation of state culture politics”56 and as an interference with individual museums’ room for manoeuvre.57 During the 1970s, museum and cultural politics were generally dominated by an ideology of preservation. This changed during the 90s when the focus shifted to the roles museums played in the everyday life of their surrounding society. This shift in focus contributed to the Ministry of Culture’s increasingly frequent formulation of explicit political guidelines on the content and the roles and purposes of museums in society.58 In this context, the 1996 Norwegian Official Report Museum:

55 56 57 58

primary task. Eriksen further highlights that the number of museums doubled in the twenty years of the subsidy’s existence and that museum pedagogy became a central museum activity. The time of the subsidy coincides with other developments in museum thinking in Norway; Eriksen identifies a growing number of thematic exhibitions or the emergence and impact of eco-museum thinking as examples. Other fields accentuated are: 20th-century industrial and technical heritage and natural history. “redskap for iverksetting av den statlige kulturpolitikken”. Østby, “Museene og myndighetene,” 168. Ibid. The increase in governmental attempts to influence museums’ development into social actors that fulfil social purposes is a trend observable in several European countries, among them the UK. Museum functions like collecting, safeguarding, researching and educating are considered in light of their ability to meet the social purposes cultural politics have defined. For the British context, the work of Richard Sandell has demonstrated this influentially. See: Sandell, “Museums as Agents of Social Inclusion”.

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Diversity, Memory, Meeting Place (NOU 1996:7 Museum: mangfald, minne, møtestad) was a central document as it presented the government’s understanding of museums in a detailed way. The document, which was followed up by a White Paper, thus turning much of its content into official policy, is still considered a constitutive document and continues to impact upon Norwegian museum discourse.59

3.2.3.

Norwegian Official Report (1996: 7) Museum: Diversity, Memory, Meeting Place

The report’s title refers to what the authors considered museums’ most pressing challenges: museums are asked to reflect ‘diversity’ in their exhibitions to respond to a growing diversity among the Norwegian population. Memory concerns the museums’ task of documenting and safeguarding cultural heritage, now with the recent past and present as emphasized areas, and finally, meeting place refers to the conviction that museums should not exclusively rely on one-way communication, but need to turn into ‘meeting places’ and act as ‘dialogue institutions’ in order to reach their audiences.60 Norwegian Official Report 1996:7 Museum: Diversity, Memory, Meeting place was commissioned by the government and its principles were formulated in Stortingsproposisjon no. 1 (1994-1995) for the Ministry of Culture.61 In this proposition, strategy implementation for the museum sector was introduced, and even though the document contained descriptions of what the desired societal effect of museums was, activities leading to this effect were only vaguely described. The term ‘dialogue institution’ is key to this document and since its first use in Norwegian Official Report 1996:7 Museum: Diversity, Memory, Meeting Place has had a long-lasting impact on Norwegian museum practice.62 In her 2016 description of the social role of museums in contemporary Norway, Kathrin Pabst stated that that the term ‘dialogue institution’ is often used synonymously with the term ‘social institution’ (“samfunnsinstitusjon”), which has a ‘social mission’ (“samfunnsoppdrag”), and a ‘social role’ (”samfunnsrolle”).63 Concerning ‘dialogue’ in particular, 59

60 61

62 63

Østby, “Museene og myndighetene,” 169. In 2017 still, Hylland points to the continuous effect on museum politics of NOU 1996: 7. Hylland, “Museenes samfunnsrolle – et kritisk perspektiv,” 83. Norwegian Official Report 1996: 7. Museum. Diversity, Memory, Meeting Place, 11. St.prp. are suggestions for decisions concerning laws or budgets. They “form the basis for the Stortinget’s consideration of proposed resolutions, new legislation or amendments to legislation, the budget, or other such matters that require a decision by the Stortinget.” https://www.regjeringen.no/en/find-document/draft-resolutions-and-bills-/ id1753/ (retrieved 12 June 2020). Eriksen, Museum. En kulturhistorie, 220/221. In accordance with this observation, in her description of museums’ social roles Pabst writes that “the terms are usually used synonymously and refer to the same thing: A specific di-

3 The Norwegian context

Pabst states, that the term is central to most documents and plays on a basic responsibility that museums have towards the population.64 Ydse on the other hand describes the use of the term ‘dialogue’ as “having been established as an official guideline for museums”.65 She highlights that the term is often used as an argument for a bottom-up approach to history, meaning that the museum should give a voice to members of those groups in society that have been excluded.66 Both Pabst’s and Ydse’s descriptions of the notion of the museum as ‘dialogue institution’ mark the end of a twenty-year history of reception and interpretation. How has the meanings of the term changed over the years and what does that mean for museum practice today? And in the future? But first, how has the term ‘dialogue’ found its way into museum policy? What meaning is intrinsic in the first text to use dialogue in a museum context? And what implied meanings can be found? To answer these questions, a close reading of the original text of Norwegian Official Report 1996:7 Museum: Diversity, Memory, Meeting Place will be presented below.

3.2.4.

The museum as a ‘dialogue institution’

Norwegian Official Report 1996:7 Museum: Diversity, Memory, Meeting place starts with a thorough overview of the development of the Norwegian museum field, which is followed by a chapter on museums as societal (or social) institutions (“samfunnsinstitusjoner”). The term ‘dialogue institution’ as a description for the museum is introduced in this Norwegian Official Report as a replacement for the term public educator (“folkeopplyser”) that shaped the understanding of museums in Norway from the golden age of open-air and folk museums onwards. The idea of the museum as public educator in its traditional form is criticized by the authors of

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rection and a clear aim for professional renewal in all parts of the institutions.” (“Begrepene brukes vanligvis om hverandre og henspiller på det samme: En konkret retning og et tydelig mål for museumsfaglig fornyelse i alle deler av institusjonene.”) Pabst, Kathrin, Museumsetikk i praksis (Trondheim: Museumsforl., 2016), 16. Ibid., 17: “The notion of dialogue has held a central position in most documents and refers to the basic responsibility of museums towards the population as an actor on behalf of and for the benefit of society.“ (“Dialogbegrepet har stått sentralt i de fleste dokumentene og henspiller på museenes grunnleggende ansvar overfor befolkningen som en aktør ‘på vegne av’ og ‘for’ samfunnet”.) Pabst uses the phrases ‘on behalf of’ and ‘for the benefit of’ society, which were first used in the Norwegian Official Report 1996: 7: Museum. Diversity, Memory, Meeting Place, 40. Ydse, Tone Fredriksen, Museum, Arkiv og samfunn: Kunnskapsbehov og utfordringer (Oslo: Norsk kulturråd, 2007), 16. Ydse, Museum, Arkiv og samfunn, 16.

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the report.67 They argue that, even though it is linked to ideals of democratization, the notion of public education is overly vulnerable to a canonization of elite standpoints and preferential to one-way communication from a knowing centre to people outside this inner circle.68 The authors develop the term ‘dialogue institution’ as an answer to these limitations, they refer to media theorist Neil Postman who, according to the report, “challenges museums in this field, and would like to see them act as dialogue institutions [italics in orig.] to a higher degree, that is, as meeting places in which lexical monologue is supplemented with searching and enquiring dialogue.”69 The way the text introduces the phrase ‘dialogue institution’ suggests that the term ‘dialogue institution’ is adopted from Postman himself, but this is not the case. In fact, in his original text70 Postman does not use the term ‘dialogue institution’ at all, and uses ‘dialogue’ only twice: first in the title “Museum as dialogue”, which, through putting it in the title, places importance on the concept of dialogue in his short text. In the main text, however, ‘dialogue’ appears only one more time. In his text, Postman argues that museums are fundamentally political institutions and capable of offering what other institutions (e.g. schools, political and social institutions) fail to provide, namely “alternative versions”71 that could help us to find new answers to the fundamental question “What does it mean to be a human being?”72 Postman’s museum institution is one that acts as a critical commentator on the dominant Zeitgeist as opposed to perpetuating well-established and oversimplified cultural narratives. Postman’s ideas about the museum are best understood in context of his work, especially the argument that as a consequence of mass media, societies’ ability to discuss serious questions has decreased,73 which is based in his criticism of societies’ subjection to the logic of technology and rationalization as the ultimate goals 67

68 69

70 71 72 73

The text speaks of a “traditional idea of public education” (“den tradisjonelle folkeopplysningstanken”) and “supporters of traditional public education” (“Tilhengjarar av tradisjonell folkeopplysning”) (Norwegian Official Report 1996:7 Museum. Diversity, Memory, Meeting Place, 39.) Nevertheless, the basic idea of museums as institutions that contribute to education remains in the subtext as the report does not explicitly deny the validity of some of its functions. Norwegian Official Report 1996:7 Museum. Diversity, Memory, Meeting Place, 39. “Forfatteren og kommunikasjonsforskeren Neil Postman vil utfordra musea på dette feltet, og ser gjerne at dei i større grad fungerer som dialoginstitusjonar [italics in orig.], dvs. møtestader der den leksikalske monologen blir supplert med den søkjande og spørjande dialogen.” Norwegian Official Report 1996:7 Museum. Diversity, Memory, Meeting Place, 40. Postman, Neil, “Museum as Dialogue,” in Museum Provision and Professionalism, edited by Gaynor Kavanagh (London: Routledge, 1994) (orig. 1990). Postman, “Museum as Dialogue,” 70. Ibid., 68. Postman writes about US culture, but his arguments are transferable to other Western cultures with some modifications. Postman, Neil, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (New York: Viking, 1985).

3 The Norwegian context

of development.74 The ‘museum as dialogue’ as presented in Postman’s original text is a profoundly political institution that is critical of the society surrounding it and that uses knowledge to engage with ongoing cultural trends in order to show where space for alternative regimes might be found. Postman thus writes: “The most vital functions of museums is to balance, to regulate what we might call the symbolic ecology of cultures by putting forward alternative views and thus keeping choice and critical dialogue alive.”75 The above quote represents the single occasion that Postman uses ‘dialogue’ in his text. He adds the attribute ‘critical’, speaking of ‘critical dialogue’ instead of dialogue per se (which he did in the title). In another quote he specifies what critique means: “What we require are museums that tell us what we once were, and what is wrong with what we are, and what new directions are possible.”76 I interpret Postman’s term ‘dialogue’ in the museum context as dialogue that is meant to question current society and challenge existing structures and ways of seeing the world. Although the Norwegian Official Report does not actively attempt to conceal Postman’s emphasis on the ‘critical’ character of dialogue, the authors’ interpretation of what a ‘dialogue institution’ should be downplays this critical feature. In their reception of Postman’s argument, the authors of the Norwegian Official Report change dialogue into a commenting function, which they describe as being aware of and reacting to current trends. I have already referred to how Postman is introduced in the report: “The author and communication researcher Neil Postman seeks to challenge museums in this field, and he asks them to function more as dialogue institutions [italics in orig.], that is, as meeting places in which lexical monologue can be supplemented by searching and enquiring dialogue.”77 The dialogue described in connection with Postman is presented as ‘searching’ and ‘enquiring’, not explicitly ‘critical’. The adaptation of Postman’s argument disregards its critical aspect, which is not transferred to the idea of the museum as ‘institution of dialogue’ or ‘dialogue institution’. Instead, based on their interpretation of Postman’s text, the report offers the following comprehensive definition of museums as ‘dialogue institutions’:

74 75 76 77

Postman, Neil, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology (New York: Knopf, 1992). Postman, “Museum as Dialogue”. Ibid., 70. “Forfattaren og kommunikasjonsforskaren Neil Postman vil utforda musea på dette feltet, og ser gjerne at dei i større grad fungerer som dialoginstitusjonar, dvs. møtestader der den leksikalske monologen blir supplert med den søkjande og spørjande dialogen.” (Norwegian Official Report 1996: 7: Museum. Diversity, Memory, Meeting Place, 39; italics in original).

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“The idea of the museum as dialogue institution incorporates something basic to museums as institutions. They are actors on behalf of and for the benefit of society at the same time. Museums represent the community while simultaneously acting for the community. In this context, dialogue means a reciprocal relation between museum and community in which both questions and answers should be allowed to go both ways. Further, dialogue means an interaction between questions and answers, a process which constantly leads to counter-questions and new answers. Central to such a process is knowledge generation or research, which will be the most important tool the museum possesses in combination with expedient education methods. In our time, dialogue with society [italics in orig.] is a strong and meaningful basis for museums’ function.”78 In this definition of the museum as an institution of dialogue, the critical potential of dialogue is replaced by a focus on mutuality and reciprocity between the museum institution and society, and a declaration that questions and answers should go both ways. While the museum is easily identified as one partner in the described dialogue, the report remains vague concerning who the partners in dialogue with the museum are to be. The term ‘dialogue with society’ moves the focus from a perspective on dialogue as encounters between the museum and individuals towards society as an abstract entity. As ‘dialogue with society’ is highlighted in the original text, it deserves further attention. ‘Dialogue with society’ is used as a description of what constitutes the ‘functional basis’, the foundation for all museums’ activities. In itself, this description is rather vague. Examples79 provided in the report, however, show that ‘dialogue with society’ means that museums are supposed to adapt to changing societal conditions and to address challenges that are part of the contemporary context so as to help members of society to orient themselves in contemporary context. The report’s subsequent sections support such an interpretation. Here, in order to offer a more nuanced understanding of how museums can live up to the 78

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“Førestellinga om museum som dialoginstitusjonar tek opp i seg noko grunnleggjande ved musea som institusjonar. Dei er aktørar på vegner av og for samfunnet samstundes. Musea representerer fellesskapet samstundes som dei skal verka for fellesskapet. Dialog inneber i den samanhengen eit gjensidig forhold mellom museum og samfunn, der både spørsmål og svar skal kunna gå begge vegar. Dialog inneber også ein vekselverknad mellom spørsmål og svar, ein prosess som heile tida fører til motspørsmål og nye svar. Sentralt i ein slik prosess står kunnskapsgenerering eller forsking, som vil vera den viktigaste reiskapen museumssamfunnet rår over i tillegg til føremålstenlege formidlingsmetodar. I vår tid er samfunnsdialog eit sterkt of meiningsfullt funksjonsgrunnlag for eit museum.” Norwegian Offical Report 1996: 7 Museum: Diversity, Memory, Meeting Place, 40; italics in original). The example given for a museum that is in dialogue with society, it that of the Canadian Museum of Nature. Norwegian Offical Report 1996: 7 Museum: Diversity, Memory, Meeting Place, 40.

3 The Norwegian context

idea of being dialogue institutions, the report outlines challenges that demand a reaction from museums. The first challenge the report mentions is that of the ‘information society’. Museums are considered possible ‘interpreting filters’, helping individuals to orient themselves in a world of fragmented knowledge. Through acting along this line, museums can help individuals to discover what constitutes relevant information and what not; furthermore, museums can identify context and long lines of development.80 In addition, museums are regarded as especially well equipped to connect knowledge across disciplines, and thus counteract specialization and fragmentation. I find that in this description of the museum, the idea of the public educator still informs what the museums’ functions are considered to be. Ultimately, it is the museum that possesses and manages knowledge ‘on behalf of’ and ‘for the benefit of’ society. While the museum as ‘dialogue institution’ responds to and addresses contemporary challenges in society, its overall function falls back on traditional ideas of the museum as public educator. A second task for the museum as ‘dialogue institution’, according to the Norwegian Official Report, is the renewal or adjustment of the identity-creating functions that museums fulfil.81 The report reads: “The condition for being able to create cultural identity is for museums to stand out as places in which people can feel at home, where they find points of connection and where they can experience messages that have something to offer to them individually.”82 Museums, according to the report, are supposed to offer identity-creating functions to all members of society and strike a balance between “training cultural tolerance” and “creating and reaffirming cultural identity”.83 It appears the report takes the connection between history, museum and identity as a given. The role of the ‘dialogue institution’ in terms of identity is described as the challenge and indeed duty of mirroring the cultural self-conceptions of diverse groups. According to the report, the museum furthermore has the task not only of creating and affirming cultural identities, but also of being critical towards their depictions of others. The task itself – that is, contributing to identity affirmation – has long been 80

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83

In doing so, museums fulfil an important orientation function, and without using the precise term, the report speaks of museums as places of historical consciousness. More precisely, the document depicts museums that help to qualify ‘genetic’ or critical historical consciousness. Identity was not mentioned in Postman’s text at all. “Vilkåret for å kunna skapa kulturell identitet er at musea kan stå fram som stader der folk kan kjenna seg heime, der dei finn assosiasjonspunkt og der dei opplever at bodskapane har noko å gje dei som individ.” Norwegian Official Report 1996: 7 Museum: Diversity, Memory, Meeting Place, 40. “Kulturell toleransetrening”, “skapa og stadfesta kulturell identitet”. Ibid., 41.

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established in the history of museums in Norway. The aspect of renewal introduced by the idea of the ‘dialogue institution’ is the widening of the group of people whose identities are to be affirmed in the museum. Here, too, we see that the idea of the dialogue institution is not a radical change in the traditional idea of the museum as a place for identity negotiations and affirmation. Third and finally, museums as ‘dialogue institutions’ are, according to Norwegian Official Report 1996:7 Museum: Diversity, Memory, Meeting Place, good arenas for societal debate. It is in this context that the report turns back to Postman’s ‘alternative visions’. In the context of public debate, the idea of the museum as ‘dialogue institution’ presented in the report, is a more practical one, as the report pictures the museum as an institution that can offer a space for alternative viewpoints and which is open for debate and discussions about topics of relevance.84 The museum is presented as a space in which the public sphere can be performed; here, the text follows (without referring overtly to it) a Habermasian line of thought on the public sphere.85 In this case also, however, dialogue is introduced in a limited way: again, it is ultimately the museum who decides what the relevant questions are and what alternatives to promote. Such a restricted understanding of dialogue is expressed in the ways the report suggests that museum professionals could adapt their practice to Postman’s idea of ‘museum as dialogue’. The report claims that Postman “points [...] towards the productive role of a museum specialist who uses his or her knowledge to ask questions, preferably critical questions, which in turn create reflection and wonder in the museum visitor.”86 In this quote, critical potential now is no longer an inherent quality and task of the institution but is attributed to the individual museum specialist, who through questions creates reflection and questioning in visitors. This quote presents quite a clear idea of how to implement dialogue in the encounter between visitors and the museum. Dialogue here follows the logic of the Socratic method and operates through an indirect process of instruction. In addition, it suggests what dialogue should result in: change takes

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The idea of the ‘dialogue institution’ shows resemblance with Duncan Cameron’s classical idea of the museum as forum. In Cameron’s writing, forum functions add to the functions museums fulfill as temples, they do not replace them. Cameron, Duncan, “The Museum, a Temple or the Forum,” Curator. The Museum Journal 14, no. 1 (1971). Dialogue (or discourse which is the term applied by Habermas) implies the possibility of consensus which at the same time is the ultimate goal of discourse. For a discussion of Habermas’ theory of the public sphere and its ties to museums, consult Barrett, Jennifer, Museums and the Public Sphere (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011). “Men han peikar [samstundes] på det fruktbare i at spesialisten på museet bruker kunnskapen til å stilla spørsmål, gjerne kritiske spørsmål, som i sin tur skaper reflekterande undring hjå den som gjestar museet.” Norwegian Official Report 1996: 7: Museum. Diversity, Memory, Meeting Place, 39.

3 The Norwegian context

place on the side of the museum visitor. The museum employee or the museum expert remains relatively unaffected. At the same time, in this definition dialogue is not linked to museum tasks as acquiring, conserving, researching, but describes the relation between museums and society as a) one of mutual influence on an abstract level or b) a museum steered dialogue in real-world encounters with members of the public. In the latter, dialogue is located exclusively in museums’ education or communication departments. To sum up, through a close reading of the report text, I have shown that the dominant understanding of the museum as ‘dialogue institution’ is that of a museum that is aware of and responsive to current trends that evolve around it. Dialogue is hence presented as a synonym for being in touch and respondent to contemporary developments and contexts. The ‘dialogue institution’ described in the report is one that helps citizens to orient themselves in and adapt to contemporary society, not one that in Postman’s sense would criticize and show alternatives to a contemporary situation. Furthermore, examples from the report suggest that even though the report says that in the museum as ‘dialogue institution’, questions and answers can go both ways, the main agency remains on the side of the museum. Agency here relates to having the power to decide about issues, topics to discuss and which perspectives deserve attention. Audiences remain recipients of experiences and messages developed by the museum. Despite the fact that the notion of ‘dialogue institution’ is explicitly developed as a response to criticism of the idea of public education, the idea that the museum contributes to or offers education to society is still fundamental. Dialogue hence remains a means to an end. The operationalizations of dialogue that are indicated in the text present themselves as limited since the decision about which trends are relevant, which issues need consideration and which alternatives are offered, still lie in the hand of the institution. This restricts the ability of the institution to be amenable to public- or communityinitiated topics for deliberation.

3.2.5.

Museum politics in the 2000s: White Paper no. 22 (1999-2000) Sources for Knowledge and Experience

The Norwegian Official Report 1996: 7 Museum: Diversity, Memory, Meeting Place was followed up by White Paper no. 22 (1999-2000) Sources for Knowledge and Experience (St. meld. nr. 22 (1999-2000) Kjelder til kunnskap og oppleving). Although this document considered museums, libraries and archives together and was mainly focused on structural reorganization, dialogue was again used in context with museums. As in the preceding Norwegian Official Report, cultural diversity and coastal culture

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were emphasized as main thematic challenges for museums in this document.87 As a further consequence of this White Paper, in 2003 ABM development (ABM utvikling) was initiated as a platform to unite the Norwegian archive, library and museum sectors, and shortly afterwards a national museum reform with the goal of decreasing the number of museum organizations financed by the Ministry of Culture was initiated. The process of consolidation was to be finished in 2009, but as late as 2016, some consolidations still remained or were on their way.88 At the same time, museum networks were established as important instruments to increase co-operation and professional exchange in terms of specific topics, museum functions or methods. By now, 24 networks have been established,89 among them a network dedicated to contemporary collecting and documentation, a network for minorities and cultural diversity in museums, and a network that is dedicated to fishery and coastal culture. The term ‘dialogue institution’ was used only once in this White Paper, but with a significant shift in meaning compared to its uses in NOU 1996:7 Museum: Diversity, Memory, Meeting Place. Again, dialogue was introduced in the context of challenges (the title of the chapter is 6.11. Challenges). Here, it said: “Museums are to serve society and its development. It is hence imperative that they do not operate within a closed system, but engage in dialogue with their surroundings. Museums play a significant role in democratizing society. [...] As dialogue institutions it is necessary that museums: - make transparent their choices concerning collecting, conserving, and communicating objects. - are critical towards their presentations of historical processes against the background of new knowledge and new questions, and - put emphasis on authenticity in communication in a way that puts original objects into the correct context.”90 The impetus of the connection between democratization and dialogue exemplified in the quote above concerned inner structures, methods and practices inside the 87

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Others are: industry and service economy, ecology and environmentalism and intangible knowledge and heritage. White Paper no. 22 (1999-2000) Sources for Knowledge and Experience, 93-95. Fossestøl, Knut, Organisering av Museene: En evaluering av organisasjonsformer i kjølvannet av museumsreformen, edited by Eric Breit, Hanne Heen, Ellen K. Aslaksen (Oslo: Kulturrådet, 2013). A list of existing museum networks can be retrieved from http://www.kulturradet.no/museum/museumsnettverk. (retrieved 03 April 2018). “Som dialoginstitusjonar er det naudsynt at musea: klårgjer dei vala dei gjer ved innsamling, bevaring og formidling av gjenstandane, er kritiske til presentasjonane sine av historiske prosesser på bakgrunn av ny kunnskap og nye problemstillingar, og legg vekt på autentisitet i formidlinga slik at originale gjenstandar vert sette i rett samanheng.” White Paper No. 22 (1999-2000) Sources to Knowledge and Experience.

3 The Norwegian context

museum. Democratizing in the context of the quote concerned transparency in the museum’s inner workings. What is remarkable is that ideas of dialogue, which earlier were restricted to communication and education departments, now were put in the context of museum activities that audiences could not easily gain access to. Dialogue was connected to democratization, which in turn was linked to transparency, critical self-awareness and authenticity, which in this context means trustworthiness. Nevertheless, reciprocity or mutuality as principles that would allow actors from outside the museum to contribute and which arguably are defining characteristics of dialogue, are not given priority.

3.2.6.

The BRUDD project

I demonstrated above that in early policy documents the critical potential of Postman’s original idea of ‘the museum as dialogue’ was present, but soon restricted to a more general idea of a museum ‘in touch’ with its present surroundings. Yet though, in a later document, transparency and self-questioning were to open museums to public scrutiny, members of the public were still not invited into museums inner workings and the museum retained the role of a public educator. Nevertheless, Postman’s ideas found some resonance in the Norwegian museum field after all. The idea of museums as spaces for more controversial, difficult, marginal topics was echoed in the Norwegian museum project BRUDD (most appropriately translated into ‘fracture’ or ‘act of breaking’91 ), which was initiated by ABM in 2003.92 ABM, and after a reorganization in 2010 Arts Council Norway,93 have been the most important advocates and promoters of more ‘critical’ roles of museums. ABM inhabited an in between position as they were subordinate to but professionally independent of the Ministry of Culture, and they were not bound by practice-oriented museum organizations like the Museumsforbund or the real-life contexts that museum professionals need to take account of. The aim of the BRUDD project was explicitly “to promote the critical questions. To tell about the difficult, the tabooed, the marginalized, the invisible, the controversial.”94 Even though there had been thematic exhibitions that problematized

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Lill Eilertsen, “Norwegian Cultural Policy and Its Effect on National Museums,” in Museum Policies in Europe 1990-2010: Negotiating Professional and Political Utopia, edited by Lill Eilersten and Arne Bugge Amundsen. Eunamus Report 3 (Linköping: Linköping University Electronic Press, 2012), 55. About BRUDD: Eriksen, Museum. En Kulturhistorie, 196-198. The museum related responsibilities of ABM were transferred to the Arts Council in 2010. “Føremålet var å fremja dei kritiske spørsmåla. Å fortelja om det vanskelege, det tabuførebudde, det marginaliserte, det usynlege, det kontroversielle.” ABM utvikling, Brudd: Om Det Ubehagelige, Tabubelagte, Marginale, Usynlige, Kontroversielle, Abm-Skrift 26 (Oslo: ABMutvikling, 2006), 5.

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diverse historic subjects from the 1970s onwards and NOU 1996:7 Museum: Diversity, Memory, Meeting Place as well as White Paper no. 22 Sources for Knowledge and Experience had brought the social role of the museum to the fore, the BRUDD 2003 project contributed more to a changed understanding of museums than political guidelines had achieved previously. The main reason for this was that BRUDD involved museum professionals in real-world museum projects in addition to reaching audiences. Even though individual projects under the aegis of BRUDD did not bring about sustained change in the whole sector, the projects galvanized reflections about museums on a more general level.95 Not all museums embraced the ideas behind BRUDD. According to Anne Eriksen, for many museum professionals, the BRUDD project was not only about new topics or exhibition formats; instead, they experienced it as an attack against their basic understanding of what a museum is and does.96 This explains why the BRUDD project provoked stronger reactions among museum professionals than public documents had earlier. While Eriksen refers to museum professionals only, I find it reasonable to assume that many visitors to BRUDD exhibitions or participants in BRUDD projects would have been equally torn between traditional ideas of what a museum is and the demand to unveil uncomfortable stories of the past.97 95 96

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BRUDD has never been officially terminated. As late as in 2014 project called BRUDD 2014 collected diverse exhibitions to celebrate the anniversary of Norway’s constitution from 1814. “Among the things that are jeopardized is a basic understanding of what museums actually ‘do’ and what kind of institutions they are.” (“Blant det som settes på spill er også den grunnleggende forståelsen av hva museer egentlig ‘driver med’ og hva slags institusjoner de er.”) In her 2010 article, Eriksen is even more explicit as she no longer asks, but states: “[t]here can be a danger that too many demands are imposed on museums and so many secondary tasks are given to museums as ‘dialogue institutions’ that primary museum functions disappear. In this situation, there can be a need for new discussions about what characterizes museums’ specific competency, and what museological work actually consists of, not only what the role of museums as societal institutions is.” (“Det kan være en fare at det stilles så mange krav til museene og de pålegges så mange sekundære oppgaver som ‘dialoginstitusjoner’, at de primære museumsoppgavene forsvinner. I denne situasjonen kan det være behov for nye diskusjoner om hva som kjennetegner museumsspesifikk kompetanse, og hva det museumsfaglige arbeidet faktisk består i, ikke bare om hva som er museets oppgave som samfunnsinstitusjon.”) Eriksen, Anne, “Fra stevneplass til dialoginstitusjon. Norske kulturhistoriske museer 1950-2010,” in Samling og museum. Kapitler av museenes historie, praksis og ideologi, edited by Bjarne Rogan and Arne Bugge Amundsen (Oslo: Novus forlag, 2010), 74. A similar argument is presented by Hylland, “Museenes samfunnsrolle – et kritisk perspektiv”. There are, as far as I am aware, no visitor studies on how audiences received the exhibitions in the BRUDD project. Discussions that unfold in the context of the exhibition “Vidkun Qusling” (2007) nevertheless offer some indications. For those see, e.g. Ramskjær, Liv, “Break! On the Unpleasant, the Marginal, the Taboos, and the Invisible or Controversial in Norwegian Museum Exhibitions”. Before the opening of the exhibition, the local newspaper conducted polls

3 The Norwegian context

3.2.7.

White Paper no. 48 (2002-2003) Cultural Politics until 2014

The following White Paper no. 48 (2002-2003) Cultural Politics until 2014 (St. meld. nr. 48 (2002-2003) Kulturpolitikk fram mot 2014) was largely a continuation of the preceding White Papers. The social role of museums was accentuated even more strongly and described as anchored “in development and dissemination of knowledge about humans’ understanding and interaction with their surroundings”.98 This description appeared in the policy paper in the context of a discussion of the museum measures initiated in the White Paper no. 22 (1999-2000) Sources for Knowledge and Experience. There, the two key terms public education and dialogue are presented as related to one another. “The ABM-meldingen [synonym for White Paper no 22 (1999-2000) Sources for knowledge and Experience, author’s remark] emphasizes and underlines the roles museums play as social institutions. As public education institutions, museums need to be able to combine the historical dimension with contemporary questions and re-evaluations as the result of new knowledge or an emphasis on alternative values. If museums are to function as good social institutions, this has to happen in dialogue with the surrounding world. This means that museums not only

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which showed that a majority of the public did not support an exhibition on Quisling based on the argument that he should not be honored with a place in a museum. The underlying assumption was that museums are places of (national or local) pride, places in which the past is glorified and presented as positive (national or local) identity. Interestingly, resistance against the exhibition Vidkun Quisling was expressed in national and local newspapers before the exhibition opened, after the opening, opposition fell silent and discussions focused on single objects, not so much on the choice of Vidkun Quisling as a topic for the museum. Similar events can also be observed in discussions sourrounding the Enola Gay exhibition planned in 1994. For an account and analysis of this discussion, see Crane, Susan, ”The Conundrum of Ephemerality. Time, Memory, and Museums,” in A Companion to Museum Studies, edited by Sharon Macdonald (Malden, MA and Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006). For a more recent Norwegian example, in which anticipations led to public discussions, see the forerun of the July, 22nd exhibition, which was discussed by members of the public as a museum for the perpetrator. In this case, likewise, political and public protest was grounded in fear of glorification that did not come true and the discussion ended in the moment the exhibition was opened to the public. “Selve samfunnsrollen eller samfunnsoppdraget for museene ligger i å utvikle og formidle kunnskap om menneskers forståelse av og samhandling med sine omgivelser.” White Paper no. 49 (2008-2009) The Museum of the Future, 145. Hilde Holmesland from Arts Council Norway emphasized the key role this text passage plays. Holmesland, Hilde, “Museenes Samfunnsrolle,” (Arts Council Norway, 2013). (http://www.kulturradet.no/documents/10157/ 239d827f-0d57-4cfd-a0cf-fe8cc8eba7e3). (retrieved 23.02.2018)

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generate and disseminate knowledge, but that they also should have the ability to surprise and challenge users both emotionally and intellectually.”99 The above quote represents an interpretation of the previous Norwegian Official Report with an interesting twist: although the notion of ‘dialogue institution’ was initially and explicitly developed in response to criticism of the museum as an institution instrumental in traditional forms of public education, in the quote above, dialogue is again related to public education as the main social role of museums. Dialogue now describes a state of awareness in terms of current trends as well as a means to communicate knowledge that the museum develops within its walls in reaction to outside stimuli. In this quote, audiences again are consumers of experiences generated by the museum. The two-sidedness of dialogue is minimized and the museum is the active part that – through ‘surprising’ and ‘challenging’ visitors – steers the flow of communication, whereas visitors consume or react. A second trend becomes manifest in this document; dialogue is increasingly connected with cultural diversity. In chapter 6.2. Cultural Diversity in a globalized world, the attribute of equality is introduced for the first time in the context of dialogue as the White Paper refers to balanced and reciprocal dialogue (“likeverdig dialog”). Equality is a core feature in theories on dialogue; however, it is only mentioned as the text addresses cultural diversity. One possible explanation is that in the context of growing awareness of marginalized groups and recognition of minority groups, the idea of a homogeneous public became unsustainable. In the Norwegian context of the 1990s, the discourse around national minorities unfolded simultaneously with public discussions of what it meant to be Norwegian, all set against the background of an international strengthening of ethno-politics. The term ‘dialogue institution’ is not mentioned in the document. ‘Dialogue’ is used 32 times in addition to the uses presented above, but without any specific meaning for museums in particular.

3.2.8.

White Paper no. 49 (2008-2009) The Museum of the Future

In 2009, the Government White Paper no. 49 (2008-2009) The Museum of the Future. Management, Research, Dissemination, Renewal (St. meld. Nr. 49 (2008-2209) Framti-

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“I abm-meldinga er det lagt stor vekt på å streka under den rolla musea kan spela som samfunnsinstitusjonar. Som folkeopplysningsinstitusjonar må musea i formidlinga si kunna kombinera den historiske dimensjonen med aktuelle spørsmål og omvurderingar som resultat av ny kunnskap eller vektlegging av andre verdiar. Skal musea fungera som gode samfunnsinstitusjonar, må dei søkja dialog med omverda. Dette inneber at musea ikkje berre skal generera og formidla kunnskap, men at dei og skal ha evne til å overraska og utfordra brukarane både emosjonelt og intellektuelt.” White Paper no. 48 (2002-2003) Cultural Politics until 2014, 178.

3 The Norwegian context

das museum. Forvaltning, forskning, formidling, fornying)100 once again addressed museums in particular and according to Eilertsen was the first paper to “explicitly redefine the role of national museums so as to reflect cultural diversity and create intercultural dialogue.”101 In the section concerning measures to be undertaken for “professional quality and renewal”,102 the societal role of the museum is described as follows: “The societal role for museums, or their societal assignment, lies in developing and communicating knowledge about humans’ self-understanding and interaction with their surroundings. Within this, there is tremendous professional freedom and at the same time challenges for museums that concern how to define and limit what is relevant and important from a societal perspective. This is a professional key question for museums and demands continuous analysis and reflection.”103 The White Paper follows up on this definition by accentuating the duty and responsibility of museums to make decisions on what to collect and communicate, and in doing so, the document highlights museums’ role as active creators (as opposed to neutral keepers) of cultural heritage. The paper challenges museums to consciously work on giving “as nationwide and balanced [a] picture of the diversity that constitutes Norwegian society through the ages”104 as possible. In terms of communication, the White Paper describes the aim of public museum politics and cultural politics as to put museums in a position in which they “reach the public with knowledge and experience and are accessible for all. That means targeted facilitation for different groups and relevant education that promotes critical reflection and creative insight.”105 In this description of how museums are to engage 100 The background and topic for the White Paper is a status report and evaluation of the museum reform that was launched in White Paper no. 22 (1999-2000) Sources for Knowledge and Experience and initiated in 2001. 101 Eilertsen, Lill, “Norwegian Cultural Policy and Its Effect on National Museums,” 53. 102 White Paper no. 49 (2008-2009) The Museum of the Future, 145. 103 “Selve samfunnsrollen eller samfunnsoppraget for museene ligger i å utvikle of formidle kunnskap om menneskers forståelse av og samhandling med sine omgivelser. I dette ligger stor faglig frihet og samtidig utfordringer for museene i å definere og avgrense hva som er relevant og viktig i et samfunnsperspektiv. Dette er et faglig kjernespørsmål i museene som krever kontinuerlig analyse og refleksjon.” White Paper no. 49 (2008-2009) The Museum of the Future, 145. 104 White Paper no. 49 (2008-2009) The Museum of the Future, 145: “Det er derfor en konstant faglig og kulturpolitisk utfordring å arbeide for at den seleksjonen som museumsinstitusjonene samlet sett gjør, gir et så dekkende og balansert bilde som mulig av det mangfoldet som utgjør norsk samfunnsliv opp gjennom tidene.” 105 Ibid., 155: “Mål: Museene skal nå publikum med kunnskap og opplevelse og være tilgjengelig for alle. Det innebærer målrettet tilrettelegging for ulike grupper og aktuell formidling som fremmer kritisk refleksjon og skapende innsikt.”

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with society – that is, audiences and visitors – the idea of dialogue moves into the background. What remains are “critical reflection” and “creative insight”, while other features that previously were linked to the notion of dialogue are abandoned. As the document is supposed to be a status report of the museum reform and hence has no ambition to provide any substantial discussion of museums’ role and character, directly comparing Norwegian Official Report 1996:7 Museum: Diversity, Memory, Meeting Place and this text is of limited value. In 14 of the 22 mentions of the term ‘dialogue’ in the White Paper, dialogue could be replaced with terms such as ‘communication’ or ‘contact’ without changing the overall meaning. The word ‘dialogue’ is thus often reduced to designating a neutral form of communication between two parts. In its eight other occurrences during the text, ‘dialogue’ conveys meanings that are more specific: on page 9, the White Paper speaks of “dialogue-oriented education activities” (without further differentiation) as one of the many tasks museums have to fulfil.106 The next mention of dialogue is in the context of a self-description submitted by the Perspektivet Museum in Tromsø. There are 84 such self-descriptions in the report, but none of the other museums uses ‘dialogue’ in describing their aims or activities.107 A more nuanced use of the notion of dialogue is again present in the White Paper’s chapter 6 on Minorities and cultural diversity. This chapter discusses cultural diversity as a “driving force for future development”. To facilitate cultural diversity – and, as a consequence, dialogue – is hence regarded as one of museums’ required tasks.108 To substantiate this statement, the White Paper refers not to the notion of the museum as ‘dialogue institution’ that was developed in Norwegian Official Report 1996:7 Museum: Diversity, Memory, Meeting Place, but to the European Council’s

106 Others are “to protect and preserve collections and to drive knowledge based and dialogue oriented education activities”. (“å sikre og bevare samlingene og å drive en kunnskapsbasert og dialogorientert formidlingsaktivitet”) White Paper no. 49 (2008-2009) The Museum of the Future, 9. 107 In this context, the observation that the Perspektivet museum uses the term dialogue, even ‘critical dialogue’, prominently in its self-description is less remarkable than that it is the only Norwegian museum to do so when describing its activities. In the case of the Perspektivet museum, there is reason to assume that this has to do with the museum’s youth (it opened in 1996, the same year the Norwegian Official Report 1996:7 Museum: Diversity, Memory, Meeting Place was published) and its collection, which was built from scratch and focuses on the recent past and the present. It is a greater struggle for larger and older institutions to incorporate new museum thinking into their institutional structure and activities. 108 “Å tilrettelegge for kulturelt mangfold og, følgelig, for dialog, anses å være en av vår tids mest påkrevde oppgaver.” White Paper no. 49 (2008-2009) The Museum of the Future, 123.

3 The Norwegian context

White Paper on Intercultural Dialogue (2008).109 Further, the White Paper agrees with UNESCO and the European Council in considering ‘intercultural dialogue’ to be the solution for challenges deriving from modern multicultural society. In this White Paper, the connection between dialogue and cultural diversity that could be traced in previous documents has been strengthened further and manifests under the new term ‘intercultural dialogue’.110

3.3.

Museum professionals’ views on the museum as a ‘dialogue institution’

In 2015, ICOM Norway conducted a survey among Norwegian museum professionals in co-operation with the Vest-Agder Museum. This section is partly based on the original analysis carried out by Kathrin Pabst111 and partly on a secondary analysis of the survey responses produced by me. The aim of the original survey was to learn what museum employees think about the social role of museums and how this shaped their work. Taking ICOM Norway’s e-mail list, a member list of the Norwegian Museum Association and the Google group Museumsnorge as a basis for recruitment, several hundred museum employees were contacted.112 The survey questionnaire was developed by an editorial committee and focused on four thematic parts: first, museums’ societal role in general; second, work with sensitive topics and subject matters; third, key challenges and pitfalls; and fourth, requirements and needs. 40 museum employees from 22 different institutions responded to the survey. All respondents who answered the survey considered the societal role of the museum to be important. Nonetheless, there were significant differences in the extent to which respondents considered this aspect to be already integrated into museum activities. Informants with leadership roles attested solid integration within the institution, whereas museum employees who worked in projects did not share

109 Council of Europe, “White Paper on Intercultural Dialogue. ‘Living Together as Equals with Dignity’,” (Strasbourg: Council of Europe, 2008). (https://www.coe.int/t/dg4/intercultural/ source/white%20paper_final_revised_en.pdf) (retrieved 09 March 2018). 110 On Intercultural dialogue in museums, see: Bodo, Gibbs, and Sani (ed.), Museums as Places for Intercultural Dialogue: Selected Practices from Europe and Bodo, “Museums as Intercultural Spaces”. 111 Kathrin Pabst presents and discusses the results of the survey in Pabst, Kathrin, “Valuable, Challenging and Becoming Established,” in Towards New Relations between the Museum and Society, edited by Kathrin Pabst, Eva D. Johansen and Merete Ipsen (Oslo: Norsk ICOM: VestAgder Museum, 2016). In the same article, she also reflects upon the low response rate, and further steps concerning professional development within the Norwegian museum field. 112 Pabst, “Valuable, Challenging and Becoming Established,” 36.

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this view and described integration as “not good enough”.113 This difference can be explained by the vagueness of the terms ‘societal role’ and ‘dialogue’, which match the general, rather abstract language use that is typical for policy, strategic, and management documents, but which elicit difficulties when an attempt is made to operationalize them in museum practice. According to Pabst, 80 percent of the respondents regarded exhibitions that focused on current themes as a way of fulfilling the role of societal actor. In this context, dialogue plays a role as a means for museums to detect the needs of the outside world.114 A significantly smaller number (20%) stressed that museums need to stay neutral and fulfil the function of providing a meeting place for different viewpoints and voices from the community.115 All respondents were aware of the debate and discourse about the social role of the museum. The fact that they answered the survey questions is a further indication that they considered the issue important. The first three questions in the survey were: “What does the role of museums as dynamic societal actors involve?”, “Do you agree that it is important for museums to take on this role? Why or why not?” and “What would you say is the most important task museums hold within this working area?”116 In this context, according to my own analysis of answers to the first three questions,117 dialogue is considered a means to an end or a goal per se; the pure fact of establishing communication is considered an achievement. In a third use of the term, dialogue expresses one’s being in touch with one’s surroundings. As the main reasons for the existence of museums, respondents cited knowledge and subject-matter competency in addition to attempts to make previously marginalized voices heard. Based on these priorities, dialogue is not considered reciprocal or mutual. Instead, respondents described the museum as the one who is speaking. Such a perspective is illustrated by statements that describe museums living up to their societal role in cases where they “[...] put focus on diverse issues, make people reflect/think themselves.” Reciprocity – which constitutes a crucial feature of dialogue as a form of engagement – is ruled out explicitly, as the respondent continued: “We are not to give answers, but offer a broader picture.”118

113 114 115 116

117 118

Ibid., 21. Ibid., 18. Ibid., 19. “Hva mener du selv museenes rolle som aktiv samfunnsaktør innebærer? And “Er du enig i at det er viktig at museer tar denne rollen? Hvorfor eller hvorfor ikke?” and “Hva mener du er den aller viktigste oppgaven museene har innen dette arbeidsområdet?” I was given access to anonymized data in the form of an excel file with questions and answers that relate to my research interest by Kathrin Pabst in December 2016. “sette fokus på ulike temaer, få folk til å reflektere/tenke sjølv. Vi skal ikkje gje eit svar gje folk eit større bilde.”

