Performing Nordic Heritage: Everyday Practices and Institutional Culture

by Lizette Gradén, Peter Aronsson (Editor)

Overview

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

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781138255852
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	11/11/2016
Series:	The Nordic Experience
Pages:	368
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

Peter Aronsson is Professor of Cultural Heritage and the Uses of History at the Department of Culture Studies, Linköping University, Sweden. Lizette Gradén is Chief Curator at the Nordic Heritage Museum in Seattle, Affiliate Associate Professor in Scandinavian Studies at the University of Washington, and former research fellow at the Department of Design, Craft and Art at Konstfack, Stockholm.

Table of Contents

1: Introduction; 2: Walking Nordic; 3: ‘Something in the Air'; 4: A Windmill and a Vikinghjem; 5: Negotiating Local, National and Nordic Identities through Commemorations; 6: Banal Nordism; 7: ‘Nordic' as Border Country Rhetoric; 8: Performing Nordic Spaces in American Museums; 9: The Geopolitics of Distinction; 10: Sweden versus Norden in the Nordiska Museet; 11: Performing the Nordic in Museums; 12: Conclusion

Editorial Reviews

'With contributions from historians, folklorists, ethnologists, and museologists, the anthology combines a rigorous sense of historical depth with nuanced understandings of the fleeting and ephemeral, creating a historically-informed scholarly snapshot of heritage politics in contemporary Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden, with occasional excurses to the eastern Baltic and North America ... Taken as a whole, the volume provides a state-of-the-art overview of heritage studies as currently practiced among Nordic scholars of ethnology, history, and cultural studies.' Ethnologia Scandinavica 'Many different themes are woven into this interesting collection of 12 chapters ...' Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change ’Scholars of heritage, tourism, ethnology and folklore, as well as museum practitioners, policy makers and cultural historians, will find much in this book that will stimulate and provoke. It also makes a good teaching text for both undergraduate and postgraduate students and it would certainly belong on the shelf of a student of heritage tourism. People doing research for a Nordic travel experience will no doubt find this book useful and interesting. The book should also appeal to those whose interests lie beyond the Nordic, providing an excellent introduction to heritage tourism in Nordic destinations. The editors and authors have succeeded in their mission - to have their readers understand how a transnational dimension of identity has become an asset for negotiating collaboration and consensus rather that feeding conflicts and legitimising claims on territorial realms.’ Journal of Heritage Tourism

From the Publisher