Internet news service Barents Observer has published an article entitled “70 years after the war, Finland looks back“. The journalist interviewed several members of the Lapland’s Dark Heritage team and quotes Oula Seitsonen directly.
The article also features lots of great images from the “Wir waren Freunde” exhibition, and is well worth a read!
Lapin synkkä kulttuuriperintö -hankkeen tiimi sai kutsun osallistua Lapin maakuntamuseon näyttelyn Wir waren Freunde – Olimme ystäviä virallisiin avajaisiin Arktikumissa. Näyttely keskittyy suomalaisten ja saksalaisten suhteisiin ennen Lapin sotaa vuodesta 1940 vuoteen 1944 kuten esittelyteksti kertoo:
”Vuoden 1940 syksyllä Lapin rautatieasemilla ja Jäämerentiellä alkoi näkyä vieraita kieliä puhuvia sotilaita. Lappilaiset ihmettelivät kotiseuduilleen yllättäen ilmestyneitä komeita univormuihin pukeutuneita saksalaisia sotilaita, jotka ottivat vähitellen käyttöönsä rakennukset ja kentät. Tästä alkoi suomalaisten ja saksalaisten neljä vuotta kestänyt yhteiselo, joka päättyi dramaattisesti Lapin tuhoutumiseen syksyllä 1944.”
Kartoittaaksemme nykypäivän ihmisten suhdetta sota-ajan kulttuuriperintöön toteutamme näyttelyyn liittyvän kävijäkyselyn, jonka tarkoituksena on, että näyttelyssä vierailevat voivat jakaa kanssamme näyttelyn herättämiä ajatuksia. Kyselylomake ja palautuslaatikko löytyvät Arktikumista näyttelyn sisäänkäynnin luota. Jos olet vieraillut näyttelyssä, mutta unohdit täyttää kyselyn, voimme lähettää kyselyn sähköpostitse. Tiedustelut: DarkHeritageLapland[at]gmail.com.
Mobile app bringing WW2 images in the exhibition to life. Photo by Eerika Koskinen-Koivisto.
The ‘Lapland’s Dark Heritage’ team were recently honoured to be invited to the official opening of the new exhibition at Arktikum – the Provincial Museum of Lapland – entitled “Wir waren Freunde / Olimme ystäviä / We were friends”.
This exhibition presents and discusses the interactions and encounters between German and Finnish people in Lapland from the Autumn of 1940 until the Lapland War in 1944. As the exhibition description says:
“In autumn 1940, one started to encounter soldiers speaking foreign languages in railway stations and on the Arctic Ocean Road. Lappish people were amazed by the handsome, uniformed German soldiers that suddenly appeared in their land, taking over the buildings and fields. Thereby, the four-year coexistence of Germans and Finns began and ended dramatically with the destruction of Lapland in the autumn of 1944.”
As part of our research into understanding how people respond to the cultural heritage legacy of this period, we are inviting visitors to the exhibition to share their thoughts and impressions with both us and the museum staff through a short questionnaire survey. Paper copies of the survey will be available at the exhibition itself and can be returned to the box next to the entrance of the exhibition.
If you have visited the exhibition and would like to fill in a survey, please email us (DarkHeritageLapland[at]gmail.com), and we can send you an electronic copy.
Suzie Thomas was in Brussels this week for the Project Advisory Panel meeting of MEDEA, a new initiative led by researchers at SKAR and SMIT at Brussels Free University, and PACKED, funded by the Hercules Foundation.
Suzie joined panel members from organizations such as the British Museum, Ashmolean Museum, Aarhus University, the Coin Cabinet of the Royal Library of Belgium and Flanders Heritage Agency to hear how the project has been developing. MEDEA aims, following recent changes in Flemish legislation, to create a research- and user-friendly database for recording archaeological material discovered by metal detectorists. The panel’s role was to advise based on their own experiences from similar projects in such as the UK and Denmark, and to provide advice based on their research specialisms.
A full day in a long but productive meeting is a day well spent.
Following extensive focus groups and consultations and after rounds of careful beta-testing and programming, the MEDEA platform is expected to launch in late 2015 or early 2016.