3 The Norwegian context

Another respondent expressed similar thoughts, as she described how museums fulfil their societal role as “[...] offering historical and cultural knowledge and high competency as a basis for evaluations and conclusions.”119 While dialogue was mentioned in the survey introduction, knowledge and expertise were not. The emphasis on knowledge and expertise are hence museum employees’ independent contribution to a specification of what characterizes the museum’s societal role. In the cases in Pabst’s study in which respondents refer to those elements; they do this of their own accord, not influenced by something they have just read. In the individual answers of museum employees, knowledge and expertise are foregrounded and precede dialogue and the forms dialogue takes instead of the other way around. Dialogue does not lead to knowledge generation or exhibition preparation, but is used for disseminating knowledge or in exhibition communication. This suggests that individual museum employees rank knowledge and expertise above dialogue as museums’ defining features. ‘Being in dialogue’, then, is not the guiding idea behind the institution’s existence, nor does it shape all activities in the museum. Rather, given the underlying assumption that knowledge and expertise should define museums, dialogue is limited to a strategy that serves the dissemination of knowledge. A number of individual answers reveal additional understandings of dialogue. One respondent highlighted that “[m]useums must dare to address up-to-date topics and be in dialogue with the local community on many levels. Both for better or worse.”120 Deviating from how the later policy documents present dialogue, this quote associates dialogue with the possibility of disagreement or failure, instead of anticipating consensus. A more obviously critical perspective is offered by an informant who asked about the meaning of ‘being in dialogue with society’: “Besides, museums are supposed to be in dialogue with society, but what does that mean? I think the term dialogue can turn into a flowery phrase – a political catch-phrase that does not mean anything.”121 This example, even though it represents a minority position in the data, reminds us that dialogue is not unanimously considered good

119

“[...] Tilby historisk og kulturell kunnskap og kompetanse som grunnlag for vurderinger og konklusjoner.” 120 “Museene må tørre å ta opp dagsaktuelle tema og vera i dialog med lokalmiljøet på mange ulike plan. Både på godt og vondt. I tillegg så må museene tørre å utfordra sitt eige forhold til venelag og frivillige, og fornye seg, ikkje berre gå i dei spora som blir forventa av ein.” (“Museums must dare to address current issues and be in dialogue with its community. Both in good and ill. In addition museums must dare to challenge their own relations to the group of friends of the museum and volunteers, and renew itself, not only continue in the same old rut.”) 121 “Ved siden av dette skal museene være i dialog med samfunnet, men hva innebærer det? Jeg synes dialogbegrepet kan bli en floskel - et politisk moteord som ikke betyr noe.”

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and valuable by museum practitioners, despite the overall impression conveyed by political documents. However, in line with the use of the term in strategic documents, respondents to the museum survey more often linked ideas of consensus to the notion of dialogue. This general trend is illustrated by a quote from one respondent who expressed an understanding of dialogue that presupposes agreement and consensus. She referred to dialogue as to the opposite of acts challenging the surrounding community, stating that “Both to be in dialogue, but also to challenge one’s surroundings, are important tasks.”122 While dialogue tends to occur within the context of education and dissemination activities, only one museum employee regarded the notion of dialogue as one that applies to all museum activities. She linked her understanding of dialogue in a museum to the involvement of people from outside the museum in the museum’s internal processes: “For the museum, to be a societal actor means to be in dialogue with its surroundings for purposes of acquisition/collecting, ‘handling’ of materials and in their dissemination.”123 The number of survey respondents who make use of the term ‘dialogue’ in their discussion of museums is too small to make claims as to how Norwegian museum professionals in general think about the concept. Nonetheless, respondents’ answers make possible some preliminary suggestions: one is that some museum professionals experience the term as too vague to work with. Dialogue is more useful as a statement of intent than as a practical guideline for museum action. On the other hand, dialogue is used in a mundane sense of the word, simply designating communication, and at times not even two-way communication, but simply as a way of speaking or addressing somebody.

3.4.

Norwegian museums: relevant through dialogue?

In Norway the idea of the museum has transformed from folk museums as public educators and identity-affirming institutions to today’s view of museums as societal institutions with important responsibilities for democratization and cultural diversity. In Norwegian policy documents, the descriptions of museums’ societal relevance centered around the term dialogue, however in the analysed documents the notion is characterized by a certain vagueness and theoretical poverty.124 Often, dialogue functions as a buzzword, a positive word that implies connectivity, 122 123

“Både å være i dialog, men også utfordre omgivelsene er en viktig oppgave.” “For museet å være en samfunnsaktør betyr å være u dialog med omverdenen både når det gjelder innsamling og bearbeiding av materiale og i formidlingen av det.” 124 This is comparable to the ‘philosophical poverty’ that Barrett diagnosed in understandings of ‘the public’ that prevail in the museum world. Barrett, Museums and the Public Sphere.

3 The Norwegian context

exchange and possible agreement between equals and that makes it difficult to oppose or withdraw from dialogue. Dialogue is also presented as a specific form of engaging with visitors in educationally worthwhile communication. The manifold meanings of the term and the vagueness of the idea of the museum as ‘dialogue institution’ explains why museum professionals’ understanding of the term is based on different, at times contradicting interpretations of what is dialogue, what are the functions and aims of dialogue. This confusion does make it difficult to come to a shared understanding of the meaning of dialogue in museum contexts and to translate the notion, with all its potential and limitations, into museum practice.125 Therefore, I find the term ‘dialogue institution’ of limited use for thinking new about local history museums. Neither the idea of the ‘dialogue institution’, nor any of the previously presented ideas on museums as ‘post museum’, ‘contact zone’, ‘third space’ or ‘active museum’ refer to museums of history in particular. None of the theoretical approaches offer clues on how to understand the role of local history in the encounters between museums and community. Sheila Watson observed a similar shortcoming in realworld museums: “[...] some local histories in professionally run museums are authored by curators, or an exhibition team, who draw on academic histories to construct their narratives but who pay little regard to the way such histories are used by local audiences. [...] by giving more attention to the historiographic needs and historical perceptions of these audiences, museums might more effectively articulate community identities and a sense of place.”126 To gain a better understanding of the role (local) history plays in changing communities, the following chapter will first address the topic using the concept of historical consciousness. I will introduce the notion of historical consciousness, and then I will discuss its relevance for museums in general and for the study at hand in particular before presenting findings from qualitative interviews.

125

126

My observations seem to correspond to the way the Ministry of Culture and the Arts Council in particular looked at the issue. For four years (2013-2016), the Ministry of Culture financed week-long courses with the title The relevant museum to enhance museum professionals’ awareness of and competency on social issues and museums’ relevance. Watson, Sheila, “History Museums, Community Identities and a Sense of Place: Rewriting Histories,” in Museum Revolutions: How Museums Change and Are Changed, edited by Simon J. Knell, Suzanne MacLeod and Sheila Watson (London and New York: Routledge, 2007), 160.

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Historical consciousness among Hitra and Frøya’s population and the local museum

4. Memory and history, historical culture, historical consciousness and the local museum

4.1.

Memory and history

It is not easy to draw a line between memory and history, since both are closely related. There are manifold definitions of the terms that at times overlap due to different research interests or theoretical vantage points. Nevertheless, discussions of memory – whether collective or individual – are impossible without considering what is meant by history. The same applies to attempts to define history: history, too, is unthinkable without some sort of understanding of memory. The resemblance between history (historical culture, historical consciousness) and memory (cultural memory, collective memory) is rooted a fundamental characteristic shared by both: they both refer to the past and both must be actualized in organic memories in order to have any effect on an individual or collective basis. American historian Carl L. Becker stretched the similarities between history and memory as far as an equation. In his 1931 presidential address to the American History Association “Everyman His Own Historian”, he argued that history’s focus is not on the past, instead accentuating that since history served a purpose in present everyday life, history is “the memory of things said and done”.1 Drawing on Becker’s definition, I agree with Anette Warring who argues that if we, as historians or as museum practitioners, are to play a role in qualifying society’s uses of history, we require not only a clear-cut understanding of what history is, but also insight into how individuals remember or use history in different life contexts and for different purposes.2 With this in mind, in the following I will outline the understandings of history, historical culture and historical consciousness that inform the present research. For the most part I will follow the German-speaking and Scandinavian tradition of theories on historical culture and historical consciousness, albeit with side glances

1 2

Becker, Carl, “Everyman His Own Historian. Presidental Address Delivered before the American Historical Association,” American Historical Review 37, no. 2 (1932). Warring, Anette Elisabeth, “Erindring og historiebrug: Introduktion til et forskningsfelt,” 31.

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at English-language (especially Canadian3 ) research in order to enrich the discussion.

Historicity In the German tradition, Reinhart Koselleck’s work on ‘historicity’ has prepared the ground for the development of the notion of ‘historical consciousness’. According to Koselleck, humans shape their understanding of the present in accordance with their individual space of experience (“Erfahrungsraum”) and within a horizon of expectation (“Erwartungshorizont”). Koselleck thus establishes the idea of humans as fundamentally historical beings. As he puts it: “Historical times can be identified if we direct our view to where time itself occurs or is subjectively enacted in humans as historical beings: in the relationship between past and future, which always constitutes an elusive present. The compulsion to coordinate past and future so as to be able to live at all is inherent in any human being.”4 Koselleck develops ‘historicity’ as a philosophical concept within the theory of history. In terms of the investigation at hand, Koselleck’s theory is important because it supports the basic assumption that history does not exist independently of contemporary humans or the contemporary context. Grounded in the present, human beings’ experiences of the past and their expectations of the future form the frame within which they make history.

External and internal aspects of history Jörn Rüsen adds two other aspects to the tripartition into temporal spheres. He writes that “[t]he temporal orientation of life has two aspects, one external, the other internal.”5 History thus unfolds in the interplay of past, present, future and everyday practical life (the external) and the internal, subjective life of individuals.6 3

4

5

6

Historical consciousness was the topic of The Historical Thinking Project (2006-2014) at the Center for Study of Historical Consciousness at the University of British Columbia. Since the project aimed at history education in schools in particular, it only partially overlaps with the research interest of my study. For more information on the Historical Thinking Project, see: http://historicalthinking.ca/ (retrieved 12 March 2018). Koselleck, Reinhart, “The Practice of Conceptual History: Timing History, Spacing Concepts,” in Cultural Memory in the Present, edited by Hayden White (Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 2002), 111. Rüsen, Jörn, “Historical Consciousness: Narrative Structure, Moral Function, and Ontogenetic Development,” in Theorizing Historical Consciousness, edited by Peter Seixas (Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press, 2004), 68. Rüsen, Jörn, History: Narration, Interpretation, Orientation (New York: Berghahn Books, 2005), 25. Rüsen writes that “[t]he external aspect of orientation via history discloses the temporal dimension of practical life, uncovering the temporality of circumstances as shaped by human

4 Memory and history, historical culture, historical consciousness and the local museum

History, seen from the position of the individual, is thus a cultural and a cognitive process.7

Actor history Bernard Eric Jensen elaborates this idea, as for him, history is when somebody uses something that happened in the past for something in the present.8 Jensen uses the term ‘aktørhistorie’ (actor history) to describe this understanding of history. The understanding of actor history is based on the view that history is actively used for the purposes of life in the real world. ‘Observer history’ on the other hand is based on a detached approach to history, which regards history as synonymous with the past; this view has traditionally been prevalent in the historical sciences.9 When referring to ‘history’ without further explanation at later points in this book, I follow Koselleck’s, Rüsen’s and Jensen’s core arguments. History is defined as a contemporary product of meaning-making processes that relate to the past (and the future). Such an understanding of history is close to a common understanding of memory. A significant difference between the two is, however, the emphasis on the impact that ideas concerning the future have in the meaning-making processes that produce history.

7

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activity. The internal aspect of orientation via history discloses the temporal dimension of human subjectivity, giving selfunderstanding and awareness a temporal feature within which they take the form of historical identity, that is, a constitutive consistency of the temporal dimensions of the human self.“ Jones, Ceri, “An Illusion That Makes the Past Seem Real: The Potential of Living History for Developing the Historical Consciousness of Young People,” (PhD diss., University of Leicester, 2011), 66. “As a consequence, history needs to be defined in this way: History = When somebody uses something past for something → history is always somebody’s history(ies) → It is theoretically illegitimate to speak of history without specifying whose history one is referring to. When the emphasis is on somebody using something for some purpose, the dimension of present and future is automatically built into the context.” (“Historie må følgelig defineres på denne måden: historie = når noen burger noget fortidigt til noget → historie er altid nogens fortid(er) → det er teoretisk illegitimt at tale om historie, uden at det specificeres, hvis historie det er tale om. Når eftertrykket lægges på, at nogen bruger noget fortidigt til noget, er en samtidsog fremtidsdimension samtidig indbygget heri.”) Jensen, Bernard Eric, “Historiebevidsthed en nøgle til at forstå og forklare historisk sosiale processer,” in Historiedidaktik i Norden 9: Del 1: Historiemedvetande – Historiebruk, edited by Per Eliasson, Karl Gunnar Hammarlund, Erik Lund and Carsten Tage Taylor Nielsen (Malmö: Malmö högskola og Högskolan i Halmstad, 2012), 30. Ibid., 29/30.

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4.2.

Historical culture

Historical culture is widely described as “the articulated presence of the past in the life of a society”10 or as “[t]he practical realization of the mental procedures of historical consciousness in social communication.”11 The term historical culture describes a social process that is rendered observable through material and intangible manifestations. Historical culture can manifest in monuments, institutions, and arenas where contemporary understandings of the interrelatedness between past, present and the future are expressed.12 It is through its manifestations that the historical culture of a given group or society can be made the object of analysis. Researchers interested in particular historical cultures13 investigate artistic interpretations, political uses of history, leisure-time activities and school teaching. Museums are only one of many places where manifestations of historical culture can be observed and analysed. Nevertheless, they are special places in this context, and I will come back to why this is so below.

Three dimensions of historical culture Jörn Rüsen offers an analytical distinction between three dimensions of historical culture in order to better explain the particularities of historical culture: the aesthetic (corresponding to humans’ feelings), the cognitive (humans’ wish to understand), and the political (corresponding to humans’ political will).14 In Rüsen’s conceptual structure, these three dimensions always exist in parallel, but with varying priorities. According to Rüsen, all three dimensions are necessary for historical culture to fulfil its orientation function.15 Historical sciences, which tend to equate 10 11 12 13

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Sanchez Marcos, Fernando: Historical culture, http://www.culturahistorica.es/historical_culture.html#7 (retrieved 12 March 2018). Rüsen, “Historical Consciousness: Narrative Structure, Moral Function, and Ontogenetic Development,” 40. Warring, “Erindring og historiebrug: Introduktion til et forskningsfelt”, 10. I use the plural because I assume that different historical cultures are always competing for predominance over others. Even though it might be possible to identify dominant historical cultures in groups (such as nations), there are always subgroup or alternative historical cultures at play. Rüsen, Jörn, “Geschichtskultur,” in Handbuch Der Geschichtsdidaktik, edited by Klaus Bergmann, Klaus Fröhlich, Annette Kuhn, Jörn Rüsen and Gerhard Schneider (Seelze-Velber: Kallmeyer'sche Velagsbuchhandlung, 1997); Warring, “Erindring og historiebrug: Introduktion til et forskningsfelt,“ 11; Nordgren, Kenneth, “Vems är historien? Historia som medvetande, kultur och handling i det mångkulturella Sverige. (Who Does History Belong To? History As Consciousness, Culture and Action in Multicultural Sweden),” (Phd. Diss., Karlstad University, 2006), 19. “[H]istorical memory can best fulfil its orientation function if the three dimensions maintain their autonomy while at the same time critically referring to each other.” („Diejenige historische Erinnerung kann ihre kulturelle Orientierungsform am besten erfüllen, die ihre drei

4 Memory and history, historical culture, historical consciousness and the local museum

history and the past, belong to the cognitive dimension of historical culture. Here, the criteria of scientific quality, coherence and rationality are dominant.16 In European countries, universities and schools are strongly grounded in this dimension of historical culture. Museums, too, are carriers of this dimension as they base exhibitions or programming on academic research and contribute to historical education. As a consequence, they are highly trusted institutions when it comes to historical knowledge. The aesthetic dimension primarily describes the ways in which historical facts and knowledge are communicated to the public. This dimension’s power lies in its ability to appeal, to engage people and to evoke feelings. Focusing on the aesthetic dimension in museums means looking at which narrative strategies are employed, which objects are chosen, and how objects are arranged. Finally, the political dimension of historical culture is based on the assumption that every form of power needs to be legitimized by its subjects. Public memorials, uses of historical argumentation in political speeches or in the history taught in state schools are examples of this dimension. Where museums are concerned, statements about the political dimension can be made based on which subjects are displayed, which groups are represented or invited to participate (or not), and a general acceptance of the stories told in the museum. An awareness of the dynamic character of historical culture is expedient: despite the arguably long-lasting character especially of material manifestations of historical culture, such as monuments or permanent museum exhibitions, historical culture must never be understood as a “fossilised system of representing the past”.17 Rather, historical culture is to be regarded as a dynamic process in which interpretations of the past are negotiated. As such, historical culture is always dependent on the societal and cultural dynamics that unfold around it, and is also subject to different readings that shift according to the time and beholder. Museums, their exhibitions, and museum programming can be conceptualized as momentary expressions of historical culture that are embedded in processes and dynamics taking place around them.18 There are thus strong indications that the same manifestations of historical culture would be perceived and used differently by different groups.

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Dimensionen in relativer Autonomie beläβt und zugleich wechselseitig kritisch aufeinander bezieht.“) Rüsen, “Geschichtskultur,” 40. They are not undisputed, however. Within historical studies discussions have unfolded about the character of the field, its scientificity versus its literary character, and its epistemological basis. Fernando Sánchez Marcos, Historical culture. Again, the debate about the proposed Enola Gay exhibition at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum can serve as an illustrative example.

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When studying historical culture, research has often focused upon understanding how memory and history are produced and used for particular (often political) purposes. Particularly in Scandinavia, the focus on uses of the past has gained much attention.19 This strand of research focuses on different actors’ instrumental uses of the past and of history, but also looks more generally at how people use the past in everyday contexts. Even though researchers are aware of the fact that the officially articulated versions of the past only represent one voice in negotiations of groups’ historical culture and historical consciousness, the correlation between an articulated historical culture and its individual (everyday) appropriations are seldom studied.20 Empirical studies of how people use history in their everyday lives remain a lacuna.21

Historical culture in relation to historical consciousness As elaborated above, the analysis of historical culture does not take account of the way audiences perceive its products, and in most analyses, consumers are regarded as passive homogeneous recipients. Arguably, people with different backgrounds, prior knowledge and different motivations will apply different readings to the manifestations at hand,22 and an individual approach is thus fitting to study appropriations of historical culture. Fernando Sánchez Marcos highlights the “articulated presence of the past”23 as that which characterizes historical culture as opposed to historical consciousness, which refers to invisible internal processes of meaning production. However, the distinction is not straightforward. In the end, internal processes of making meaning from the past find their expression in historical culture and are influenced by historical culture in turn. Arguably, the delineation between the two concepts of historical culture and historical consciousness is an artificial one and serves analytical purposes only. In the real world, there will always be an overlap and mutual exchange between the two, as one cannot exist without the other.

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23

Karlsson, Klas-Göran, “Historiedidaktikk: begrep, teori och analys,” in Historien är nu. En introduktion till historiedidaktikken, edited by Klas-Göran Karlsson and Ulf Zander (Lund: Studentlitteratur 2009), especially 56-70; Warring, “Erindring og historiebrug: Introduktion til et forskningsfelt,” 23-31. Warring, “Erindring og historiebrug: Introduktion til et forskningsfelt,” 17/18; 7. This is mainly due to methodological challenges. Viviane Gosselin makes this a focal point of her Ph.D. thesis “Open to Interpretation: Mobilizing historical thinking in the museum”, considering different ideas of museum visitors as learners (visitors as passive recipients of knowledge, visitors as active learners, and a middle position: considering visitors’ individuality and social agency) to be pivotal in the learning experience in the museum. Viviane Gosselin, “Open to Interpretation: Mobilizing Historical Thinking in the Museum,” Phd diss., The University of British Columbia, 2011), 14-27. Fernando Sánchez Marcos, “Historical Culture.”

4 Memory and history, historical culture, historical consciousness and the local museum

Despite their interrelatedness, and for purposes of clarity, I base my analysis on the presumption that a historical culture approach to the case at hand casts a light on society (or the local community) as a whole, while historical consciousness (although it can refer to collectives) offers tools to gain insight into individual processes of meaning making.24 This understanding aligns with Jörn Rüsen’s definition of historical culture as the “total range of the activities of historical consciousness”25 or, as he wrote together with Friedrich Jaeger, the “embodiment of all those social activities and institutions through which historical consciousness happens.”26 For her study of how young migrants appropriate German history, Viola B. Georgi emphasizes the cultural dependency of individual’s historical consciousness. She highlights that individual historical consciousness develops in interplay between cultural representations of the past and individual’s engagement with and interpretations of the such public representations of the past.27

4.3.

Historical consciousness

One important aspect of historical consciousness is that it contributes to orientation. Rüsen writes that “[...] historical consciousness functions as a specific mode of orientation in real-life situations in the present: its function is to aid us in comprehending past actuality in order to grasp present actuality.”28 The metaphor of orientation was picked up by David Carr who, drawing on Rüsen’s writing, argues that the concept of orientation expresses the place history has in our lives in general.29 By way of illustration, Carr points to parallels between orientation in time and orientation in space from which the term is derived. Orientation thus stands for knowing where we come from and where we are going. Sometimes we get lost and need to reorient ourselves.30 The crucial point in Carr’s reference to spatial

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27 28 29 30

Accordingly, it offers insight into different interpretations and appropriations of historical culture. This approach is also chosen as a response to the criticism of armchair research that favors one interpretation of the object of analysis. “Gesamtbereich der Aktivitäten des Geschichtsbewusstseins”. Rüsen, “Geschichtskultur,” 38. “Inbegriff der sozialen Aktivitäten und Institutionen, durch die und in denen Geschichtsbewusstsein geschieht.” Rüsen, Jörn and Jaeger, Friedrich, „Erinnerungskultur,“ in Deutschand Trendbuch. Fakten und Orientierungen, edited by Karl-Rudolf Korte and Werner Weidenfeld (Opladen: Leske + Budrich 201), 401. Georgi, Viola, Entliehene Erinnerungen. Geschichtsbilder junger Migranten in Deutschland (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2003). Rüsen, “Historical Consciousness: Narrative Structure, Moral Function, and Ontogenetic Development,” 66. Carr, David, “History as Orientation: Rüsen on Historical Culture and Narration,” History and theory 45, no. 2 (2006). Ibid., 231.

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orientation is that in order to provide a sense of direction, orientation must relate to some actual knowledge of the territory. Applied to historical orientation, this means there needs to be access to some factual knowledge about history, or, as Carr puts it: “we need to know our surroundings as they really are [emphasis added by author], not as we wish they were.”31 If (local) history is to offer any orientation to the individual – be it to old people, young people, long-time residents or newcomers to a region – individuals need to have access to some sort of factual knowledge of the past. Moreover, historical consciousness’s obligation to respect historical facts implies a connection between individual meaning-making processes on the one hand and academic studies of history that are organized by specific disciplinary rules and the museum as a trusted knowledge institution on the other.32 It is in this constellation, then, that museums have the potential to play a significant societal role. Therefore, I will pick up this line of argument later and discuss which methods museums can employ in order to acknowledge individuals’ historical consciousness, perpetuate fact-based knowledge, and qualify individual historical consciousness in line with Jensen and Rüsen as outlined above. In German history didactics, the process of making sense of the experience of the past has been studied through the lens of historical consciousness since the late 1970s. Karl-Ernst Jeismann, in his seminal definition, wrote in 1979: “more than pure knowledge of or pure interest in history, historical consciousness encompasses the interconnection between the interpretation of the past, understanding of the present and perspectives towards the future.”33 Even though this classical definition has existed for almost 40 years and has been very influential in Central and Northern Europe34 no consensus on how to define

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Ibid., 242. Research shows that museums are still one of the most trusted institutions when it comes to learning, especially historical learning. In Rosenzweig and Thelen’s seminal 1998 study, museums are even the most trusted source when it comes to ‘information about the past’. Rosenzweig, Roy, and David Thelen, The Presence of the Past: Popular Uses of History in American Life (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 22/23. “Mehr als reines Wissen oder reines Interesse an Geschichte umgreift Geschichtsbewußtsein den Zusammenhang von Vergangenheitsdeutung, Gegenwartsverständnis und Zukunftsperspektive.” Jeismann, Karl-Ernst, “Geschichtsbewusstsein – Theorie,” in Handbuch der Geschichtsdidaktik, edited by Klaus Bergmann, Klaus Fröhlich, Annette Kuhn, Jörn Rüsen and Gerhard Schneider (Seelze-Velber: Kallmeyer'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1997). Cintia Velázquez Marroni’s in her article “History Museums, Historical Culture and the Understanding of the Past: A Research from Mexico,” Museum Management and Curatorship 32, no. 4 (2017) underlines that the notion of ‘historical consciousness’ has been overlooked in Anglophone academia, with the exception of a small number of publications, including Peter Seixas seminal edited volume Theorizing Historical Consciousness (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004). Ceri Jones offers a list of English works on historical consciousness,

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the term precisely has been established thus far.35 Furthermore, the term is employed interchangeably with related concepts, including memory, sense of the past or historical thinking, and this has resulted in ambiguous uses of historical consciousness.

4.3.1.

Bernard Eric Jensen on historical consciousness

In the Scandinavian context, the work of Bernard Eric Jensen in particular has contributed to a paradigm shift in history didactics. Inspired by the discourse of German-language academia, which from the 1980s onwards moved from concern with history in formal (school) education to more general questions concerning history in society, Jensen promotes history didactics as a research field with a focus on emergence, forms, sociocultural relevance and functions of historical consciousness.36 Jensen is a spokesperson for engaged history didactics, stating that the purpose of history didactics is not to study how to best teach ‘history’. Instead, the purpose must be to “qualify” individuals’ historical consciousness. According to Jensen, history didactics “does not teach people to build and use their historical consciousness – this they learn elsewhere – but it seeks to make them into more insightful and responsible, more critical and creative users of their historical consciousness than they elsewise would have been.”37 As such an understanding corresponds with ideas of the museum as an active participant in negotiations about history, identity and belonging, a closer look at Jensen’s ideas on historical consciousness is worthwhile.

Historical consciousness and identity For Bernard Eric Jensen, historical consciousness is characterized by two basic features: it is an integral element of humans’ identity formation and it forms part of

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most important among them Merriman’s 1991 Beyond the Glass Case; Rosenzweig and Thelen’s 1998 The presence of the past: popular uses of history in American life, Ashton and Hamilton’s 2009 book section Connecting with History: Australians and Their Pasts. Jensen, Bernd Eric, “Historiebevidsthed - en nøgle til at forstå og forklare historisk sosiale processer,” 15. Cf. Gosselin, Viviane and Phaedra Livingstone, “Introduction: Pespectives on Museums and Historical Consciousness in Canada,” in Museums and the Past. Constructing Historical Consciousness, edited by Viviane Gosselin and Phaedra Livingstone (Vancouver: UBC Press, The University of British Columbia, 2016), 5. Warring, “Erindring og historiebrug: Introduktion til et forskningsfelt,” 9. “Historiedidaktik lærer ikke folk at danne og bruge deres historiebevidsthed; det lærer de andetsteds, men den vil gøre dem til mere indsigtsfulde og ansvarsfulde, mere opfindsomme og eftertænksomme, mere kritiske og creative brugere af deres historiebevidsthed end de eller ville have være.” Jensen, “Historiebevidsthed - en nøgle til at forstå og forklare historisk sosiale processer,” 29.

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sociocultural learning processes.38 Based on the assumption that history is “when a person or groups are interested in something past and make use of their knowledge about it for one purpose or another”,39 Jensen further elaborates a model that establishes correlations between how history as a mode of understanding (“forståelsesform”) is correlated to history as a practice. The distinguishing factor is the temporal dimension being accentuated. In cases in which the past is most predominant, Jensen speaks of a remembering function (“erindrende function”). In cases in which humans use their historical consciousness to make sense of a present situation, Jensen speaks of a diagnostic function (“diagnosticerence function”) and in cases where humans use historical consciousness to make statements about the future, Jensen speaks of an anticipating function (“anticiperende function”).40 As historical consciousness serves purposes of identity formation, it is used to answer questions such as: who am I /who are we? How have I become the person I am/how have we become who we are (remembering function)? What characterizes my/our present situation (diagnostic function)? And where can I/we go from here (anticipating function)?

Meeting with others While the functions outlined above are related to identity, Jensen also speaks of the use of history to put things into perspective (“perspektiverende function”) when historical consciousness manifests in an encounter with ‘the Other’ and otherness. As stated by Jensen, this encounter can take different forms. Attempts to understand the Other can be abandoned, turning one’s back on the other; one can try to fit what is new and different into a pre-existing system of categories; or a learning process, developing an understanding of why others think and act the way they do, can be set in motion. This kind of enquiry leads not only to learning more about the other; one’s own life is put into perspective, offering starting points for selfreflection.41

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Jensen, Bernard Eric, Historie: Livsverden og fag (København: Gyldendal, 2003), 68. Jensen’s differentiation is similar to Rüsen’s divide into external and internal aspects of history. “[...] at gøre med historie, når en person eller gruppe personer interesserer seg for noget fortidigt of gør brug af deres viden herom til et eller andet formål.” Jensen, Hvad Er Historie (København: Akademisk forlag, 2010), 8. Jensen, Historie: Livsverden og fag, 67/68. Ibid., 68/69. Peter Seixas expresses similar ideas when writing about the functions of comparison: “Comparison promotes the examination of unarticulated assumptions and throws aspects of historical consciousness that might otherwise have escaped notice into sharp relief. Comparison helps to challenge unfounded claims of uniqueness drawn from one national setting; conversely, it challenges unfounded claims of universality.” Seixas, Peter, “Introduction,” in Theorizing Historical Consciousness, edited by Peter Seixas (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), 14.

4 Memory and history, historical culture, historical consciousness and the local museum

In line with what Jensen regards as the purpose of history didactics, the epistemological interest that informs his categories is identifying how the different elements contribute to qualifying individuals’ historical consciousness. The question thus is whether “they offer their users insight into correlations between preconditions, possibilities and consequences of and for humans’ choices as well as an understanding of themselves as both creations of history and creators of history.”42 This description resonates with how historical consciousness is implicated in societal and political relevance, as historical consciousness can be read as both indicative of and determining the political thoughts and actions of individuals as well as groups. As Jensen states: “It is about learning processes that seek to develop good discernment as a basis for the regulation of human beings’ reflective action.”43 As Jensen’s deliberations render obvious, historical consciousness is normative and political. Peter Seixas emphasized that scholars of historical consciousness “must accept the burden of normative judgements”. According to Seixas, the reason for this lies in the observation that different forms of historical consciousness are supported by different social and political arrangements.44

4.3.2.

Jörn Rüsen on historical consciousness

While Jensen has been influential in Scandinavia, in English- and German-speaking academia, Jörn Rüsen’s model of types of historical consciousness has attracted greater attention. Rüsen offers a second perspective as he differentiates between traditional, exemplary, critical, and genetic types of historical consciousness and implies progressive development from the traditional type to the genetic type. 45 The traditional type is characterized by individuals who mobilize significations of the past without really questioning their accuracy for present-day reality. Cultural norms and values are kept alive through the repetition of narratives or symbols that confirm and reaffirm established meanings of the past as well as individuals’ connection to their peers. Affirmation – found in jubilees, foundation myths

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Warring, “Erindring og historiebrug: Introduktion til et forskningsfelt,” 9; Jensen, Historie: Livsverden og fag, 69: “[...] om de bibringer brugerne indsikt i sammenhænge mellom betingelser, muligheder og konsekvenser for og af menneskers valg samt en forståelse af sig selv som såvel historieskabte som historieskabende.” “det drejer sig da om læreprocesser, der sigter mod at utvikle den gode dømmekraft som udgangspunktet for menneskers refleksive handlingsregulering.” Jensen, Historie: Livsverden og fag, 69. Seixas, “Introduction,” 10/11. Rüsen, “Historical Consciousness: Narrative Structure, Moral Function, and Ontogenetic Development,” 70-78.

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and the like – is the most common form of communication applied in this kind of historical consciousness. The exemplary type remembers single cases from the past that represent common/universal conduct guidelines. Individuals make sense of the past with the help of patterns and rules that are taken for granted and endowed with general validity. Stories that present examples or role models or narratives with a clear moral constitute the typical form of communication. The critical type invokes questioning and remembers historical events that transgress dominant historical narratives. Individuals highlight the problematic aspects of significations of the past for the present and justify their non-pertinence. Communication takes the form of standpoint-based debate as stories are highlighted that contradict traditional narratives. The genetic type focuses on change and recognizes the complexity, temporality, and variability of knowing and acting in the world. There is an acknowledgement that one’s moral obligations to the past not only vary according to time, space, and context and thus are constantly adjusted, but also require sincere openness to different viewpoints if a more complete vision of reality is to be attained. Individuals appreciate the difficulty of understanding reality and thus the necessity of finding a more sophisticated and fluid manner to comprehend it. They understand that the way in which they conceive the world not only is part of and varies according to time, but also consists of a historical construction in and of itself that evolves according to its own logic and rhythm. Furthermore, they recognize the temporal distance between the past and present where different ways of doing and living are concerned. Finally, they realize that they do not always possess sufficient knowledge to understand the past and, as a result, need to know and learn more about it. Communication is discursive, and different positions and perspectives are seen in relation to one another. The latter type of historical consciousness aligns best with the view of museums as elements of or in communicative memory and the idea of an active museum that opens up reciprocal interaction with their presentday surroundings and communities. Despite this connection, manifestations of this type of historical consciousness are, according to Ceri Jones, difficult to find in museums.46

4.4.

Historical consciousness in research on museums

On a conceptual level, museums share the temporal dimensions of past, present, and future with the concept of historical consciousness. Museums are institutions 46

Jones, “An Illusion That Makes the Past Seem Real: The Potential of Living History for Developing the Historical Consciousness of Young People,” 104.

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that contribute to shaping individuals’ historical consciousness. Simultaneously, museums demand that visitors actively engage their historical consciousness to give meaning to the experience of visiting an exhibition. However, a discussion of museums in the light of historical consciousness is lacking in museum studies in general, and in Norway in particular. History didactics’ and museum studies’ discussions of historical consciousness have largely evolved in parallel without acknowledging each other’s contributions, concepts and terms.47 Nevertheless, in more recent publications on museums, a number of scholars approach museums with theories of historical consciousness in mind.48 Most recently, an edited volume by Gosselin and Livingstone (2016)49 and Susan Crane somewhat earlier (1997, 2000) have regarded historical consciousness as the bridge connecting personal awareness of the past with ‘facts about history’, arguing for a refinement of relationships between the two. In their Ph.D. dissertations, Ceri Jones (2010) and Viviane Gosselin (2011) apply historical consciousness as a theoretical background when studying visitors’ encounters with history in the museum. Instead of being interested in how visitors’ historical consciousness is activated in encounters with museum exhibitions (Gosselin) or living history programs at the museum (Jones), I am interested in what we can learn about peoples’ historical consciousness prior to encounters with the museum. An analysis of the role local history plays in the life of individuals is, I suppose, necessary information for a museum that seeks to be in touch with and relevant for its community. Gaining more knowledge about how and where individuals actualize and use historical consciousness in the context of local history is salient knowledge for rethinking the place and functions of small local museums that consider themselves as places of and agents in communicative and functional memory. Significantly for research, Jensen’s and Rüsen’s approaches present categories that are determined a priori. Jensen’s categories, however, offer starting points for 47

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Cf. Gosselin and Livingstone, “Introduction: Pespectives on Museums and Historical Consciousness in Canada,” 5. Also page 262: “Although museology literature rarely refers to the term, it shares concerns and theoretical underpinning with historical consciousness as a field of study – namely an interest in studying historical and current processes of identity formation and the role of historical narratives in temporal orientation and moral guidance.” Sharon Macdonald partly bases her analyses of how Nazi past is negotiated in Nuremberg on the theory of historical consciousness. Macdonald, Sharon, “Undesirable Heritage: Fascist Material Culture and Historical Consciousness in Nuremberg,” International Journal of Heritage Studies 12, no. 1 (2006). Gosselin, Viviane and Phaedra Livingstone (eds.), Museums and the Past. Constructing Historical Consciousness (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2016) presents an exception. The authors identify a lack of research on the relationships between museums and historical consciousness, despite the fact that “[t]he words ‘museum’ and ‘historical consciousness’ dovetail almost intuitively: the former being a physical and public space inviting reflection about the past, the latter being a reflective state of mind about the past.” Ibid., iix.

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observing, describing and analysing the setting and purposes of processes of historical consciousness and thus do not preclude the establishment of new categories. Rüsen’s categories, on the other hand, help to systematize the structures and contents of these processes. My use of Jensen’s and Rüsen’s approaches hence does not aim to show whether and where my empirical data supports their respective categories. As Rüsen himself writes, there are no clear-cut boundaries between the different categories, and characteristic features from different categories can be observed in one utterance or one person’s expressions of historical consciousness.50 Instead, in my use of the term, historical consciousness is intended to draw attention to how history or the past is used in individuals’ processes of making sense of their lives in a specific time and context. In my research I aim to develop a nuanced picture of ongoing negotiations about history, identity and belonging in Frøya and Hitra. The idea is, through the analysis of individual interviews, to explore the differences as well as similarities and potential patterns in how individual members of the community relate to history in general and local history in particular. Having established significant patterns in how individuals relate to the subject matter of the local history museum, the following question will be: what do these findings imply for the local museum in a changing and diverse community? Before I address these questions, meanwhile, the following chapter will introduce Oral history as theory and method in relative detail. The reason for my choice of oral history is that while no shared method to study historical consciousness has been produced as yet, oral history has developed a nuanced epistemology and a methodological apparatus with a corresponding terminology.

50

Rüsen, “Historical Consciousness: Narrative Structure, Moral Function, and Ontogenetic Development,” 78.

5. Historical consciousness among Hitra’s and Frøya’s population

5.1.

Oral history theory and methodology

My empirical research takes a phenomenological approach, since I seek to gain a better “understanding [of] social phenomena from the actors’ own perspectives[,] describing the world as experienced by the subjects, with the assumption that the important reality is what people perceive it to be.”1 Qualitative research furthermore allows the exploration of previously unfamiliar research fields and provides the necessary freedom for unexpected elements and interconnections to emerge. Qualitative criteria inform the method of open active interviews,2 which I apply in my research. More specifically, oral history serves as the main theoretical and methodological background for my conducting and analysis of interviews. Oral history belongs to a qualitative research paradigm but differs from other such paradigms as it engages with the past.3 Oral history’s main concern is the past as seen through the eyes of living individuals. It reveals how the past shapes present-day thinking, values, and attitudes, and at the same time offers insight into how present-day contexts shape views on the past. This is very much in line with my wish to better understand how individuals with different backgrounds in rapidly changing communities use the past and history for orientation.

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3

Brinkmann, Svend, and Steinar Kvale, Interviews: Learning the Craft of Qualitative Research Interviewing. 3rd ed. (Thousand Oaks, Calif: Sage, 2015), 30. Gubrium, Holstein and Jaber’s argument is that all interviews are characterized by interaction between those involved and interpretative activity on both sides of the communication. Gubrium, James A. Holstein and Jaber F., “The Active Interview,” in Qualitative Research: Theory, Method and Practice, edited by David Silverman (London, Thousand Oaks, New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2004). “qualitative research which may collect data via an interview can be a close cousin of oral history but may not have the distinctive character of specifically engaging with the past.” Abrams, Lynn, Oral History Theory (New York, N.Y.: Routledge, 2016), 2.

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Oral history had its breakthrough during the 1960s. Since its earliest beginnings, the field has been characterized by a bottom-up approach and an ideal of democratizing history. Accordingly, oral history is not only a scholarly, but also an activist enterprise as it seeks to contribute to “people’s empowerment and social change, often at the community level.”4 Oral history interviews are hence conducted with the aim to fill in gaps in historical records and research and to give a voice to previously silent groups, thus rendering those groups and their perspectives on the past visible.5 Since historical written sources that offer insight into the lives of marginalized groups are scarce, interviews with representatives of such groups were seen as the most adequate method of gaining access to information about diverse groups and their history. In Europe, women’s and the working classes’ memories and history have attracted oral historians’ (and many museums’) interest in particular. In the case of Norway, indigenous groups and cultural minorities have also recently become the subject of oral history research. Topics of everyday domestic and family life are best addressed with oral history approaches, as these areas produce only few written documents. Oral history has gone through a number of paradigm shifts since its beginnings, moving away from the idea that historical research can lead to the reconstruction of an objective image of the past.6 In historical research, interviews were conventionally considered unreliable sources due to their subjectivity, and were thus seen as offering little historical insight. Historians used interviews mainly as illustrations and proof or to add emotional layers to written historical accounts. Criticism of oral history’s use of interviews asserted that interviewees’ memories would be distorted not only by nostalgia, but also by the personal bias of both interviewee and interviewer. Furthermore, they would be influenced by collective memory and contemporary dominant versions of the past. In response to this criticism,

4 5

6

Leavy, Patricia, Oral History: Understanding Qualitative Research (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 5. Bornat, Joanna, “Oral History and Remembering,” in Research Methods for Memory Studies, edited by Emily Keightley and Michael Pickering (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013), 31. Perks and Thomson summarize this as “the post-war renaissance of memory as source for ‘people’s history’; the development, from the late 1970s, of ‘post-positivist’ approaches to memory and subjectivity; a transformation about the role of the oral historian as interviewer and analyst from the late 1980s; and the digital revolution of the late 1990s and early 2000s.” Perks, Robert, and Alistair Thomson, “Critical Developments: Introduction,” in The Oral History Reader, edited by Robert Perks and Alistair Thomson (London and New York: Routledge, 2006). For a short overview over the development of oral history theory with a focus on the role of the interviewer, see: Yow, Valerie,“’Do I like Them Too Much?’: Effects of the Oral History Interview on the Interviewer and vice-versa,” in: The Oral History Reader, edited by Robert Perks and Alistair Thomson (London and New York: Routledge, 2006).

5 Historical consciousness among Hitra’s and Frøya’s population

oral history scholars drew on diverse disciplines such as social psychology and anthropology and developed guidelines and methods to support reliability and consistency in work with oral sources.7 Today, oral history has developed an understanding of interview data as recollections of the past that are anchored in and influenced by contemporary contexts. In addition, under the influence of the ‘memory turn’ in historical studies,8 oral history theory increasingly pays attention to questions of why and how people remember (or forget) certain events, and how memories are shaped by interviewees’ own experiences and politics.9 By now, the early criticism of oral history’s unreliability has been reversed and turned into a strength. Oral history is, as Michael Frisch writes, not about Ranke’s ideal of writing history ’as it really was’; instead, oral history focuses on memory and how people make sense of the past, how they use history to give meaning to their present lives and the world around them. With this shift of focus in mind, oral history approaches offer insight into the status of history in the lives and minds of living people, which corresponds to the predominant perspective of the research reported here and is consistent with the theory of historical consciousness. The shift in focus from gathering information about a silent past to looking into present constructions of memories and significations of past events demands that oral history goes beyond established historical methods of analysis. Linguistic, 7 8 9

Ibid., 3. Confino, Alon, “History and Memory,” in The Oxford History of Historical Writing, edited by Axel Schneider and Daniel Woolf (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), especially 46. In this regard, oral history overlaps with memory studies, which are interested in processes of remembering as well. However, despite their shared object of interest, the two fields exist independently and communicate rarely. See also: Keightley, Emily, and Michael Pickering, Research Methods for Memory Studies (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013), 4: “Its adjacency to memory studies might suggest the potential for fruitful collaboration, yet a peculiar impasse has grown up between the two fields. It is peculiar because of the ostensible closeness of their key concerns: the one with the remembered past, the other with processes of remembering. […] Perhaps the main reason why active dialogue has not happened is that, although oral historians have become increasingly sensitive to the hermeneutic issues involved in oral history, considered as both method and material, they have not engaged in any extensive way with the public dimension of memory and the question of how this is constituted. In turn, those involved in memory studies have failed to engage, again in any extensive way, with oral history, mainly because of a leading pre-occupation in memory studies with collective ‘trauma’, national history and heritage, grand-scale ritualistic social practices, and macro-cultural memory, rather than with individual and small group micro-processes of remembering.” For the research at hand, the differences between memory studies and oral history materialize as follows: whereas memory studies, developed within a cultural studies tradition, offers fruitful perspectives when discussing the role and status of the museum institution in demographically changing communities (on a general, theoretical level (cf. Chapter 2), oral history is better equipped to provide insight into individuals’ real-world versions of the past, which impact on how individuals engage with a museum.

