This Tuesday, project PI Professor Vesa-Pekka Herva will give a guest lecture at the University of Tromsø.

View of Tromsø, image by Lars Tiede available under CC-BY-SA-2.5 license.

His presentation is titled “Why the attraction to the heritage of the WWII German military presence in Finnish Lapland?”

“This talk discusses the diverse interests in the material heritage of the German military presence in Finnish Lapland during the Second World War, with a particular emphasis on non-professional or ‘alternative’ engagements with German sites and artefacts. Finland cooperated with Germany during the war and over 200,000 German troops were based in northern Finland. The German military presence in Finland had significant impacts on northern Finnish mindscapes and landscapes and left behind a rich, yet largely overlooked heritage. People have nonetheless engaged with this ‘dark heritage’ in various ways after the war and up to the present. This talk considers the motivations and meanings of treasure hunting, militaria collecting, and other such forms of engaging with German materialities in northern Finland.”