The Flanders experience is particularly interesting with regard to the Lapland’s Dark Heritage project, due to the interest of many metal detectorists active in Belgium that engage with material from the First World War, and the expansion of First World War tourism in recent years. This, compared to different encounters with Second World War material in Lapland may form the basis of some comparative studies further into the project.
Professor Vesa-Pekka Herva, the project’s PI, recently had a paper published in the Journal of Contemporary Archaeology.
The paper, entitled ‘Haunting Heritage in an Enchanted Land: Magic, Materiality and Second World War German Material Heritage in Finnish Lapland’, features in Volume 1 Issue 2 of the journal. It has the following abstract:
This article addresses the functions and meanings of Second World War German material heritage in northern Finland from a haunting perspective and in terms of magical thinking. While archaeologists and heritage professionals have primarily been interested in the historical information that Second World War sites and military material culture may contain, this article explores how encounters and engagements with Second World War materialities in the northern wilderness of Lapland can be considered to affect people and manipulate their perceptions, awareness and understanding of the surrounding world. Second World War sites and matériel may be taken to promote a kind of magical consciousness which enables a degree of restructuring of relationships between the self and world and the past and present.
If you would like to find out more about this and other literature connected to the project, please contact us via the project email address (DarkHeritageLapland[at]gmail.com).
Prof Herva busy at work!
On Friday 13th February, Dr Suzie Thomas gave a keynote lecture at the 6th annual Tahiti conference, held at the University of Jyväskylä. Her talk was titled “When Cultural Environments hurt: ’Dark Heritage’, the wilderness and the war in Finnish Lapland”.
The slides from her talk are available below to download as a pdf document. Some images, for which permission for web publication is not confirmed, have been removed from the original presentation.
On the morning of Friday 13th February, project researcher Dr Suzie Thomas will present a keynote lecture at Tahiti 6 (the 6th annual Art History Days – Taidehistorian päivät), which will be held at the University of Jyväskylä Seminarium, 12-13 February 2015.
Suzie’s presentation is entitled: When Cultural Environments hurt: ’Dark Heritage’, the wilderness and the war in Finnish Lapland
The abstract is as follows:
Within the wider discussion of cultural environments and landscapes, it is important to acknowledge that some elements of these spaces can be the result of traumatic events. This is notable in particular with spaces, monuments and environments that have been shaped by conflict or other atrocities.
The cultural environment of Finnish Lapland has been shaped by the impact of the Lapland War during the Second World War, with remnants of Prisoner of War camps, military bases and vehicles still visible in the landscape. Yet this legacy has been further affected by contemporary responses to this particularly difficult period of history. Different responses come into play, informed by touristic motivations (both preserving and destroying the material culture of the Lapland War), attempts to distance the peaceful present from the turbulent past, and more commercial connections to the portable material through militaria trade and treasure hunting.
In this paper I first outline what we mean by ‘dark’ or ‘difficult’ heritage and how this may be expressed or suppressed in cultural environments, and then apply these ideas to the case study of Finnish Lapland.
University of Jyväskylä, creative common licence image by Tiia Monto.
Tervetuloa Lapin synkkä kulttuuriperintö -hankkeen viralliseen blogiin. Projektia rahoittaa Suomen Akatemia. Blogissa julkaistaan tutkimusryhmän kuulumisia, linkkejä uusiin julkaisuihin, kenttätyöraportteja sekä tietoa ajankohtaisista tapahtumista. Bloggaamme sekä suomeksi että englanniksi.
Meitä voi myös seurata Twitterissä @DarkLapland. Lisää tietoa hankkeesta täältä. Voit myös ottaa yhteyttä sähköpostitse DarkHeritageLapland[at]gmail.com.
Welcome to the official blog of the “Lapland’s Dark Heritage” project, funded by the Academy of Finland. We will regularly update the blog with news from the research team, links to new publications, fieldwork updates and other events. We will be blogging in both Finnish and English.
You can also follow us on Twitter at @DarkLapland, and find out more about the background of the project. You can also contact us directly via DarkHeritageLapland[at]gmail.com.
Project researchers Dr Eerika Koskinen-Koivisto and Professor Vesa-Pekka Herva, investigating Rovaniemi Church yard, February 2015. Photo by Suzie Thomas.