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narrative, cultural and psychoanalytical theory have all offered insight into how meaning is produced in interviews. Despite its origin and ties to historical studies, today oral history presents itself as an interdisciplinary field of research.10 Oral history researchers gain access to personal, individual experiences and memories with the help of interviews. As oral history (through its chosen method of interviewing people) is close to ‘flesh-and-blood’ human beings, it is individual and subjective and has been criticized for this. There are several explanations for this: while written sources in principle exist independently of researchers (even though historians still have to analyse and interpret sources), oral sources depend to a high degree on what researchers bring to the conversation in terms of questions, reactions, follow-up questions and personal relationships.11 Reacting to the criticism that oral historians’ data is biased and as such of limited use as source material, oral historians have extensively discussed researchers’ involvement in the production of interview data and theory has been developed that addresses this issue directly using the term ‘intersubjectivity’.

Intersubjectivity Intersubjectivity translates as “among, amid, between, with or to each other, mutually, reciprocally”12 and subjectivities/subjects. Intersubjectivity signifies that what happens during an interview is a co-production of meaning by (at least) two persons. Lynn Abrams describes the process of interviewing in oral history as a threeway conversation: the interviewee produces text through speaking with herself/himself, with the interviewer and with culture. This cooperative quality of interview data demands that neutrality and objectivity be let go of as defining criteria,13 opening up a consideration of context and discourses beyond the interview as carriers of meaning that influence how individuals produce meaning during an interview. Interview data, due to their intersubjective character, are rich and complex, offering insight into processes of negotiations of self, interactions between interviewer and interviewee, and individual adaptations of historical culture. An additional important observation is that the interview is a singular event, an encounter between interviewer and interviewee that cannot be repeated. Even though interviews are embedded in both social and cultural contexts, they are unique events that must be studied and evaluated as such.

10 11

12 13

Abrams, Oral History Theory, 16-17. Portelli, Alessandro, “What Makes Oral History Different,” in The Oral History Reader, edited by Robert Perks and Alistair Thomson (London and New York: Routledge, 2006 (orig. 1998)), 39. Glare, P. G. W ed., Oxford Latin Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007 (orig.1982)), 938/939. Abrams, Oral History Theory, 54.

5 Historical consciousness among Hitra’s and Frøya’s population

The foregrounding of intersubjectivity in oral history interviews is also a response to feminist criticism concerning imbalances of power in interview processes on a general level. Even though feminist historians initially embraced oral history as a way to render ordinary women visible in history, they soon criticized that oral history interviews were not merely liberating. Far from it: when conceptualized as depersonalized encounters steered by ideals of the researcher’s objectivity and detachment, they were part of a ‘masculine paradigm’ and considered to reproduce scholarly hierarchies.14 Another feminist criticism addressed language in interviews: since patriarchal discourse dominates language, it deprives women of the possibility to express female experiences on their own terms.15 The notion of intersubjectivity is an attempt to respond to feminists’ critique and proposes a number of strategies to avoid – or at least reduce – power imbalances. Some of these strategies are to treat the interview as a conversation or shared experience, to adapt linguistic patterns to the performance of the narrator, to dress differently, to allow respondents to interrogate the interviewer, and to allow respondents to influence the research questions and ultimately take some responsibility for the project.16 Not all of these strategies are easily employed, and some are more feasible in oral history community projects than in research contexts. However, they are important reminders of the fact that interviews play out in power constellations that must be factored in during the interview and during analysis. Once the intersubjective character of interview data has been acknowledged, the next step is to understand that neither the interviewer’s nor the interviewee’s subjectivity is ever fixed or stable, but can change from one interview to the next, or even during the interview.17 As individuals react to circumstantial changes faster than museum exhibitions, for example, can, interviews offer an approach that is able to register immediately not only how history develops, but also how members of a local community experience and interpret changes. In Hitra and Frøya, the local communities are undergoing far-reaching changes in terms of demography and economic growth. Since these developments started in the early 2000s and are ongoing, their implications and long-term consequences are yet to be seen. As ongoing historical changes cannot be seen in hindsight, there is reason to assume that the verbalization of unfinished processes of meaning production has an impact on how these meaning-making processes develop. Interviewing individuals 14 15

16 17

Ibid., 71/72. Abrams takes this argument from Minister, Kristina, “A Feminist Frame for the Oral History Interview,” in: Gluck, Sherna Berger and Daphne Patai, eds., Women’s Words: The Feminist Practice of Oral History (London: Routledge, 1991), 30. Quoted in Abrams, Oral History Theory, 72. Ibid., 72. “oral sources derive from subjectivity – they are not static recollections of the past but are memories reworked in the context of respondent’s own experience and politics.” Abrams, Oral History Theory, 7.

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about current processes of making meaning of the past and present itself can have an effect on how these processes unfold. The conviction that participating in interviews has an impact on informants’ understandings of the issues at stake is widely shared in oral history and interviewbased qualitative research. Patricia Leavy, for instance, sums up that “[s]ometimes the experience of empowerment results from having an opportunity to share personal experiences and perspectives and thereby, in a sense, have one’s experiences and knowledges validated. Empowerment and educational benefits can also stem from participants having an opportunity to re-story their experiences as they narrate. This involves a process of reflection, recalling, remembering, reimagining – it is a process of putting the pieces together, and may be very beneficial to participants. This process can lead to a greater understanding of past or present issues for the participant.”18 One final important aspect that oral history brings to the research at hand is the understanding that practice and analysis are connected and the interview process and outcome cannot be separated.19 During the interview encounter, processes of signification, interpretation and meaning making already take place and impact on data. In the present research, this meant that my focus in interviews changed slightly in order to adapt to my changing and emerging understanding of the case. In terms of analysis, an awareness of intersubjectivity implies three focal points of analysis: firstly, how does the informant develop his or her viewpoints? Secondly, which discursive constructions are available to and/or (not) used by the informant? Thirdly, which interactions between informant and interviewer take place during the interview, and how do these shape what is being said? The answers to these subquestions provide stepping-stones that lead to a more nuanced understanding of the role local history plays for individuals in Hitra and Frøya and how public representations of local history are involved in processes of identity formation and form part of negotiations of belonging.

5.2.

Oral history inspires museum practice

Museums have collected life stories and presented oral history research in exhibitions for a long time now. Furthermore, they have played and continue to play a major role in community history projects in dialogue with communities. The most distinguished example of an oral history community project that works closely

18 19

Leavy, Patricia, Oral History: Understanding Qualitative Research (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011, 83. Abrams, Oral History Theory, 2.

5 Historical consciousness among Hitra’s and Frøya’s population

with community members is the Chinatown History Museum in New York (originally founded in 1980 as the New York Chinatown History Project). Rooted in oral history, cofounder and historian John Kuo Wei Tchen explicitly aims to create dialogic community projects as the basis for a ‘dialogic museum’.20 For him, a dialogic museum is a museum “whose narrative is developed entirely through the diverse stories and perspectives of those who lived it, not as a master narrative written by a historian.”21 Further, together with Liz Ševčenko (founding director of The International Coalition of Historic Site Museums of Conscience), he identifies at least three different ideas of a dialogic museum, all based on oral history as a political movement and research paradigm and all with different implications for whether or how authority is shared. The first concerns the museum’s purpose to promote discussions of a truth that has been forgotten or deliberately suppressed. For the Frøya and Hitra context, this approach is not unambiguously relevant as there is no history that has been deliberately suppressed in public versions of the past. However, this perspective becomes relevant when we focus on contemporary history; the failure to include labour migrants’ voices in the museum’s documentation of the present situation and culture in Hitra and Frøya threatens to silence a significant number of residents. A second variation manifests as community curation: here, dialogue takes place between historians and eyewitnesses with the aim of “[s]haring the museums’ and historians’ traditional curatorial authority, tapping into the knowledge and perspectives of people who have been marginalized. It also shares the authority of a single narrative, embracing multiple perspectives that together create a larger truth.”22 This approach corresponds strongly with oral history as outlined above and is in evidence in attempts to document contemporary changes in Frøya or Hitra. Finally, a third version of the dialogic museum based on oral history opens up the museum as a space in which to discuss the implications of the past for the present. Without mentioning it explicitly, in this last version Tchen describes the role of museums as facilitators of historical consciousness and historical thinking.

20

21 22

Tchen, John Kuo Wei, “Creating a Dialogic Museum: The Chinatown History Museum Experiment,” in Museums and Communities. The Politics of Public Culture, edited by Ivan Karp, Christine Mullen Kreamer and Steven D. Lavine (Washington and London: Smithonian Institution Press, 1992); Tchen, John Kuo Wei, and Liz Ševčenko, “The ‘Dialogic Museum’ Revisited: A Collaborative Reflection,” in Letting Go? Sharing Historical Authority in a User-Generated World, edited by Bill Adair, Benjamin Filene and Laura Koloski (Philadelphia: The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, 2011). Tchen and Ševčenko, “The ‘Dialogic Museum’ Revisited”, 83. Ibid., 85.

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Furthermore, the museum he describes corresponds with the museum as part of ‘communicative’ and ‘functional memory’. Despite the prominent example of the Chinatown History Museum, theoretical awareness of intersubjectivity in oral history has found little resonance in museum exhibitions to the present day.23 The way in which the voices of informants from outside the museum are made audible in exhibitions (or, more precisely and more frequently, the way in which they are made visible in the form of quotes printed on labels or on the wall) illustrates this: quotes are taken out of their original context and presented as unique and universal at the same time.24 They are used to initiate individual identification and, at the same time, exemplify general contexts. While the term ‘intersubjectivity’ in the context of oral history research interviews highlights context, setting, and the relationship between interviewer and informant during the interview as factors that cause a specific utterance to take a certain shape, all these elements are made invisible in exhibitions. Hence individuals’ statements are presented as more universal, stable and detached from time, context and discourse than they originally were. Something is lost in the transformation from transcription to presentation. While the interviewer’s utterances are visible (legible) in interview transcripts, they are most often omitted or reduced to a minimum in presentations of oral history research. This means that the “voice of narrator is distorted”25 and answers to particular questions are easily mistaken for statements that the interviewee would always make, irrespective of context. While intersubjectivity is incorporated into research and (albeit tacitly) into oral history publications, in museums, quotes from interviews are frequently transferred from one context to a very different one and are in danger of being used to illustrate points the informant did not have in mind. As oral history is interested in alternative interpretations of the past, oral historians interview people who are to some extent excluded and struggling with dominant versions of the past more often than other historians do. Revealing ‘compo23

24

25

In their introduction to The Oral History Reader, editors Perks and Thomson address this concern as they write “that the increasing theoretical sophistication of academic oral history is incomprehensible to, or ignored by, oral historians outside the academy – for example those working in schools, community projects and the media – and that our interviewees may be bewildered by the deconstruction of their memories” Perks and Thomson, “Critical Developments: Introduction,” 4. The use of individual accounts is predominantly informed by communicative aspects as individuals’ voices have a greater effect on visitors, touch visitors more, offer identification, are less intimidating and all in all are ‘more appealing’ than presentations of research findings. For an account of why and how individual quotes were chosen and presented in a recent Norwegian exhibition, see Pabst, Kathrin, “Mange hensyn å ta - mange behov å avveie. Moralske utfordringer museumsansatte møter i arbeidet med følsomme tema,” (PhD diss., Universitetet i Agder, 2014), 224-227. Portelli, “What Makes Oral History Different,” 39.

5 Historical consciousness among Hitra’s and Frøya’s population

sure’, or lack thereof, in interview data is thus a common task for oral historians. ‘Composure’ is an interpretative framework taken from oral history. The term refers to interviewees’ striving to find a version of the self that fits in with the social and cultural world that surrounds them. Interview partners consciously and unconsciously select memories of past events to present an account that achieves coherence or ‘subjective composure’. The search for composure not only informs interviewees’ narratives; in extreme cases, it can lead to false testimony (when measured in terms of factual historical correctness).26 In their role as researchers, oral historians are not supposed to actively address issues of composure or its absence. However, interviewers cannot help introducing (even if unconsciously so) their ideas and beliefs into the conversation. Despite acknowledging this, oral historians are hesitant to contribute more overtly to interviews with their personal memories, knowledge or opinion. In this context, Ronald Grele has identified the interviewer as being caught in a double bind: they risk injecting their own ideologies. At the same time, by not intervening, they relinquish their critical responsibilities.27 Museum employees, and museums generally speaking, are caught in the same double bind. As discussed above (cf. chapter 2), ‘active museums’ are even expected to actively contribute to discussions of belonging and historical consciousness. As an enhancement of oral history interviews, in the last part of the book, I will show how interviews conducted for purposes of contemporary documentation in Hitra harness oral historians’ double bind in order to intervene in cases where they observe gaps between the self and the social world that stand in the way of developing feelings of belonging. Furthermore, I test the oral history interview’s potential to contribute to education and empowerment in this particular museum context. In the following section, however, I will first present the oral history methodology of my research in detail before portraying the findings of an in-depth exploration of the diverse forms of contemporary historical consciousness that can be encountered on the islands of Hitra and Frøya.

26 27

Abrams, Oral History Theory, 59; 66-70. Grele, Ronald, J., “History and the Languages of History in the Oral History Interview: Who Answers Whose Questions and Why?,” in Interactive Oral History Interviewing, edited by Eva M. McMahan and Kim Lacy Rogers (Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, 1994), 15.

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5.3.

Methodology

5.3.1.

Selection of interview partners

The initial research question was: “How do members of the local communities in Hitra and Frøya relate to local history?” The selection of informants was determined by the definition of ‘community’ as introduced earlier. Following Delanty, I consider all residents of Frøya and Hitra to be (potential) members of the local community involved in discussions about belonging. For this reason, and in order to cover a broad spectrum of different positions, I chose to address individuals who can be reasonably assumed to stand for widely different versions of historical consciousness in relation to local history. I based this selection on the assumption that the way people build narratives about themselves and local history is influenced by contemporary living conditions and by whether they are long-time residents or newcomers to the islands. In Frøya and Hitra, the largest groups of newcomers are labour migrants from Eastern European countries. My initial hypothesis was that long-time residents’ views on local history would be characterized by an overall close connection to the history of the place they lived. Labour migrants, on the other hand, experience drastic changes in terms of their living situation – a new place of living, new job, new community to relate to – and presumably have little connection to, awareness of, and interest in local history.28 When selecting informants, I took care to also include the voices of persons who could be seen as unqualified to talk about local history and its significance in people’s lives. These theoretically guided assumptions explain why the group of newcomers – compared to their overall numbers on the islands – is overrepresented in my material, which consists of 19 interviews with 23 informants, including 12 newcomers to either Frøya or Hitra. All informants were adults between 29 and 90 years old; nine informants were female and ten male. The sampling strategy I employed is inspired by grounded theory’s ‘theoretical sampling’29 in which the 28

29

Norway has little data on how newcomers to the country visit museums. The report “Kulturvaner 1991-2015. Resultater fra kultur- og mediebruksundersøkelsene de siste 25 år” (Cultural habits. Results from cultur and media use studies during the last 25 years) does however refer to numbers of museum visits among different population groups. Relevant for the study at hand is that immigrants from countries in the European Union, EEA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand visit museums in average more often than both members of the groups of immigrants from other countries and Norwegians. Vaage, Odd Frank, “Kulturvaner 1991-2015. Resultater Fra kultur- og mediebruksundersøkelsene de siste 25 år,” Statistiske analyser 147 (Oslo: Statistisk Sentralbyrå, 2015), 121-123. The term ‘theoretical sampling’ was coined by Glaser, Barney G., and Anselm L. Strauss, The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1967). I has since been further developed by Schatzman, Leonard and Anselm L. Strauss, Field Research: Strategies for a Natural Sociology (Englewood Cliffs, N. J: Prentice-Hall, 1973);

5 Historical consciousness among Hitra’s and Frøya’s population

selection of cases is guided by concepts and theories that have proven theoretical relevance through the process of analysis, and with a special attention to cases that can be expected to represent variation in relation to the research question. The sampling was driven by its relevance for the phenomenon under study, not by the need for representativeness, a circumstance that will be taken in to account when the research findings are discussed.30

30

Strauss, Anselm L. Qualitative Analysis for Social Scientists (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Strauss, Anselm L., Qualitative Analysis for Social Scientists (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987) and Corbin, Juliet M., and Anselm L. Strauss, Basics of Qualitative Research: Techniques and Procedures for Developing Grounded Theory, 4th ed. (Thousand Oaks, Calif: Sage, 2015). Gobo, Giampietro, “Sampling, Representativeness and Generalizability,” in Qualitative Research Practice, edited by Clive Seale, Giampietro Gobo, Jaber F. Gubrium and David Silverman (London: Sage, 2004), 447.

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Overview Interviews Pseudonym

Newcomer or long-time resident

Interview conducted as part of Changes project

Language of interview

Ingrid

Long-time resident

Norwegian

Liv

Long-time resident

Norwegian

Per and Wife

Long-time resident

Norwegian

Kari

Long-time resident

Norwegian

Sigrid

Long-time resident

Norwegian

Ida

Long-time resident

Norwegian

Bjørn

Neither

Norwegian

Kornelius

Long-time resident

Norwegian

Hilde

Long-time resident

Norwegian

Anna

Newcomer

Norwegian

Gunnar

Long-time resident

Norwegian

Jan

Long-time resident

Norwegian

Marie

Newcomer

Norwegian

Alexander and Iulia

Newcomers

X (with H. Mellemsether)

English

Gabriela

Newcomer

X (with H. Mellemsether) Another Norwegian, Gabriela’s colleague Gerd, was present at this interview.

Norwegian

Elena

Newcomer

X (with B. J. Vorpbukt)

Norwegian

Paul and Sarah

Newcomers

Arthur

Newcomer

X (with B. J. Vorpbukt)

English

Georg and Martin

Newcomers

X

English

German

5 Historical consciousness among Hitra’s and Frøya’s population

The main recruitment strategy used was to study articles in the local online newspaper in which different newcomers to the island, clubs or neighbourhoods presented themselves. Initially, I purposefully contacted neither the local museum nor local history groups or other persons who were considered ‘experts’ or especially interested in local history. While contact with a neighbourhood group was easily established and four informants (Liv, Per and his wife, Kari, and Sigrid31 ) were willing to meet with me, getting in touch with immigrants to the island was more difficult. None of those I contacted based on my local newspaper research answered my letter. I thus changed my approach, adopting snowballing as a strategy, and during the first interviews asked whether participants knew somebody I could talk to. I was given the names of colleagues or neighbours. Being able to refer to an acquaintance or colleague proved a successful door opener, and five informants from different countries were recruited this way (Kornelius, Anna, Paul and Sarah, Marie). Snowballing also brought me into contact with a handful of Norwegian informants (Ingrid, Bjørn, Hilde, Gunnar, Jan.). It is unclear why newcomers to the island would not respond to my initial interview requests. Nevertheless, there is an indication that they did not regard the topic ‘local history’ as something they related to and on which they had anything to contribute. This impression is supported by the fact that when a second recruitment round introduced interviews on the topic of newcomers’ personal experiences of moving to Hitra or Frøya, their lives today, and what role history plays for them, all the persons we asked to meet with us participated (these were Alexander and Iulia, Gabriela, Elena, Arthur, Georg and Martin). Besides this more targeted topic, a second reason why individuals were now keener to participate was that these interviews were both part of my research and part of an exhibition and documentation project under the aegis of the Coastal Museum in Fillan, Hitra. The connection between museum project and research adds complexity to the way we must think about the interview process. The most apparent difference is in the expectations informants had of the interviews’ purpose. The interviews I carried out without museum staff participating were conducted at participants’ homes or working places. In most cases, informants welcomed me as their guest and offered coffee, sometimes even cakes and biscuits, thus contributing to a friendly and relaxed atmosphere. The interviews took between 60 and 120 minutes, with the exception of the shortest interview that took 45 minutes and the longest, which lasted for over three hours. I used an interview guide that was structured along my initial research questions. I started the interview with a short introduction to the research project and the purpose of the interviews. I used the introduction to emphasize that my main interest was in personal 31

All names used throughout the book are pseudonyms to provide anonymity.

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and individual perspectives, not historical facts. I further showed the interviewees the interview guide to give them an impression of the scope of topics I was interested in hearing their thoughts about, but stressed that the interview guide only served as an orientation, actively encouraging informants to extend the scope of issues and questions or to skip questions they did not want to answer or felt were unimportant. After informants had given their oral consent, I turned on the voice recorder.32 The interview guide was informed by the theory of historical consciousness as it explicitly addressed the past, present and future of the local community, and further contained questions that explicated links between these different times. After the interviews were finished, participants signed consent schemes, I gave them my card and asked them to contact me if they had things to add or wanted to withdraw their consent. Several times, we kept on talking after I switched off the recorder. I noted down these pieces of conversation in memos right after the interview.

5.3.2.

Transcription process

“Oral sources are oral sources”,33 Allessandro Portelli writes, and any transcription will change them, add or eliminate meaning. Pauses, hesitation, laughter, speaking louder or lowering one’s voice, speaking fast or slowly – all these elements have an impact on the meaning-making process that takes place during an interview. Researchers have access to these elements of communication during the interview itself and (albeit already stripped of immediacy) while listening to recordings, and finally during the transcription process. The danger of turning oral interviews into text is that “the emotional content of speech [is flattened] down to the supposed equanimity and objectivity of the written document.”34 I apply several strategies in an attempt to minimize this effect. First, I established contact, conducted interviews and transcribed all interviews myself. In addition, I made notes during the interview and wrote field notes and memos directly after each of the interviews. I noted observations in terms of both the communication situation and my overall impression. How did the interview develop? Did we, for example, need a long time to ‘warm up’? Were interviewees hesitant or agitated? What were the dynamics of the discourse? Did informants use dialect? Did they use many words or 32

33 34

In some cases, it would have been an advantage to record interactions from the very beginning of the encounter, especially in cases where informants expressed insecurity as to whether they would have anything substantial to offer to my research, as our negotiations of the topic and their individual relation to the topic of local history already started at this point. Portelli, “What makes Oral History Different,” 33. Ibid., 35.

5 Historical consciousness among Hitra’s and Frøya’s population

expressions that they needed to explain to me? Were there signs of unwillingness, tiredness and the like which I noticed? I wrote down these observations from my short-term memory. The next step was to listen to the entire interview recording, writing a summary, but also noting laughter, hesitation and the like. Afterwards, I transcribed interviews verbatim. In this way, I retained the oral tone of what was said, including dialect and syntactical or grammatical mistakes. However, when reproducing the interviews in the text of this book, I corrected smaller mistakes in cases where the original utterance would have been difficult to comprehend and, when necessary, added information for the reader’s understanding.35

5.3.3.

Language

Even though it was not a main focus of my research, language plays a significant role in processes of meaning making. Language is tied to identity, and acquiring a new language or speaking a new language always involves questioning who one is or who one is becoming.36 Language is just one manifestation of cultural difference, and as such can pose challenges in interviews. However, language does not need to be a barrier to interviewing as long as the researcher is aware of the potential cultural difference that languages manifest. There is arguably a strong connection between language and the overall research question about history and negotiations of belonging. In oral history, as in the social sciences generally, questions concerning cross-language research have not been addressed sufficiently.37 Not only is the way the use of different languages affects interviews rarely discussed; discussions of how to represent people’s utterances in writing in a language that they did not use during the interview are even more seldom. In the research at hand, informants themselves chose the language they preferred to use. Despite this, the choice was not free, because I as the interviewer could only offer Norwegian, English or German. Informants with Norwegian as a native language chose Norwegian, and only few brought up language as an issue at all.38 German informants spoke Ger35 36 37

38

The changes in the original language are made visible as author’s remarks. This includes words added for clarification, which are put in square brackets. Temple, Bogusia, “Casting a Wider Net: Reflecting on Translation in Oral History,” Oral History 41, no. 2 (2013), 105. Nevertheless, there are exceptions. Norton Wheeler offers an overview of a number of oral history projects that address language questions. Even though he focuses on the use of interpreters in interviews, his article addresses a number of relevant methodological questions, namely questions of gaining access, how to conduct a cross-lingual interview and “getting the meaning right”. Wheeler, Norton, “Cross-Lingual Oral History Interviewing in China: Confronting the Methodological Challenges,” Oral History 36, no. 1 (2008). One informant changed her way of speaking to a moderate Norwegian, avoiding dialect in order to make herself comprehensible to me, whom she identified as a non-native Norwegian speaker.

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man with me. Those informants with native languages other than Norwegian or German chose Norwegian and English in equal parts. My decision not to use interpreters during the interviews was grounded in the fact that either Norwegian or English is the language that structures informants’ lives in the local community, which is how they engage in communication with their surroundings. While the interviews thus resemble a real-world communicative situation, this choice potentially precluded more nuanced interview speech. Language knowledge varied greatly between informants. The same applies to me, the interviewer, as my Norwegian is more fluent than my English. Language-related issues hence had to be considered during interview, transcription and analysis and finally in writing the interviews down. Interviews were transcribed in the language they were originally spoken. Only quotes written up here were translated (the original quote is provided in a footnote).

5.3.4.

Analysis

In oral history, interviewing and analysis are intrinsically linked. Oral history interviews are part of a broader research design, and since I was interested both in individual processes of meaning making and in the overall picture that singular voices add to, I noted questions that were raised in one interview and that could be asked in subsequent interviews. Further, I noted when things that were said that reminded me of earlier interviews. From the very beginning, data generation through interviews, memos, and the transcription process thus presented itself as interwoven with the analysis. Coding as a way of immersion in interview data has been promoted by grounded theory in particular. Judith Holton describes coding as the activity which “gets the researcher off the empirical level by fracturing the data, then conceptualizing the underlying patterns of a set of empirical indicators within the data as a theory that explains what is happening in the data.”39 Coding was conducted with the help of a software package called QDA Miner Lite40 . In a first

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Holton, Judith A., “The Coding Process and Its Challenges,” in The Sage Handbook of Grounded Theory edited by Antony Bryant and Kathy Charmaz (Thousand Oaks, California: SAGE Publications, 2007), 266. While my analysis is inspired by the grounded theory approach, I do not follow its methodology in detail. The main reason is that my research does not aim at developing new theory based on empirical data, but follows a hermeneutical approach, seeking to better understand a predefined phenomenon and using pre-existing theory to fully grasp the phenomenon under study. At the same time, the desire to describe and understand the phenomenon under study from the perspective of the informants leads my research and I therefore find it most appropriately met by analytical methods inspired by grounded theory. https://provalisresearch.com/products/qualitative-data-analysis-software/ (retrieved 28 March 2018).

5 Historical consciousness among Hitra’s and Frøya’s population

analytical step, interview transcripts were coded with initial codes. Initial codes were descriptive of what was said in interviews. Even though they were derived from what informants spoke about, they were not inductive in the sense that I used informants’ own words as codes, but from the very beginning referred to more generic codes with links to the research question and theory. To illustrate, one informant spoke to me about the holidays she spent with her grandparents on the island. For this section, I applied the code “remembering holidays with grandparents”. In a second step, codes were connected through axial coding41 in order to identify central characteristics of the phenomenon under study. In the above example, this led to the category “childhood memory”. The development of categories thus moved from the individual to the collective level, presenting categories that applied to groups of interviews instead of to just individual interviews. Through constant comparison,42 “childhood memory” was classified further into the category “personal reference to the past”. Through further links to other materials such as field notes, research literature, categories were further developed into patterns and themes that served as a vantage point for types of connection to local history as presented below.

5.3.5.

Ethical considerations

Before the start of the project, approval from Norsk Senter for Forskningsdata, NSD (Norwegian Centre for Research Data) was obtained. The major challenge in case studies within small communities and a small sample of conducted interviews is to guarantee informants’ anonymity. Mentioning a person’s country of origin and profession can be enough to identify them. In my presentation of informants, I thus generally chose not to differentiate between nationalities and work places, but indicated whether a person was born on Hitra or Frøya or had moved there later. Only if I could be sure that quotes would not lead to an identifiable individual and information about country of origin was important for understanding was nationality indicated. Gender and age were mentioned as long as they did not make it possible to identify individuals.

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“Focused, Axial, and Theoretical Coding are Second Cycle methods – coding processes for the latter stages of data analysis that both literally and metaphorically constantly compare, reorganize, of ‘focus’ the codes into categories, prioritize them to develop ‘axis’ categories around which others revolve, and synthesize them to formulate a central or core category that becomes the foundation for explication of a grounded theory.” Saldana, Johnny, The Coding Manual for Qualitative Researchers (Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications, 2009), 42. The purpose of ‘constant comparison’ is to see whether data supports emerging categories while at the same time, through constant comparison between data and categories, categories can be refined. Holton, “The Coding Process and Its Challenges,” 277.

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5.4.

Manifold ways of relating to the (local) past: Historical consciousness among local residents in Frøya and Hitra

Independently of whether one has lived in an area for a long time or is a newcomer, humans have the need to contextualize their existence. The history of the place one is living in arguably plays a significant role in these processes. The focus of this chapter is to present findings about individual historical consciousness on Frøya and Hitra. It is concerned with “people’s self-conscious definition of some aspects of the past as history, their notions of the agency of the past, their apprehensions of time, and their ‘temporal orientations’ – how they perceive past, present and future in their interrelations.”43 A subordinate question for interview analysis thus is: which dimensions characterize historical consciousness in relation to local history? The analysis identifies three types of historical consciousness among the residents of Hitra and Frøya, each of which combines different dimensions of relating to the (local) past, history and heritage in specific ways. With this as a background, the chapter closes with a discussion of how the findings can be rendered fruitful for small museums of cultural history in dynamic communities.

5.4.1.

Competing understandings of history

In the interviews, two main ways of talking about history were evident. When asked directly to define ‘history’, informants alluded to variants of either a general, depersonalized, official and abstract understanding of history, which showed an overlap with historian Ola Svein Stugu’s term of ‘narrow history’44 or Bernard Eric Jensen’s term ‘observer’s history’. Such definitions of history share the assumption that we can gain distanced and neutral knowledge about past events. The definition to a large extent corresponds with the academic field of historical research, history as a taught school subject and history as the subject matter of cultural history museums. Broader definitions, on the other hand, refer to history as something personal, individual, experienced and closely related to issues of memory and identity. In this broad understanding, history is conceived as open for interpretation and closely related to present-day perspectives. The broader definition of history highlights history’s constructed nature as a narrative intrinsically tied to living individuals. 43 44

Macdonald, “Expanding Museum Studies: An Introduction,” 12. Stugu identifies as the narrow understanding of history an idea of history based on the academic discipline of history. History then are quality assured narratives and theories about the past. Stugu, Ola Svein, “Tilnærminger til historiebruk,” in Historiedidaktik i Norden 9: Del 1: Historiemedvetande – Historiebruk, edited by Per Eliasson, Karl Gunnar Hammarlund, Erik Lund and Carsten Tage Taylor Nielsen (Malmö: Malmö högskola og Högskolan i Halmstad, 2012), 117.

5 Historical consciousness among Hitra’s and Frøya’s population

A first finding is that the way that informants initially described ‘history’ did not always correspond to the ways in which they talked about or used (local) history in the ongoing process of the interview conversation. In some informants’ utterances, different conceptions of history intersected or even merged during our conversations. One explanation for this is the different scales that ‘history’ can refer to. The narrow understanding – despite the term narrow – was often associated with national or global history and the entirety of humanity’s past, while the broader understanding of history – again, despite the term – was often associated with the personal, self-experienced past and individual memories. Local history, as a history of the place and the local community, represents a place in between: a place where the general and the individual, the narrow and the broad definition of history meet. Narrow understandings of history often presented a starting point for reflections about the matter of history. During the conversations, however, none of the informants remained committed to a narrow understanding of history; they addressed issues on a local scale and took a personal view, elements that are best described as features of the broader definition of history. Below, I will exemplify the described processes of reflection about the past with quotes from interviews that to me seem to illustrate these processes particularly well. As reported above, to initiate reflections about history, I asked informants how they would define ‘history’, or what immediately came to their minds when they heard the word ‘history’. A quote from 64-year-old long-time resident Per illustrates a detached, impersonal understanding of history that focused on temporal distance and presented itself almost as an equation of history with the past. For him, history was “things that have happened before, before us.”45 A 28-year-old man whose family was from Frøya referred to the school subject and explained: “Well, I am not that good at this kind of thing, but well, the school subject history is somehow about retelling what has happened before.”46 Both long-time residents and newcomers to the islands presented parallel definitions of history. Paul, a male newcomer to the islands, described his view of history the following way: “For me, first of all, history comes with negative attributes from school. I did not like it. To learn dates, past events, I did not really find that exciting. But of course, there is some value to it, because, theoretically one can learn a lot through history.”47 One final quote from an interview with Georg from Eastern Europe further manifests

45 46 47

“Ting som er skjedd tidligere, før oss.” “Nei det er, jeg er ikke så god på sånne ting, men det er vel, faget historie handler vel om å på en måte gjenfortelle hva som har skjedd.” “Für mich war erst mal Geschichte von der Schule negativ belastet. Ich habe das nicht gemocht. Jahreszahlen, vergangene Dinge zu lernen fand ich nicht wirklich spannend. Aber natürlich hat Geschichte ‘nen gewissen Wert, weil aus der Geschichte kann man theoretisch sehr viel lernen.”

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an abstract, depersonalized understanding of history as the number one answer to the general question of what history is: “History for me? Things that happened. And that’s it. The history is the past. Okay? The past is something you cannot change. It speaks all the time. The past, even if you want to get rid of it, you cannot. The history is what others and you and everybody did a moment ago. And that is it.” In all the descriptions above, history is not only something you can study and learn, recall and then communicate to others (much in line with the knowledge focus of the first definitions presented that link history to formal education in school). Further, history is characterized by the fact that it is over and completed. It is ‘objective’ and unchangeable, independent of present-day developments. In these versions, history somehow exists autonomously of today’s humans, and ultimately it is of little relevance for individuals living in the present. Even though the definitions above indicate a distance in time as a crucial condition for something to qualify as history, Elena, a young woman from Eastern Europe, modified temporal distance as a single criterion in her definition of history. As an addition to time, she introduced ‘importance’ as an extra feature defining what history was for her. She said: “If something really important had happened, then that is history.”48 Saying this, she took a first step towards a broader definition of history as her way of looking at history implies that there must be somebody who decides whether a past event is to be regarded as important and thus qualifies as ‘history’ or not. Only in retrospect can we assert an event’s importance. Elena thus offers a first link between the past and a time after that particular past, maybe even our own present time. Ida, a woman from Frøya, is another informant who moved from a narrow towards a broader understanding of history during the interview. Initially, she indirectly referred to history as synonymous with knowledge about past events. She did this, for instance, when she excused herself for not knowing much about the island’s local history: “I know too little. On what concerns the history of Frøya. There are, no doubt, many others who know much more than I do.”49 She then explained that she considered her relation to Frøya’s local history to be diffuse, more about feelings than about knowledge. Nevertheless, when asked about whether and how she would introduce an outsider to Frøya’s past, she again referred to a knowledgebased understanding of history: “[s]o, if I really wanted somebody to gain an insight into Frøya’s history, then I would introduce him to a friend of mine […] who really knows about the history, who has knowledge about local history.” In contrast to 48 49

“Hvis det har skjedd noen veldig viktige ting, så er det historie.” “Jeg kan for lite. Det gjelder sånn historie fra Frøya. Det er mange som kan mye mer enn meg i hvert fall.”

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her friend, all she could offer was information about her individual biography. She continued: “What I can tell about that is somehow my own sphere, which is to say, my own roots.”50 Her utterances demonstrate that she differentiated between two understandings of history: history is either based on, and an expression of, knowledge, or it is shaped by emotions and personal memories. The latter, from her point of view, is not the topic of local history in its classical sense. Nevertheless, she acknowledges the second meaning as both versions are part of her understanding of history, which she described as a ‘diffuse’ relation to history. The differentiation into different kinds of ‘history’ was further supported when she identified different actors who convey and communicate different variants of history (either herself on personal and family history or her friend on fact-based local history). A similar ‘task sharing’ between stakeholders and communicators of an official local history and a personal history was expressed by other informants. Both long-time residents and newcomers alike named specific long-time residents as the ones I should go and talk to if I really wanted to learn something about Frøya’s history. Ida was one of the informants who continuously shifted the conversation to her own priorities, moving away from my questions about history on a local scale to discussing herself and her identity – often either as an illustration of typical character traits of members of the local community, sometimes in contrast to the community. Despite the shift in focus she induced, she returned to a new definition of history, one she developed during our conversation and that referred to the people constituting the local community. Later during the conversation, she also offered a second definition: “It [history] is about identity and a recognition of who we are and why. A deeper understanding of why things are the way they are, why the people of Frøya are the way they are. What is good about it, and what might not be quite as good with that. And why that is. It is in this context, it has its greatest significance, I think.”51

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“Ja, mitt forhold til historie, altså kjennskap til lokalhistorie, hva jeg ville fortalt, det er litt sånn diffust egentlig, for det handler mer om følelser enn kunnskap. Så, hvis jeg virkelig ville at noen skulle få innsikt i Frøyas historie, så ville jeg nok introdusert han for en venn av meg som heter [...].” Some similar thoughts are expressed by Kari: “But if I am honest, I am not like this. I do not get involved, I do not get like this I need to know more about. It is like, what is over and I cannot remember, or did not know or just heard people talk about, that does not give me anything, because I do not have the person, I do not have a picture. So, regarding this, I am not too good.” (“Men hvis jeg skal være ærlig, så er ikke jeg sånn. Jeg blir ikke så veldig fenget. Jeg blir ikke sånn at dette her må jeg vite mer om. Det er liksom, det som er over og dem som liksom ikke jeg husker, eller kjente eller bare hørte snakk om, det synes ikke jeg gir meg noe, for jeg har ikke mennesket, jeg har ikke bilde. Så, der er ikke jeg så flink.”) “Det handler om identitet og erkjennelse av hvem vi er og hvorfor. En dypere forståelse av hvorfor ting er sånn som dem er, hvorfor Frøyværingene er sånn som dem er. Hva som er bra

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In Ida’s definition, the abstract notion of history as the history of events on the islands merged with personal and individual versions of local history as part of individuals’ identity. Another woman from Frøya, Hilde, expressed a corresponding view on history, but in more abstract terms. According to her, history was an “understanding of society, it is foothold and identity. It is a part of us.”52 In this short utterance, she alludes to key aspects of history, namely knowledge and learning, which lead to understanding, self-awareness and identity. Without wanting to put words in Hilde’s mouth, she describes a process of establishing relevance. Sigrid’s statements followed a similar logic. Sigrid bridged the different understandings of history by stating the following: “History, that is what has been before, sort of. You have a history of your own, but there is also a history of everything, actually, of the place, the family, the place you live. Well, everything does have a history. There is always somebody who has lived there before and so.53 […] But history, that is in a way, history is sort of not interesting if you cannot relate it to any kind of feelings. [...] If you do not feel it concerns you, then it is some kind of knowledge you do not need.”54 In order to address the challenge of being inextricably woven into local history, I tried to motivate Sigrid to put herself in the position of an outsider and anticipate what somebody from outside the island might consider interesting to learn about Hitra or Frøya. I asked Sigrid what she would tell a good friend from outside Frøya about the island and its past and she answered: “Well, that is difficult, because, actually, it is very close and natural. But at the same time so hard to explain. I would talk in general. Actually, a little bit about what has happened out here and important events in a way. And at the same time about myself because we have some history in my family [...].”55

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med det og hva som kanskje ikke er så bra med det. Og hvorfor det. Det er der det har sin største betydning egentlig, synes jeg.” “Det er samfunnsforståelse, det er forankring og identitet. Det er en del av oss.” In this section, her utterances show remarkable conformity with Georg’s description of history. “Historie er jo det som har vært tidligere på en måte. Du har jo en egen historie, men så har du også en historie til alt egentlig. Til stedet, til familien, til plassen du bor, ja alt har jo en historie. Det er noen som har levd der før og i hvertfall […] Men historie, det er jo egentlig uinteressant hvis du ikke klarer å relatere det til noen form for følelser. […] Når man ikke føler at det angår en selv, så er det sånn kunnskap som man ikke trenger.” “Hmm, det er så vanskelig, for egentlig, så er det så nært og naturlig, men samtidig er det så vanskelig å forklare. Jeg ville jo fortalt om litt sånn generelt. Egentlig litt sånn om hva som har skjedd ut på her og at det er viktige hendelser på et vis. Og samtidig litt mer om meg selv siden vi har en del historie inne i familien [...].”

5 Historical consciousness among Hitra’s and Frøya’s population

In line with other informants, Ida and Sigrid described that history turns into knowledge that concerns them when it is linked to their ancestors and offers answers to the question “where do I come from?” Local history provides answers for long-time residents; it does not offer the same to newcomers. But does this mean that Hitra’s and Frøya’s local history is irrelevant for this group? Or are there other strategies of making local history relevant for newcomers to the islands? When the interviewees discussed the term history in a mainly abstract way, there was no significant difference between long-time residents and newcomers’ broad understandings of history. Just like Sigrid, Iulia from Eastern Europe also described history as answers to the questions: “Where do I come from? What do you have in the past? Where you come from.” But Iulia added in the same breath: “But about Hitra, I don’t know so much.” In the very same answer, Iulia’s statement illustrated a dichotomy between an abstract, broad understanding of history in which history is important because it answers questions of identity on the one hand and Hitra’s history on the other hand. The way she introduced Hitra to her reflections about history suggests that for her, Hitra’s history belongs to a narrow definition, only accessible by cognitive means and with little personal relevance for her. For Iulia, like other newcomers to the islands, the history of Hitra or Frøya does not concern her emotionally as it does not provide any answers to questions of identity. The question remains whether newcomers find themselves on ground zero in terms of history-based identity constructions when it comes to their present place of living. As they cannot travel back in time, they will never have ancestors, a family history or childhood memories linked to the islands. The important question for a museum as a place of communicative memory is, once more, whether there are other ways the museum can facilitate ways that allow these individuals to engage with the local past. Her differentiation into history on a general level and Hitra’s history in particular notwithstanding, Iulia, like most other informants, agreed that history was important. This unanimous answer in the interview data arguably contains an aspect of informants wanting to live up to the interviewer’s expectations. Their answers may have been influenced by what informants expected the ‘right’ answer during their conversation with me to be. Nevertheless, looking more closely at the arguments given in support of the positive statement of history’s importance offers insights into why history is considered relevant and ‘important’. Arguments are foreshadowed in the quotes and will below be divided up and discussed under ‘learning from history’ and history’s significance for individuals’ or groups’ ‘identity’.

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5.4.2.

Different ideas about learning from history

In the interview data, learning from history was connected to different purposes for different potential learners. For Ingrid, a local from Frøya who no longer lives on the islands but regularly spends time on Frøya, local historical knowledge was first and foremost important for politicians and administrators as they had a duty to secure continuity and base responsible development decisions on in-depth knowledge of the island’s past. Ingrid expressed concern that otherwise historic sites and the particular landscape of Frøya would be threatened by demolition in the wake of development and construction. While she stressed the importance of saving these sites, she did not provide any arguments on why maintaining historic sites and landscapes was an important undertaking in the first place. The only reason she mentioned was that safeguarding the island’s historical dimensions could help to attract visitors and tourists from abroad. Ingrid did not regard local history as something that could teach her anything and local history’s lessons did not concern her in her everyday life; instead, local history was a public and political matter. There is arguably a second element to Ingrid’s relation to the history of the islands, one that is closely related to nostalgia. Throughout the interview she expressed a wish to maintain the island’s character as she remembers it from her childhood. For her, the islands are places of childhood memories, and as such she does not want them to change, but remain as she remembers them.56 Other informants took a more personal view on learning from history. Longtime residents in particular used local history developments to identify lessons with applications that went beyond the local space. Long-time resident Liv, for instance, referred to the development of aquaculture, and explained that those “who have experience with it, they know that things are going to happen”.57 On a general level, for her this was a lesson that success could not be taken for granted and that one should not think too big, but take small steps instead. Long-time resident Kari similarly emphasized that history had taught her that things cannot always go well, and that the islands’ growing wealth was not a matter of course: “I think that, in order to understand why things are the way they are today, you have to sort of know where you come from. Yes. Or to understand that it is not a given, that it goes

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Ingrid visits the island regularly, but does not live there any longer. She demonstrated some resistance against modernization, as that would change the character of her ‘home place’. In her discussion of history’s importance she took the view of an outsider who still has a good knowledge of past and present developments on the islands, but for her the past of the islands was detached from her everyday life as she lived in another Norwegian city. “Og dem som har erfaringer med seg, de kan se at ting kommer til å skje.”

5 Historical consciousness among Hitra’s and Frøya’s population

well all the time.”58 With one exception,59 none of the newcomers to Frøya or Hitra referred to the (local) past as a source of learning. This was not surprising; more remarkable, however, is that the newcomers scarcely offered examples for learning from history at all. In general, long-time residents presented reasons for the importance of learning from local history in the context of present-day life in the local community. Learning about the local past was crucial for them for understanding and finding a way to live in the contemporary local community. I referred to Ida’s ideas about history above; she identified the importance of history as a deeper understanding of the community and continued: “[...] what is good about it and what perhaps is not as good about it. And why. It is here it has its biggest importance, I think.” Insa: “And that does not exclusively concern people that are born and grown up here?”60 Ida: “No, it doesn’t. Because, actually, it is not possible to understand the community here, and it’s not easy to understand either, because I know, my husband, he didn’t find it easy to understand why things are the way they are. And that is not always positive either. So, it’s a little community that has its strengths and weaknesses, that is beyond doubt. [...]”61 Here, Ida mentioned two groups that she believed would benefit from learning from history: locals, for reasons of identity, and newcomers, to gain knowledge about how the community functions, which in her eyes is an indispensable prerequisite of integration.

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“Jeg tror det er for å skjønne hvorfor ting er som de er i dag, må du på en måte nesten vite hvor du kommer fra. Ja. Eller for å se at det ikke er en selvfølge at det går bra hele tiden.” Iulia was an exception, as she wanted residents of Hitra to learn about communism. This example is presented in section 5.4.6. At this point in the interview we had already spoken about newcomers to the island and labour migrants in particular. I did not introduce these groups to the conversation, the question I asked was hence less leading than it appears. Ida: “Oh ja, det synes jeg.” Insa: Og så kommer selvsagt oppfølgingsspørsmålet ... Hvorfor det?” Ida: “Ja, fordi det handler om bånd egentlig. Det handler om identitet og erkjennelse av hvem vi er og hvorfor. En dypere forståelse av hvorfor ting er sånn som de er, hvorfor Frøyværingene er sånn som dem er. Hva som er bra med det og hva som kanskje ikke er så bra med det. Og hvorfor det. Det er der det har sin største betydning egentlig, synes jeg.” Insa: “Og det gjelder da kanskje ikke bare folk som er født og oppvokst her.” Ida: “Ja, det gjør jo det. For det går jo egentlig ikke an å forstå seg på det samfunnet her, og det er ikke så lett å forstå seg på heller fordi at det vet jeg at mannen min synes ikke at det er enkelt å forstå seg på hvorfor ting er som den er. Og det er jo ikke alltid at det er positivt heller. Så, det er jo et lite samfunn det har jo sine styrker og svakheter, det er jo helt udiskutabelt [...]”

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5.4.3.

Many ways of linking history to identity

According to Ida, both groups benefit from learning about local history; however, the effects are different. Identity negotiation and consolidation would be the intended outcome for long-time residents, while newcomers are excluded from identity processes. For them, by contrast, local history is considered a means, an abstract knowledge or competency that they could acquire in order to better understand and ultimately better integrate into the local community. The concepts of local history presented in the interviews are markers of difference, as local history represents identity and belonging to one group, and of exclusiveness, as newcomers engage with local history as a way to learn how the others (not they themselves) have become who they are. Sigrid affirms the dichotomy as she explains the importance of local history: “It is about identity, and in a way about better understanding the community, and yes, I think it is important for all those living at one place to somehow know what the place used to be like. Because there are quite a number of immigrants on Frøya today, who have come to Frøya the last years and to in a way get them to gain a little insight into local history and this kind of things, I think is important. But it is pretty difficult.”62 Long-time resident Hilde adds a second perspective to the value of knowledge about history for newcomers. According to Hilde, getting to know the place and its history not only facilitates learning, but ultimately fosters feelings of belonging: “[...] that you learn about a place, that makes that you relate to the place in a different way. It means more.”63 Following Ida’s, Sigrid’s and Hilde’s reasoning, gaining knowledge about local history is vital with regard to understanding the community, being able to live in it and finally develop feelings of belonging. Is it hence not reasonable to expect the same line of argument from newcomers to the islands – that they would seek knowledge about the islands’ history in order to orient themselves and finally start to feel they belong here? To my surprise, none of the newcomers I interviewed addressed this aspect. On the contrary, Sarah explicitly said that in the beginning, some knowledge about the history of the place might be useful, “[b]ut”, as she said, “after a while you

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“Det handler om identitet, og på en måte forstå litt mer om samfunnet og ja, det tror jeg er viktig for alle som bor på en plass liksom å få visst hvordan det har vært. For det er jo ganske mange utlendinger på Frøya nå, som er kommet til Frøya de siste årene og det å på en måte få dem til å få litt mer innblikk i lokalhistorie og sånne ting, tror jeg er viktig. Men det er ganske vanskelig.” “[...] når du lærer om et sted, så knytter du deg til et sted på en annen måte. Det betyr mer.”

5 Historical consciousness among Hitra’s and Frøya’s population

realize that you manage well even without that knowledge.”64 None of the newcomers was convinced that learning about the past of Frøya or Hitra would help them better understand the islands’ society or help them to feel more at home. Locals’ connection to the past, which Ida described as “strong roots” that were “wandering around” on Frøya, are invisible and hold no significance for newcomers. Interviews revealed, however, that newcomers found other ways to learn about and to appropriate local history. Their first steps into local history often started with concrete, individual experiences. Eastern-European labor migrant Arthur’s account offers an example. During the interview Arthur did not show much interest in local history, but he said he would like to know more about the house he was living in. The reason for this was that he had come to learn that the same house in which he and his family lived today had formerly belonged to an important official in the community. In Arthur’s case, a material reminder of the past, a historical house that now is his home, directly connected him to the local past and the past and present local community. His home held a special status in the development of the area he is living in today, and some of that uniqueness is transferred to him and connects him directly to the place. In addition, maintaining the building and taking stewardship and responsibility for the building’s survival in the future is now Arthur’s job. Arthur’s neighbour, who was able to tell Arthur about the house and the area, contributed by offering facts that allowed Arthur to see the connections between history and his present-day life. Arthur took responsibility for this local heritage and emphasized: “And I will not change anything!” In our conversation, he proceeded to describing the house and what he had learned about it: “There were also three stories, from the backside, there were also apartments all the time, there was living the [important office-holder, removed by author for reasons of anonymity] or something. And then other people. And now I meet these people and they say, you know, in this house was born this woman, she is now 6070 years old. And one man [head of an important business on Frøya], he was also born in this house or the smaller house. So you see, how many important people lived in this house. It is interesting. And when I was trying to find a work close to home, so my neighbour [...], he told the manager, chief of [name of business], he said, one man who lives in your parents’ house is looking for work. His name is Arthur and after some time, he said 'okay'.” Arthur finishes the story by telling me that afterwards, he was offered a job in the company that belongs to the man who was born in Arthur’s house. In this little episode, Arthur connected being part of local history with the reward of gaining

64

“Sagen wir mal so, in der Anfangszeit, wenn man neu kommt, ist das schon gut, einiges zu wissen. Aber irgendwann sieht man auch, dass man ohne das Wissen ganz gut klar kommt.”

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acceptance and even a good working position. At the end of his account, Arthur positioned himself as a local community member who was aware of the past, unlike the young people in Frøya, who according to Arthur lacked knowledge of earlier structures and officials in their local community. Finally, later in the conversation, Arthur even used his home as a starting point to criticize contemporary local politics in terms of cultural heritage management and took responsibility for maintaining his house as part of the local cultural heritage. In Arthur’s example, we see that even though he has no family history or personal memories that tie him to local history, he has gained access to the local community through participating in contemporary negotiations about the local past. He writes himself into that history, takes the role of a preserver and, as a very concrete outcome, is offered a good job. All this results from his unique way of connecting to the local community with the help of history and heritage.

5.4.4.

The ‘old days’ help long-time residents to connect past and present

Narrow and broad ideas about history are prevalent in the interview data. However, a third understanding of history that is not entirely covered by these two concepts became visible when the informants spoke about Frøya’s or Hitra’s history in general terms. Many used the term ‘the old days’ or ‘the old times’ (“gamle dager”, “gamletiden”). These ‘old days’ are not synonymous with history. Rather, they describe a point of contact between narrow and broad understandings of history, between a knowledge-focused and an identity-oriented definition of history, and between national or local and personal versions of history. ‘The old days’ are close to a personally experienced past, or to an orally transmitted history. As one informant said: “Yes, [...] maybe I feel like it starts to be the old days the time when I was 16 and in school. A little bit like that. And when we talk about the old days, then I have the story my father told me about that time, that would be around – well my father was born in 1918, then he grew up, when he was ten years old that was in 1928, when he was 20, that was 1938, yes that was then around the times of the war. Yes, interwar period. Yes, he told many stories about neighbours and Germans and after all what life was like in Frøya that time.”65

65

“Ja, det var, kanskje jeg synes det begynner å bli litt gamletiden den gangen jeg var 16-åring på barne- og ungdomsskole. Litt sånn. Og når vi snakker om gamletiden så har jeg den fortellingen som faren min fortalte når jeg vokste opp. Så jeg har jo mange fortellinger om den tiden, det er da rundt – ja, faren min han vart jo født i 1918, så vokste han opp, når han var 10 år så var det 1928, når han var 20 år så var det 1938, ja, det var jo rundt krigens tid. Ja, sånn mellomkrigstiden. Ja, han fortalte jo mange historier om naboene og tyskerne og i det hele tatt om hvordan det var på Frøya den gangen.”

5 Historical consciousness among Hitra’s and Frøya’s population

Even though ‘the old days’ do not designate a specific moment in the past (in fact, as demonstrated in the quote above, they can refer to a childhood in the 1960s and the interwar period alike), interview data suggests that for long-time residents in general, ‘the old days’ represent life before the huge transformations brought along by aquaculture. Per, a former fisherman, made this explicit when saying: “No, that must be industrial development. Development in terms of salmon. There were many more fishing boats in the old days compared to today. Now there are far fewer boats and bigger units. Before, there was fishing and small-scale farming. Now it has transformed into fish industry and salmon industry. And many people work in oil industry.”66 In Norway, more generally speaking, ‘the old days’ refer to the pre-industrialized era. Industrialization was one of the driving forces behind the establishment of folk museum collections and open-air museums, with the result that the past represented in folk museums dominantly is that of rural and agricultural societies. The same ideas are operative in Hitra and Frøya and lead to differentiation between the ‘old days’ and the time after Frøya and Hitra experienced the rise of aquaculture. Only the time in question differs, as industrialized aquaculture is a phenomenon of the 1960s and 1970s, whereas Det store hamskiftet (The Great Transformation) in agriculture took place in Norway 100 years earlier during the 19th century. Not only are the ‘old days’ bound to a time before far-reaching transformation, the content of the term is dynamic as it moves with its carriers. Informants’ use of ‘old times’ often referred to the lifespan of their grandparents and parents, or to telling stories about the ‘old days’ which they knew from hearsay. Sometimes informants chose to refer to ‘old days’ because they did not remember the exact point of time (“And then, there was this gold path67 , I do not remember, in the old days, there was, I cannot remember”68 ). In addition, during several of the interviews, the labels ‘old times’ or ‘old days’ were used to refer to unspecific past times that lay outside the time frame of generational memory: “At first they said there was a pagan place of worship, and that it was Christianised in the old days [...].”69 Despite the different periods that ‘old days’ refer to, the important

66

67 68 69

“Nei, det er nok næringsutviklingen. Utviklingen på laksen, oppdrett og fiskebåtene er det nå gått tilbake med. Det var jo mye mere fiskebåter før i gamle tid enn hva det er nå. Nå er det jo mye mindre båter og større enheter. Før så var det jo fiske og småbruk. Men nå er det jo gått over til fiskeindustri og lakseindustri er det vel. Og mye folk som jobber i oljen.” The ‘gold path’ refers to a story about gold smuggling in the Frøya region during the Second World War. “Og så denne gullveien, jeg husker ikke, i gammel tid, så var det, jeg husker ikke.” (Anna) “For først var det sagt at det var et hedensk tilbedestede, og at det vart kristen der i gamle tid.” (Ingrid)

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question is not the specific period or date to which they refer, but the function the designation fulfils in individuals’ historical consciousness. My data suggest three main functions: in cases where the ‘old days’ pointed to an unspecific past long back in time, the described events have a mythical character, which in turn contributes to shaping a shared community memory culture and hence Frøya or Hitra as a place of collective and cultural memory.70 G. J. Ashworth describes this process as the transformation of space into place: “space is transformed into place through traditions, memories, myths and narratives and its uniqueness confirmed and legitimated in terms of their relationships to particular representations of the past.” If this transformation does not occur – as is the case for newcomers – space does not transform into a specific place, and it is more difficult to develop feelings of belonging. Second, for long-time residents, ‘old times’ and ‘old days’ offered a way of linking themselves to the islands’ past through either their own memories or stories told by ancestors. However, the notion of ‘the old days’ at the same time fulfilled an important function as it helped long-time residents to accentuate changes and to conceptualize current developments as different to ‘before’, the time of their ancestors. The third function of the phrase ‘the old days’ is the contrast it presents to ‘history’. ‘The old days’ is a far more personal and ordinary denomination; it refers to the experience of everyday life – life as it is lived from day to day. This mundane aspect of ‘the old days’ also presents a contrast because most historiographic representations are organized in terms of periods or more abstract notions, such as ‘coastal culture’ or the ‘pre-industrialized times’. Speaking of the old days highlights the ordinary, and somehow, indirectly, even implies a certain continuity as no direct rupture is indicated: we live life day by day. Just as ‘we’ did before. The ‘old days’ are old, but they are not necessarily over, as a reference to ‘historic’ or ‘history’ would suggest. Given this underlying meaning of ‘the old days’, it is not surprising that newcomers to the islands did not refer to ‘old days’ on the islands at all.71 The observation is furthermore unsurprising as Hitra’s and Frøya’s ‘old days’ are not part of new residents’ horizon of experience. However, the consequence of immigrants not being in a position to use ‘the old days’ as a structuring element in making sense of the past is important. As ideas about ‘the old days’ are based on experience or stories told by relatives, not having ‘the old days’ as a repertoire poses challenges for newcomers in relating individually and emotionally to the local past.

70 71

Ashworth, G. J., Pluralising Pasts: Heritage, Identity and Place in Multicultural Societies, edited by Brian Graham and J. E. Tunbridge (London: Pluto Press, 2007), 54. There was one exception, but that was when an informant reproduced a story told to her by a long-time resident. In this case, ‘the old days’ was not a phrase she had chosen herself.

5 Historical consciousness among Hitra’s and Frøya’s population

The focus in interviews was on the past and the history of Hitra and Frøya. That said, informants had opportunity to change conversation topics and I showed interest in the places they came from. None of the newcomers I interviewed used ‘the old days’ in reference to the past of their home, the region or country they had previously lived in. I interpret this as a further indication that ‘the old days’ are a relational term that makes only sense in relation to a ‘now’ in the same place. For newcomers to the islands, ‘the old days’ do not offer a vehicle that could lead them to experience the relevance of local history.

5.4.5.

Comparing to different ‘befores’ in attempts to make sense of past and present

As outlined above, the phrase ‘old days’ served long-time residents to connect the past, present and future. Temporal comparison, be it with the ‘old times’ or specified points of time, emerged as a frequent strategy employed by long-time residents in the process of making sense of the present-day world. Taking comparison with the past as a given strategy, I was interested which ‘before’ informants would refer to. To that end, I asked informants what was different in Frøya or Hitra compared to ‘before’. When answering the question, informants had to decide themselves to which ‘before’ they would refer, whether ‘before’ would designate a more recent or a more remote past. The fact that immigrants did not possess the same repertoire of experiences or knowledge concerning local history of Frøya and Hitra was illustrated in their answers. When comparing answers given by long-time residents to those given by newcomers, there is a significant difference concerning when members of the different groups set the dividing line between ‘before’ and ‘now’, and at the same time there is a high level of agreement within groups. For the majority of long-time residents, ‘before’ turns into the present ‘after the salmon came’. The expression ‘after the salmon came’ (“etter at laksen kom”) refers to the rise of aquaculture on Hitra and Frøya. During the interview, Per introduced this temporal specification as a structuring element in his answer to the question of “what is different today compared to before?” As a phrase, ‘after the salmon came’ bears a resemblance to similar expressions like ‘before the oil came’ (in a Norwegian context) or ‘before the railway came’. This is not the place to discuss the use of such formulas in detail, but I wish to point out that the formula of ‘after the salmon came’ turns the actual step-by-step development of aquaculture on the islands into one single past event with an almost mythical character, an originary myth for the present-day community in Frøya or Hitra. Even though it cannot be linked to one single specific year, the temporal divide expressed through ‘after the salmon came’ can be fixed around the 1970s. Here, the differentiation between ‘before’ and ‘after’ refers to an intersubjective periodization shared by most long-time residents.

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From newcomers’ points of view, the situation presents itself differently. Some newcomers did not want to talk about the ‘before’ of the islands at all, and steered the conversation in a different direction. However, for the majority of immigrants, they considered the most significant difference between earlier and ‘now’ to be the increase in the numbers of immigrants to Frøya and Hitra.72 Newcomers’ ‘before’ was hence dependent on individual experience to a greater extent, and was more difficult to date or generalize. The distinctive factor for considering something to be ‘before’ is their change of perspective or change in terms of ‘positioning’. As soon as newcomers take an insider’s position and start to regard developments from the perspective of Frøya or Hitra, they begin to perceive developments from an inside perspective. They are no longer ‘outsiders’ who have come to the islands, but rather newcomers who have been in Frøya or Hitra for a while. This change is significant both in terms of belonging and because it represents newcomers’ entry into communicative memory and local history. The main trends outlined above merit more nuanced consideration. Long-time residents use comparisons with the past in order to evaluate contemporary circumstances. Liv, for instance, compared her childhood memories with childhood today in order to reach a verdict on the lives of children today. Later during the interview, she compared the way she looked at Frøya when she was a 16-year-old girl to how she saw the island today. In doing so, she was able to understand not only historical development, but also her own personal development.73 Per, on the other hand, referred to more general developments when asked about the biggest changes in Frøya. In his answer, he compared fishing before and today, criticizing a loss of knowledge, traditions and skills in doing so. A third strategy found in the interview data was to refer to the lives and memories of one’s parents and grandparents in an attempt to describe changes: “Yes, well, it is very different in the way that I have parents who have been shaped by the time they grew up in, both mum and dad are from a typical working-class milieu just like most of the people in Frøya were. They had no choice. They were

72

73

This was the case for Martin, who stated that: “[...] the facilities are the same. The people are more afraid about people that are not from their country.” Insa: “So, you think they were more open-minded five years ago?” Martin: “We were not so many. Now it is a lot of people.” Georg: “They get used to it. No?” Insa: “That is what I would think, too. That they get more used to it, to having people from different countries around.” Martin: “They are used, but five years ago, when I came, they were 50 people, now they are 200 and they meet them everywhere: they meet them in the shops, they meet them in the street, we have a quite different culture, we are speaking. I don’t know. Not in a bad way, but they see us.” Liv’s relation to the local past will be presented in more detail later.

5 Historical consciousness among Hitra’s and Frøya’s population

very smart people, but mum had no opportunity to go to school because they were poor. And the same with dad. When he was 15 he had to go on a boat [...]”74 Ida continued the conversation comparing her parents’ situation with that of today’s young people, who according to her encountered different conditions, but also inherited a weak tradition in terms of academic training, which explains why few local young people have gone into higher education. All of these long-time residents used the past in order to be able to describe contemporary circumstances better. In Bernard Eric Jensen’s words, their historical consciousness fulfils ‘diagnostic functions’ as it helps them to make sense of the present-day situation. Did newcomers’ historical consciousness fulfil similar diagnostic functions? Even though newcomers to the islands have only lived on Frøya or Hitra for a couple of years, they were still able to identify historical changes, which in turn allowed them to answer the question “what is different today compared to before?” As reported earlier, newcomers unanimously described the number of immigrants as the most significant change between ‘before’ and ‘now’. A second pattern in interview data was that immigrants rejected the view that changes had occurred at all, and instead emphasized how they – and especially their view of the islands – had changed. I will come back to these strategies in more detail below. For now, I will focus on which alternative strategies newcomers apply for purposes of judging the present. Theory on historical consciousness suggests that humans depend on references to the past in order to orient themselves in their present lives. Due to the relatively short time period immigrants have lived through personally in their new dwellingplace and their limited access to experience of and knowledge about local history, newcomers are forced to resort to alternative strategies when constructing meaning. In this context, immigrants alluded to the national level as a frame of reference. Simultaneously, data material suggests that the category of the national level did not play a significant role in long-time residents’ processes of orientation. While the national level stayed in the background in statements by Norwegians and the local was presented as a unique version of the national, for newcomers the category ‘Norwegian’ seemed important, as for them, this was the level on which difference was experienced. The observation that Frøyværinger consciously demarcated themselves from people on the neighbouring island of Hitra and vice versa, while newcomers considered the islands to be the same or at least scarcely distinguish-

74

“Ja, altså, det er jo veldig annerledes på den måten at jeg har jo foreldre som er preget av den tiden som de vokste opp i, både mamma og pappa kom fra sånn typisk arbeidermiljø som nok de aller fleste gjør på Frøya. Jeg hadde ikke noe valg. Dem var veldig sånne intelligente mennesker, men mamma hadde ikke noe mulighet til å gå videre på skolen for de var for fattige. Og likedan var det for pappa. Da han var 15 år, så var han nødt til å gå på båten.”

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able from one another, further supports that different groups preferred different levels for group building and meaning making.

5.4.6.

Drawing on knowledge about Norwegian history or the history of home countries to make sense of the past

In order to understand present-day phenomena, newcomers further resorted to elements of the historical knowledge they had acquired in their home countries. Describing observations they had made about the organization of the local community, the newcomers Paul and Sarah spoke of the need to be a part of the community and to know “the right people”. According to them, important functions (like getting a boat repaired) could not be performed otherwise. They drew on hearsay about life in East Germany75 to explain and understand this phenomenon. Paul said: “If you do not know the right people, or have the right connections, then you will have trouble getting it [your boat, author’s remark] fixed. Connections are of importance in such a small society.” He then offered a historical explanation: “I guess that is because without the tunnels people were not free in the past, it was difficult to get at things, then you had to help each other. You can compare that with East Germany,76 they too, in principle, did not get much input from the outside and they helped each other as well.” What is striking in this quote is that for him it is not enough to draw on what he knows of Frøya’s past, namely the restricted infrastructure before the opening of tunnels to the mainland, in order to understand contemporary phenomena. Instead, he takes a detour via a different historical, political and societal system, one that he is more acquainted with, in order to fully explain features of social life in Frøya today. A second, even more telling example of how newcomers referred to frames of reference stemming from their historical education and experiences in their country of origin was provided by Iulia. When asked what she would like to see in a historical museum in Hitra, she answered that she would like the museum to show something about the victims of communism, because she felt that the people in Hitra did not take the issue seriously enough and glorified a political system she had experienced as oppressive. In this case, Iulia alluded to a personal experience she had had with a resident in Hitra who had expressed positive attitudes towards communism. Based on her personal experiences and her historical consciousness, she could not agree with the other person’s opinion and interpreted this as expressing a lack of knowledge about communism as a political system. Not least, she felt hurt because of this person’s ignorance of something that constituted an important part of her historical consciousness and her identity. 75 76

They both were born and grew up in West Germany. Here, Paul is referring to the German Democratic Republic.

5 Historical consciousness among Hitra’s and Frøya’s population

A last example is taken from the conversation with Arthur. During the interview, Arthur expressed a wish to know more about Norway’s history (NB not Hitra’s): “Well and about Norway, I would like to know more. Of course I used to be interested in history, in school, the most important thing for me and what I was excited about, was history. Most of it about wars, first wars with Napoleon. A little back in time [my country, changed due to preserve Arthur’s anonymity] was in the middle of Europe, [...]. And the old Viking battles, most important the ways and how they changed the population, how they were mixing the people and brown eyes and sky blue, how the culture was changing and [...] but for example about Hitra, I don't know much.” Insa: “What do you know about Norwegian history?” Arthur: “Well, kings. I know Harald. [...] But I don't remember who was before him. But always, when I come to countries, I try to find out who’s the king or president. Because otherwise I would be looked at like a fool. Maybe I do not know the prime minister, but I must know who is the king. In Norway, it is Harald V,77 and in Sweden, it is Carl Gustav. But about Norway? Of course, in the war time, in the Second World War it was occupied by Germany and Norwegian people were fighting against this as much they could, as possible. People were dying, they already lost their lives because they wanted to get freedom as fast as possible, but Germans went out and, how to say, the Allies started pressing a little more and they left Norwegians. And Norwegian people executed some Norwegians who helped.” Insa: “Traitors?” Arthur: “Yes, traitors. So, that I know, these people as they are patriots, they never say never, they will fight to the end and I respect this. And they can kill betrayer, it is even exciting. In [my country], nobody knows who was a traitor.” This rather lengthy quote illustrates well how the local dimension constitutes a blind spot in Arthur’s view of history. He connected pieces of his home country’s past with pieces of knowledge about Norway’s history and compared historical events and developments between Norway and his country of origin, but neither the local history of his home place nor the local past of either Frøya or Hitra were mentioned in his deliberations.

5.4.7.

There is no history on the islands

The comparison to their home country or the reference to Norway on a national level shaped newcomers’ views of local history and local conditions. Several times,

77

Arthur is referring to the present King of Norway, Harald V of Norway.

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when asked about Frøya or Hitra, newcomers took the opportunity to use the comparison to shift to talking about their home country, that country’s history and culture, and the place they came from. Gabriela, a newcomer from Eastern Europe, for instance, described Hitra as the opposite of her hometown. While her town was 700 years old and had much to offer in terms of tangible cultural heritage, here in Hitra, she found only nature. Gabriela was just one of several newcomers who ascribed a lack of history to Hitra and Frøya. There is reason to assume that this initially has to do with a low awareness of Hitra’s and Frøya’s history. Georg is a labour migrant who explicitly admitted having very limited knowledge of local history. During the interview, I asked Georg whether he could think of things he would like to learn about Hitra’s history and he answered: “I was interested, for instance, about the Second World War, because somebody told me about the existence of an observatory for submarines here on Hitra. But I did not believe that because from that place you cannot see much of the water. But it aroused my imagination to go there and see what it was all about [...] But I would like to know a bit what was the history of Second World War? What did they do? The citizens, because, you know, Norwegians didn’t suffer very much from the Germans.” Interaction with a long-time resident on Hitra initiated Georg’s interest in learning more about a particular piece of history concerning the island. He rejected the possibility of an observatory for submarines on the island, but his interest was awakened nevertheless. He referred to his body of knowledge concerning the Second World War in general, and wondered what the situation was like in Hitra. This piece of conversation is significant given that a little earlier in our conversation, Georg had explicitly stated that he was not interested in Hitra’s history, yet the history of Norway was of interest for him. When I asked him: “Are there things about Hitra’s past and history that you would like to know? Or things that you have seen and wondered about?” Georg answered: “[...] I saw [a] picture of a bus library from 1946, so it was, I thought of the fact that just two years after they finished the Second World War, they had this service, public service. And the history particularly about Hitra, I don’t know, the history of Norway I am interested in. Am I interested in the history of the place exactly? No.” This quote indicates a mismatch between concrete events in Hitra’s local history and his ideas about the years directly after the Second World War. This mismatch between his historical consciousness and new pieces of information is motivating him to learn more. Nevertheless, once again, the preferred frame for this learning is not local, but national. His statement hence implies that he considered the library and functioning public services a national phenomenon, not a local one. The

5 Historical consciousness among Hitra’s and Frøya’s population

full import of Georg’s statements only becomes clear in the context of our ongoing conversation. Later during our talk, he mentioned his positive experiences of Norwegian public services and the municipal administration, which he presented as a stark contrast to experiences he had had of similar institutions in his home country. His emphasis on the well-functioning library services shortly after the war is affected by his positive experiences with public services in Norway today. In sum, two distinctive pictures emerged with regard to the frames of reference that long-time residents and newcomers to the islands used to make sense of the past, present and future. While long-time residents use personal memories, family memories, local historical events and local developments that unfold over a long period of time, newcomers do not have access to the same resources. Indeed, most newcomers expressed little interest in local history; they connected to the local past through isolated contemporary observations or recently acquired fragmented knowledge about local historical events. They further sought to fit their observations into explanatory patterns that they had acquired in their home countries or contemporary observations. In addition, they slotted new pieces of information into their rudimentary knowledge of Norwegian history. While long-time residents’ ideas of local history presented themselves as variations on a theme, namely the fisher-farmer community, individual newcomers’ ideas of local history were individual with little shared ground across the group. This is indicated by the fact that they chose very different key aspects when discussing the local past and present.

5.4.8.

The ‘official’ narrative of the fisher-farmer culture does not resonate with newcomers

Interviews offered insight into which main narratives about the history of Frøya and Hitra were commonly told among individuals. Both groups foregrounded the way of life related to the fisher-farmer (“fiskerbonde”) and the fishing community as the most characteristic feature of Frøya’s and Hitra’s past. The fact that fish as a resource and fishing as way of making a living were dominant in the past and remain the most important livelihood even today, albeit in different forms, was brought up by all informants. However, the way the story was told, the level of detail and the kind of evaluation offered differed significantly. Long-time residents provided detailed, personal descriptions of living conditions in the fishing community. They highlighted the roughness and cruelty of this way of life, reproducing stories told by parents and grandparents. Bjørn reproduced what he had heard from his grandmother, who had told him that during her time in elementary school, any time a child was asked to step outside the classroom, the

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others immediately knew a father had been lost to the sea.78 At a later point during the interview, Bjørn summarized further: “[...] I believe that before, life in Frøya has been affected by large poverty, for many decades. It has been rather hard to live there, I think.”79 Another illustrative description of life in the fishing community was provided by Kari: “There often were seven children in a family and bad economy before and during the war and it was like, I have been told this, that people had to row on the sea to get fish and if you did not get fish, then you did not have any food that day and you had to somehow apportion it, it was like this that people ate porridge many days in a row, or if they had herring, than they could eat herring for many days or even weeks because they did not have anything else.”80 A shared characteristic of Bjørn’s and Kari’s accounts is that while they no longer personally remember the situation they describe, they use “as I have been told” as a strategy to strengthen credibility, implying that they had been told by somebody who was there and who hence was a trustworthy witness, which in turn adds authority to the account. The observation that all long-time residents mentioned the fishing community and its hardships suggests that not only was this considered important as a description of what had been, it was also thought to be relevant from a contemporary point of view. One line of reasoning was that these historical conditions have formed residents’ particular traits of character. Sigrid, for instance, described people on Frøya as particularly open and caring for each other and gave the rough nature and past harsh living conditions on the islands as a reason.81 A second line of reasoning was to consider today’s residents as the ‘result’ of the islands’ particular historical development. Again, Sigrid explicated this line of reasoning: 78

79

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The story about a child being taken out of class to be informed that her father had died, is a powerful narrative and can be found for instance in local historical literature. An example is Frøya author Vidar Oskarsson’s Oda fra havet (Oda from the Sea) which also has been turned into a local open air theater performance. “Ja, hun sa f.eks., altså jeg tror at livet før på Frøya har vært preget av stor fattigdom, mange tiår. Det har vært ganske tøft å bo der, tror jeg. Iallfall sammenlignet med mange andre plasser.” “Det var jo gjerne syv unger i familien og dårlig råd før og under krigen og det er sånn jeg selv har blitt fortalt og sånn at du måtte ro på sjøen og for å få fisk og fikk ikke du fisk, så hadde ikke du mat den dagen og da måtte du jo liksom spre på med, det var jo sånn at folk spiste havregrynsgrøt i mange dager. F.eks. og dem hadde jo hvis dem fikk sild f.eks. da kunne de jo ha sild i mange dager og i uker for dem hadde jo ikke noe annet.” (Kari) “Yes, that openness that you somehow had to take care of each other and there were difficult times.” (“Ja, den åpenheten at du på en måte måtte ta vare på hverandre og at det var vanskelige tider.”)

5 Historical consciousness among Hitra’s and Frøya’s population

“Well, it is, one would in a way speak about history in connection with the economic activities out here, that there have been fisher-farmers and that it has developed into a huge aquaculture municipality and that the salmon in a way has meant enormously much. So, the development things have taken, that is in a way something I would tell. And it is, now I am just thinking out loud, that is maybe the most important part since this is what shapes our lives today.”82 Contrary to expectations, and despite the strong standing of the fisher-farmer in the contemporary cultural and collective memory on the islands, newcomers did not establish a link between the poor fishing community of the old days and the present living conditions on Frøya and Hitra. Instead, representatives from this group described the previous community in Frøya and Hitra without much detail or personification, referring to the fishing community in general statements such as: “Well, what should I tell more, yes, people settled here because of fish.”83 A second typical quote comes from Arthur, who, when I asked him what he thought Hitra looked like 50 or 100 years ago, answered: “I think there were few factories and people were living around them. Except for Fillan, Fillan was always the centre. But anyway, there was also hard work. So I think, everything was close to fishing, crabs or something like fish industry. Or sailing fishermen.” Both accounts are characterized by depersonalized, short, structural description; no thought is given to what the everyday life of the people living in these conditions might have been like. While empathy is a widespread mechanism when connecting to the past among long-time residents, the data suggests that for newcomers, the local past as a fishing community is difficult to comprehend, and their imaginations stop on a general level. In the following, I will draw on the example of Titran to illustrate in greater detail how the angles from which local history is seen differ between different groups within the local community. Titran is a small fishing village on the southern part of Frøya. It is well known as a centre of the 19th-century fishing community and for the Titran accident that took place the night before 14 October 1899. During the night a storm raged, and 141 fishermen drowned in the sea close to Titran. At that time, Titran did not have a telecommunications connection to the mainland yet, and as a consequence, the storm warning that had been issued in Trondheim and 82

83

“Det er jo, man vil jo på en måte snakke om historie i forhold til den næringsvirksomheten her ute, at det har vært fiskeribønder og at det har blitt en kjempestor oppdrettskommune og at laksen på en måte har bettydd enormt mye. Så, den utformingen som har skjedd, den er jo på en måte noe som man kan fortelle. Og den er, nå bare tenker jeg høyt, den er kanskje også det som er er det viktigste siden det er det som preger livet i dag.” “Hva skal jeg fortelle videre, ja at folk bosatte seg her fordi det fantes fisk.”

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Kristiansund earlier the same day did not reach the fishermen in Titran in time. The accident had huge consequences for the fishing community, as not only were dearly loved family members lost, but the material loss was also considerable. Many boats disappeared or were severely damaged, only three of the fishermen and a few boats were insured, and in many households all male family members perished.84 In 1949, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the incident, Frøya municipality erected a monument with the names of all 141 victims. Furthermore, a theatre play was written and performed on several occasions. The 100th anniversary in 1999 marked the starting point of a ‘year of commemoration’ with a ceremony, a number of cultural events and publications. During the Second World War, Germans built Stabben Fort in Titran. The fort still exists today and can be visited. Titran was mentioned in nearly every interview with residents on Frøya, and even interviewees who lived on Hitra mentioned the place. The majority of longtime residents from Frøya referred to the Titran accident in 1899 as a well-known historical event: “The accident in Titran in 1899. I guess you have heard about that? Of course you have.”85 The accident and its consequences were seen as illustrating the community’s vulnerability to the forces of nature and the central position of fishing within the community.86 While the newcomers failed to grasp the event’s symbolic content, they were aware of the way the catastrophe is commemorated by the community with a monument and occasional performances re-enacting the events of that night (Titran spel). However, how and why it happened, what the accident meant for the community and the role it still plays in the local community are absent from newcomers’ descriptions of Titran. Labour migrant Alexander was an exception as he introduced the Titran accident to our conversation. He explained that for him, this historical event was at once exotic, fascinating and difficult to fully comprehend in terms of its meaning for the local community and the context it belonged to:

84 85 86

Grønskag, Hans Anton, Titranulykka: Natta Mellom 13. og 14. Oktober 1899: Et Minneskriv i forbindelse med 100-årsmarkeringa i 1999 (Sistranda: Frøya kommune, 1999). “Ulykken her på Titran i 1899. Det vet vel, du har hørt om den, det har du klart.” (Kari) “The Titran accident. No, that is from a totally different time. Hmm, in a way, if you want to tell about it, then it would in a way have to be in order to show how people survived along the coast before. Just that that is completely foreign to us. In a way, that is very important to understand settlement and heritage here.” (“Titran ulykken. Nei, det blir en helt annen tid. Hmm, på en måte, hvis du skal fortelle om det, så er det på en måte for å vise hvordan folk måtte overleve på kysten før, da. Bare at det blir fullstendig fjernt for oss. På en måte, så er det veldig viktig for å forstå bosettingen og den arven.”) (Sigrid)

5 Historical consciousness among Hitra’s and Frøya’s population

“[...] we read about Hitra [sic!],87 looked at maps, were very impressed about the Titran catastrophe, I read about that two times, because, when I came I saw the sea around, when you have never lived so close to the sea, of course, that is a shock when you read about Titran.” Alexander’s answer further alluded to the differences in the way historical events are considered. His background was very different from that of the long-time residents and let him see things differently. In addition, even though he has learned about what happened, since much of the oral and collective tradition remains unknown to him, he has no access to the Titran accident as an element of communicative memory on Frøya. For most representatives of both groups, Titran gained recognition primarily because of Stabben Fort, which is one of very few tangible, easy-to-spot historical traces on Frøya and Hitra. Members of both groups introduced Titran as good place to show visitors, and they pointed out that the history of Stabben Fort and the Second World War was communicated very well by a local resident who shows visitors around for free.88 Stabben Fort is the only example of material heritage that is mediated to visitors, albeit by a volunteer, and thus it features in informants’ accounts of local history. And as it belongs to the history of the Second World War, all informants were in possession of historical references that helped them to recognize and put the events involved into context, even if the contexts differed. In addition to the past as a fisher-farmer community and Titran as a place of double historical significance, the overall data revealed surprising conformity in terms of the events considered important for the islands’ history. Among recent developments, improvements in infrastructure, namely the opening of tunnels between the mainland and Hitra in 1994 and between Hitra and Frøya in 2000, assumed a special status and were mentioned by almost all informants. Kari spoke on behalf of most informants when she said: “Yes, the biggest thing that has happened out here, that was that we got tunnels between Hitra and the mainland and Frøya, and that is one of the biggest things that has happened out here.”89 New87

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This quote further substantiated the observation that newcomers see Frøya and Hitra as one entity. Even though Titran is located on Frøya, in Alexander’s eyes the Titran accident is part of the islands’ history, that is, Hitra and Frøya together. This is an important observation as long-time residents are very aware of the fact that Titran is part of Frøya’s history. “But there is a possibility of taking them to Titran. There is an older man who knows very well the Second World War and can show you around at those places that were important during the war” (“Men det er jo mulighet for å ta dem med på Titran, der er den en eldre mann som har utrolig peiling på andre verdenskrig og kan ta med og vise disse her plassene som var aktuelle under krigen.”). As he does his tours in Stabben Fort in Norwegian, not all residents are able to join a tour. “Ja, største som har skjedd utpå her, det var at vi fikk tuneller mellom Hitra og fastlandet og Frøya og det er jo noe av det største som skjedde ut på her.”

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comers Sarah and Paul, even without having experienced the situation before the tunnels were opened, also regarded the tunnels as changes with a tremendous impact: “Well, no doubt, that has changed dramatically during the last decades after the tunnels came.”90 Again, long-time residents used accounts of what life was like before the tunnels were opened, talking about how difficult it was to travel and how long it took to get to Trondheim, to illustrate the importance of the event.91 Newcomers, on the other hand, took the tunnels and the islands’ connection to the mainland as a given (albeit a somewhat exotic given). Today, tunnels are an integral part of everyday life on Frøya and Hitra. What all of the events (Stabben Fort, Titran, the tunnels) mentioned by informants had in common was that they had left physical traces that could be ‘read’ in the contemporary landscape of the islands. The tunnels are used on a regular basis, and Stabben Fort is visible to anybody who takes a driving tour across the island of Frøya. The importance of visibility and the impact of historical events on cultural identities has been studied by Sheila Watson in her research on Norfolk. Watson has shown how visible traces of the fishing industry in Norfolk were the main reason for the fishing industry’s strong position as part of cultural memory.92 In Frøya and Hitra, there are few visible traces of the fish-farmer communities in the islands’ landscape, but they do live on in people’s homes as family portraits, old ‘stuff’ in garages and attics, and the knowledge of previous uses of certain parts of the islands as fish landings, harbours and the like survives in street names or dialect expressions which are not easily understood by foreign-language newcomers. As a consequence, an imagined landscape still lives on among those who have been living on the islands for a long time. For newcomers, these traces are invisible, and voices from the past remain silent. Arguably, the perceived historical depth of the landscape is another distinguishing feature that characterizes how long-time residents’ way of relating to the past differs from that of how newcomers relate to local history.

5.4.9.

Competing narratives of the local development

As mentioned above, long-time residents and newcomers paint different pictures of the islands’ past. They do agree to some extent on the important events in the recent history of the islands. However, when shifting the focus to the present and

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Paul: “Das ist ja schon so, dass sich das die letzten Jahrzehnte extrem verändert hat nachdem die Tunnels gekommen sind.” In this context, long-time residents often criticized that the opening of tunnels had gone hand in hand with a decline in public transport. For newcomers, public transport does not play a role; for them, their personal vehicles are the only means of transport on the islands. Watson, “History Museums, Community Identities and a Sense of Place,” 167.

5 Historical consciousness among Hitra’s and Frøya’s population

asking about the relevance of local history for the contemporary situation, differences became apparent: informants who were born and had grown up on Frøya or Hitra reproduced a master narrative that, taking the fishing community as kind of a foundation myth, regards present-day economic growth and wealth as the result of locals’ resilience, audacity, hard work, and creativity. In the context of this narrative, all long-time residents are in one way or another considered the descendants of traditional fishermen and innovators, something that can be traced in the ways long-time residents characterize themselves today. While long-time residents are ascribed roles as agents, pushing developments towards progress and finally economic growth and wealth, in the same narrative, immigrants have only joined during the last phase of the development and are merely considered passive beneficiaries. They fill in places and spaces that local entrepreneurs have created for them. This narrative entails certain assumptions concerning the reasons why foreigners would move to Hitra and Frøya, with jobs and money seen as the prime motivations. Interview data suggests that little (if any) thought is given to possible other reasons why people might choose to migrate to a foreign country. Frøya and Hitra are the centre from which reflections develop. Some long-time residents expressed views such as that “without them [the immigrants, author’s remark] this [the positive development of the islands, author’s remark] would not have been possible”, but recognition of immigrants’ motivations and their role in the local community were still linked to the functions they fulfilled. Newcomers’ utterances supported this observation as they deplored long-time residents’ lack of interest in their backgrounds and in their reasons for leaving their home countries. Interviews suggested that from long-time residents’ point of view, the newcomers’ role in the history and the present-day local community was clearly defined by the function they fulfilled in the present-day local community, with the group designation ‘Eastern European labour migrant’ further enforcing and stabilizing this differentiation. Differences in age, nationality, education, profession, and family status are ignored in favour of the categorization as labour migrants. There are further indications, albeit only expressed indirectly, that long-time residents agreed that immigrants needed to adapt to local conditions. Such ideas were expressed exemplarily in an interview in which the informant said that the role of museums was to teach newcomers about local history so that they could better understand and adapt themselves to the local community. Newcomers, too, acknowledged this opinion about their own group. Anna expressed her observation poignantly: “Norwegians like us as workers, but I am not sure whether they dare to let us in otherwise.”93

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“Nordmenn liker oss som arbeidsfolk, men jeg vet ikke om dem ellers tør å la oss slippe lengre inn.” (Anna). Anna’s relations to the local history of Frøya (and Hitra) is subject of chapter 5.6.

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From a newcomer’s point of view, immigrants’ role in the islands’ historical development presented itself in a significantly different way. The developments leading to the dominant role of aquaculture on the islands today were little known among newcomers; during the interviews, none of them referred to these developments. Instead, representatives of this group emphasized that none of the positive developments would have been possible without them, their effort and contribution, highlighting the positive knock-on effects of their presence on the islands. From the labour migrants’ point of view, the islands’ wealth was dependent on labour migrants’ commitment to hard work, and as a consequence they see longtime residents as those benefiting from their commitment. As they are essentially unaware of the long run-up that led to today’s industrial and economic growth, they consider their effort to be at least of equal importance to that of local entrepreneurs. This means in many cases that they do not feel that the locals have welcomed them adequately. Several of the non-Norwegian informants said that long-time residents did not put sufficient effort into welcoming them and showed little interest in their cultural backgrounds or their motivations for emigration. Despite seemingly clear understandings of the different actors’ roles in the historical process, interview data revealed that both groups struggled with ambivalences and had trouble interpreting the significance of past developments for the present and the future. This unsure evaluation of ongoing changes affected first the rise of aquaculture and the economic development closely linked to it, and second the role that labour migrants played and will continue to play in the future of the local community. From long-time residents’ point of view, immigrants fell into two groups: those who settled in Hitra or Frøya with their families, who learned Norwegian, and who started to integrate into the local community, and those labour migrants who worked in the fish-processing industry and sent money to their families at home. Representatives of the latter group had no intention of living in Norway on a permanent basis and did not always put much effort into learning Norwegian. Some newcomers agreed with this dichotomy, while others did not accept it without protest. Instead, they explained that the decision to stay in Norway or not was not easily taken, and the same person could go through different phases and change his or her opinion several times. This indicates that the categories of immigrants ‘who have settled for good’ and those ‘who are staying for a limited period of time’ are not stable. They do, nevertheless, have an impact on the self-representation and identity constructions of those they address. Residents in Frøya and Hitra were generally optimistic about their islands’ future. Long-time residents based their predictions on previous developments and contemporary observations, which led them to anticipate continued growth. As Sigrid put it:

5 Historical consciousness among Hitra’s and Frøya’s population

“Hmm, I think that as long as we are allowed to operate with salmon farming, Frøya’s future will be very good in terms of work and the like. Well, that makes people move here. But it is very clearly a change in a way, those people who live here today are very different to those who have lived here 50 years ago, and that is of course natural, a lot of things have happened during the last 50 years everywhere. But I think it will be a good society and people will be fine.” This optimistic overall picture was differentiated by voices that pointed out the economic vulnerability that goes along with being solely reliant on aquaculture,94 but even in these cases, references back to history and the ingenuity of the ancestors resolved any doubts.95 Long-time residents’ view of the future built on the master narrative of the development from a fisher-farmer community to an aquaculture community. Those who (local entrepreneurs) and that which (aquaculture) drove the developments in the past will continue to do so in the future. The focus in accounts of the future is the same as in narratives of local history. Drawing on newcomers’ utterances, more differentiated perspectives on the future emerged. Members of this group, too, emphasized the role of aquaculture, but their predictions were based upon contemporary living conditions to a higher degree. They also wondered how people with different backgrounds would live together in the community. Arthur, for instance, predicted economic growth, leading to increasing numbers of newcomers, but he was concerned because “Well, you know when it is too much, it is not good anywhere. I hope there will not be conflicts between outsiders who are coming here, immigrants and inhabitants. I have seen people coming here and showing a different temperament. [...] also, there can

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“Yes, I think that in case something happens with aquaculture, I cannot stand, I cannot imagine, then I think, Frøya would simply sink in the sea. We have only this one leg to stand on.” (“Ja, jeg tenker sånn at dersom det skjer noe med oppdrettslaksen, jeg orker ikke, jeg klarer ikke å se på meg, da ser jeg at Frøya detter rett inn i havet. Vi har jo bare det å stå på.”) (Liv) Sigrid: “Yes, I believe in Frøya’s future. But it is very vulnerable out here. In context with that the most of all business is in connection with salmon farming and aquaculture and the most of all service economy is in connection to that and so on. It is dependent on this. If there happens to be a collapse, that will mean tremendous challenges. But then again, I think people out here have shown that in times of decline, then they get creative and in a way manage to find solutions and start new things. So, I think peoples out here, they would survive because that is somehow in their nature. But that indicates that growth will continue.” (“Jo, jeg har god tro på Frøyas framtid. Men det er jo veldig sårbart ut på her. For i forhold til det at det meste av næringsvirksomheten foregår i det med lakseoppdrett og havbruk, det meste på servicenæring er i forhold til det og all sånt. Det er så avhengig av det. At hvis det blir en kollaps der, så vil det by på kjempeutfordringer. Men ellers, jeg tror nok at folk ut på her har visst det at i nedgangstider, så blir dem kreative og på en måte greier å finne løsninger og starte med noen nye ting. Så, jeg tror nok at folkeslaget ut på her, de ville nok overlevd fordi at det på en måte er i deres natur. Men det tyder jo på at veksten vil fortsette.”)

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be between immigrants even, conflicts.” Georg and Martin shared Arthur’s view in part. Georg said that he thought Hitra would become a cosmopolitan place: “Hitra, I think, this is a trajectory. Hitra will be a cosmopolitan place. Because they are coming and coming and they keep coming from different nationalities.” Insa: “That would mean, Hitra's development would just continue the way it goes now?” Georg: “I don't know.” Insa: “Do you think there will be more people coming?” Georg: “If they diversify the industry, maybe.” Martin interjected: “Maybe not if they diversify only. I don't know if you know but there is a huge project at Sandstad. It is an industrial platform there and Marine Harvest will have a factory, and not like Ulvan, it will be three times bigger. So, obviously they will need more workers.”96   Georg replied that he was speaking of “[...] diversifying segments of production, not only fish. Because all the economy here is based on fish.” And Martin asked, rather rhetorically: “But what can you do? You cannot put potatoes.” Georg had some ideas and answered: “Maybe, other things, seal factory. You might have an image of the future, but maybe some diseases or maybe, I don't know. Constantly we are reminded that we are working in a very unsure field, with a lot of changes.” Insa: “It is kind of a laboratory; they are still trying to find out how to do it best.” Martin: “But they are producing fish in over one hundred and something tons. It won't die now.” Georg: “But maybe they discover tomorrow something different, the salmon is not good anymore.” Besides showing that Martin and Georg – especially Martin – were able to think of alternatives to the current major business strands, this piece of conversation also serves as an illustration of how personal circumstances impact upon how the past and the future are linked. Georg did not hold a permanent position and even though he had been working on Hitra on and off for several years, his wife and child had not yet been able to follow him there. He was looking for alternatives and sought signals that would help him to better foresee or prepare for changing conditions. Martin, on the other hand, did have a permanent working position. He lived on the island with a girlfriend and had siblings and other family living on Hitra as well. In their verdicts about Hitra’s future development, Georg and Martin 96

Sandstad is the place where the fast boat arrives/leaves from/to Kristiansund and Trondheim, Marine Harvest is planning to build a huge factory in the area. Ulvan is an industrial area located in the North-west of Hitra, Marine Harvest has a factory here.

5 Historical consciousness among Hitra’s and Frøya’s population

were examples of how different experiences of being a labour migrant influence individuals’ historical consciousness, their views on the past, present and future. Despite being allocated to the same demographic group – Eastern European labour migrant – and coming from the same country, sharing the same gender and even being about the same age, they are, to quote sociologist and culture theorist Stuart Hall, examples of “the different ways we are positioned by, and position ourselves within the narratives of the past.”97 Positioning as taking part in negotiations about history is a local activity, which demands and contributes to the development of historical consciousness. In my analysis of the interviews, a number of dimensions emerged that defined differences in the ways that individuals positioned themselves in relation to local history. These dimensions are: speaking position, self-positioning, individual narrative, links to local history, speaking of local history, chronology/ temporal adverbs, dividing line between ‘before’ and ‘now’, ideas about the local past, ideas about who the agents in local history are, expressed interest in local history, access to communicative and cultural memory, narrow understandings of history, broad understanding of history, history is important, strategies for making sense of the contemporary context, ‘the old days’, conception of the islands as one unit, links to before/the past, now/the present, then/the future.

5.5.

Three ideal types of historical consciousness

Each of the respondents combined these dimensions in unique individual ways, depending on background variables and influenced by the involvement with the interviewer and the interview setting. Despite the individual, one-off character of the interview conversation, my comparison of the ways in which respondents’ answers related to the different dimensions meant I was able to develop a tripartite typology describing ideal types98 that describe how residents relate to local history.

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Hall, Stuart, “Cultural Identity and Diaspora,” in Identity, Community, Culture, Difference, edited by Jonathan Rutherford (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1990), 225. Also, ibid., “Cultural identities are the points of identification, the unstable points of identification and suture, which are made, within the discourse of history and culture. Not an essence but a positioning [emphasis added by the author].” Following Max Weber, ideal types are conceptual tools developed with the help of selection and abstraction. Ideal types combine essential characteristics of a social phenomenon. They do not mirror reality, but are abstractions from reality. Coates describes ideal types as a “logical extraction of elements derived from specific examples, [they] provide a theoretical model by which and from which we may examine reality.” Coates, Rodney D., “Towards a Simple Typology of Racial Hegemony/Vers une typologie simple de l'hégémonie raciale/Hacia una tipología sencilla de la hegemonía racial,” Societies Without Borders 1, no. 1 (2006), 87.

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The types are: type 1: continuity; type 2: beginnings, and type 3: detachment. Each of the types combined the dimensions listed above in distinct ways. The typology is limited to dimensions of the meaning-making level; other significant variables (such as class, age, gender, education and occupation) are not considered, or at least not primarily. Duration of stay presents itself as an obvious criterion in the research context. As expected, the three types I identified correspond to positions between the extremes of always having lived on one of the islands, as is the case for long-time residents, and just having arrived on either Hitra or Frøya, as is the case for some labour migrants. Nonetheless, data analysis revealed that the reference to how long somebody has lived on Hitra or Frøya was not the main determinant of how the past and history are used for orientation and identity constructions. To follow up on this finding, I break up the conventional dichotomy between long-time residents and labour migrants. Established categories, when used as basis for museum work, have tended to reproduce group boundaries, thus oversimplifying diversity and denying dynamic changes and individual hybrid appropriations of history. There is then a danger of ‘Othering’ despite the best intentions. Instead of categorizing residents into one of the two categories defined by residents’ origin, I present a differentiation into three different ideal types that describe individuals’ relation to local history. Moreover, in order to take the dynamic movement of historical consciousness into account, I propose considering the ideal types as representing positions on a spectrum along which individuals are constantly moving whilst they change local history’s place and role in their identity negotiations.

5.5.1.

Type 1: Continuity

Individuals’ strong connections to local history narratives through personal and family memory are characteristic of how history and identity relate in type 1: continuity. Individuals representing historical consciousness characterized by continuity have access to the communicative and cultural memory of the place where they are living. Their individual narratives – that is, the answers to the question “Why am I where I am today?” – are developed in line with personal memories and autobiographical narratives against the background of local historical development. Seen from the opposite angle, when reporting the island’s (either Hitra’s or Frøya’s) general historical development, individual memories or comments are used to illustrate and even structure the narrative. Taken together, this type presents a high degree of ‘composure’, that is, the integration of autobiography and local history. Links to the past comprise personal memories, family stories, access to and participation in communicative and cultural memory. Representatives of type 1 have an insider’s position in the local community, they engage critically with their surroundings and measure contemporary developments against the past, using local history for the purpose of orientation. In terms of the future, history plays a role as

5 Historical consciousness among Hitra’s and Frøya’s population

something one can learn from. In addition, the future is anticipated as an extension of developments that started in the past and have endured until the present day; there is thus a certain continuity.

5.5.2.

Type 2: Beginnings

Representatives who make use of a historical consciousness characterized by type 2: beginnings are those who have been ‘new for a while’ and for whom local history has just started to play a role in meaning-making processes. While this type has a number of individual memories of the recent local past (e.g. memories of first encounters with the island) and of recent general developments and events, their childhood and family memories provide no insight into or connection to local history. Their historical consciousness is in a state of transition and repositioning. This process is illustrated by the observation that members of this group are able to reflect upon the way their first impressions of the island have changed during their stay there. Access or limited access to communicative and cultural memory plays a significant role in the context of meaning production. Representatives of this type do not have direct access to communicative and cultural memory (yet), and their individual narratives only intertwine slowly with the local past and local history. However, they demonstrate growing awareness and knowledge of the local community’s communicative and cultural memory and historical culture. Representatives of this type do not describe themselves as part of local history, nor do they use local references to the past in meaning-making processes that concern the present and future. For them, drawing connections between a local past and their current identity does not (yet) come naturally (as is the case for representatives of the first type). Put differently, even though individuals representing this type may be able to see their place in local history, they have not yet incorporated the local past as a means for their own individual orientation. In their links to the past, type 2 individuals have direct individual access to the recent local past through experience. At the same time, they have personal (especially childhood) memories and family memories that connect them to their places of origin or previous places of residency. They remain continuously connected to these places through communicative and cultural memory, although their distance to the communicative memory of their home country increases in correspondence to their growing involvement on Hitra or Frøya. Accordingly, using history for orientation is a complex meaning-making process in which the new context struggles for dominance with old frames of reference. While history only partially contributes to building an understanding of presentday conditions, representatives of type 2 take an inside position and criticize today’s developments on the basis of a comparison with the recent, self-experienced past and an external view. Often the outside view is manifested as a comparison

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with how things are in their home country. When stated explicitly, these comparisons are easy to trace, while more subtle meaning-making processes that employ ‘cultural scripts’99 and reference frames from the ‘old’ culture are often more difficult to identify.100 For newcomers, recognizing these is a challenge, and Norwegians are not always aware of them either. Representatives of type 2 are unaware of the limits that prior frames of reference can constitute for their understanding of the local context. The same mechanisms apply for type 2’s perspectives on the future development of the islands, which are mainly based on their experiences on Frøya and Hitra. Type 2 representatives embrace a wider perspective; more specifically, they draw on knowledge, experience and historical consciousness developed in context of their original home. The latter can lead to misinterpretation and misunderstanding not only concerning the issues at stake, but also between speakers representing different types.

5.5.3.

Type 3: Detachment

In the case of the third type, the past, history and orientation in the present life world are not connected. The label ‘detachment’ refers to the relation between the past and the present (and the future) that shapes this type’s historical consciousness. Representatives of this type express little interest in local history; the past of the place they live in is considered neither interesting nor relevant, as they have no personal memories, nor access to communicative and cultural memory. Their individual narratives do not employ links to local history, and the question of how they have become the people they are is answered with a narrative of an individual acting against a blurred or even ahistorical background. There is thus no historization of their autobiographies that relates to local history. There is an indication that this has to do with a lack of congruity between the different spheres of individual past, local past and cultural context. This type shows similarities with the topos of ‘the foreigner’ as elaborated by Jan Motte and Rainer Ohliger (2004). The foreigner is somebody who lives in a world, the definition of which he or she is unable to contribute to because this world is defined and driven by others. While foreigners live in the everyday realm of the local community, they are excluded from the symbolic spaces of that same community. They are not culturally represented, or if they are represented, natives define the parameters of representation. Their links to the past are of minor importance for

99

Lindsey Dodd defines ‘shared cultural scripts’ as “recognizable, standardized reworkings of the past.” Dodd, Lindsey, “Small Fish, Big Pond: Using a Single Oral Narrative to Reveal Broader Social Change,” in Memory and History: Understanding Memory as Source and Subject, edited by Joan Tumblety (London: Routledge, 2013), 37. 100 Especially for the researcher who has little knowledge of the informant’s culture.

5 Historical consciousness among Hitra’s and Frøya’s population

their construction of the self and their perspectives on the world around. The surrounding community/world is looked upon from an external position. Expectations towards the future are hence not grounded in interpretations of the past, and what is to come is uncertain.101 Furthermore, a narrative position of ‘individuality’ is typical of this type. Representatives of this type do not ascribe themselves to groups; instead, much of their positioning is based on distancing themselves from other groups, whether newcomers or long-time residents. In doing so, they present themselves as unencumbered individuals with an extraordinary amount of agency in terms of deciding their lives. The table below offers a schematic overview over the different dimensions of historical consciousness elaborated on basis of interview analysis.

101

The type of ‘the foreigner’ was introduced by Motte and Ohliger, who studied how immigrants were incorporated into German historical culture. See: Motte, Jan, and Rainer Ohliger, “Einwanderung - Geschichte - Anerkennung. Auf den Spuren geteilter Erinnerung,” in Geschichte und Gedächtnis in der Einwanderungsgesellschaft: Migration zwischen historischer Rekonstruktion und Erinnerungspolitik, edited by Jan Motte and Rainer Ohliger (Essen: Klartext, 2004), 30.

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Types of historical consciousness Name type of historical consciousness

Type 1: Continuity

Type 2: Beginnings

Type 3: Detachment

Developments are aligned in a comprehensive narrative about local community and self.

characterized by a transitional phase in which different frames of reference are brought in alignment

characterized by discontinuity, detached from historical frames of reference

Links to before/the past of Frøya or Hitra

Personal memories; Family memories; Communicative and cultural memory; Knowledge about local history

Personal memories of recent local past (experienced past); Personal and family memories linked to place of origin; Access to communicative and cultural memory of home country; Some knowledge about local history; Some interest in local history

No personal or family memories; Little or no knowledge about local history: No access in communicative and cultural memory; Outsider’s observation of communicative and cultural memory Not interested in local history

Now / the present time

Insider position; View on present situation/development based on comparison with the past

Insider position; View on present situation/developments based on comparison with the recent past and view from the outside

Outsider position; View on present situation based on synchron perspective*

* 102

102 Any personal view is arguably shaped by experience, memories, communicative and cultural memory of place of origin. However, in this type, these background features are suppressed in the present situation. To compare, in the second type, these features are drawn on for purposes of making sense of present situation and current developments.

5 Historical consciousness among Hitra’s and Frøya’s population

Type 1: Continuity

Type 2: Beginnings

Type 3: Detachment

The future

Extension of past and present developments

Based on recent experiences from Frøya or Hitra, and present developments; Draws on history of other places

Does not base judgement on past/history.

Temporal adverbs when discussing around past, present, future of Frøya or Hitra

Wide range of temporal references; Most of them ‘absolute’, i.e. they organize the narrative from the outside

Wide range of temporal references, both individual and general

characterized by discontinuity, detached from historical frames of reference

Access to communicative and cultural memory?

Yes

In the process of gaining access to both

No

Narrative strategy to connect individual and local history (Answer to the question “Why am I were I am today?)

Personal memories / autobiography against background of local development

Draws on historical background from several places

‘Ahistorical’ existence. Focus is here and now

Individual memories used to illustrate general historical developments (both local and national, universal)

Narrative of becoming a part of local history

Narrative of individual acting upon ahistoric context; no historization of autobiography

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  Type 1: Continuity

Type 2: Beginnings

Type 3: Detachment

Connections to local history other than Frøya’s or Hitra’s? (e.g. to place of origin?)

None

Some personal memories; Family memories

None

Does local history fulfill orientation functions?

Yes

Yes

No

Most often represented among demographic group

Long time residents

Newcomers

Newcomers

While the typology was developed through the analysis of all interview data gathered, I have chosen excerpts from three exemplary interviews to illustrate the types and their distinctive features. As the typology represents ideal types, none of the informants fully matches all criteria of the typology. The following informants were chosen because they show core features of the respective ideal types. I will start with Liv, a long-time resident of Frøya. She represents the first type, whose historical consciousness is characterized by continuity. Second, I will present excerpts from my conversation with Anna, who represents type 2 as she moves along the spectrum between continuity and detachment. Her ways of using local history for orientation are characterized by beginnings as she is beginning to incorporate relations to local history into her narrative about herself. At the same

5 Historical consciousness among Hitra’s and Frøya’s population

time, she retains her distance and detachment from the local community she meets on Frøya. Detachment is the main characteristic of Kornelius’s relation to the local past. Quotes from the interview with Kornelius serve to illustrate type 3: detachment.

5.6. 5.6.1.

Three examples: Liv, Anna and Kornelius Liv “My grandson asked me: ’Grandma, did you live in the old days?’ and of course, I answered ‘no.’ I thought that the old days, that was when my parents were young. But then I started thinking, and then I answered ‘Actually, […] grandma lived in the old days.’”103

Liv, a woman in her 60s was born and brought up on Frøya. During the interview, she expressed a strong affinity with the place and pride in the island, as she said herself: “[...] so, I really love the island and want to show off what we’ve got.”104 Even though Liv repeatedly expressed pride in the place during the interview, she applied a master narrative of ‘things used to be better before’. In Liv’s narrative about Frøya’s local history, verdicts about the past blurred with happy childhood memories, hence turning the past into ‘the good old days’, a time when things were better. Her nostalgia went along with a general criticism of the fast-changing times today. For example, when I asked her to compare Frøya in the past with Frøya in the present, she answered: “Well, then I would say, that before, it felt like people had much more time. They were not as busy as they are today. It was not this with the clock and that you should do the most possible in the shortest time possible. I can tell a story very well, which I have told to my own children many times. Both my mother and my father come from Frøya and my grandfather, my mother’s father, had a little farm and during the summer, it was usual to harvest hay and to take care of the animals. And he had a horse, he did not have a tractor, but when the time came to bring in the hay that was dry, and we could see there would be rain

103 “Barnebarnet spurte meg: ‘Du mormor, levde du i gamle dager?’ Og selvfølgelig så svarte jeg jo ‘nei’ fordi eg tenker jo at gamle dager det er da mine foreldrene var unge. Og så begynte jeg å tenke og sa at ‘vet du hva, hun mormor levde faktisk i gamle dager.” 104 “[...] så jeg er veldig sånn glad i Frøya og vil vise fram det vi har.”

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within a couple of hours, still, the horses should not be pushed too hard, they should go slowly. If we did not finish the day, we would the next day. And then I think sometimes, oh goodness, how good it was during the days it was like that. Because today, we have a lot more stress than what we used to have here on Frøya. There is nothing to do but to accept that.”105 The excerpt is illustrative of how Liv based her criticism of contemporary life on personal memories of a better past. In addition, the same quote demonstrates how Frøya and ‘the world in general’ are the same: the saying ‘everything used to be better before’ is a cliché with an all-encompassing claim of validity far beyond Frøya’s coastlines. Liv clarified this as she answered my question of what she would tell people from outside about Frøya’s history: “Well, it’s this about Frøya’s history, that it has developed very much. I would probably say what I’ve already said, that it was very good to be child in Frøya since I felt we had plenty of time.”106 In saying so, she literally summed up the aspects she drew upon for her individual verdict about the island’s local history: a general idea of ‘the good old days’, based on the impression that things were not only different, but better before, in combination with childhood memories. Liv applied the same narrative pattern later in the interview when speaking of food and Christmas traditions in her family. Again, personal and family memories were taken as vantage points for generalizing about ‘the good old days’. For Liv, local history, family history and personal memories were elements in one single coherent narrative about herself and the world. She used personal memories and family stories to illustrate local history, and just as naturally drew on accounts of more general local history to put her individual experiences into a wider context. Although she had a lot to tell about the local past, she repeatedly emphasized that she was not especially interested in history, nor had she ever learned about local history, neither in school nor through visiting a museum. However,

105 “Ja, det vil jeg si at før i tiden, så føltes det som om folk hadde mye bedre tid. De hadde det ikke så travelt. Det var ikke det med klokke og tenk på at vi skal gjøre mest mulig på kortest mulig tid. Jeg kan godt fortelle sånn som jeg har sagt så mange ganger til ungene mine, jeg hadde både mora og faren min var fra Frøya og bestefaren min, morfaren min, han hadde et lite gårdsbruk og på sommeren så var det vanlig at de slo gress og ordnet med dyrene og han hadde hest, han hadde ikke traktor, men når det var tid for å ta inn høyet som var tørt, så kunne vi sjå at det ble regn om noen timer, men hestene skulle ikke drives hardt, dem skulle gå. Hvis ikke dem fikk det inn i dag så får det være i morgen. Og det tenker jeg noen ganger å herlighet hvor godt det var i den tiden, da det var sånn. For nå har vi mye mer stress her enn hva det var før her på Frøya. Det er bare å innse det.” 106 “Det er vel det med historien på Frøya den har utviklet seg veldig mye. Jeg ville nok sagt at det som jeg allerede har sagt. At det var veldig godt å være barn på Frøya med at jeg føler at vi hadde god tid.”

5 Historical consciousness among Hitra’s and Frøya’s population

she was aware of places that would serve as starting points for learning about local history and mentioned farmbooks (“bygdebøker”107 ) and a local historian, who according to her knew many things and would be able to find out about most matters. ‘Factual’, academic knowledge, as she stated on several occasions during the interview, was not a primary concern for her, and it was a topic that she proposed I should ask others about. To learn more about what she considered common knowledge about local history, I asked her: “But beside your personal experiences, are there things, like stories, which are retold? Which everybody knows about?”108 She answered: “Well, there was the huge Titran accident. On the sea in 1899. There died, well, I do not remember the exact numbers, but there were unbelievably many people who died and there were many widows afterwards, among them dad’s grandma, my great-grandmother, who was left alone with seven children. And that is something everybody knows about. And then there was the consolidation of municipalities and we have had quite a lot of disputes here on Frøya, and that is something we have continued with, but well, it is in the media that we disagree about things, and that is almost like paparazzi style, so that was this issue with the municipality consolidations.” I asked: “When was that?” And Liv answered: “During the 60s, but I do not recall the exact year. I am sure you can find that somewhere. Well there really was a war on this issue. Earlier, we had North and South Frøya, now changes came and the municipality centre was moved to Sistranda, and then many thought there was the issue of building a new home for the elderly, and then we got a new health centre in Sistranda and many thought that the home for the elderly should be located at the same place, and then there was a new war109 on where to build it. It then became the same place, on Hammervik, where we had the old one. Then Slettan church burned down in 1984, and then we had a couple of years with discussions as to where the new church should be located, and there it was said that it would be all right to have it in Sistranda, then we fought about that for a while and then it was raised again in Slettan. Well, like I say, Frøya and history that are fierce debates and it drags on, for today it is local politics that we will get a new cultural centre.”110 107 ‘Farm’- or ‘Parish’books are a type of Norwegian historical literature. Often, these books unite general cultural history with the history of a parish, a local farm or a family. 108 “Men bortsett fra dine egne opplevelser, var det ting som historier, som gjenfortelles? Som alle vet om?” 109 Liv used the Norwegian word ‘krig’ which translates as ‘war’, but she is referring to a public discussion or debate. 110 “Der gikk det i vei, nå vet jeg ikke tallet, men da var det utrolig mye folk som gikk i vei og det ble det mange enker av. Blant annet bestemor til pappa, oldemora min, som ble sittende ig-

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In line with many others, she highlighted the Titran accident in 1899 as the most important historical event in Frøya’s history. Without a pause, she then enumerated events she personally remembered, namely the consolidation of municipalities of North and South Frøya in 1964, the fire in Slettan church in 1984, and finally the establishment of a new cultural centre in the present. In her personal overview over 100 years of local history, she not only demonstrated a temporal perspective that encompassed a long period of time, but at the same time chose to foreground historical events that unfolded during her lifetime. She related personally and directly to all the events specified. Again, this strengthened her embeddedness in local history. Even though the Titran accident lay over 100 years back, she employed the same strategy of appropriation when speaking of it. Her knowledge of the Titran accident had to be depersonalized and transmitted, since it occurred long before she was born. By mentioning her father’s grandmother, she built a direct family connection to the historical event. In doing so, she gave herself a place in the story, and underlined her belonging to the fishing community that was affected by the catastrophe. Her way of making sense is aptly described by the concept of composure, as she constructed an account of past events that is coherent from her point of view. As a consequence, Liv presented herself as member of a community with roots going a long way back in time. With the Titran accident strongly anchored in Frøya’s historical culture, referring to it was an ‘officially correct’ answer to my inquiry about important events in Frøya. The events Liv mentioned in the following were, however, unique and individual choices. She integrated subsequent events (the consolidation of municipalities, the fire in Slettan church and the establishment of a new cultural centre) into a narrative that, in her view, illustrates a particular, characteristic way of being that distinguishes the people of Frøya. According to Liv, Frøyværinger are strongminded, eager to engage in discussion and not afraid of a fight. Put in a wider context, Liv presented an idea of history as developments that play out as consequences

jen med syv barn alene. Og det er jo noen som alle vet om og så kommunesammenslåing og vi har jo hatt veldig mye krangel her på Frøya g det har vi jo fortsatt, men det er jo i mediene, at vi er uenige om ting da, og det er jo nesten sånn paparazzi, så det er dette med kommunesammenslåing.” Insa: “Når var det?” “På 60-tallet, men årstallet husker jeg ikke. Det finner du sikkert et sted. Så, det var det nå krig om. Før så var det Nord- og Sør-Frøya, nå var det endringer og da ble kommunesenteret på Sistranda og så var det det med Frøya og at de skulle bygges nytt sykehjem og da har vi fått ett helsesenter på Sistranda og sa mente jo mange at der burde også sykehjemmet ligge, da var det en ny krig da om hvor skulle vi bygge det. Så ble det på samme sted, på Hammerviken, der vi hadde det gamle. Så brann Slettan kirke og 1984 og så var det noen år å diskutere hvor vi skulle få den nye kirken, og da var det sagt at det ville være greit å ha den på Sistranda, så da kranglet vi en del om det da og så kom den opp igjen på Slettan. Så, liksom, som jeg sier. Frøya og historie det blir heftige diskusjoner og det drøyer ut for nå er det jo i lokalpolitikken at vi skal få et nytt kulturhus.”

5 Historical consciousness among Hitra’s and Frøya’s population

of residents’ characteristic traits. By alluding to specific local character traits, she contributed to a self-description of the group to which she belongs. At the same time, the essential ‘natural’ traits of character that she ascribed to her own group exclude people from the outside. In Liv’s statements, local history, the past and personal memories mixed to form a consistent narrative. At the same time, current changes in the local community posed difficulties in terms of how to incorporate them into established patterns and strategies for making meaning of the past. In the interview, she demonstrated a strong interest in discussing contemporary issues. After speaking of important historical events, she continued her reflections about the islands’ past and local politics with a focus on current local politics concerning elderly citizens. Again, she drew on personal memories, namely that of how her parents and parents-in-law had been taken care of in their old age. When comparing their situation to the situation in the present, she perceived a development for the worse that was part of a general development. Frøya was just one example of these trends: “[...] and I think that, if you want to call it service or goodwill to seniors has declined in Frøya compared to what I experienced with my parents and today, so I don’t know. I am slightly pessimistic about getting old on Frøya in comparison to how my grandparents and parents were living when they were old. I think so, and this applies not only to Frøya, it is general.”111 At the same time, she sought an explanation for why the development had unfolded in the way she described. Besides the general trend of increasingly hectic lives and the cliché of ‘things were better before’ (see above), the way in which she experienced current changes added to the complexity of her attempts to understand what was going on and what these changes might mean for the future to come. She expressed her ambivalence in the following quote: “But it is probably the same in many places. It is maybe like this most places. But I am sure, maybe it has something to do with that if you are a small local community, and there are so many people moving away and settling that things

111

“[...] og da synes jeg at om man skal kalle det for servicen eller goodwill til eldre har gått ned i forhold til det som jeg opplevde med mine foreldre og sånn som jeg opplever det i dag, så jeg vet ikke. Jeg ser litt mørkt på å bli gammel på Frøya i forhold til hvordan jeg opplevde det da mine besteforeldre og foreldre hadde det da de var gamle. Det synes jeg, og det er ikke bare på Frøya, det er generelt.”

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become different. Well, no, I do not know what it is that makes it different, but... [she does not finish the sentence, author’s remark].”112 The quote is an expression of ambivalence and uncertainty about how to interpret current developments. It indicates that current changes are experienced as game changers, which Liv struggled to integrate into her personal narrative. Despite these ambivalences, one identifiable strategy she chose to address changes was empathy. Liv focused on the challenges that go hand in hand with the fact that many newcomers speak languages other than Norwegian. She expressed sympathy for the children who came to Hitra or Frøya and did not understand what was going on around them and who started preschool without speaking the language. However, she left it at this observation and did not follow up on the issue. Soon afterwards, I again asked her about the past, about which stories or objects she considered valuable and worthwhile preserving for future generations. She did not have an answer to this question. Instead, she returned to her thoughts about how it must feel for migrant children to start school and kindergarten in Frøya. Liv connected the discussion of these children’s situation with her own childhood memories and historical changes in Frøya. She told me that when she attended school, secondary school was centralized in Sistranda. Previously, there had been small schools on most of the small islands that surrounded Frøya, while now students had to travel to Sistranda and lived away from their families for long periods of time. Liv used our conversation to discuss her lack of understanding for the situation of others at that time and gave her young age as a reason. Her verdict about her own thinking at that time sounded as follows: “Well, yes. That made an impression on me as a grown up, but, you know, I did not think like that when I was young. I was allowed to live at home, egoism prevails. It’s almost like I get a bad conscience when I think of it today. But that is just the way it is.”113 She did not explicitly draw a parallel between the immigrant children and those children who had to move to Sistranda in order to attend school. However, there was a connection in her line of thought as both stories appealed to her empathy, and her emphasis on feeling guilty suggested she had similar feelings towards the group of migrant children she expressed pity for, but with whom she was not involved

112

113

“Men sånn er det vel alle plasser. Det er kanskje sånn de fleste plassene, men det er sikkert også noe med at når du er et så lite lokalsamfunn og det er så mye folk som flytter fra og flytter til at det blir litt annerledes. Ja, nei, jeg vet ikke heller, om hva som gjør det så annerledes, men …” “Ja, altså. Det gjorde inntrykk på meg som voksen, men ikke sant, jeg tenkte ikke sånn som unge, da syntes jeg at det var helt greit. Jeg fikk lov å bo hjemme, egoismen råder. Nesten sånn at jeg får dårlig samvittighet når jeg tenker på det nå, men sånn er det bare.”

5 Historical consciousness among Hitra’s and Frøya’s population

either. As she said: “But that is just the way it is.” More generally, she used references to the past to identify guiding principles in terms of how to look at and understand present phenomena, and maybe even to find guidance for how to act. A similar strategy shaped her understanding of the future. For Liv, the future presented itself as a continuity from the past and present. The knowledge of history provided valuable lessons and helped to predict the future. For her, local history and personal memory were two interrelated sides of the same thing. When we spoke about the present situation on Frøya, she agreed that there was a rapid development in terms of fish farming and immigration to the area. She instantly connected this to her own life story in order to illustrate the development. I asked her: “If you think about the last couple of years, because, as far as I have understood, Frøya has gone through a strong development in terms of fish-farming industries and immigration. And that was like the last ten years?” Liv answered: “Yes, it has been ten years since we started to have the first foreigners in the staff. Yes, but what concerns fish farming, for that matter, I have been lucky to be allowed to follow the development from the beginning since a relative of mine, they started a fish farm [...],114 and think about the development it has taken since they started until the present day. Of course, it was a lot of work, everything was done by hand, it was hard work and there were many small enterprises. They all started like my [relative, author’s remark], with family helping out on some days when there was especially much to do, and so on, and nowadays it is just unbelievable with all automatization and technology.”115 In her account, she not only presented herself as an eyewitness to the early period of aquaculture on Frøya, but – albeit indirectly through her relative – presented herself as an actor, as somebody who participated actively in the development. Her long-term perspective on the development put her in the position to learn lessons from the past. As a person she knew well had experienced a number of throwbacks before the investment became profitable, she was aware of the dangers inherent in an economy based solely on one strand of industry. Hence, even though she regarded the overall development as positive, she stated: “Yes, I think that in case 114 115

I deleted some detailed information in order to preserve Liv’s anonymity: information concerning who was involved, which position her relative had, and the years of activity. Liv: “Ja, ti år vil jeg si at det var at vi begynte å få utenlandske folk i arbeidsstokken, ja. Men når det gjelder havbruksnæringen, så har jeg vært så heldig å få følge med, for [en slektning], de startet et eget fiskeoppdrett [...] og tenkte på utviklingen fra da de startet dette og frem til nå. Det er klart at det var mye, alt gikk fra hånd, det var tung arbeid og sånn da og så var det jo mange små bedrifter. De startet likedan som min [slektning], sånn at familien var med og jobbet litt ekstra dersom det var noe som foregikk en dag og sånn og nå er det jo helt utrolig sånn med automatikk og teknologi og han, [slektningen] min og de, de solgte det lille oppdrettet sitt [...]”

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something happens with aquaculture, I cannot stand, I cannot imagine, then I think, Frøya would simply sink in the sea. We have only this one leg to stand on.”116 Newcomers were a part of Liv’s story about Frøya and she highlighted that they were the reason why Frøya had slowly grown over the last years. Otherwise, as she pointed out, Frøya would have shrunk due to the high average age of its population. Despite the remarkable changes effected by immigration, she could not visualize that a steady stream of people from abroad could possibly change Frøya significantly in the years to come. As Liv stated: “But I think that, well, I do not believe that Frøya will grow much more in demographic numbers and the like. I don’t believe that. Development in technology that will come here just like at all other places, but that we should have people moving here so that we become several thousands more, I don’t know, I do not see that happening.”117 Liv was unable to draw on local history or personal memory to predict Frøya’s future in terms of demographic development. The past offered no template for the recent phenomenon of immigration. Actually, in the past, Frøya had even stood as an example of opposite trends as population numbers decreased due to emigration. To some extent, Liv’s answer can be interpreted as a strategy for coping with an insecure and possibly profoundly different future: what cannot be imagined cannot happen. The recent experience of changes caused by immigration to Frøya is an identifiable rupture in the continuity that, as described above, characterized the interrelatedness of past, present, future as well as the relation between the private and the public for Liv. The view of immigration as a contemporary, ahistorical phenomenon shaped how Liv looked at newcomers. Immigrants’ cultural backgrounds were nonexistent topics for her. During the interview we talked about neighbourhoods on Frøya, and that in some of them, contact between newcomers and long-time residents was well established through weekend activities such as having waffles and drinking coffee at “grendahus” (neighbourhood centres), but that this was more difficult in the more ‘urban’ parts of the island like Sistranda. According to Liv, the reason was that there was more fluctuation in these parts of the island. I then asked her about her encounters with immigrants to the island, and Liv answered:

116 117

“Ja, jeg tenker sånn at dersom det skjer noe med oppdrettslaksen, jeg orker ikke, jeg klarer ikke å se for meg, da ser jeg at Frøya detter rett inn i havet. Vi har jo bare det å stå på.” “Men jeg tenker nå sånn at, jeg tror ikke at Frøya kommer til å vokse så mye mer i antall folk og sånn. Det tror jeg ikke. Utviklingen i teknologi det kommer nok hit slik som alle andre plasser, men at vi skal ha folk komme flyttende at vi blir mange tusen flere, det vet jeg ikke, men jeg ser ikke at vi blir det.”

5 Historical consciousness among Hitra’s and Frøya’s population

“Well, I haven’t noticed that they had much to tell. Well, it would be, if we were sitting together and the like, and then you meet somebody who has moved here. Yes, ‘Why did you come here? What was the reason for that?’ and the like. And then you would get an answer to that. But there is nobody who comes and tells you about this and why, no there isn’t.”118 In her answer, Liv described a potential meeting and the questions she would ask in a conversation with a newcomer to Frøya. It is significant that present-day Frøya is her focus; she would not ask about the immigrants’ life in their home country. Her choice of question is also interesting because, based on our conversation, this would be a question to which she thought she knew the answer already. Labour migrants move to Frøya because of the well-paid work. Her questions, and the ways in which she would approach newcomers to the island, would again be steered by her historical consciousness, that is, her version of Frøya’s history, in which newcomers play a role as labour migrants in the aquaculture industry. To use Jensen’s words, in her encounter with ‘the Other’ she tries “to fit the new and different into an already existing system of categories”119 in an attempt to maintain continuity.

5.6.2.

Anna “Norwegians like us as workers, but I am not sure whether they dare to let us inn otherwise.”

I met up with Anna, an Eastern European migrant who has lived on Frøya for more than ten years, at the local Italian restaurant. Anna’s statements make her an representative of the second type: beginnings. Local history has begun to play a role in her historical consciousness. While she is aware of her roots in her place of origin, she has simultaneously started to put down roots on Frøya as well. Her narrative was thus one that drew on two belongings, namely her home country’s cultural background and her personal background, but also a growing feeling of belonging to a Norwegian, or more precisely a Frøyværian, way of life. Anna vividly remembered the first time she heard of Frøya, and her first encounter with the island. The local newspaper of the Trondheim area, Adresseavisa, had written about a car that had been blown off the road on Frøya, and Anna told me 118

119

Insa: “Men for nå tenker jeg litt sånn inflyttere, og folk som kommer fra andre plasser, Hva er det de forteller om hvor de kommer fra, om deres historie? Snakker de om det? Er det noe som er et tema eller er det heller her og nå?” Liv: “Ja, jeg opplever ikke at det er så mange som har ting å fortelle, da må vi egentlig sitte og sånn som f.eks. at du treffer noen som er flyttet hit. Ja, hvorfor kom du hit? Hva gjorde det og sånn og sånn. Og da får du svar på det. Men det er ingen som kommer å fortelle deg dette om hvorfor, nei det er ikke det.” Jensen, Historie: Livsverden og fag, 69.

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she remembered that she thought, “Aha, well that is what it is like on Frøya?”120 and that she saw Frøya as “boring, little to do, no friends, no shops, no cafés, bad with regards to discotheques. Everything was negative, actually. The only reason I stayed was my husband, and the job. Which I didn’t like.”121 As she told me, her view of the islands changed, becoming more positive, and during our interview she presented herself as well aware of the economic and demographic changes that characterized Frøya’s recent development. For Anna, the demographic development – more precisely immigration – was the paramount change. This marks a difference to Liv, who considered the economic development the main transformation of which immigration was merely a consequence, albeit a significant one. From Anna’s point of view, the industrial and economic development (that is, aquaculture above all) primarily served as a background. This was illustrated by her answer to my question “If you would compare the first impression you had the day you came to Frøya, and now that you know Frøya better, what would you say is different today?” She answered: “I think Frøya has changed very much since then. Before, when I came to Frøya – I think I was one of the first foreigners from Eastern Europe, or [Anna’s home country, removed by author for reasons of anonymity]. I have heard of only one from [my country] who had come here before me. And the foreigners that were here, they came from Asia and Sweden, none from Eastern Europe, but after only maybe four years, they started to come. Because at that time, the borders were opened, right?”122

120 My question was whether she knew anything about Frøya before she moved there and she answered: “I read a little in Adressavisa [local newspaper for Trondheim and surroundings, author’s remark]. My first impression was that a car had been blown off the road. That was many years ago. And then I thought: Well, well, that is what it is like in Frøya.” (“Jeg leste litt i Adresseavisa. Første inntrykket mitt var at en bli var blåst av veien. Det er mange år siden. Og da tenkte jeg: Aha, det er sånn det er på Frøya.”) 121 Insa: “Hvordan var ditt første møte med Frøya? Husker du hva som var ditt første inntrykk?” Anna: “Det var kjedelig, lite å gjøre, ingen venner, ingen butikker, ingen kafeterier, dårlig med disko. Alt var negativt, faktisk. Det var bare mannen som holdt meg og jobben. Som jeg ikke trivdes i.” 122 Insa: “Så, Men hvis du skulle sammenligne det første inntrykket du hadde den dagen der og nå kjenner du jo Frøya litt bedre. Hva er annerledes i dag?” Anna: “Jeg synes at Frøya har forandret seg veldig mye siden da. For, når jeg kom til Frøya - jeg tror at jeg var den første, første utlendingen fra Østeuropa, eller [...]. Jeg hørte bare om en som hadde vært her før meg fra [...]. Og de som utlendinger som var her, de var fra Asia og fra Sverige ingen fra Østeuropa, men rett etter kanske fire år etter, da begynte alle å komme. For da åpnes det grensene, ikke sant?”

5 Historical consciousness among Hitra’s and Frøya’s population

Asked about what she considered the most significant changes, Anna answered: “Maybe I do think most of population numbers. That has changed very much. I think there has been tremendous progress. Much more life maybe.”123 In Liv’s main storyline, aquaculture succeeded and generated jobs, thus leading people from abroad to come to Frøya for work, whereas in Anna’s perspective the cause is to be found elsewhere. Moreover, Liv speaks of foreigners in general, while Anna talks specifically about Eastern Europeans. She pointed out the EU’s Fifth and Sixth Enlargement in 2005 and 2007 as the context in which the migration movement had to be understood, thus putting Frøya in an international context. This implies a significantly different perspective to what she considers the driving forces behind the developments in Hitra and Frøya: in Liv’s version, these forces are domestic – the people of the islands developed an industry that required labour – whereas in Anna’s version, international political developments are the main foundation for the development unfolding on Hitra and Frøya. Despite understanding the driving forces behind developments in more or less opposite ways, both Liv and Anna spoke of times that were better before. A significant difference, however, was that Anna’s ‘before’ referred only ten years back in time. While Liv equated Frøya’s development and more general trends, the former being an illustration of the latter, Anna explicitly asked about alternative reference frames. She pointed out the national as a missing level of reference. According to Anna, the people of Frøya were interested surprisingly little in history and national ‘high’ culture: “I was very surprised. Nobody showed me Oslo until many years after I moved here. Maybe it’s geography, that everything is that far away. But I think, in case my relatives on my husband’s side [she is married to a long-time resident of Frøya, author’s remark], should come to [Anna’s home country, left out for anonymity reasons], the first thing I would show them would be the capital and the most important places and tell them about those places. That is how I would show my culture, you know? My background. But Frøyværinger, they don’t do that.”124 While representatives of type 1 equated the local, the general and the personal, thus omitting the national level, for representatives of type 2 like Anna, Frøyværinger and 123

“Kanskje jeg tenker mest på folketallet. Det har forandret seg veldig mye. Jeg synes det har vært stor fremgang. Mye mer liv, kanskje.” 124 “Jeg var veldig overrasket. Det var ingen som viste meg Oslo før mange år etter at jeg flyttet hit. Kanskje det er geografi, at det er så lenge borte. Men jeg tenker, at dersom mine slektninger fra min mann sin side ville komme til [hjemlandet], så det første ville jo være å vise dem hovedstaden og så de viktigste plassene rundt og til slutt min plass og fortelle litt om det. Det er sånn jeg skal vise kulturen min, ikke sant. Bakgrunnen min. Men det har ikke Frøyværinger.”

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Norwegians are equated, but not connected to the general or personal. Based on her experiences on Frøya, Anna compared Norwegians to foreigners in general: “[...] we foreigners are very preoccupied with showing off our country, Norwegians aren’t. And that I find very strange. When somebody comes and visits me, I would at once take them to the capital and the most important places in my country. Norwegians don’t do that. Strange.”125 In this quote, Anna not only wondered about Norwegians’ ‘strange’ behaviour. At the same time, the quote indicated that Anna’s nationality shaped her view on what she experienced in Frøya. To underline the oddity of the Frøyværinger’s behaviour in not showing off their national culture and history, she drew attention to Frøya’s exotic food traditions: “That is the first thing and then there is this way of eating. They eat seagulls’ eggs, right?”126 This distancing (which at the same time was a way of building alliances with the non-Norwegian interviewer) took place in the same interview in which Anna, a few minutes previously, had expressed that she considered herself a part of Frøya. The rationale behind her description of herself as a Frøyværing is a clear understanding of her relation to local history in Frøya: she experienced important developments as an eyewitness. Since she was present when things happened, she constituted herself as embedded in the historical developments of the island in line with all other residents. However, at the same time, her involvement in local developments was always balanced by her ability to look at her position from the outside. With some distance – reinforced by the interview situation that encouraged reflection on the topic – she recognized what distinguished her from many other residents in Frøya, leading her to describe her place in the community as one of the first Eastern Europeans who came to the region. The different modes through which she expressed belonging and distance to several cultural groups (e.g. Frøyværinger, Norwegians, Eastern Europeans, foreigners, country of origin) are again aptly described as processes of ‘positioning’. During our interview, Anna’s positioning manifested itself under the influence of whom she was speaking to, but also depending on the topics we addressed. Whereas Liv demonstrated a relatively stable concept of self, Anna’s identity constructions were unfinished, partially even contradictory, as they drew on a number of identity categories that sometimes excluded each other. During the interview, she connected the demographic development directly to the way she positioned herself in the community. When we were talking about the biggest and most important changes she had observed, Anna said: 125

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“Og det er jo mye mere, vi utlendinger, vi er veldig opptatt av å vise våres land, men det er ikke Nordmannen. Og det synes jeg er fryktelig rart. Når noen besøk kommer til meg, så tar vi dem med en gang med til hovedstaden og det viktigste punktet i landet vårt. Men det gjør ikke Nordmannen. Rart. Det er det første og så er det det med spising. De spiser måkeegg, ikke sant.” See previous footnote.

5 Historical consciousness among Hitra’s and Frøya’s population

“Maybe I do think most of population numbers. That has changed very much. I think there has been tremendous progress. Much more life maybe. Maybe that felt huge for me because I got more people from my home country […], so that I was no longer alone as foreigner. So, that as well.” Insa: “I must be quite tough to be the first and only [...]” Anna: “Yes, but you know, people in Frøya, they were good, I did not feel like a foreigner before, but now, I feel like a foreigner.” Insa: “That is a big and important change then.” Anna: “Before, when I came, then I was alone, right? And everybody thought that I spoke Norwegian very well and the like, and now, fear grows and there is more and more negative focus than there is focus on positive things, I think.” Insa: “That could be true.” Anna: “I did not feel like a foreigner before.”127 Anna’s feelings of belonging to the local community depended directly on the island’s demographic development. Although she experienced the flow of migrants to Frøya as positive – more life and more contact to people from her place of origin, at the same time she observed how growing numbers of immigrants negatively affected the way long-time members of the local community reacted to and treated her. According to Anna, they had recently begun to position her as a ‘foreigner’, which, as she repeatedly expressed, she had not felt like earlier. Anna expressed dislike of the way she is positioned by others. At the same time, she was inconsistent in how she positioned herself. In terms of history and identity formation, there were (at least) two different identities struggling for dominance in her statements: on the one hand, she described herself as a fully-fledged and equal member of the local community. When this was the case, she highlighted how much she felt included in historical developments, and that she was an engaged member of the local community. She was even engaged in local politics, with clear visions on how to further develop the island. On the other hand, she talked of herself as a migrant, distancing herself from locals and Norwegians, identifying with the group of working migrants. During the interview, she repeatedly pointed out that she had little interest in local history, but when asked, she demonstrated facta knowledge about local history that resembled that of type 1 representatives. She referred mainly to the same events and places as representatives of type 1 would do. In detail, she mentioned 127

“Insa: “Ja, det må være ganske tøft å være den eneste og den første.” Anna: “Men vet du, Frøyværingene de var så flinke, jeg følte meg ikke som en utlending før, men nå så føler jeg meg som en utlending.” Insa: “Det er jo en stor og viktig forandring da.” Anna: “For, når jeg kom før, så var jeg jo alene, ikke sant og alle syntes jo at jeg snakket så bra norsk og sånn og nå, det blir frykten mer og mer og det er mer negativ fokus enn at det er fokus på positiv, tror jeg.” Insa: “Det kan jo hende.” Anna: “Jeg følte ikke meg som utlending før.”

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Titran (though she spoke of Stabben Fort and the guided tours one could take part in, not the 1899 accident), the ‘gold road’, and for further information she referred to the same person whom many of the long-time residents referred to, “an older man who tells about history and this kind of things”. Through her answers, she demonstrated access to communicative and cultural memory. Anna was even familiar with the exhibition Frøya over the course of time in the town hall’s basement, which she introduced to our conversation unsolicited, advocating that it should be brought to light so that it could be seen by others as well. Knowing about this is indicative of Anna’s access to communicative memory, as she said herself: “You have to know somebody to hear about it, right?” While continuing to think about Frøya’s past, she remembered what she knew about the first people who settled on the island, foregrounding that they chose Frøya because of the fish. I inserted: “Yes, and they do the same nowadays.” Anna answered: “Yes, I haven’t thought about that, but it is true. It is SalMar who makes that we are here, really. It is uncertain we would be here without SalMar.”128 Unlike Liv, who went back to the beginning and the varied history of aquaculture and drew conclusions thereafter when asked about her predictions for the future, Anna based her view on the positive development of Frøya that she had experienced hitherto and thus expressed optimism concerning the future. “Frøya’s future, yes, if we continue to have SalMar on Frøya, that I think will be huge, because already now, population numbers have increased very much and it is not going downwards, it goes only upwards somehow and in case SalMar grows more, so grow other businesses. I think Sistranda will be a coastal city soon. [...] We don’t have that status yet, we are only a municipality centre. Many foreigners ask for more shopping malls and activities and parks. But I feel, we are there already. We might need more shopping malls if population growth continues this way, that is clear. We need a park. [...]”129 In this instance Anna presented herself as included in the anticipated positive development, and spoke of ‘we’, in contrast to the ‘foreigners’. Her involvement with the local community was further supported by her very precise ideas about what needs to be done in order to maintain and improve quality of life on Frøya. 128

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Anna: “Hva skal jeg fortelle videre, ja at folk bosette seg her pga av fisken.” Insa: “Ja, og det gjør de jo idag også.” Anna: “Jeg tenkte ikke på det, men det er sant. Det er jo Salmar som gjør at vi er her, egentlig. Det er ikke sikkert at vi ville bodd her uten Salmar.” “Frøyas framtid, ja, hvis vi skal fortsette å ha SalMar på Frøya, så da tror jeg at det blir stort, for allerede så er jo folketallet økt veldig mye og det går ikke nedover, det går bare oppover og dersom SalMar vokser mere, så vekser også andre bedrifter. Jeg tror at Sistranda blir kystby ganske snart [...] Vi er ikke det ennå. Vi er bare kommunesenter. Det er mange utlendinger som etterlyser kjøpesenter og aktiviteter og parker. Men jeg føler at vi er med i det. Vi tenger kanskje flere kjøpesenter hvis folkeveksten fortsetter, helt klart. Vi trenger park.”

5 Historical consciousness among Hitra’s and Frøya’s population

In the interview with Anna, a number of comments indicated the beginnings of an internalized belonging to the local community.130 When speaking of an internalized way of belonging, I wish to draw attention to the passages in the interview in which Anna used ‘cultural scripts’ and thinking patterns that are a distinct feature of historical consciousness shaped by continuity. One example was when she made use of knowledge related to cultural and communicative memory (cf. above); another example was that Anna made fun of dialects in Norway. This required a certain amount of language and cultural knowledge. At another point during the interview, she expressed awareness of “you have to know somebody” to get things done and to gain access to necessary information, but more importantly, she demonstrated that she knew the right people (cf. above). Her identification with Frøya was most apparent and outspoken however in an utterance in which she distanced herself from people on the neighbouring island Hitra. She recounted and laughed about a story in which she was driving in a car with a colleague from Hitra and told him that “it is much better to be a foreigner on Frøya than to be from Hitra.”131 Even though she has moved to Frøya from abroad, she has internalized the neighbourly disputes between the two island communities and identified as a Frøyværing, mocking those living on Hitra. An observation further supported by her answer that she had not visited the Coastal Museum “because it is on Hitra.” In contrast to Anna, representatives of the third type typically would not perceive any differences between the two islands and their respective residents. Despite her continuous integration into the local community, at the end of the interview, Anna used my open question whether there was something she wanted to add to our conversation to bring the question of how one could show the positive effects of immigration to the islands to the table. She continued by asking how to communicate all that to “our next generation.”132 It was not clear from the context whose next generation she was thinking of and whether she was differentiating between labour migrants and long-time residents or whether ‘we’ referred to all members of the local community. A second related aspect she brought up was that “Norwegians should get a part of our [that is immigrants’, author’s remark] history, because we are part of Frøya’s local community. So maybe one could orga130 It is this ‘beginning’ of considering oneself a part of the local community with a role and a place in local history that inspired the name of the type. 131 “But I drove home once with a colleague of mine, she is from Hitra and a foreigner and I said that it is much better to be a foreigner on Frøya than to be from Hitra.” (“Men jeg reiste hjem en gang sammen med kollegaen min, hun er fra Hitra og utlending. Og jeg sa at det er mye bedre å være utlending på Frøya enn Hitraværing” [Both laugh, author’remark].) 132 How, maybe, how we foreigners can contribute to make Frøya utterly interesting. Maybe, how we can communicate to our next generation. And that I don’t have an answer on.” (“Hvordan kanskje, hvordan vi utlendinger kanskje kan gjøre Frøya ytterligere interessant. Kanskje, hvordan vi kan formidle til vår neste generasjon. Og det vet jeg ikke svaret på.”)

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nize evenings, historical evenings, Lithuanian night, Polish night, Latvian night, Estonian night and all the other countries that can be found on Frøya, right?”133 Her idea of establishing a forum in which immigrants’ national cultures would be presented to others can be interpreted as an answer to a loss she has experienced: since nobody has asked her about it, her cultural background is becoming less and less relevant. She told me that she counteracted this tendency by safeguarding souvenirs from her home country. I had asked her whether she had objects from her own past or history or something that she wanted to show off. Her answer was yes. She wished to surround herself with some objects that reminded her of ‘home’, especially, as she said, because she seldom visited her home country now. She took with her a number of objects, fixed them and put them on a shelf at her home. She gave the impression that this was quite a number of objects. I asked her what her husband said about all the old stuff in the house and she answered: “He does not understand that I like them and that I bother people with this. But I think this is a part of me. That is fair enough, I did not move into my husband’s house, we built it together, fair enough, but I want my things, some that are only mine from my home. I find that very important. Especially since I am so very seldom at home.”134 Since those objects are for herself only, memories of her cultural background are limited to her private life and do not find entrance into a shared collective/communicative memory on the island.

5.6.3.

Kornelius “Frøya is a nice place when you come here for the first time. There is the sea and the rocks. But after one or two years, you will see that we are many foreigners who live like on the moon.”135

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“Jeg tenker at vi egentlig skulle, Nordmann skulle fått en del av vår historie også fordi at vi er jo en del av Frøya samfunnet. Så kanskje det går an å ordne sånne kvelder, historiske kvelder, litauisk kveld, polsk kveld, latvisk, estisk, alle de landene som finnes på Frøya, ikke sant?” Insa: “Hva sier mannen din til dette?” Anna: “Han skjønner ikke at jeg liker det og at jeg plager sånn på folk. men jeg synes at det er en del av meg, og sånn. det er jo greit nok, jeg kom ikke inn i mannen min sitt hus. Vi skapte huset vårt sammen, så det er greit nok, men jeg vil ha mine ting som er bare mine fra mitt hjem. Jeg synes det er veldig viktig. Spesielt siden jeg er så sjelden hjemme også.” “Frøya er et fint sted når du kommer for første gang. Det er sjø og fjellet. Men etter ett eller to år, så ser du at vi er mange utlendinger som bor som på månen.”

5 Historical consciousness among Hitra’s and Frøya’s population

The third type, detachment, is represented by Kornelius. Kornelius is from a Baltic country and came to Frøya as labour migrant to work in a fish-processing facility six years prior to the interview. Like Anna, he is in his late thirties, early forties. In his eyes, the island had hardly changed at all during the time of his stay. However, he emphasized that his view of Frøya has changed significantly. While we were talking, he demonstrated a high level of self-awareness and reflexivity concerning his status as ‘labour migrant’. Putting himself and his family at the centre of our conversation, he repeatedly avoided speaking about the past, be it the past of Hitra or Frøya or the past of his home country. Instead, he used the interview to present a success story about his individual process of integration on Frøya. Some quotes illustrate this. For example, I asked Kornelius: “If you compare Frøya in the year of your arrival with Frøya today – have things changed? Is something different compared to before?” He answered: “Well, maybe it hasn’t changed that much, but it has changed in our eyes. To begin with we felt very foreign here and were worried about language and we spoke English, and the most Norwegians, they speak English very well, but some others are slightly racist and they don’t want to speak, but when you speak a little Norwegian, they change instantly and speak much better with you. Feels much better.” Even though my initial question was directed at developments in Frøya, Kornelius immediately changed the focus and spoke of himself and his family, how they perceived changes and how their feelings towards their new home had altered. In terms of language, I confirmed his observations with my own experience of people opening up once one attempts to speak Norwegian, and he then continued, now referring to the islands: “But also [the islands, author’s remark] changed for the better, they have enough money to build better roads and houses and the like. In the beginning, we rented an apartment, but now, three years ago we bought a house. So, now we live in a big house. We rent out the first floor and live on the second floor. That feels better that you can do what you want in your own house. And we have bought Norwegian cars, because it is a rule that you can drive a car from another country for only one year. But many drive them for five to six years. But we have bought one and that feels very Norwegian.”136 136

“Ja, det har forandret seg kanskje ikke så mye selv, men har forandret seg i øyene vårres. At først, vi følte oss veldig fremmed her og var redd det med språk og vi snakket engelsk, men de meste av norske folk, de snakker god engelsk, men de andre er litt sånn rassist og de vil ikke snakke og når du snakker litt norsk, de forandrer seg med en gang og snakker bedre med deg. Mye bedre følelse.” [...] “Forandret seg litt også med litt bedre, de har nok penger til å få bedre vei og bygger nye hus og sånn. I begynnelse vi leide leilighet og nå har vi kjøpt hus for

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In the above quote he mentioned positive changes that have taken place on Frøya, but once again he did not elaborate on these; instead, Frøya’s positive changes were soon dismissed and he followed up in detail on how much better his situation had become: now he and his family owned a house, rented out a floor, and they had bought a new car. In terms of material goods, they enjoyed the same level of material wealth that local residents did. He emphasized further that they followed local rules and had assimilated to the Norwegian way of life. In the quotes above, two traits that run through the entire interview are visible: the first is a master narrative of the successful immigrant, while the other is the strategy of avoiding speaking about local history and instead moving the conversation towards Kornelius’s own field of interest and expertise: presenting life as an immigrant to Frøya. All of Kornelius’s answers during the interview emphasized how he acted within the given context. Frøya and its development, changes in industry, economy, and demographic patterns only served as a background with little relevance to how he chose to live his life. No connections between personal experiences, memories and local history were to be found in the interview; instead, the present and visions of the future prevailed. His distance to Frøya’s local history is reflected in the way in which he gives an account of Frøya’s past: “They were only fishermen in the beginning and relied solely on fishing and the like, and until 1970, I think, there were no streets on Frøya, so they merely used boats to get in contact with each other.”137 While this short version of Frøya in the old days is an apt depiction, it still applies to most other coastal areas in Norway during the 19th and 20th century. The fact that Kornelius nevertheless regards this as an adequate description of Frøya in the past suggests two possible readings: first, he may not be very interested in details about Frøya’s history because he is preoccupied with present-day Frøya and learning how to fit in today. The past seemingly has little to offer in this context. This reading is further supported by his understanding of the local community as generally preoccupied with the present day and incurious in terms of the past. On two occasions (one is quoted below) he referred to history as something for the ‘particularly interested’ who, he supposed, would consult the internet to find out more about it. The other possible explanation is that for him, somebody from a different country, Norway and Frøya are difficult to distinguish. Such an explanation is supported by

137

tre år siden. Så, vi bor på stor hus. Vi leier første etasje ut, bor på andre etasje. Det bringer også bedre følelse at du kan gjøre hva du vil i ditt eget hus. Og så har vi kjøpt norske biler i det er som regel at du kan ikke kjøre bil fra andre land ett år, lengre enn ett år. Men mange kjører fem-seks år. Men vi har kjøpt et det føles som norsk.” “Det var bare fiskerfamilier først og de levde bare fra fiskeri og sånn og til 1970 tror jeg, det var ingen vei på Frøya, så de brukte bare båter og kontakt til andre.”

5 Historical consciousness among Hitra’s and Frøya’s population

interview data from conversations with other newcomers to Hitra and Frøya. Kornelius lacked an understanding of Norway’s national history, which would enable him to highlight the particularities of Frøya and thus gain an understanding of the outline of local history when compared to the rest of Norway. Kornelius’ account of the Titran accident further adds to the picture. Kornelius has heard about but it, but the event has not captured his interest: “That, for example, there was such a big storm, I do not know how many years ago, maybe 20 years ago, I don’t know, I can’t remember, but there was a storm on the sea, close to Titran and many fishers were killed. I don’t know, hundred maybe. That is something they tell very often. And last year, two years ago, they did a play about what happened.”138 While for many informants, the Titran accident represented Frøya’s most unique historical event, for Kornelius it was merely something he had heard others speak about. He neither was aware of the correct historical context, nor did he express any form of connection to the incident. The way Kornelius related to the Titran accident positioned him as an outsider aware that there was shared historical knowledge, that is, communicative memory, of a group to which he did not have full access. At the same time, he referred to the play and thus positioned himself as well aware of the cultural activities arranged in today’s Frøya. Although Kornelius was cautious about making statements on residents’ connection to the local history of Frøya and Hitra, he was very explicit when he stated that the history of his home country was of no interest to the people of Frøya. Asked whether he ever spoke to anybody from Frøya about the culture and history of his home country, he answered: “No. Maybe not so much. We don’t get that question, history. Most often, we are asked what does fuel cost, or what is the price for alcohol and cigarettes and the like? That is the question. No, it’s not about the past. I think those who want to know about history, they turn to the internet or read themselves. But that is not an interesting topic at the moment.”139 Taking all his utterances together, the temporal frame he drew on during the interview spans just a couple of years back in time. The only time he referred to an 138

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“At f.eks. Det var sånn storm, vet ikke når, hvor mange år siden, men kanskje 20 år siden, vet ikke, husker ikke, men stor storm på sjøen utenfor Titran og siste det var drept mange fiskere. Jeg vet ikke, hundre, jeg tror. Og det er noe som de ofte forteller. Og i siste året, for to år siden, var det et teaterstykke om dette hva som skjedde.” “Ja. Nei. Kanskje ikke så mye. Vi får ikke det som spørsmål. Litauisk historie. Mest spørsmål angår hvor mye koster bensin eller diesel i Litauen eller hva koster alkohol og sigaretter og sånn? Det er det spørsmålet. Nei, ikke om historie. Jeg tror at de som vil vite om historie, de går til internet eller leser selv. Men det er ikke så interessant tema for tiden.”

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event that happened more than ten to twelve years ago was when he was speaking of Frøya’s fishing community past.140 For Comparison, as representative of type 1, Liv used a greater variety of time specifications.141 Kornelius distanced himself from his home country’s history as well. The reason he gave was that his children did not wish to move back, implying that his family did not have any use for that history anyway. According to Kornelius, his children gained insight into past life in his home country from their relatives while on vacation, but they seldom asked their parents about it during their everyday life in Frøya. Although he avoided speaking about history several times during the interview and repeatedly described history as only for those especially interested, he answered the question of whether he thought history was important with “Yes, I think that is important. [...] Because if they should forget, and they do not speak with the children and the children do not know anything about history and history needs to be spoken about to exist, I don’t know, it is difficult to explain.”142 After following up on the question, he was still convinced that “[i]t is important for everybody, but most important for those who want to stay and live on Frøya”, but was unable to offer nuanced reasons for this opinion. Despite valuing history in general terms, during our conversation he expressed no interest in learning more about Frøya’s history. Nevertheless, when I asked what kind of museum he would like to see on Frøya, he answered:

140 This is indicated by the temporal adverbs he used during the interview. These were: five years ago, 2007, after half a year, two years, almost two years, afterwards, the last ten to twelve years, firstly, the first year, once or twice a month, that summer, two and a half years since, long break, after one or two years, two days, five years, after five years, 2007, afterwards, after four years, five months, after a seven-year break, three years ago, two years ago, after three years, two years ago, in two years. The time frame of ten to twelve years back in time is exceeded only once when he refers to “until 1970” and “twenty years ago”. In both cases he refers to Frøya’s history. And the event he dated twenty years ago is actually an event that happened more than one hundred years ago. 141 Liv’s use of temporal adverbs spans from a mystical time of ‘before’ and ‘once’ via the time of her parents’ childhood and her own childhood, the 70’s and 80’s towards today and the future. In detail, the following temporal adverbs are taken from the interview with Liv: one year, after that, sometimes, almost every day, twice a week, for 33 years, before, tomorrow, during that time, today, during the 1970’s and 1980’s, today, when I was a child, when we were children, when my children were small, for ten years, 1973, when they started this, until now, early during the 1970’s, Eastern, September, April to September, all the time, 17 May, Christmas, Christmas Evening, two years ago, before and now, the old days, when my parents were young, 30 September, 2 January, two month, in 1899, during the 1960’s, during that yer, a couple of years ago, before that time, for many years, in 30 years, once. 142 Kornelius: “Ja, Det synes jeg er viktig.” Insa: “Hvorfor det?” Kornelius: “Fordi de hvis de skal glemme foreldrene og de skal ikke snakke med barna og barna vet ingenting om historie og så historie må bli snakket om og at de skal bli, jeg vet ikke, det er vanskelig å forklare.”

5 Historical consciousness among Hitra’s and Frøya’s population

“I have always dreamed about going to a real Viking museum in Norway. Because I know that Norway, the first association is Viking. So, I know there is a Viking museum in Oslo, but that is far away. One day, maybe we will go there. Also I could imagine a museum with different kinds of boats and fishing equipment and fishermen and fishermen’s houses with costumes and different stuff, what they have eaten, food.”143 His answer suggests that he has a certain idea about the history of the place he is living, but this primarily concerned the Norwegian history of a golden age.144 He did not elaborate on his interest in the Viking period; possibly the Vikings crossed his mind because he had heard about Vikings even before he moved to Frøya as they are part of the Baltic states’ history as well. The Viking age hence offered familiar ground within an otherwise little known Norwegian history. Only on second thought did Kornelius introduce the idea of a museum representing the local history of the fishing community that had shaped Frøya. I cannot know whether his answer was a concession to me, the interviewer who had asked about local history. There is reason to assume so, since he did not follow up on the idea of showing fisher-farmer society and its material traces in the exhibition, nor did he give any reasons for why he would recommend such topics. In addition, the way in which he promoted the idea of a museum of local fishermen’s lives neither implied that he felt this could have anything to do with him, nor that he would visit such a museum. At a closer glance, his answer would seem to give more insight into what he considered likely to be shown in a local museum than what he wished to see. Kornelius’s relation to local history as well as to the history of his home country is best described as one of detachment. References to the past of his home country offer little of value for orientation in his present life. Furthermore, such links are devalued by what he describes as a lack of interest on the side of other members of the local community as well as by his children’s indifference. At the same time, he struggled to gain insight and access to the communicative memory of the community, and thus he is detached from the local history as well.

143

“Jeg har alltid drømt å gå til et riktig vikingmuseum i Norge. Fordi jeg vet at Norge, første assosiasjonen er viking. Så, jeg vet at det er vikingmuseum i Oslo, men det er langt unna. En dag, kanskje vi skal gå. Men som i her, og så kunne jeg tro at det kunne bli museum med forskjellige båt og båtutstyr også fisker og fiskerhus og med drakt og alt mulig hva de har spist, mat.” 144 An emerging question is whether the interest in and appreciation of national high culture and national history and heritage is a significant difference between Norwegian and Eastern European culture. I do not have the space to follow up on this thought, but a study of Eastern European historical culture and the history and present roles of museums would be highly relevant in this context. Interview data offers only very limited insight into this topic.

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Kornelius has not been to the exhibition Frøya over the course of time or to the Coastal Museum in Fillan. Neither have Liv or Anna. Nevertheless, all of them had ideas about museums and a local museum in particular. In the following chapter I present the thoughts, opinions and expectations concerning museums that all informants shared with me during the interviews. Is there a discernible difference between how different types of historical consciousness relate to ideas about the museum in general and a local museum of cultural history in particular?

5.7.

Talk about museums

Interview analysis revealed significant differences between informants’ views on the value of local history. Many newcomers stated that they did not consider local history important or relevant at all. Long-time residents, who most often matched type 1: continuity, pointed out local history’s contribution to helping people make better decisions for the future, to learn to know the community one is part of, and to develop feelings of belonging. They ascribed orientation functions to local history. This aspect was missing in newcomers’ statements. In their arguments for why history was important, long-time residents pointed towards newcomers as the group that would benefit the most from learning about local history. Acknowledging the value of local history on behalf of others is noticeable, as it suggests that long-time residents do not see the same value in learning from history for themselves. Instead, emotional aspects precede rational ones for this group. These findings are important because of their implications for the way informants looked at museums. In general, museums were associated with understandings of history that emphasized knowledge above feelings. Even in discussions about how knowledge of the local past could make newcomers better equipped to adapt to local circumstances, knowledge was placed above feelings as it was seen as a precondition for developing a sense of belonging. The general picture of informants’ ideas of local history museums as expressed in interviews was that of a strong connection between local history and the museum as a knowledge institution. Paradoxically, although local history museums were associated with knowledge, none of the informants recommended a museum, in particular the Coastal Museum or the exhibition in Sistranda, as places I should visit in order to learn more about Hitra’s or Frøya’s history.145 Instead, long-time residents and newcomers alike referred me to named individuals and particular places as opportunities 145

With the exception of only one individual, informants had not visited the museum or exhibition themselves. The lack of knowledge about what the museum contains is a good explanation for the failure to recommend visiting either the exhibition or the museum. However,

5 Historical consciousness among Hitra’s and Frøya’s population

for learning or for engaging with history in individual and emotional ways. This observation suggests a gap between general ideas about museums, history and learning on the one hand and specific ideas about the history of the place on the other. This gap can be partly explained by the particularities of local history as located somewhere in between global universal history and personal memory, or between the abstract and the personal. Informants’ answers suggested that living human storytellers were considered the most eligible communicators of local history.146 Indvidual storytellers combine knowledge of historical facts with individuality and incorporate personal experience into collective memory. Finally, through storytelling techniques, good storytellers have the ability to bring the past to life and engage their audiences, often by means of evoking emotions. Interview data revealed at the same time that informants associated museums with a neutral dissemination of facts and an uninspired displaying of objects representing the fisherfarmer lifestyle of last century in a detached and frozen way.

5.7.1.

Established ideas hinder visits to the museum

Overall, informants’ answers suggest a connection between narrow understandings of history and ideas of the museum, a combination that leads to an anticipated lack of relevance to the individual. However, the same view on history and museums implies a conviction that museums hold expertise and authority concerning interpretations of the past. The local history museum hence finds itself trapped between expectations of expertise (about local history) and demands for individual relevance that seemingly are mutually exclusive. Interview data revealed that most informants anticipated that the local museum would present the history and living conditions of 19th -century fisher-farmers. Such an expectation can be traced back to informants’ experiences with museums of cultural and social history in Norway (at least this applies to informants of Norwegian descent or with a long experience of living in Norway). The abovementioned line of thinking is exemplified, for example, in Liv’s statement that she would not visit the museum unless it arranged special events. Her reason was that she was not interested in what she anticipated the museum had to offer. To her mind, the museum’s offer would comprise facts and objects related to local history, overall things she already knew, and in addition, these were things that would be on display in the future as well. Sarah, a newcomer to Frøya, supported this view

this restriction does not weaken the argument as I am discussing informants’ expectations of museums, not their experiences. 146 For example, several of the interview partners referred to a name given individual who offers guidet tours at Stabben Fort. For long-time residents he is “the old Gautvik” (“han gamle Gautvik”), for newcomers he is “this elderly man who offers privat guided tours.”

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as she introduced the perception that there was nothing new to learn for long-time residents: “Local history is probably more interesting for people who come from the outside. When they want to learn something new. The local community, they know local history. The more recent local history and much from stories. I don’t know if something like that would be an attraction in the museum.”147 Similar thoughts were expressed by Per’s wife, a long-time resident on Frøya. She likewise expressed a lack of interest in local history, unless it was far distant in time or enriched by fictional elements. She said: “What I find interesting, that would be even older history. For this is too close, actually, that – we know. But you can say that my grandchildren, maybe they will think this is exciting. [...] But older history is maybe more exciting, like Lady Inger of Ostrat,148 things like that. That is exciting, fun, fantastic, stuff like with heroes and fairy-tale characters.”149 Finally, labour migrant Arthur told me about a neighbour who had shown him a number of historic whale-hunting items: “My neighbour even showed me this harpoon for whale hunting. [...] And also he has some kind of meat cutter, something like a spear. So, he already has half a museum in his house.” Arthur’s account supported the impression that the idea that the local history museum would show only things that could also be found elsewhere on the islands was widespread among Frøya’s and Hitra’s population. As a side note to the observation that lack of interest is grounded in an assumed familiarity and closeness to long-time residents’ everyday life, the quotes above further indicate that long-time residents’ connections to local history are not dependent on museum representations, since they are well established in other areas. Some of the informants even possess items that they would consider to be potential museum objects, but which they store on attics and boat houses.

147

“Lokalgeschichte vielleicht eher interessant für Leute, die von Ausserhalb kommen. Wenn sie mal was Neues erfahren wollen. Die lokale Bevölkerung kennt ja die lokale Geschichte. Die jüngere Lokalgeschichte und vieles aus Erzählungen. Ich weiss nicht, ob sowas im Museum dann der grosse Magnet ist.” 148 Lady Inger of Ostrat (ca. 1475–1555) was a wealthy landowner and political actor most known for her dispute with Archbishop Olav Engelbretsson during the Reformation in Norway. She further served as an inspiration for Henrik Ibsen’s piece “Lady Inger of Ostrat” (1857). 149 “Det er ennå eldre historie, det synes jeg er spennende. For dette bli for nært og for tett, så det kan vi. Men du kan si, barnebarna mine, vil kanskje synes at det er spennende. Men dem også ser jo sånne gamle bruksting. Men sånn eldre historie er kanskje litt mere spennende, sånn med fru Inger på Austrått, sånne ting. Det er litt sånn spennende, artig, fantastisk, sånn med sånne helter og eventyrfigurer.”

5 Historical consciousness among Hitra’s and Frøya’s population

The general idea of the museum as represented in interview data is that of an institution exhibiting historical objects and disseminating historical facts from a detached speaking position.150 It neither addresses visitors individually nor allows for questions or discussion. Again, the contrast to the storyteller is notable. It is at this point I would like to point out that the ideas of the museum expressed by informants are exactly this: ideas. Hilde was the only informant who had visited both the museum on Hitra and the exhibition in Sistranda, and she offered a dissenting voice, as she emphasized that the Coastal Museum presented history well, offering visitor’s opportunities to engage in the exhibitions’ narratives. Asked what she considered a museum’s purpose, she answered: “Of course, collecting, preserving and presenting, but I also think [...], to bring history up to date, to let audiences take part and connect to the story in it. That, I think, the Coastal Museum is very good at with the audio guides, right? You hear the voices and then they arrange the story through theatre, make it come alive.”151 Despite this refutation in Hilde’s statement, the picture held by the majority of informants is important as it describes what non-visitors expect of the museum and which expectations a museum has to address in its attempt to become relevant for members of the local community. Interview data suggested that in the case of Hitra and Frøya, preconceptions of local history and of what a local history museum did, stood in the way of people engaging with the institution. This traditional understanding of museums among interview partners is so firmly established that when asked what their dream museum would look like, what they regarded the roles and purposes of a museum to be, and what they would like to see in a museum, informants struggled to come up with alternatives. Therefore, those interview partners who demonstrated high correspondence with type 1: continuity, proposed traditional topics and objects to show. They mentioned old boat motors, or they proposed an exhibition of the material remains of everyday life in

150 Museum practices that are not visible from the outside, that is from a visitor’s point of view, are not considered by informants. Their statements hence address exhibitions, events, marketing and to a certain degree educational programs for school children. They ignore documentation, collection management, and research as the ‘hidden’ activities unfolding in the museum. 151 “Selvfølgelig samle og bevare og stille til skue, men jeg tenker sånn som referansen tilbake til det innslaget på Norge rundt, men det å gjøre historien aktuell, og la publikum ta del i og formidle fortellingen i det. Det synes jeg at Kystmuseet gjør veldig fint med de fortellingene på øret, ikke sant? Du hører de stemmene og så gestalte det gjennom teater, levendegjør det.”

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the fisher-farmer community in the previous century.152 In this context, the majority of long-time residents spoke about showing evidence of their ancestors’ lives, expressing historical consciousness in line with the type of continuity. In terms of the purposes museums should fulfil, the answers given suggested that a local history museum should show earlier ways of living to new generations and newcomers to the islands. Besides immigrants, tourists were mentioned as a possible audience. An explanation for this could be that informants associated museum visits with holidays and being foreign to a place. This explanation is supported by the fact that, when asked about their last visit to a museum, informants unanimously referred to either museums in other cities, namely the bigger cities of Trondheim and Oslo, or to museums in foreign countries, which they had visited while on holiday.153 The museum represented in informants’ statements is not an institution of the everyday, not an institution they would actively engage with, and certainly not an actor in the local community. Several informants highlighted that they would prefer new modes of presentation and ways to become active themselves. They said that they generally wished for a museum to be a ‘living place’, that is, a museum filled with activities and people; a visit to the museum should be a “good experience”154 and fun. Ingrid painted a vivid picture of her dream museums, which is telling in its description of a living museum as the opposite of ‘a silent room’:

152

153

154

As the ‘folkemuseum’ type has shaped many Norwegians ideas about cultural history museums, topics commonly considered typical are the everyday life and working life of the peasants (or, in coastal regions, of the fishermen) and associated objects such as tools and household appliances or furniture. Cf. Eriksen, Museum. En kulturhistorie, 89. (See also chapter 3.1.) The Norwegian Bjørn, who has ancestors from Frøya, for instance said: “a local museum on Frøya would have to tell the history and show traditions from Frøya. Maybe some stories and maybe a little about what the everyday life was like.” (“et lokalmuseum på Frøya, det må jo liksom fortelle noe om historie og tradisjonene på Frøya, gjerne fortelle litt historier og kanskje litt sånn som dagliglivet var.”) This explanation is further supported by data from Statistics Norway that Odd Frank Vaage gathered in the report “Kulturvaner 1991-2015”, 18. Museums represent the most frequent form of cultural activity when in a foreign country. Around 25% of Norwegians visit a museum when they travel abroad. This leading position is only slowly being challenged by concerts or other music events, which, in comparison, are visited by between 8% (1991) and 14% (2015) of Norwegians. I asked Sigrid what she regarded as museums’ objectives. She answered: “That would be to show the story of what it has been like here, show that in the museum and then people go afterwards and feel that they sit with something, with some impressions and that they in a way have experienced something, frankly a good experience.” (“Det er å formidle historien om hvordan det har vært her, vise det på museum at det blir fortalt og at folk går og etterpå føler at de sitter igjen med noe, noen inntrykk og på en måte har opplevd noe, en god opplevelse rett og slett.”)

5 Historical consciousness among Hitra’s and Frøya’s population

“It would be very nice with a living museum with things happening. Interactive museum, it is very little tempting if you are supposed to travel there and just look through the silent room. Maybe there have to be events. That could be the museum of the future: every Friday at 12 they have herring soup-day, some traditional food, and some things taking place around that, arrange something in context with that, so that it would fit families with children. [...] That must be the dream museum, there must be life. It shouldn’t be, it can very well smell old, but it should not be really very silent.”155 While several informants expressed updated ideas of how museums could offer experiences or communicate with audiences, there seemed to be no alternatives to the topics a local history museum could present. Since local history museums are linked to ‘narrow conceptions’ of history, they are to show the past as things that happened in previous times at the particular place in question. The understandings of the role and functions that were expressed in interviews followed this idea and did not resonate with the idea of the museum as active agent in society, or even less a ‘socially engaged museum’.

5.7.2.

Divergent ideas about what should be the topic of local museums

Newcomers’ ideas about what a local museum of cultural history could show or what it should be differed fundamentally from that of representatives of type 1: continuity. Representatives of type 3: detachment, and to a lesser degree representatives of type 2: beginnings, did not consider local history to be an overly relevant topic. Instead, they uttered diverse ideas about what the local museum should exhibit. This ranged from old photographs of the islands and fishing equipment (thus far, they agreed with long-time residents) to historical and contemporary art and natural history objects, which none of the Hitterværinger or Frøyværinger had mentioned. The most significant difference, however, was that individuals who correlated highly with types 2 and 3 considered objects or accounts from their respective home countries to be something a local museum should show in an exhibition. In this context, Paul spoke enthusiastically of “inviting the big, wide world”156 to Frøya.

155

156

“Veldig fint med levende museum med ting som skjer. Interaktiv museum, ja. [...] litt vanskeligere tilgjengelig å bare reise ditt for å kikke gjennom det stille rommet. Det må være kanskje sånn happening, det kunne vært fremtidsmuseum, at det arrangeres fredag kl.12, museet har sildsuppe-dag, det er noe gammelt mat og så kan du servere sildsuppa og ha litt sånn ting rundt, lage noe rundt det, slik at det passer litt sånn barnefamilier vil jeg tror. [...] Det må være drømmemuseum. Det må være liv. Det må ikke være sånn, det kan godt lukte litt gammelt, men det må ikke at det er virkelig sånn helt stille.” “Die grosse weite Welt auch mal ins Lokale reinhol[en].”

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Arthur, on the other hand, expounded the problems of choosing which nations to present, and that at all times somebody would feel overlooked, or would not see relevance in what would be shown in the museum. His concerns are supported by Mary Steven’s research at the Musée dauphinois in Grenoble, France, which highlights the risk inherent in giving single groups special attention, potentially leading to conflict with other groups.157 Similarly to Paul, Georg and Martin located the local museum within a cosmopolitan paradigm, and regarded filling locals’ knowledge gaps concerning the background and cultures of new members of the local community as a task for the museum. Looking at local history museums from this angle – that is, as an opportunity to learn more about ‘the other’ – demonstrated surprising parallels with the arguments that respondents with significant overlap with type 1 had put forward, only that they had had newcomers in mind as students and Hitra’s or Frøya’s history as the subject matter in question. Although Martin and Georg agreed that their culture should be represented in the museum, their suggestions differed when it came to details. Martin started the reflection by stating: “[...] The younger people, they do not even know where [Martin’s home country, author’s remark] is on the map. They do not know anything158 about it. The people that are not yet 30 years old.” To address this lack of knowledge, Martin proposed “[i]t should be good at the museum, a page, where somebody reads them: “The first person from [home country] came in that year, after that came a number and families...” Georg interrupted him and proposed a different approach: “But the museum and with this cosmopolitan area, you address, because Norwegians are going away from Hitra. [...] They move from here, and here come the immigrants. In this very cosmopolitan area, the museum should address everybody. This sort of museum should have to show very exciting stuff from different nationalities. It is my way of seeing things, not expressing a trajectory of [name of country] diaspora.” Despite the shared ambition to show the newcomers’ culture and history, Martin and Georg are guided by different paradigms. While Martin wishes to document and present the story of his fellow countrymen and their immigration to Hitra, thus embedding their stories into wider knowledge about the culture, politics and history of his home country, Georg advocates a multiplicity of cultures and “exciting stuff from different nationalities”. He said that in this way everybody would

157 158

Stevens, Mary, “Museums, Minorities and Recognition: Memories of North Africa In Contemporary France,” Museum & Society 5, no. 1 (2007). ‘nothing’ in original quote.

5 Historical consciousness among Hitra’s and Frøya’s population

be addressed alike and the multicultural dimensions of the local community represented. Even though Martin and Georg were newcomers from the same country, their ideas concerning the way the museum should represent their stories differed significantly. In sum, individuals inclined to type 1: continuity cling to the genre conventions of local history museums they have acquired through familiarity with folk museums and the long Norwegian tradition of local history and local museums. For them, a small museum of cultural history is defined by its subject matter, local history as the history of the place. This explains the paradox that they described the museum they imagined for their island as similar to the museum they choose not to visit. The reason for not visiting is essentially that they do not regard it as interesting, often due to the idea that it is too close and has nothing to offer that could not be found in private attics or sea houses spread over the islands. Newcomers did not visit the museum and exhibition either, but their reasons were different. They considered the museum irrelevant because it did not represent their history and culture. Newcomers, however, did not perpetuate the same genre conventions long-time residents associated with local cultural history museums. Instead, analyses of their ideas about museums suggested an understanding of the local museum as a museum for the people living in the locality with an outwardfocused perspective. In contrast to looking inward for the museum’s subject matter, they thought of objects, stories and contexts from abroad that could be brought to and represented in a local museum in an attempt to mirror the diversity of the contemporary community. While the analysis of interview conversations about museums helped to develop a better understanding of which ideas members of different groups have about local museums, I will below move on to describe the implications for a reorientation of museum practice based on findings from interview analysis in greater detail.

5.8.

Museum practice with a focus on different types of historical consciousness: Implications for local history museums

In the case of Frøya and Hitra, insight into complex dimensions that characterize how individuals relate to history made it possible to identify thought patterns that underpinned residents’ choices not to engage with local history in museums. On the one hand, informants presumed a visit to the museum would not offer a worthwhile experience because there would be ‘nothing new’, while on the other hand, local history was considered to have nothing to do with oneself or one’s present lifeworld, so that one did not relate to the topic of the museum and hence had no reason to visit it. These positions exemplify extremes; however, gaining a better understanding of the thought processes behind local community members’ decisions

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not to visit a museum is arguably useful knowledge for a museum that wishes to (re-)build links to its community. Through my analysis, I was able to develop three ideal types of historical consciousness that describe not actual persons, but – with a focus on the topic of the museum, history and especially local history – different ways in which individuals relate to local history. The three types of historical consciousness (continuity, beginnings, and detachment) are derived from empirical observation of how interview partners used the past and history in their identity negotiations, or, put differently, how individuals wove their biographies into larger historical developments. At the same time, the types are predictive on a more general level. I chose to present ideal types of how individual community members relate to local history as positions along a spectrum. The image of a spectrum emphasizes that there are no clear demarcations between the three types in the real world. In addition, the image of the spectrum highlights permeability in both directions. Long-time residents whose individual memories and biographies are strongly entangled with the ‘official’ history of the place take a position on one end of the spectrum; newcomers who have no personal relation to the area’s history take a position on the other end. For historical reasons museums of local history mainly answer to the first type of historical consciousness as they serve identity confirmation and hence present stories that match the narratives of representatives of the first type. The other extreme, type 3: detachment sees no relevance and has no interest in a museum of local history at all. Even though museums are well advised not to neglect these groups, with the social role of the museum and theories of communicative memory and the ‘active museum’ as a background, I argue it is representatives of type 2: beginnings who are the ones that the local museum of cultural history should address. It is in encounters with members that share traits of this type that local museums of history have the biggest potential to make a positive contribution, both on the individual level and to the local community at large. Representatives of the type ‘beginnings’ have started to gain access to communicative memory, and for them, a museum can act as a facilitator in further negotiations about history and belonging to the local community. In order to fully acknowledge the implications for the development of museum practice that derive from the typology developed, a brief reminder of the understandings of the role and purpose of local history museums that underpin my line or argument is in order at this point. I consider museums to be places of ‘communicative’ and ‘functional memory’, and as such they presumably allow all residents of the area to engage in negotiations about history and cultural heritage. Moreover, with reference to the notion of historical consciousness, museums are places in which processes of identity formation that involve historical narratives, temporal orientation and moral guidance unfold in the interaction between individuals

5 Historical consciousness among Hitra’s and Frøya’s population

and museum representations, programs or even activities that do not primarily address audiences, such as collection management. Based on such an understanding, the museum’s goal is to promote a critical historical consciousness.159 In the case of Frøya and Hitra, the typology of different types of historical consciousness opens up categories of ‘us’ and ‘them’ and is better equipped to consider diverse ways of relating to local history. The insight into different types of historical consciousness among the local population made it possible to recognize patterns of thinking that lay behind residents’ choices to not to engage with local history in museums. It also rendered visible similarities and places where individuals with different types of historical consciousness can meet. Drawing upon these findings, I have identified shared ground and points of contact that can serve as starting points from which to develop a local museum practice that reaches members of all groups but holds significance especially for those inclined to type 2: beginnings. Three key features of such a shared ground are, first, contemporaneity, that is, a focus on contemporary experiences and the recent past; second, individuality; and third, reciprocity and flexibility. Interview analysis established the recent past as a shared temporal frame that is accessible to both long-time residents and newcomers, as members of both groups have acted in, observed, and hence have memories of this period of history. While the recent past is familiar ground to members of both groups, it also is a field of negotiation that reveals different interpretations of events and developments and can serve as a starting point for discussions of historical developments as well as initiate reflection upon how and why we interpret the past the way we do. Ultimately, this can lead to a critical stance towards uncontested master narratives. In the case of Hitra and Frøya, diverging interpretations of how the islands gained their wealth apparently have consequences for identity and self-positioning as well as the positioning of members of other groups – consequences that impact on everyday communal life. As immigrants have become part of local history in the recent past, this is also the period in which their existence in the local context can be documented and archived for future generations. The typology of different forms of historical consciousness highlights the dynamic character of any form of historical consciousness, nuancing historical consciousness as a dynamic relational process taking place between individuals and local history. It is important to underline that this relation is reciprocal: local history shapes individuals’ historical consciousness, but at the same time, the way that individuals narrate local history shapes shared accounts of local history in the

159

Gosselin, Viviane, and Phaedra Livingstone, “Epilogue: The Blossoming of Canadian Museology and Historical Consciousness,” in Museums and the Past. Constructing Historical Consciousness, edited by Viviane Gosselin and Phaedra Livingstone (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2016), 264.

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local community. As far as museums are concerned, an analogous mutual interference has been described by Ludmilla Jordanova, who writes: “While museums satisfy curiosity about the past, they also shape the forms such curiosity is permitted to take.”160 An immediate consequence of the dynamic character of historical consciousness is that it challenges permanent exhibitions in particular as museums’ primary method. Based on her review of research undertaken within the MeLa project 161 , Marzia Varutti concludes that temporary exhibitions are the “ideal medium for museum communication” today because “the flexibility and modularity they afford make them suitable to tackle multifaceted, ever changing features of our societies such as human mobility […].”162 Drawing on the typology presented above, I would go even further in the case of Frøya and Hitra and suggest a flexible, individual approach to encounters between museums and the local community that allows for adaptations and adjustments during the process of interaction between the museum and individual community members. In small museums of local history, these encounters could take the shape of temporary exhibitions as proposed by Varutti, but their implications go further than this and concern museum practices such as research, collecting, collection managemnet and documentation as well. In my material, most of the long-term residents fitted well into to first type of historical consciousness. However, there is reason to assume that current experiences of fast and rapid changes in the local communities will start to affect longtime residents’ historical consciousness and challenge representatives of this ideal type’s experience of local developments as continuous. Hence, it is reasonable to believe that the experience of drastic changes will put the repertoire and strategies representative of this type to the test. This would lead to a movement towards the middle of the scale between continuity and discontinuity. The same movement towards the middle can be expected from representatives of type 3: discontinuity, who through personal experiences might develop an interest in the past and history of their new place of residence. Taking historical consciousness’s fluidity and changeability as a given, it is clear that traditional museum exhibitions struggle to address a core feature of historical consciousness. Exhibitions can play an important role when it comes to initiating historical meaning-making processes,

160 Jordanova, Ludmilla, History in Practice, 2nd ed. (London: Hodder Arnold, 2006), 129. 161 MeLa* Museums in the Age of Migration (2011-2015) was funded within the 7th Framework Programme of the European Commission and was a research project with nine European Partners. More information can be found at the project website http://www.mela-project. polimi.it/index.htm (retrieved 13 March 2018). 162 Varutti, Marzia, “Book Review: Luca Basso Peressut, Francesca Lanz & Gennaro Postiglione (Eds.), European Museums in the 21st Century: Setting the Framework,” Nordisk Museologi, no. 1 (2014).

5 Historical consciousness among Hitra’s and Frøya’s population

as exhibitions demand that visitors draw on their historical consciousness. Interactive installations offer further ways of individualizing the experience, yet their flexibility is limited, as is their ability to respond. Collections are the heart of the museum and objects define museums. My interview analysis showed that most informants shared this view; however, for small museums of local history the association between museum, collections, and objects can pose a problem. Interviews revealed that the objects in the local history museum are expected to have little explanatory power or relevance to members of the local community, regardless of which type of historical consciousness they belong to. Local historical objects refer to a past that those aligning mostly with type 3: discontinuity seem to have no access to, as they do not possess the references needed to make sense of what is presented in the museum. The same old fishing equipment or food products that type 1: continuity can recognize as that used by their parents or grandparents, triggering recognition and stabilizing collective memory, pass type 2: beginnings and type 3: discontinuity by without affecting them. In this regard, there is only little difference between newcomers who have recently moved to Hitra or Frøya and migrants who settled several years ago. As long as the objects are presented as witnesses to a territorial past within a local frame of explanation, they do not speak to those whose historical consciousness is characterized by beginnings (type 2) or discontinuity (type 3). The local history museum needs to offer alternative frames of reference for individuals that demonstrate a high correspondence with these types to contextualize and make sense of local history. Informants inclined to type 3: detachment made it clear that they did not consider learning about local history a relevant undertaking. Instead, they expressed the wish to use the museum as a space to present some of their own culture. By accommodating this demand, the museum could fill a void and in consequence offer material for identification and an official recognition of non-Frøyværinger’s and non-Hitterværinger’s existence as members of the local community. Showcasing foreign cultures and their history offers significant benefits in terms of selfesteem, identity work and public recognition of all people living on Frøya and Hitra. This line of argument has had a tremendous impact on museum practice in Norway, Scandinavia, Europe and internationally over the last 20 to 30 years. With Norway in mind, Kathrine Goodnow describes this way of representing minorities in museums using the term ‘enhancement narrative’. According to Goodnow, these narratives are preoccupied with showing how minorities contribute to host countries.163 The problem with such representations is the underlying narrative of

163

Goodnow, Katherine, “Exhibition Forms and Influential Circumstances,” in Scandinavian Museums and Cultural Diversity edited by Katherine Goodnow and Haci Akman (New York: Berghahn Books 2008), 230.

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cultures as essential, which applies to both the homogeneous majority and the minority culture. Goodnow explains the predominance of this way of representing cultures other than the majority culture as an expression of widely held and accepted notions of cultural difference and as a contribution to supporting and protecting cultural minority groups. However, while minority cultures are represented positively, the problem of ‘othering’ persists.164 Showcasing newcomers’ culture furthermore comes at the cost of not considering long-time residents’ ideas about the local museum. It also ignores the museum’s original topic, which is the history of Hitra and Frøya and coastal culture in middle Norway. A representation divided into different cultures furthermore tends to confirm stable categories of ‘locals’ and ‘immigrants’, of ‘Frøyværinger and Hitterværinger’ in contrast to newcomers. Finding ways to instead use historical consciousness as a starting point for museum practice, for instance in documentation or exhibition development, crosses the boundaries between different cultural groups and offers individuals an opportunity to position themselves along the spectrum between continuity, beginnings or detachment in relation to local history. Using an approach to local history centred upon historical consciousness can facilitate individuals’ appropriation of local history. Questions such as “What do you think about this development? What would you like to know more about? What would you like to add to our account of historical events?” put members of the local community in a position where they can ask questions as well as have a say about local history. In such an approach, different cultural backgrounds are lenses through which the local past and the present-day local community can be viewed. This approach would recognize differences in how we perceive reality, but would not let individuals be defined and limited by these differences.

164 Marzia Varutti’s study of five contemporary exhibitions in Norway supports this finding. While Varutti finds new forms of displaying multiple cultures, these “representations do not really challenge received understandings about different categories of Others” Varutti, Marzia, “Gradients of Alterity. Museums and the Negotiation of Cultural Difference in Contemporary Norway,” ARV. Nordic Yearbook of Folklore, special issue (2011): 13-36, 33.

An experiment in contemporary documentation

6. Documentation of labour immigrants’ experiences and views of the local past and present

The purpose so far was to develop a re-definition of the museum of local history in general against the background of Norway and the case of Hitra and Frøya in particular. In the first part I established the local museum of history as a place of ‘communicative memory’ and ‘functional memory’. ‘Communicative’ and ‘functional memory’ highlight the recent past and contemporary culture as subjects of ongoing negotiation. Furthermore, they ascribe expertise and authority over interpretations of the past to, in principle, all members of a given community. This finding remains general in nature and it is up to individual museums to translate it into museum practice. With the help of three ideal types of historical consciousness concerned with local history, I was further able to identify that a focus on the recent past and present and approaches that are responsive to individuals as well as reactive and flexible represent the most promising ways for small museums to strengthen links between local history and members of diverse local communities. In the following chapter, I present one possible way local museums can utilize the findings. For this purpose I will draw on interviews conducted as part of the project Change and ask what happens when interviews conducted for the purpose of contemporary documentation and exhibition preparation are informed by the features elaborated upon in the previous chapters, namely individuality, reciprocity, flexibility, and the theories of historical consciousness and oral history. The guiding question is whether documentation interviews then can serve as spaces for negotiations about local history and belonging. During the contemporary documentation project that formed part of the project Change, I was hired to conduct interviews with labour migrants from Romania, Poland and Lithuania who were now living on Hitra. The interviews were conducted together with either Hanna Mellemsether, a senior curator and historian in the development and research department of MiST and originally from Hitra, or Berit Johanne Vorpbukt, a geographer and staff member of the Coastal Museum. We conducted five interviews with seven informants in total (three women, four men). With the exception of one, all informants worked in fish-processing factories. We invited the informants to meet with us at different

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museum locations; only one interview was conducted at the informant’s workplace. Initially, contact was established by sending letters to possible interview partners suggested to us by the museum or other locals. These letters introduced the project, but also highlighted how important it was for MiST and the Coastal Museum to make marginalized voices heard in the exhibition as well as document the current changes and immigrants’ perspectives on them. The letter emphasized how crucial individual experiences and knowledge would be for the project’s overall success. All of those we asked to participate agreed to meet with us. For me, these interviews offered an opportunity to test some of the findings of my previous research within a real-world museum project. Before I turn to the analysis of the interviews, I will consider the purposes and methods applied for documentation of contemporary culture against the background of the idea of local history museums as part of communicative memory.

6.1.

Contemporary collecting and documentation1

Why should museums, as institutions dedicated to the past, engage with the documentation of contemporary culture? What are the aims of collecting and documenting the present time? Often, the argument in favour of documentation and collecting the contemporary mentions future researchers, whose study sources need to be secured. The argument furthermore states that neutral and objective action on the museum’s part guarantees the quality of the documentation. To satisfy (future) research criteria, documentation must follow the same scientific

1

Any discussion of contemporary collecting and documentation in a Scandinavian country draws heavily on the work of Samanslutningen för samtidsdokumentation vid kulturhistoriska museer, SAMDOK (the Association of Swedish Museums of cultural history museums). See Axelsson, Bodil, “The Poetics and Politics of the Swedish Model for Contemporary Collecting,” Museum & Society 12, no. 1 (2014) for a short introduction and discussion of SAMDOK’s activities over the course of the project’s running time (1977 to 2011). For a discussion of SAMDOK’s initial weaknesses concerning the inclusion of other than majority forms of Swedish culture into their activities, as well as an overview over SAMDOK’s attempts to include cultural expressions of minority groups, see: Silvén, Eva, “Cultural Diversity at the Nordiska Museet in Stockholm: Outline of a Story,” in Scandinavian Museums and Cultural Diversity, edited by Katherine Goodnow and Haci Akman (London: Berghahn Books, 2008), especially 14-16. Also: Purkis, Harriet, “Collecting the Home in Different Way: Samdok's Ethnographic Method Compared to Other Approaches,” in Collecting the Contemporary: A Handbook for Social History Museums, edited by Owain Rhys and Zelda Baveystock (Edinburgh, Boston: Museum Etc, 2014). For the Norwegian context Svein Gynnild, “National Networks for Contemporary Collecting in Norway,” in Collecting the Contemporary, a Handbook for Social History Museums, edited by Owain Rhys and Zelda Baveystock. Gynnild offers insight into how SAMDOK has inspired the Norwegian network on contemporary collecting.

6 Documentation of labour immigrant’s experiences and views of the local past and present

criteria that apply to research in general: they must increase knowledge, correspond to reality, and be exhaustive. As compelling as this sounds at first, Odd Are Berkaak alerts us to an essential flaw in this argument. We cannot know which questions future researchers will ask, which samples of data they will need, and which methods they will apply. Accordingly, considering future researchers as the exclusive principle for determining contemporary documentation is misguided.2 Besides research purposes, be they today or in the future, contemporary collecting and documentation often serves educational purposes in connection with exhibitions. If documentation is carried out with an exhibition or other forms of dissemination in mind, comprehensibility and relevance to anticipated visitor groups and the emotional appeal of stories and objects tend to replace supposedly neutral and objective scientific criteria as the primary concern. A third and very different argument for documenting the present is that it allows diverse rich material to be collected, instead of relying on those traces from the past that have survived in museum archives and collections or by historical coincidence. When objects are collected in their own time, a more complex and rich documentation can be compiled.3 However, this puts the museum in the position of having to make decisions on what to collect or document in the present. Historians are not trained to make decisions about what significant contemporary phenomena are; thus, they need to draw on the expertise of sociologists, social anthropologists or cultural researchers, and in principle consult their own contemporaries.4 In all arguments presented, the value of the documented information and objects is located in the future, as they are to serve either future researchers or future museum visitors. As indicated above, we cannot know what use the documentation museums produce today will be put to. Therefore, before the background of the theory of communicative memory, the ideas of the active museum and the museums’ societal role in mind, I suggest that the process of documenting should become the centre of attention.   Before I elaborate on this idea, I will take a closer look at how focus on the contemporary and questions of representation or representativty impact on the process of contemporary documentation.

2 3

4

Berkaak, Odd Are, “Samtid: En lang historie. En evaluering av tusenårsprosjektet Dokument 2000,” (Oslo: Norsk kulturråd, 2003), 34/35 and 86/87. Jensen, Inger, and Grete Swensen, “Museene og samtidsdokumentasjon,” in Inn i et nytt årtusen: Museene og Samtiden, edited by Bjørn Fjellheim and Anne-Sofie Hjemdahl (Oslo: Novus 2007), 26. Berkaak, Odd Are, “’Bevissthet i Vind’ - Samtidsdokumentasjon som Sisyfosarbeid,” in På ny kurs - Dokumentasjon og Samtid. Rapport fra et nordisk seminar 15-19 August 2006, edited by Eva Fägerborg and Svein Gynnild (Norsam: Maihaugen, 2006), 22.

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As soon as the contemporary becomes the focus of museum collecting activities, a fundamental shift in the communicative situation between museums and their audiences is set in motion: anybody living becomes a potential expert.5 The communicative situation is thus significantly different to that of collecting, for example, 19th-century fisher-farmer culture, which would require the expert knowledge of history curators and research on the sources and previous academic literature. Two major challenges for museum professionals arise from this profoundly changed communicative situation. According to Berkaak, the first concerns ways of constructing meaning: documenting a vanished past requires reconstruction work. Cultural historians are well trained in this. Conversely, engaging with present-day and contemporary social, political and cultural phenomena requires different processes in order to make sense of these phenomena.6 An awareness of the selective and constructive character of contemporary collecting and documentation in particular goes hand in hand with an awareness of its tentativeness and the possibility that alternative views exist. This leads to the second challenge, which is the work with ‘sources’. In contemporary collecting and documentation, museum workers rely heavily on contemporaries who share their experiences, views, and opinions. In order to get in touch with the world around them, museum practitioners need to engage in dialogue with these ‘experts’. In these cases, ‘experts’ are defined primarily not by formal subject-matter expertise, but to a much higher degree by individual engagement with the phenomena under study. Although informants’ immediate knowledge, experience and opinion of phenomena can contribute to a rich and multifaceted documentation, at the same time, a lack of historical distance can lead to challenges. When documentation touches upon individuals’ cultural selfconcepts and values,7 museum workers may be confronted with possible disagreement or even controversy and have to decide on whether and how such positions are to enter the museum archive or exhibitions. For individuals from minority cultural, social, or religious backgrounds in particular, much is at stake in these encounters with museums, as social anthropologist Thomas Michael Walle has pointed out.8 In cultural and social institutions, representation is an important concern. In museums, a political notion of representativity as a democratic principle is at play, as museums are supposed to act on behalf of and for ‘the public’.9 In principle,

5 6 7 8

9

Berkaak, “Samtid”, 47. Berkaak, “Bevissthet i vind”, 22. Gynnild, Svein, Samtiden og museene: Dokumentasjon og forskning (Oslo: Norsk museumsutvikling, 1997), 36. Walle, Thomas, “Participation and Othering in Documenting the Present,” in Participative Strategies in Collecting the Present, edited by Léontine Meijer-van Mensch and Elisabeth Tietmeyer, Berliner Blätter/Ethnographische und ethnologische Beiträge (Berlin: Panama Verlag, 2013), 86/87. Cf. Norwegian Official Report (1996: 7) Museum. Diversity, Memory, Meeting Place, 40.

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the public consists of everybody, and so everybody ought to be represented and museum exhibitions and programs should appeal and speak to everybody. When representation is discussed in the context of collections, the concept is additionally inspired by scientific standards of representation that allude to choice, neutrality and objectivity. Helen Graham argues against claims of representation for the museum. She develops an alternative argument that abandons the idea of representation and instead considers the notion of participation as a starting point from which to develop museum practice. She bases her argument on the observation that participation and representation “derive from quite different and distinct political and epistemic genealogies”.10 According to Graham, representation in museums derives from the idea of representative democracy, in which somebody speaks on behalf of somebody else or a group of others. In participatory museum projects and activities, the idea of representation often leads to the question of “Who is speaking on behalf of whom?” and “Who is not represented?” These are crucial questions to ask within a representation paradigm. Graham instead advocates participation as a leading idea for museums seeking to fulfil their social role. She criticizes museum projects that are labelled as participatory but remain bound to a representative paradigm. According to Graham, such projects “fundamentally misunderstand what participation is and can offer”,11 because the basic principle of participation is that people act directly for themselves. Set in a context in which group compositions are fluid and changing and identity negotiations are ongoing, an individual approach has immediate appeal. With reference to the findings presented in chapter 5, it is furthermore closer to the way that individuals in Hitra and Frøya conceive of their relations to history and the way they experience everyday life on the islands than could be accounted for under a representative paradigm. Applied to processes of contemporary documentation, dismissing the criteria of representativeness strengthens the value of individual voices. Each informant speaks primarily on her own behalf, not as the representative of a group. As such, individual voices still integrate into groups, communities, and the public because they are part of a network of constantly changing relations between people and objects.12 A second implication is that individuals cannot be contacted and interviewed as representatives of a specific group, but should instead be addressed as individuals.

10

11 12

Graham, Helen, “Museums Are Not Representative (and This Is a Good Thing for Participation),” in Museum Participation. New Directions for Audience Collaboration, edited by Kayte McSweeney and Jen Kavanagh (Edinburgh, Boston: MuseumsEtc, 2016). Ibid., 1. These can again be made the subject of research at a later point.

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For museums, the changed communicative situation between the museum, museum staff and society (that is, individual members of society) leads to a particular responsibility to acknowledge and recognize individual minority positions in the context of contemporary collecting and documentation. This responsibility is not limited to capturing minority voices in museums’ archives and collections, but also encompasses present interactions between museum professionals and individual informants here and now and requires a reconceptualization of documentation activities as a two-sided communicative process.

6.2.

Interviews in contemporary documentation

Museums have a long tradition of conducting interviews for documentation and contemporary collecting purposes. Interviews mostly serve the purpose of information gathering. Regardless of whether a museum conducts life cycle or thematic interviews, the aim is to gather more information about an object in the collection, a person’s life, or a historical event. Museum employees reflect upon how to select informants, upon the fact that the interview is a communicative process in which both interviewer and informant contribute to the conversation, and finally upon the fact that the interaction between informant and interviewer shapes the result. In recent years, discussions on ethical questions connected to contemporary collecting and documentation have attracted increasing interest.13 Nevertheless, studies of informant-interviewer interactions during real-world interview situations remain scarce and are seldom put at the centre of considerations how to conduct documentation interviews.14 The process of meaning building that unfolds through interaction between conversation partners is the focus of my following analysis. This interview interaction could equally well be designated as ‘dialogue’. Hence, I have selected a theory of 13

14

As indicated by Katrin Pabst’s 2014 doctoral thesis “Mange hensyn å ta - mange behov å avveie. Moralske utfordringer museumsansatte møter i arbeidet med følsomme tema,” (Phd. diss., Universitetet i Agder, 2014) and the recent publication Pabst, Kathrin, Eva D. Johansen, and Merete Ipsen, eds., Towards New Relation between the Museum and Society (Oslo: Norsk ICOM: Vest-Agder Museum, 2016). For more detail on contemporary collecting and the documentation of minority groups’ culture and history also see Boe, Liv Hilde, Kristin Gaukstad, and Therese Sandrup, “Min stemme - vår historie. Dokumentasjon av det flerkulturelle Norge,” ABM-skrift no. 19 (Oslo: ABM-utvikling, 2005). Pabst highlights a similar concern regarding museum work with difficult topics in particular. She writes that even though some research has been carried out enquiring into how museums can impact on individual lives, the perspective adopted is mostly one of learning and recognition on the visitors’ part. There is little research on what happens with those informants who participate in the preparation of museum exhibitions. Pabst, Museumsetikk i praksis, 43/44.

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dialogue as developed by educational philosopher Nicolas C. Burbules as the basis of my analysis. Burbules presents a list of potential dialogue outcomes that range from agreement and consensus via understanding and/or tolerance to irreconcilable and incommensurable difference.15 His core idea is that dialogue does not have to be measured by its results. He proposes conceptualizing dialogue as a ‘situated practice’ instead of a neutral way of communication.16 When measuring the success of dialogue, the focus then moves to the process of engaging in dialogue, instead of being measured restrictively against whether consensus was obtained.17 In The Limits of Dialogue as Critical Pedagogy (2000), Burbules elaborates further on the range of potential outcomes of dialogue. He identifies them as agreement, consensus, understanding and tolerance, and emphasizes that dialogue’s outcomes cannot be regarded as stages in a continuum towards more and more understanding. Burbules attempts to further systematize his theory into four models of dialogue: First, following in the footsteps of Socrates, dialogue can be instructional in character. A teacher guides a learner with the help of questions and answers that point in the direction of a particular understanding. The teacher decides beforehand what is to be learned. Second, dialogue as inquiry sees learners and teachers exploring an issue together; the aim can be to solve a problem or to seek common understanding. In the third type of dialogue, dialogue as conversation, the topic of the dialogue retreats into the background whereas interpersonal understanding and connection come to the fore. Finally, in dialogue as debate, the aim is not necessarily to convince the other, or to reach a shared understanding. Dialogue as debate is appreciated as an opportunity for each participant to “strengthen or clarify her or his own view by responding to the challenge of the opposing view.”18 Each of these 15

16

17

18

“a) agreement and consensus, identifying beliefs or values all parties can agree to; b) not agreement, but a common understanding in which the parties do not agree, but establish common meanings in which to discuss their differences; c) not a common understanding, but an understanding of difference in which the parties do not entirely bridge these differences, but through analogies of experience or other indirect translations can understand, at least in part, each other’s positions; d) little understanding, but a respect across differences, in which the parties do not fully understand one another, but each seeing that the other has a thoughtful, conscientious position, they can come to appreciate and respect even positions they disagree with; e) irreconcilable and incommensurable difference.” Burbules, Nicolas C., and Suzanne Rice, “Dialogue across Differences: Continuing the Conversation,” Harvard Educational Review 61, no. 4 (1991). Burbules, Nicholas, “The Limits of Dialogue as a Critical Pedagogy,” In Playing with Ideas. Modern and Contemporary Philosophies of Education, edited by Jaime G. A. Grinberg, Tyson E. Lewis and Megan Laverty (Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company, 2007). Such an understanding of the wished-for outcomes of dialogue is an important difference to Jürgen Habermas’ or Paolo Freire’s ideas on dialogue, but in line with Mikhail Bakhtin’s writing on dialogue. Roth, Klas, “Dialogue, Difference and Globalization: An Interview with Nicholas C. Burbules,” in Education in the Era of Globalization, edited by Klas Roth and Ilan Gur-Ze'ev (Dordrecht:

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kinds of dialogue works in a different way. Communicative patterns – for instance, what is said in response to each other’s questions and statements, which questions are asked and which affective and emotional quality questions and answers might have – will vary.19 Below, I will use Burbules’ categorization and sequences from interview transcriptions to offer a more in-depth analysis of the communication process that took place during the interviews we conducted on Hitra.

6.2.1.

Interview dialogue as conversation

When dialogue as conversation shapes the documentation interview, it has the potential to familiarize museums with the thoughts and opinions of individual members of groups the museum otherwise has little knowledge of or contact with. On the other hand, a conversational form of dialogue offers non-museum visitors the opportunity to make the acquaintance of the institution, of individuals working there, and of the ideas and opinions they hold. Arguably, it cannot be taken for granted that informants during an interview situation will always be interested in what a representative from the museum thinks about a certain issue. However, in accordance with the core features of dialogue defined above, when asked, the interviewer has to be willing to answer truthfully. These insights, and as a consequence transparency concerning the roles and guiding ideas museums work with, can serve as fruitful ground for future co-operation. For instance, after having talked with two friends, male immigrant workers from Romania named Martin and Georg, about when they came to Hitra, how they experienced their early days there and what life was like today, I asked them about their plans for the future. This was a probing question,20 intended to get not only a yes or no answer, but also the reasoning behind the answer. Georg answered: Georg: “I would like to stay. If I have the chance.” Insa (addressing Martin): “How about you?” Martin: “There are two things. In my position, it is more easy to make that decision, than in his. [The contracts, author’s remark] they [the employer, author’s remark] are giving them are only short limit. If they won't have work because the fish industry is not a workplace where you always have work. So, if he wouldn't have work, he would just stop staying in Norway, maybe. If he cannot find anything else. But I managed to get a 'fast kontrakt' [permanent position,

19 20

Springer, 2007), 22. More extensively in Burbules, Nicholas C, Dialogue in Teaching. Theory and Practice (New York: Teachers College Press, Columbia University, 1993). Roth, “Dialogue, Difference and Globalization,” 22. Probing questions are defined as “such questions are best seen as invitations, open-ended requests for opinion, beliefs, evaluations, interpretations, elaborations, and so on”. Burbules, Dialogue in Teaching, 87/88.

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author’s remark], so it is still not easy to take this decision, to say that I will just move to Norway. I am just like one foot here, one home.” While Martin derived his answer as a result of circumstances, Georg took up my line of thought and pointed out to him that I was asking about his (Martin’s) personal wishes, whether he would like to stay if that was an open choice. While Martin took a rational approach to answering my question, offering all details and elements that would lead to a decision, thereby turning the form of dialogue into dialogue that resembles dialogue as inquiry,21 Georg returned to a personal, individual level, thus dragging the dialogue back into dialogue as conversation. Martin acquiesced and subsequently spoke about how he experienced life on Hitra. Georg: “But you would like? That is what she asks.” Martin: “I cannot say that I would like it. But there are a lot of positive things that make me think to stay here, but there are also some things that make me want to turn back. It is like family, way of living. It is speaking the same language you have been born in. And I don't know, in my opinion, this community here in Hitra, it is a little bit sleepy. They – ” Georg: “We come from the East, okay? From the Balkans.” Martin: “Sitting home, they are not doing much. I believe we are having a much more active life at home.” Georg: “Yes.” Martin: “We do many more activities. Maybe it is a little isolated on this island, maybe it is a different story on the continent, but here it looks like – ” The question caught Georg’s interest and he turned to me with a question. Georg: “Maybe you could tell us, because you live in Trondheim?” Insa: “It is a city, family at the weekends, organized sports, children are learning an instrument. There is not too much action either. I guess it depends on where you are in your lives.” In an attempt to establish how far he could expect me to understand his situation, Georg asked me a number of questions: Georg: “But you live in Norway for good? Or you are just here temporarily?” Insa: “I think we are here for good. Maybe we will go back some day.” Georg: “When did you come here?” In accordance with what Martin had said earlier, and after having compared my situation with his own situation, Georg reasoned that the difference between our situations was the insecurity in terms of employment. He continued:

21

Examples of this type of dialogue will be discussed in more detail below.

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Georg: “For me it is quite difficult to think about bringing them [his wife and child, author’s remark], because of this uncertainty. If I do not have work, I do not get any kind of money, or the money you get is not enough for the whole family.” In order to place his experience in a broader local context, I shared stories I had learned from other interviews or other sources. Insa: “I think, I have heard many stories where people came to work here and they had these contracts for just a couple of month and then after a while they got a permanent position, and that is when they brought their families here.” He confirmed: “Yes, but I think, I have to pass the time test, I think it is a test time.” I introduced a statement of empathy: “I think that is a terrible situation”. Instead of collecting arguments for and against whether their employer used probation periods before offering permanent positions, which would have led the talk into dialogue as inquiry, I was still in the mode of dialogue as conversation and offered sympathy by expressing that I found uncertainty a stressful situation. Martin then rejected my offering of empathy and instead changed the dialogue in the direction of dialogue as instruction, as he explained the reasons behind the situation to us: “This is how it works because there is a limit of employees that the factory has. So. Let us say, that they have for example 100 employees, if one gets into pension or is on a long-time sick leave, he needs to be replaced. Then you can give a contract. There are so many foreign workers that wait for work, why would you give then give anybody a permanent contract? I understand them very well. It is not that they do not want to give them. This is the situation. We have offer, for one working place.” After Martin had explained to us what he considered the reasons for limited contracts to be, I introduced to the interview conversation what I had learned through earlier interviews about how people in Hitra pictured the situation of working migrants: “And as far as I have understood, and you can correct me, if I am wrong, there are people who, two groups of working migrants, those who want to settle here, have a permanent contract, bring their families and make a living. And then there are those who come to earn as much money as possible, but who are thinking about going back and building houses there.” Georg contradicted this dichotomy of those who settle and those who come for work only. He also went on to explain that these were not pre-made decisions,

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but that working immigrants changed their plans over the course of time. Martin joined him and together they gave a general description of immigrants’ situation. In the end, Georg again moved the discussion to his own experience, thus turning back to a more conversational form of dialogue. Georg: “You cannot say that. Everybody wants to spend some time here and even if you just want to make money, you cannot say how long, one year.” Martin: “In my opinion, all the people that come from the outside, that come to Norway to work, they are all coming in mind with the idea to make some money and go home. Nobody is coming to work and live here. No. Because you cannot know whether you will adapt or whether you will like it here. So, they are all coming like this, I make some money and then I go home and try to make something there. But in some situation, life is just taking you, then you say, Oh, I am just feeling good, I got enough money, I can buy a house and so on.” Georg: “You might be corrupted by the good situation you find here.” Martin: “But you do not come here with this in mind.” Georg: “I wanted a change. I know, I could be in Denmark also, or in a Western [country].” In the above example, the initial question was whether the two Romanian friends were planning to stay on Hitra or not. The topic of the dialogic encounter was thus personal plans for the future. There is obviously no right or wrong answer to this question, nor are there any objective criteria outside the conversation that would decide the validity of their reasoning. Nevertheless, after each of the participants in the dialogue had offered their perspectives on the future and arguments for why they would decide the way they would, the conversational form of dialogue was replaced by a form of dialogue that shows more similarity with dialogue as inquiry. Here, we discussed patterns of decision-making in more general terms. In the end, however, we turned back to the individual as the centre of interest. Different informants preferred different forms of dialogue. While Georg was comfortable speaking on a personal level, Martin preferred a more detached view on the topics touched upon. Georg engaged fully in dialogue as conversation, even inviting me, the interviewer, into the conversational form of dialogue. Martin on the other hand repulsed attempts to engage him in dialogue as conversation. He tended towards more ‘objective’, information-based forms of dialogue such as dialogue as inquiry or instruction. While Martin explained the situation with the aim of convincing us so that we would agree on the topic in the end, Georg described his situation as individual. He shared his perspective not with the intention of being merged into one shared understanding of the situation, but as his personal view. While Georg used the interview for identity work, Martin focused on a factual level. The interview section above demonstrates how some topics are more appropriate for dialogue as conversation than others, and how some partners in dialogue

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prefer a conversational form over another, for instance dialogue as inquiry and vice versa. In a ‘dialogic interview’, interview partners decide to a high degree whether and how to discuss topics. For museums, dialogic interviews that follow the notion of dialogue as a conversation are productive primarily because they offer an opportunity to get to know the individuals the museum is dealing with. Dialogue as conversation offers insight into informants’ ways of seeing the world. At the same time, conversational elements in dialogic interviews offer informants insight into how museums think, what they work on and with, and how they see their societal role. They can help to establish human contact between the institution and individual members of the community. Through engaging in conversational dialogic interviews, the museum is given a face and a voice and is hence established as ‘somebody’, as a member of the community and a real partner in dialogue. Furthermore, museums get the chance to test assumptions concerning specific groups. In the case of immigrants, the museum knows little about the different immigrants’ historical consciousness. Engaging in dialogic interviews in the form of conversations offers a quality of knowledge about each other. In the example described above, we gained a new understanding of why distinctions between those labour migrants who stay and those who do not do not accord with reality as experienced by those who fall into either of the two categories. This information could not have been gained from surveys or statistical data. Dialogue as conversation requires a mutual desire to get to know the other. As seen in the example above, even if the interviewer is willing to offer insights into her or his inner world of thought, it is not a given that informants will necessarily be comfortable with this alteration of traditional roles during an interview. Neither can we suppose that interviewees will be interested in learning about us or the existing subject matter of the local history museum. For instance, Elena, a young woman from Lithuania, ignored all our (Berit Johanne’s and mine) efforts to establish reciprocity. She did not pick up on our offers of personal experiences or ideas.22 Instead, she followed the tone of traditional research interviews, and answered all our questions. According to Burbules, we can understand this misalignment as a sign of missing support for the same type of dialogue. The conversational form of the dialogic encounter still made it particularly easy for the informant to move the subject in a direction she found more comfortable. With reference to the types of historical consciousness developed in chapter five, Elena showed most similarity with type 3: detachment, and the attempt to engage her in conversations about the past, present and future of the island and her relations to the island remained one-sided. Nevertheless, from the museum’s point of view this interview was still 22

Burbules describes this kind of answer as an “attempt[s] to ‘satisfy’ an inquiry and so end the dialogue.” Burbules, Dialogue in Teaching, 90.

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worthwhile, as the museum gained information relevant to the documentation and exhibition project. How far the informant benefitted from the dialogic interview remains more questionable.

6.2.2.

Interview dialogue as inquiry and instruction

Learning in its broadest sense is arguably the most important outcome of dialogue. The following excerpt from an interview with Hanna, I and Gabriela from Poland illustrates how learning takes place in dialogic interviews.23 The context of the following excerpt is that we were talking about reminders of the past that could be observed on the island. Gabriela spoke of an old ship that had been reconstructed on Hitra and that she had observed on the dock. Hanna spoke about the history of all the places where people live on the island, and that the neighbouring house to her own family home, where she lived when she was a child, was being reconstructed in the old style. Gabriela interjected an observation her mother had made during a visit to Hitra and thus raised the Norwegian bunad24 as a topic. “And for my mother, it was very fascinating, the 17th of May, they wore bunad. That was very beautiful. Many different types of bunad.” Hanna seized the opportunity and attempted to redirect the dialogue by a introducing a historical perspective on the bunad: “And that is history, too. That is linked to…” Gabriela did not follow her lead, but herself in turn used a “re-directory statement”25 and continued describing what she had seen, and what she thought about this garment.

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Besides Hanna, I and Gabriela, Gerd, a Norwegian colleague of Gabriela was present during the interview. Gerd had given Gabriela a lift to the interview venue and was then invited to be present during the interview by Gabriela and us. Since her presence was circumstantial, she is not treated as an informant in this study. Bunad is the Norwegian term for folk costumes. These folk costumes were mainly designed during the 19th and 20th century based on traditional costumes. Bunad design differs from region to region. Bunad are popular among men and women in Norway and they are often worn on special occasions such as the 17th of May, Christmas, weddings, and birthdays, but can also serve as formal dress. Bunad are expensive and on average cost several thousand Norwegian Kroner. “Redirecting statements then can be of […] two forms […]: juxtapositions and associations that are tangential, or skewed. To the original direction of discussion; and contrasts or counterassertations that drastically challenge the original terms of the discourse.” A third type of redirecting statement is avoidance. Burbules, Dialogue in Teaching, 92.

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“Some of them were very beautifully embroidered, with flowers and other motifs, so I think it is quite a lot of work to make a bunad. And also when it is handmade. I believe they are very expensive.” Hanna accepted her perspective and answered her question. The subsequent utterances can be identified as building statements that add up to an inquiry about the bunad within a contemporary local context. Hanna: “Around 2000. Like a cheap car.” Insa: “But at the same time many people own one.” Gabriela: “It takes many hours to make one.” Gerd: “Then you have a festive dress for all occasions.” Insa: “That is true.” Gabriela: “And it is very beautiful. 17th of May, that was really interesting for my mother: What is it? - It is local, it is a bunad. Okay. That is super nice.” Gerd: “You have a specific dress for Hitra.” Gabriela: “?” Gerd: “There is a dress, a folk costume for Hitra. The Hitradress. Many who have moved away use it.” Gabriela: “Is that sort of a special thing?” Gerd: “A particular folk costume, exclusively for Hitra. Green skirt and orange vest.” Hanna: “There you found a hobby: sew your own coastal dress.” Gerd: “No, that [refers to coastal dress, author’s remark] is something different.” Hanna: “Yes, right, coastal dress.” Gerd: “Everybody can use that one.”26 From the perspective of an outsider, Hanna’s and Gerd’s exchange about bunad, ‘Hitra dress’ and ‘Coastal dress’ is confusing and difficult to understand without a certain cultural background knowledge. I introduced what I had learned elsewhere 26

Gabriela: “Og for min mamma, det var veldig fascinerende på 17. mai at dem brukte bunad, det var kjempeflott. Flere forskjellige typer av den bunaden.” Hanna: “Og det er jo også historie, det der. Hører sammen med […]” Gabriela: “Noen av dem var veldig flinke til å sy, som er på, blomster og andre, så jeg tror at det er mye jobb å lage en bunad. Og det er også hvis det er håndlaget. Jeg tror at dem er så dyrt.” Hanna: “20000, circa det. Som en billig bil.” Insa: “Men samtidig så er det jo veldig mange som har det.” Gabriela: “Det er mange timer å lage det.” Gerd: “Da har du et festplagg til alle anledninger.” Insa: “Det er sant.” Gabriela: “Og det er veldig pent. 17. Mai, det var veldig interessant for min mamma. Hva er det? Det er lokalt, det er en bunad. Okay, det er kjempefint.” Gerd: “Du har en egen drakt for Hitra.” Gabriela: “Hæ?” Gerd: “Det finnes en egen drakt, en bunad for Hitra. Hitradrakten. Mange som er utflyttet bruker den.” Gabriela: “Er det en sånn spesiell ting?” Gerd: “Egen bunad for bare Hitra. Grønt skjørt og orange vest.” Hanna: “Da har du en hobby, sy deg kystdrakt.” Gerd: “Nei det er jo noe annet” Hanna: “Ja, sant, kystdrakt” Gerd: “Den kan alle bruke.”

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about the connection between bunads and local identity and the rules linked to the use of bunad in Norwegian culture. This question started an exchange about the position of bunad in contemporary Norwegian culture and Hanna and Gerd fell back into dialogue as conversation and shared their personal opinions about bunads: Insa: “Because, it is very important that you are only allowed to wear the bunad of the place you’re from? Isn’t that the case, originally? But then I have heard that people in the big cities choose those they find prettiest and then they try to find a link, some great-great-grandmother who originated from that place or something like that.” Gerd, Hanna: “But that is watered down today.” Insa: “But still, I could not wear a Stavangerbunad.”27 Gerd: “No, that would not be the same.” Gabriela rejoined the dialogue with an open question: “But do bunads go from one generation to the next? Do they have their bunads from their grandmothers?”28 With her question, she again changed the dialogue from a conversational form into dialogue as inquiry. Simultaneously, we changed roles and now, Gabriela asked questions that we answered. Her question made visible a lack of background knowledge that was not anticipated by interviewers beforehand. This showed that we did not share the same heritage and historical knowledge. She also used the dialogic interview as an opportunity to ask questions that could help her make sense of her own observations. Gerd: “That you inherit a bunad, that you can do.” Gabriela: “Then it would be interesting to have a bunad that is three hundred years old.”29 In this utterance, a new misunderstanding came to the fore. Hanna addressed the fact that three-hundred-year-old bunads do not exist. Her explanation was that

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Stavanger is a city in South Norway. Insa: “For det er jo veldig viktig at du bare har lov til å bruke bunaden som hører til det stedet du kommer ifra? Er det ikke det i utgangspunktet? Men så har jeg hørt at folk som bor i de store byene som velger den som dem synes er penest og så prøver de å finne noe lenke, en tipptippopldemor som kommer fra det stedet eller noe sånt.” Gerd and Hanna: “Det er nok vannet ut idag.” Insa: “Men jeg kan jo ikke begynne å gå med en Stavangerbunad.” Gerd: “Nei, det blir jo iallfall ikke det samme. Jeg har ikke bruk for den, jeg.” […] Gabriela: “Men er det bunad fra en generasjon til neste? Har dem bunad fra bestemor?” Gerd and Hanna: “At du arver bunad, det kan du gjør.” Gabriela: “Da er det interessant å ha en bunad som er trehundre år gammel.”

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such old garments would be difficult to store since they are easily destroyed. I interjected with a second explanation for why there are no three-hundred-year-old bunads. Insa: “But then, there were no bunads three hundred years ago. That is a little peculiar, because they are a rather new invention. Right? They have been made since the end of the 19th century?”30 Hanna followed this line of argument and added to my explanation that this was the time Norway was a part of Denmark. Gabriela answered that she knew this, possibly to build commonality showing that this was knowledge the four of us shared. In the following, the dialogic interview transformed into a more instructive form with a mini-monologue from Hanna, who in this instance stepped into the role of an expert historian and explained the context of the development of the bunad tradition. Hanna: “In 1905, we became independent. As late as 1905. And at the end of the 19th century there was something we call the ‘Norwegianness movement’, when sort of everything that is Norwegian came into existence.” Gabriela: “But yes, I understand, it doesn’t make much of a difference whether you are under Denmark or any other country, but tradition remains tradition. It was the same thing in Poland. Poland was gone for more than 100 years, but the traditions were inside the people, for instance, that tradition did not disappear.”31 Gabriela engaged with the explanation, and to show her empathy with Norwegian history, she drew a parallel to Polish history. The utterance is a building statement as it highlights agreement and a shared frame of reference. Gerd then asked whether maybe these kinds of things were especially important and Hanna agreed. Hanna: “That is exactly it, because Norway did not have much of a history.”32 Nevertheless, Gabriela and Hanna’s interpretations of Norwegian history did not correspond. Gabriela believed in an essentialist notion of nationalism and explained that nationality is a feeling in people’s hearts; Hanna on the other hand

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Insa: “Og så har det jo ikke vært bunad for trehundre år siden. Det er litt rart fordi de er en ganske ny oppfinnelse. Ikke sant, de er laget fra midten og slutten av 1800-tallet?” Hanna: “Da Norge var underlagt Danmark og så Sverige.” Gabriela: “Jeg vet.” Hanna: “Så, i 1905, så ble vi selvstendig. Først i 1905. Og på slutten av 1800-tallet så var det noe som vi kaller for norskhetsbevegelse, der alt som var norsk ble liksom.” Gabriela: “Men ja, men jeg forstår det at det er ikke stor forskjell at hvis du er under Danmark eller under andre land, men tradisjon er tradisjon. Det var det samme i Polen. Det var Polen var bort for over 100 år, men tradisjonen den var i folk, f.eks. den tradisjonen ble ikke bort.” Hanna: “Det er nettopp det, fordi Norge hadde ikke så veldig stor historie.”

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took the view that nationalism in Norway is a construction and part of a political and cultural nation-building endeavour. Gabriela: “So, it’s not them who are on top, it is the people who make history, nationality – that is in the heart.” Hanna: “Yes, but the point, or the problem for Norway was, we did not have any long traditions, we had very little preserved culture, but…” Gabriela made an attempt to understand what Hanna was speaking about. Gabriela: “But this culture, you think it is Scandinavian, not especially Norway.”33 Gabriela sought to make sense of Hanna’s explanation, and drew on the idea of a Scandinavian culture, given that Norwegians at a time considered themselves Scandinavians first and Norwegians only second.34 Hanna: “But we were under Scandinavia, for Norway it was important to detach from everything Danish, Swedish that which is Norwegian.”35 Hanna started a new mini lecture in which she explained Norwegian national romanticism and the developments of the 19th century. After this digression, Gabriela again returned to the initial topic, current life in Frøya and Hitra, and spoke of her daughter who no longer likes Polish food, which Gabriela read as a sign that her daughter is becoming increasingly Norwegian. A similar instructive type of dialogue unfolded during an interview with the Eastern European couple Alexander and Iulia. They uttered the impression that not much could have happened in Hitra’s past. Hanna used this shared impression to highlight the changes Hitra had undergone over the course of the last 100 years. She chose a very personal account, sharing her own childhood memories: “It is true. Hitra seems like a stable and traditional community, but there have been such big changes since the 1920s and 30s. Until the 1950s and then today. Because Hitra used to be very very poor. There was nothing going on. It was just, whatever was going on, catching with your boat, fish, was what you ate. You had a cow to give you some milk, and some hens for eggs. And that's it. Even in my childhood, we had fish five days a week and then we had meat on Sundays if the

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Gabriela: “Så ikke den som er opp, det er bare folk som gjør historie, nasjonalitet – det er i hjertet.” Hanna: “Jo, men poenget, eller problemet for Norge var, at vi hadde ikke noen store lange tradisjoner, vi hadde ikke så veldig mye bevart kultur, men ...” Gabriela: “Men denne kultur, dere tenker bare det er Skandinavia, det er ikke spesielt Norge.” On the interrelations between Scandinavian culture and national history in the Scandinavian countries see Aronsson, “Representing Community”, 198. Hanna: “Men vi var under Skandinavia, for Norge var det viktig å skille bort dansk, svensk, hva som er norsk.”

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pig wasn't finished. We had sometimes in the autumn, we had to eat only fish because there was no more pig left. So, for the first years after I left Hitra, I did not eat fish. I was so fed up with fish.” Alexander and Iulia were astonished by how much Hitra’s past reminded them of their own home country: Alexander: “It was 50 years ago you still had pigs around the house?” Hanna: “We had a barn where the pig lived in.” Iulia: “But there were not many pigs?” Hanna: “No, we had two pigs. And then my mother had hens, so she collected eggs and sold some of the eggs to the neighbours.” Alexander: “That sounds very traditional for Romania.” Hanna’s personal account offered Alexander and Iulia knowledge that allowed them to build a bridge between Hitra’s local history and their home country. Even though they still did not have first-hand memories about the local past, they got a far better and more familiar picture of what life used to look like on Hitra. Hanna further confirmed this as she had the same experience the other way around: when visiting Romania, she was reminded of her own childhood in Hitra. “So, when I went to Romania and we went to the villages and I met this old woman, having the hens and she had one cow and a calf and a pig. And it was just like my grandmother’s house. So, it got very emotional, because it was like being back.” Animated by Hanna’s account, Alexander asked about the reasons for the fundamental historical changes of the last 50 to 60 years. Hanna, again from an historian’s position, offered a broader perspective on the changes. Alexander: “So, this change was because of oil or also because the fish started to come?” Hanna: “No, actually, it was more of a general change in the Norwegian society. You had a general development of the poorest who were sort of starting to rise. The way my family lived, it did not last because slowly, you got pensions for the elderly and the salary they were on a general level from the late 1960s to the 70s they were being raised much of the oil, but it was more the hope and the possibilities in oil business because the oil did not start to pay off until the 1980s, really. But I think that the Norwegian government did, even though they found oil, decided that they should not spend all in one go, but that it should go into the pension fund which is now making us one of the richest countries in the world. So, we have money for the future in the fund. You know that oil fund?”

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Hanna ended her statement with a question about whether Alexander and Iulia were familiar with the ‘oil fund’. This can be read as an invitation to them to take a speaking role again to contribute to the process of negotiating the meanings of the local past. Alexander and Iulia confirmed that they were conscious of the oil fund, thus confirming we were all speaking from shared ground as we continued to discuss Hitra’s present and future. Alexander: “Of course, we know that. Because when I look around in the world and I see these changes that happen. Sometimes I am afraid.” Iulia: “You think you get pension from that one?” Alexander: “Because this form of invest money and the world and some countries start to be …” Hanna: “Disintegrating –” Alexander: “Yes, economic problems, political. And you never know what is going to happen with Russia. Sometimes I think the invest money to develop some new technology. The world after 50 years of peace, starts, Europe, I think. I am afraid of that.” Insa: “And then, maybe Hitra is not a bad place to be.” Alexander: “Yes, I think, maybe I must take all my family from Romania here. Still, it is near to Russia. I hope there will not be any war or something.” Hanna: “But you are very close.” Alexander: “Yes, we are, and we have been under this influence for so many years, so we still are in my opinion. Because it is not that easy to take away from the Russians.” Here, the ‘dialogic interview’ came to an end. After a pause, we started talking about the cake on the table, then about the exhibitions in the Coastal Museum before turning off the recorder. After the recorder was turned off, Alexander and Iulia again turned to Hanna and asked her about memories from her childhood. Dialogic interviews not only allow informants to ask questions in order to get to know the person they are talking to (see above), informants are also given the opportunity to introduce questions that start dialogue as inquiry. In dialogue as inquiry, the idea is that new insights about outside topics are gained with the help of shared interpretative power and cultural exchange. During the dialogic interviews examined here, inquiry was often initiated through very open, rather abstract questions. An example of this is the question: “What do you predict for the future of Hitra?” Questions like this can initiate collaborative reflection processes; at the same time, there is a certain element of dialogue as instruction, as the very idea of thinking about the topics in the first place is prompted by the interviewer. However, as long as these are open questions, and both possible answers and the decision when to abandon the topics are made collectively, the instructive element can be considered very weak. On the other hand, dialogue as inquiry can be initi-

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ated through input from informants. Representatives from the museum are then put in the position of having to answer a question they were not prepared for. The form dialogue as instruction takes is arguably the one least associated with open active research interviews, which have a rather explorative character. In terms of learning, what is expected from interviews is that the interviewer will learn more about the inner life of his or her informants or gain deeper knowledge of a phenomenon mediated through the informant’s perspective. While theories of dialogue unison agree that learning inevitably takes place in all dialogic encounters and on both sides, interviews are seldom regarded as places for purposive instruction, neither of the informant nor of the interviewer. Nevertheless, examples of instructive forms of dialogue were found in the data. Organizing the dialogue around local history and personal experiences of the past and present and ideas concerning the future inevitably invited interviewees to think in line with processes of historical consciousness. Instruction with the aim to nudge and initiate processes of historical thinking was supported by a number of strategies. One way of initiating historical thinking processes is by asking individuals about experiences and personal memories. Regarding experiences and memories from a contemporary point of view is a good way of motivating individuals to update their thoughts about their personal past and about (local) history. As one informant said: “I guess I will come up with more stories as we go along.”36 In the below example, the talk started with a personal memory of Georg and developed into discussing the broader development of the island. Insa: “What do you know for example of Hitra's history?” Georg: “Nothing. I had a nice boat, I was by boat with him, a small boat, an inflatable one, close to the coast. And suddenly I saw the fog, somewhere far, and I imagined the navigators, how difficult are all these waters in Hitra and also the whole Norwegian coast, I suppose. How very difficult it is to navigate with this terrible weather changing all the time with no hint in a couple of minutes. That was the only time when I thought about the history of Hitra.” Insa: “What it was like before? Fishermen, small farms, big changes happening. Do you think this has any relevance for your life here?” Martin: “You mean, how it is changing?” Insa: “Yes, or how the society has developed.” Martin: “The reason that it is developing and evolving, the society at Hitra, is the foreign workers and that they are coming. If there were only Norwegians, they would not be able to produce as much fish as they are producing currently. So, it is evolving, growing through us in a way. So, I think that is a good thing for us, because I believe, I hope, we are being appreciated for that, because the

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“Men det er jo sikkert sånn at jeg kommer på mye etterpå sånn.” (Kari)

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Norwegian State and Hitra also are taking a lot of money from us. A lot.” Georg: “A lot.” Dialogue in the form of instruction opens up the possibility of short monologues on side of the interviewer and the informant. In the material at hand, museum staff used monologues – almost short lectures – to communicate historical facts and contexts. In most cases, these interjections reacted to identified misunderstandings or a lack of information, but also responded to informants’ own questions. Local history was thus approached from an individual starting point. To engage with individual perspectives entails the interviewer giving away the power of decision on the topics of the conversation. An example from the interview with Alexander and Iulia illustrates a number of the points made above. Alexander: “You just asked what is ‘history’ for us? It is the same as if you buy something and you have a prospectus. This is history for me. So I came to Hitra, of course, we have internet now, so we read about Hitra, looked at maps, were very impressed about the Titran catastrophe, I read about that two times, because, when I came and I saw the sea around…, when you have never lived so close to the sea, of course, that is a shock when you read about Titran. And history, it is like a prospectus about everything. Everything has a history, this book also has a history. If you compare it with my home country, I think Norway is a little bit poor in history. But maybe just because I know much about my home country. Possible. This Hitra, for example, looks like a little bit isolated place cannot have so much history, it cannot have happened so much here. When you try to find, but I think history is everything you can see around. It is boats, houses. We have this Margaretes Minde.37 Yes, that is kind of history. Also there are some other. We go sometimes to a “hytte” [cabin, open to the public, author’s remark] near Fillan, we go during the weekend sometimes.” Iulia: “But that is not old, that is pretty new.” Alexander: “Yes, but it is special. You know what I am thinking about? Blåskoghytte.” Iulia: “There is a hytte five kilometres away from Fillan.” Alexander: “You walk outside.” Iulia: “Yes, and there is a lake.” Hanna: “Blåskogvatnet.” Alexander: “In autumn there is nobody there, you just stay and make some food for instance.”

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Margaretes Minde was a 18th century hunting and holiday residence and is today a hiking area and a tourist cabin where they serve coffee and waffles on Sundays.

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Iulia: “That is a very interesting type of tourism which you cannot find in Romania.” Hanna: “But that is interesting, because that is part of history. About how people used the land, before. They were very poor – people on Hitra. They did not have much. There was not much good farmland. So they had to put their cattle in the wood or in the outmark [Hanna is referring to outfield lands, my remark] side the farms and my family had a place towards that ‘hytte’. Where they cut turf, the turfs that you burn, dried bog, you put it in the oven and you use it for heating, in the old days. Each family had a part of that common area to use for grazing cattle and for harvesting the turf. So, there is sort of history along that path.” Insa: “But you have to know to see that.” Hanna: “Yes, you have to know because nobody tells you.” Alexander and Iulia mentioned a cabin they used as a destination for hiking trips and they disagreed with regards to the place’s age. While Iulia was certain that the cabin was not old, Alexander looked at it as something specific to the island, mainly because it presented a form of leisure activity uncommon in Romania. Hanna used Blåskoghytta to explain the past way of life on Hitra, and that the path to the cabin is in a way filled with history. As talk continued, Alexander explained that he found history interesting and that he had searched the internet but with little success. Alexander: “For me it is interesting, we searched the internet, what I could find in English, not so much.” Hanna: “And there is something you said earlier, you said the people in Hitra just do not offer to make you part of the traditions. They do not want to tell you about traditions and history?” Alexander: “Sometimes I wonder if they really know so much. Before, when I was, in the beginning, the first and second year, I was very interested and just asked and asked. But after that, I did not ask too much because there were not so many answers. They did not have time to explain to me.” The interview in this case was a rare opportunity to learn something about the history of Hitra. Several informants said explicitly that they were not interested in (local) history and that local history did not play any role in their everyday lives. Regardless of these utterances, during the interviews, they showed interest in historical events and facts as soon as they touched upon areas of their daily life. They were, for example, interested in work-related historical developments, such as how fish-processing facilities had changed into what constituted their working places today. Instruction goes both ways. As dialogue is mutual, it is important to emphasize that learning takes place on the side of informants. Through establishing links

6 Documentation of labour immigrant’s experiences and views of the local past and present

between experiences and observations of local history, dialogic interviews support the development of a historical consciousness adequate to immigrants’ new living context. The interviewer (representative of the museum) on the other hand is instructed about topics he or she not only did not consider relevant, but also was simply unaware of. The above example of similarities between past life in Hitra and life in Romanian rural areas is just one example. In sum, the interviews offered insight into the different strategies informants – that is, people from a background other than Hitra or Frøya – employ to make sense of Norwegian and local cultural heritage and history and the present-day living context. For the museum, knowledge about these meaning-making processes that relate to the museum’s subject matter is the most significant benefit of conducting documentation interviews with an emphasis on two-way communication.

6.2.3.

Interview dialogue as debate

One example that illustrates some characteristics of dialogue as debate stems from the interview with the same Romanian couple (Alexander and Iulia). Asked whether they had observed changes on Hitra during the last couple of years, they answered that maybe attitudes towards immigrants had changed. They referred to a newspaper article in the local newspaper with the front-page headline “Four times as high unemployment”38 . Taking this newspaper article as a starting point, they used the interview as an opportunity to express concerns and frustration that they elsewhere would have hesitated to voice. What became clear in their utterances was that they did not feel treated equally to Norwegians on Hitra. Talking to representatives from the museum in this example illustrates that the museum can play a role as a ‘safe place for unsafe ideas’39 or unpopular thoughts. Alexander: “During the last 5 years, maybe. Now I think, there is more talk about immigrants. That was not the same five years ago. Not in the media. A lot of talk about immigrants. For example, a few days ago...” Iulia: “A few weeks ago...” Alexander: “So long? Anyway.” Iulia: “There was a headline in the Hitra-Frøya newspaper, that was that the number of immigrants who take help from NAV [Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration] is five time higher than the Norwegians. I found this a discriminatory headline. I mean, if I say, I am one immigrant, then if I meet some Norwegians who do not have any idea about me, they will just think that I am living on 38 39

“Fire ganger så stor ledighet,” in Hitra-Frøya, 29 May 2015. Fiona Cameron, “Safe Places for Unsafe Ideas? History and Science Museums, Hot Topics and Moral Predicaments,” Social History in Museums. Journal of the Social History Curators Group 32 (2008).

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NAV here, because of this article. It is a little bit unfair.” Hanna: “It is very unfair. But do you know the people in your group, people you know, are there many people working or not working?” Alexander: “Here on Hitra? You mean the immigrants? We are about 20 Romanians. All of us are working.” Hanna: “So, who is not working?” Alexander: “Maybe, there is, you know in fish industry, it is seasonal. And of course after one year they have worked here, they go to NAV. Not everybody wants to go back to their home country. So, they stay to learn the language. But it is unfair. That is not the newspaper problem. It is the NAV problem, this kind of information cannot, does not need to be published.” Iulia: “Maybe not put it like this.” Alexander: “It does not have anything to do with immigrants and NAV, you take benefits because you worked before, not because you are an immigrant or an Norwegian. That does not have anything to do with being an immigrant or not.” Hanna: “But you know, journalists can interpret statistics in any way. Another day, another journalist, would find another totally different view on this.” Iulia: “This kind of headline does not help anybody.” Insa: “Did it initiate discussions? Did you speak to other Romanians about this title? Sometimes there are discussions on the internet.” Alexander: “I just thought about writing an article about it.” Hanna: “Why not?” Even though Alexander felt so agitated that he wanted to express how unfair the article seemed to him, he chose not to address the issue publicly. His reason was that he would have to stand out as an individual and his wife added that nobody would be interested in their perspective anyway: Alexander: “Because I would have to sign it.” Iulia: “And nobody would be interested.” Despite being a representative of the museum, Hanna took a political position, integrating the article into a broader contemporary political discussion. In doing so, she became very visible as a person with an opinion. Iulia then initiated dialogue as inquiry as she started a process of investigating what the background for this article was. Iulia: “That has changed. Maybe it is normal. Maybe it is too many? Too many immigrants?” Hanna: “But who should do the work? There are not enough Norwegians.” Alexander: “When you talk about immigrants, it is mostly Eastern Europeans you think of, but immigrants are also from Asia, Africa. So maybe, if you put all them together, maybe, there are some people from Eritrea now in Fillan.”

6 Documentation of labour immigrant’s experiences and views of the local past and present

Hanna: “But there is a difference between an asylum seeker and a working migrant.” Alexander: “Maybe the journalist did make a mistake, maybe they also put in asylum seekers that do not normally have benefits.” Iulia inserted a statement that was very clear about her feeling of belonging, and at the same time her experience was of not being respected. This was a very personal statement that somehow interrupted the flow of dialogue as inquiry and as an exchange of arguments: Iulia: “But when I see this in Hitra-Frøya, it is our newspaper, we read it every day. It is unfair.” The example shows how fast interviews that are responsive to informants’ input can move in the direction of dialogue as debate. In the interviews we conducted for purposes of documentation, we could not invite people with different viewpoints to engage in debate, since this was not the primary aim of the interviews. Through a dialogic approach, however, we still had the possibility of initiating the process of testing and rethinking one’s own ideas. This can be done by giving space to utterances such as the one above and discussing informants’ statements through changing the mode into dialogue as conversation. This is especially valuable in cases where the interviewer does not have the possibility of drawing on contrasting utterances or input from earlier interviews nor possesses knowledge of the issue. Furthermore, dialogue as inquiry can be a way to address statements that are ‘debatable’, as such an approach can help to understand the other’s reasoning. In the example above, the local newspaper’s reasons for writing the way they did were considered from different perspectives to integrate debatable input in broader contexts. In a more general everyday use of the term, debate is considered the opposite of dialogue. While dialogue (as conversation or as inquiry) is based on the possibility of shared understandings and agreement on equal terms, debate implies unbridgeable differences. As a result, agreement is only possible if one of the debating persons convinces or manipulates the other to change their position. Regarding debate as just one of several forms dialogue can take belongs to a different paradigm. Burbules draws on Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of heteroglossia,40 in which ‘manifold voices’ constitute the dialogic condition. As these voices and their various combinations cannot be united into one, there is no possibility of unity other than as the result of a manipulation or mutilation of dialogue. Following Bakhtin, Burbules characterizes dialogue as debate as ‘critical-divergent’. This means that

40

Bakhtin, M., The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, edited by M. Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981).

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interview partners’ utterances are critically tested, not primarily with the aim of rejecting them as ‘objectively’ wrong, but to analyse their relevance to one’s own thinking. Very often, we are unaware of our own thoughts and ideas, and encountering others’ thoughts and opinions, arguments and explanations, can help us to reconsider and reflect personal convictions and matters we take for granted. Instead of engaging in dialogue with others’ arguments and positions, the most important implication for individual learning in a dialogue-as-debate encounter can be considered a debate with one’s own thinking.41 In the interview, if museum representatives choose to take the opposite position to the interviewee, this has to be done in a very cautious way so as not to counter trust building and openness. One possible way of facilitating dialogue as debate is by introducing earlier informants’ utterances and arguments.42 To confront informants with clichés can be an alternative opportunity to nudge dialogue as debate. While the utterance ‘everything used to be better before’ represents a normative verdict on the past made by one informant, the sentence can be introduced as a cliché in a subsequent interview. As this is a very broad general verdict, it requires differentiation before informants can take a position regarding another informant’s statement. Nevertheless, even if the museum does not facilitate direct dialogue as debate between members of the local community, indirectly it puts people that do not meet elsewhere in dialogue. The form of dialogue can develop into dialogue as debate because informants feel safe to speak out, to utter feelings and thoughts for which there is little space in everyday life elsewhere or that are in danger of provoking negative reactions.

6.3.

Dialogic interviews as a way to engage with individuals and local history during documentation processes

Interviews are artificial in character. They do not imitate ‘natural’ conversations. Their artificial character can be illustrated by reference to location. In most cases, we met in the museum’s back office area, a place usually accessible only to museum staff. Informants were thus invited into the heart of the institution and gained access to what is otherwise a ‘restricted area’. This circumstance alone made the encounter between informant and museum an event out of the ordinary. In addition, interviews are ‘situated practices’ and not repeatable. In the interviews, changing relations were observable in two ways: firstly, who asked the questions and who answered changed up to several times, and secondly,

41 42

On ‘dialogue as debate’, see Burbules, Dialogue in Teaching, 119/120. This is obviously done in a way that does make it impossible for the present interview partner to identify the origin of the input.

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speaking positions altered. Individuals spoke as professionals or as private persons; they spoke for themselves or they spoke on behalf of a group. Hanna, Berit Johanne, and I were museum employees, researchers, locals, representatives of different generations, mothers or foreigners, to name just a few of the roles we took during ‘dialogic interviews’. Data gained through interviews that are oriented towards dialogue differ significantly from data generated in more traditional interviews in the context of documentation. As the informants steer the conversation more actively than usual, the range of subjects and ways of discussing topics vary to a greater extent compared to interviews that are steered by the interviewer. For the museum, this means risk taking and uncertainty. The risk is not predictable, but the same goes for the potential outcomes. What still remains to be seen is which challenges data based on talk about divergent topics, highly individual narratives and opinions will entail for researchers and curators in the future. For the Norwegian contribution to the exhibition Endring - Change - Schimbări43 , MiST used data from interviews to produce short animation films with fictional episodes based on memories and stories informants shared with us. Dividing dialogic interviews into different forms of dialogue is only possible to a certain extent. As dialogic interviews are dynamic, they change character during the process. Nevertheless, through the chosen analytic approach, I was able to identify a number of specific characteristics and uncover mechanisms that enable a better understanding of the ongoing processes of meaning making and negotiations of history, identity and belonging. Focusing on the relational and dynamic character of interviews as a method in contemporary documentation responds to the idea of the museum as an institution within the sphere of communicative memory and an actor in the negotiations that form communicative memory. Interviews further resonate with the theory of historical consciousness as they support an understanding of history as “a set of fragments about the past”44 and interpretation as “tentative and open-ended”.45 A dialogic approach to interviews is one way of establishing bonds with individual community members and remaining relevant to the museum’s surrounding local community in the longer term. Focusing on the dialogic qualities of interviews further brings to the fore a core concern regarding the relation between contemporary collecting and documenta-

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Parts of the exhibition were shown at the Coastal Museum in February and March 2016 before they moved in June 2016 and were incorporated into a larger exhibition at Astra Museum in Sibiu, Romania. Witcomb, Re-Imagining the Museum. Behind the Mausoleum, 161. Ibid., 161. What Witcomb observes here as a foundation for the use of multimedia in exhibitions in the museum in Sydney is equally fundamental for dialogic interviews in contemporary documentation contexts.

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tion and museum ‘outreach activities’.46 According to Rhys, the question is whether the main driver is the process of engagement or the objectivity of the collecting.47 While Rhys argues that “it is important to differentiate between a collecting strategy which has the benefits of outreach and an outreach programme disguised as contemporary collecting”,48 my analysis of interviews shows that such a strict distinction into these two purposes does not correspond to the situation on Hitra. A single interview inspired by historical consciousness changes character from an outreach activity in which the museum attempts to engage individuals in the museum’s subject matter, to contemporary documentation, as questions and answers go both ways, topics are introduced or dismissed by all participants in the conversation, and the museum’s expertise is met with newcomers’ expertise. In dialogic interviews, those processes that have been described as constitutive for museums as institutions of communicative memory on a theoretical level thus unfold on an individual, micro level. Labour migrants are invisible in museums’ presentations of the past and recent past of the region today. They are, as interviews have revealed and national statistics support, underrepresented among those who visit museums. While contemporary documentation of migrants’ voices is a way to preserve their experiences, memories and views for future generations, a dialogic approach invites them into the current debate. As the museum is a place of public discussion, an invitation to participate in negotiations of local history is a first step in democratizing views of the past. The democratizing effect hence goes in two directions. Museums that allow representatives of all social groups to engage in history making democratize their practices. On the other hand, through reaching out to non-visitors, museum democratize their audiences and reach the community in all its diversity. In the analysis of dialogic interviews, I was able to identify how different types of dialogue made different forms of negotiation about the past and questions of belonging and identity possible. Through upholding central features of dialogue, interviews that previously had aimed to gather information and stories now allowed the museum to facilitate individuals’ engagement with local history in ways tailored to individuals and hence to regain relevance for members of community groups that earlier had demonstrated no interest and no tie whatsoever to local history or the local history museum. This has, as others have pointed out, the ef-

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47 48

The characteristic of museum outreach activities is that they are designed to engage groups that do not visit the museum. Often outreach activities involve the museum leaving its building and meeting people where they are. Rhys, Owain, Contemporary Collecting. Theory and Practice (Edinburgh, Boston: MuseumEtc, 2011), 114. Ibid.

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fect of treating “collecting as an on-going process of connectivity and discussion”49 that – besides collecting materials and objects – offers “opportunities for new or revitalized connectivity with communities and audiences.”50

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50

Douglas, Ollie, “Oi, Get Orf Moy Land: Near-Contemporary Collecting and the English Countryside,” in Collecting the Contemporary: A Handbook for Social History Museums, edited by Owain Rhys (Edinburgh, Boston: MuseumsEtc, 2014), 324. Rhys, Owain and Zelda Baveystock, “Introduction,” in Collecting the Contemporary. A Handbook for Social History Museums, edited by Owain Rhys and Zelda Baveystock (Edinburgh, Boston: MuseumEtc, 2014), 27.

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7. Concluding remarks: The local museum as facilitator of and partner in negotiations of local history, identity and belonging

7.1.

Rethinking the idea of the local history museum

Drawing on theory and empirical investigation of how members of rapidly changing diverse communities on Hitra and Frøya relate to the local past and local history, I propose reconceptualizing the local history museum as an institution embedded in ‘communicative’ and ‘functional memory’. At the same time, the museum needs to be recognized as an active agent in the processes that shape ‘communicative memory’. The emphasis of activities in the museum as an agent in ‘communicative memory’ moves from a preservationist preoccupation with collecting and exhibiting the past of a local community that has ceased to exist in its former form towards the recent past and the present. A local history museum that considers itself an institution within the sphere of ‘communicative memory’ finds its place in the nexus of history and memory and is highly responsive to present-day communal living. From this general understanding of the museum as an institution of ‘communicative memory’, I draw a list of implications for what such a local museum could look like. In terms of content, it would strengthen its engagement with the recent past and contemporary culture. While the recent local past is accessible through individual memories, a focus on contemporary culture does not exclude a historic perspective either. On the contrary, present and recent past can serve as a starting point from which to interrogate the past and initiate processes of historical consciousness. Most important, however, is the awareness that the museum as an agent in ‘communicative’ and ‘functional’ memory actively engages in ongoing ‘history making’. This happens through programming and exhibitions, but even more obviously through the museum tasks of collecting and documenting the recent past and contemporary culture. Through all its activities, the museum contributes to the negotiation and shaping of a local community’s ‘communicative memory’ in the present time. Simultaneously the museum’s collecting and documentation activities lay ground for future understandings of the past.

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A focus on ‘communicative memory’ in the local museum’s work seeks at facilitating equal access to negotiations of history to all current members of a given community. This means that newcomers are also considered relevant contributors to processes of interpreting the local past. With a shift towards the present day and an acknowledgement that history is rooted in today’s perspectives on the past, the museum invites this group to share their experience of living in the local community today and in the recent past. From their present-day position, newcomers are capable of making decisions about which past events and developments impact on their present-day lives and hence present relevant parts of local history. In museums grounded in ‘communicative memory’, newcomers – in line with longtime residents – are given the authority to participate in conversations from which more traditional ideas of local history museums would exclude them. Whilst more people are invited to speak, be it that their experiences, interpretations and ideas are documented in the museum archives or taken as vantage points for exhibition production, the museum does not need to fall silent itself. Quite the opposite: I find it important to underline that the authority of the museum and its representatives is remodelled, but not eliminated. Museums remain trusted carriers of knowledge based on their expertise on collections, historical records and historical research. Focus on ‘communicative memory’ as small local history museums’ field of activity does not exempt the museum from due diligence, but recasts it as a central actor within what Meijer-van Mensch called a ‘constituent community’. Constituent communities assemble stakeholders in the creation and maintenance of heritage, local history and communicative memory. While the museum remains a central stakeholder, potentially all local residents in Hitra and Frøya belong to this group and could participate in the conversation. At the same time, this does not mean that all members of the community would join such a constituent community. As my analysis of different ways of relating to the past has shown, some people are ‘detached’ from local history and presumably draw on other sources for orientation and identity. A focus on the recent past and contemporary culture, equal access to contributing and participating in negotiations about interpretations of local history for all members of the community, and increased awareness on the museum’s part that all its activities are highly imbued with active interpretation, recasts the museum as a place of ongoing open negotiations about history. The link to the theory of historical consciousness is evident. One of the key aspects of historical consciousness is its dynamic character. How people regard the past changes according to contemporary circumstances, personal experiences, and expectations of the future. For museums, acknowledging this implies that they have to develop their identities as changeable, dynamic institutions, reacting and responsive to events occurring in their surroundings and aware of

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how context influences the picture of the past they hold. This reconceptualizing has implications for the museum’s potential functions.

7.2.

Rethinking functions of the local history museum – starting with the local community

For the Norwegian context, through a close reading of museum policy documents of the last 40 years, I demonstrated a growing political interest in defining the roles museums are supposed to fulfil in society. The term ‘dialogue institution’ is ubiquitous and influential in discussions of the museums’ social role. In my analysis, I was able to trace changing priorities in the meaning of ‘dialogue’ in museum contexts and, consequently, what the role of a museum as ‘dialogue institution’ was considered to be. In its earlier manifestations, the museum as ‘dialogue institution’ was described as a museum that reacts to current societal developments. On this point, the policy documents’ idea of the ‘dialogue institution’ corresponds to a certain extent with the museum in the sphere of ‘communicative memory’. However, in policy documents, the museum always retains its function as a public educator. In more recent incarnations, democratization and acknowledgement of cultural diversity are key to how Norwegian cultural politics look at museums. However, it remains unclear how these ideas might be transported into realworld museum practice. My analyses of responses from Norwegian museum professionals addressing the question of the museum’s social role further support this finding. Museum politics, and with them the idea of the museum as ‘dialogue institution’, hence offer little help for developing a new understanding of the functions of local history museums in dynamic communities like the ones encountered in Hitra and Frøya. Still less do they allow conclusions on practical museum development to be drawn. However, this does not necessarily affect museums negatively. Even though politics assign specific roles to museums, they leave it up to museums to develop professional ideas on how to perform these roles in a way adapted to the local context. It is hence up to each museum to decide whether and how to face the current challenges. This freedom in itself poses a significant challenge, as it leaves the decision on how to fill this freedom with action to museum professionals. There are many ways that a museum could engage in negotiations about local history, I propose one possible course of action. My research suggests that for the museum to be able to turn into a ‘partner in conversation’, it needs to prepare. Trusting in the ‘attraction’ or ‘holding power’1 of its subject matter is not enough. The fact that none of the informants I interviewed had visited the museum in Fillan or the exhibitions in either Sandstad or Sistranda is indicative of this. To act as a 1

Hein, George E., Learning in the museum (London: Routledge, 1998), 106.

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facilitator and partner in conversations about the past, the local museum needs more knowledge about its surrounding community and the community’s relation to the museum’s topic, namely the local past and history. My studies of this relation have been inspired by the theory of historical consciousness and oral history methodology. My analysis of interviews with residents of Hitra and Frøya revealed that most newcomers to the islands did not consider local history that reaches back in time beyond their arrival at the islands relevant at all. For them, learning from local history was not an issue, while at the same time, a large majority of long-time residents emphasized the importance of learning about local history especially for newcomers, as this would help them to adapt better to their new place of living – a reasoning none of the newcomers brought up. For long-time residents, educating newcomers about the past was one of the museum’s tasks and functions and corresponded to what they thought the museum should show in its exhibitions. Long-time residents referred to the local past as ‘the old days’, a notion that allowed them to integrate personal memory and experience with family or generational memory and the commonly shared history that is also represented in the Coastal Museum’s permanent exhibition The people of Flatvika. This tool for familiarizing oneself with the local past is not accessible to those who have just moved to the area. A consequence of these observations is that local history museums that act on and with ‘communicative memory’ would have to engage with both the ‘old days’ type of history and the recent history experienced and deemed relevant by newcomers. Of further consequence for local museums is the finding that differing strategies for making sense of the past and present result in different historical accounts, which in turn ascribe different roles to different actors. In the case of Hitra and Frøya who is considered a beneficiary of others’ work and who is regarded as the creator of wealth on the islands has consequences for what the roles of each group in the local community are seen to be. These different narratives of the past are important reminders that all individuals who engage with local history have interests and individual motivations to do so. Interview analysis revealed the strategies a person from outside Hitra or Frøya applies in order to make sense of local (and Norwegian) history and cultural heritage. From before, the museum had little information about these meaning making processes. Museums – and this applies to local history museums as well as to other types of museums – are well advised to acknowledge different interpretations of (local) history. Museum studies literature often discusses the relations between minorities and majority history, and more specifically the ways in which museums represent minority history in exhibitions in terms of exclusion, marginalization or, in the best case, as a history of omissions. This view does not recognize that newcomers and minority groups hold views on majority culture and history as well. My study

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of historical consciousness on the islands shows that, if they engage with history at all, those who start to establish a relation to local history can do so in the shape of alternative narratives, or, as seen in the case of some of the newcomers to Hitra and Frøya, even as counter-narratives to dominant versions of the past. It is in addressing individuals that belong to the type of historical consciousness characterized by ‘beginnings’ that I see the most potential for museums of local history to rebuild and strengthen links to their surrounding communities. One element of this ideal type is a process of connecting to history through personal memories of recent events. Representatives who show a correspondence with this type gain increased access to cultural memory as a form of memory that contributes to the establishment of a shared group identity that exceeds individual lifetimes. In the ideal-typical construction of an identity story, Hitra or Frøya are involved, but only as one of several places that play a role in negotiations about identity. When it came to local history museums in particular, my analysis revealed that especially long-time residents struggled to formulate new ideas about local history museums, which can be explained by the long-lasting effect of the folk museum paradigm. Their answers further suggested that for this group, visiting a museum was an event out of the ordinary, something they would do on vacation in another city or country, not a place they would visit during an ordinary week. Hence their local history museum was not something they associated with their everyday lives or something that had an impact on their views of the world. Newcomers, on the other hand, proposed inviting the big wide world into the local museum to represent and to show the diversity of the community and the world in general. While informants with a high correspondence with type 1: continuity based their identity on integration with local history, those with a high resemblance to type 3: detachment considered themselves cosmopolitans. Representatives of type 2: beginnings were those who united these two outer positions. They started to draw on local history for their identity construction, but were continuously aware that their living on Hitra or Frøya today was not a consequence of mythical roots going a long way back in time, but the result of recent historical and political developments such as working opportunities and EEA enlargement. Overall, my analysis revealed that different ideas of history in general and different individual relations to local history in particular shape local community members’ perception of the local museum and their ideas about what such a museum could be. There is a significant difference between how my informants see museums and how museums are discussed in the field of museum research. Interviews conducted outside the museum prior to establishing contact with a museum hence add important correctives to the local museum as viewed through the lenses of national museum politics and museum or cultural studies theory. As such, they are an important reminder that museum development based exclusively on political guidelines and academic or professional discussion risks losing relevance for

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and legitimacy among the surrounding population. Being considerate of surrounding communities’ views on the subject matter of a given museum is a fundamental first step in the process of establishing a ‘new museum ethics’ that seeks to work with and not only “in the service of society”.2 And it is indispensable if the museum is to develop locally adapted museum practice. Janet Marstine’s emphasis on “the contingent nature of new museum ethics” supports my argument: “To reconceptualise museum ethics as a contingent discourse is to emphasize its dependence – the way it touches upon social, political, technological and economic factors and to acknowledge its changeability. The contingent nature of contemporary museum ethics suggests that it is deeply engaged with the world around it and that it is adaptive and improvisational.”3 The diverse relations to local history, partly contradictory interpretations of the past and divergent ideas of local museums among the members of the local community are at first glance difficult to reconcile. Nevertheless, against the background of ‘communicative memory’, I was able to identify a number of implications for local history museums seeking to re-establish or strengthen their links to the local community. Local history museums that focus on the recent past and the present, that facilitate individual access to local history, that establish a communication shaped by reciprocity and flexibility, are, as my research suggests, best equipped to meet the challenges of rapidly changing demographics and the loss of relevance of traditional local history narratives.

7.3.

Practices – dialogic documentation interviews

It is the small encounters between individuals and history or individuals and (representatives of) the local museum that make a local museum relevant to its local community. In chapter 6 I studied how interviews conducted for the purpose of contemporary documentation operationalize all the major implications derived from the theoretical discussion and the empirical study in previous chapters. In these interviews, I found that museum representatives not only documented individuals’ versions of the past and their experiences. In addition, and equally importantly, interviewees and interviewers engaged in two-way communication about the local past, history, present time and topics that local community members considered important in this context. In the documentation project Change on which this part is based, migrants were chosen because their voices had not been documented hitherto. Interviews allow 2 3

ICOM’s definition of ‘museum’. Marstine, “The Contingent Nature of New Museum Ethics,” 8.

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for individual adaptability and flexibility, which makes them efficient carriers of individual negotiations of history equally suitable for residents whose relations to local history are well established and for those who just have started to participate in the community, and even for those who are ‘detached’ from local history. The five interviews conducted during the documentation project were introduced as an experiment and as one way (of many possible ways) of transforming the idea of the museum as a space and agent in ‘communicative memory’ into museum practice applicable in museums with limited resources and staff in a fast-changing communities. One question that remains is how to measure the value of such a museum practice.4 There is scarcely a greater contrast to accountability in terms of visitor numbers or economic valuation than museum representatives spending valuable work hours engaged in interviewing ‘ordinary’ people. A central argument is that a new appreciation of the individual encounter between museums and members of the local communities is necessary to (re-) establish and strengthen the links between communities and museums. This finding supports demands for the development of new methods to research and evaluate individual museum experiences as formulated by researchers within the field of museum learning.5 Furthermore, for Crooke current thought on ‘new museum ethics’ clearly asks museums to “think more deeply about the museum’s obligations to people and the potential to make an impact on their lives, whether or not they visit the museum.”6 The study at hand offers one way of approaching this question and adds to the new museum ethics framework that builds on the conviction “that transparency and self-reflexivity towards the process and authority that museums hold, helps them to build trust with communities.”7 While I have focused on growing complexities in the relations between museums and communities in Hitra and Frøya as the result of demographic changes, a number of other significant concerns have not been researched. In particular, technology and (social) media developments, which arguably impact strongly on how individuals engage – or chose not to engage – with history and museums, have

4 5 6 7

Scott, Carol A., “Museum Measurement. Questions of Value,” in Museum Practice, edited by Conal McCarthy (Malden, MA and Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2015). “The measure of success of a museum should be lives changed not bodies served.” Falk, Dierking, and Adams, “Living in a Learning Society,” 336. Crooke, “The 'Active Museum. How Concern With Community has Changed the Museum,” 493. Marstine, Janet, Jocelyn Dodd, and Ceri Jones, “Reconceptualizing Museum Ethics for the Twenty-First Century: A View from the Field,” in Museum Practice, edited by Conal McCarthy (Malden, MA and Oxford: John Wiley & Sons, 2015), 70.

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not been considered in my research.8 Furthermore, I only interviewed adults; how children respond to the same questions of history, identity, belonging and the museum would require a revised approach and methods. Moreover, it is beyond the scope of this investigation to study long-time effects,9 success10 and ramifications in the local community, all three relevant issues for future investigation. It is here that I see the biggest potential for further research. Finally, in terms of practice development based on the research presented here, above all two topics deserve further attention. First, more experiments with more and different constellations of museum visitors and non-visitors should allow insights into meaning-making processes that take place in such encounters. Secondly, and this I have not touched upon at all, research is needed as to what happens with the data material produced during museum activities that are obliged to the idea of a museum as agent in the sphere of ‘communicative memory’. How does such material find its ways into exhibitions? How will such data serve as a resource for future museum research, or visitor-oriented projects? Informed by a broad array of sources - political documents, museum practitioners’ experiences, theories from museum and memory studies, oral history interviews and an experiment - I have proposed one possible course of action for small local history museums with limited resources to thrive in rapidly changing, diverse local communities. I hope this will serve as an inspiration for new museum practices, the realization of these I will have to leave to the professionals in the field.

8

9

10

Overall such concerns have been surprisingly absent in interview talk, only two informants referred to the internet as the place I should consult to learn more about the history of the place. Anderson, David, “Visitors' Long-term Memories of World Expositions,” Curator: The Museum Journal, 46 (2003) is one of few studies that investigate into the long-term effects of museum visits. “[…] difficulties faced when attempts are made to try to measure the impact the sector has made upon people’s lives. Success cannot be measured in terms of the range of people who have taken part in public programmes. Rather, they have to be measured in terms of how programmes influence and help change the lives and circumstances of individuals.” Newman, Andrew, “’Social Exclusion’ Zone and ‘the Feelgood Factor’,” in Heritage, Museums and Galleries: An Introductory Reader, edited by Gerard Corsane (London, New York: Routledge, 2005), 325.

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