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.

Oula Seitsonen took part last week in geoarchaeological surveys of Finnish Civil War (1918) mass grave sites with the Finnish Association for Forensic Archaeology and Anthropology (FAFAA). Forensic archaeology applies archaeological research methods in the forensic and crime scene studies.

FAFAA field studies aim at comparing and developing advantageous non-invasive survey methods for working with the contemporary (and historical) mass grave sites and other burials. FAFAA co-operates with the Lapland’s Dark Heritage project, and archaeo-geophysical surveys of for example World War 2 plane crash sites and mass graves in Lapland have been planned.

Ground penetrating radar at the Tammisaari mass grave monument (Photograph: Oula Seitsonen).

Finnish Civil War mass graves have been studied by FAFAA, in co-operation with the Department of Geography and Geosciences, University of Helsinki, and the Finnish Defense Forces, with ground penetrating radar and other archaeo-geophysical methods at Tammisaari and Santahamina; studies at Tammisaari have been financially supported by the Kansan sivistysrahasto Tammisaari 1918 trust.

Mass graves at both Tammisaari and Santahamina derive from the Prisoner-of-War camps established by the victorious White side for the defeated Reds in 1918: Whites and their German allies captured tens of thousands of Red Guard members and associated people, including several thousand women and over 1000 children. Living conditions at the PoW camps were poor, and at the worst camp, Tammisaari, mortality rate exceeded 30 percent. Altogether ca. 1 percent of the country’s population was annihilated by the Civil War: only half in the battlefields and the rest by executions, disease and famine. This left the newly independent state severely divided for decades after the Civil War.

General map of the Tammisaari mass grave site showing the survey lines (© Oula Seitsonen).

More about the Finnish Civil War:

Haapala, P. & Hoppu, T. (toim. ) 2009: Sisällissodan pikkujättiläinen. WSOY.

Upton, A.F. 1980: The Finnish Revolution 1917-1918. University of Minnesota Press.

Finnish Civil War archaeology:

Seitsonen, O. & Kunnas, L. 2009: Ahvola 1918: Archaeological Reconnaissance of a Finnish Civil War Battlefield. Journal of Conflict Archaeology 5.

In the later part of the Second World War in 1940-44 Finland had close ties with Nazi Germany, even though there was no formal alliance between the two countries. German troops arrived to northern Finnish Lapland as part of Hitler’s Operation Barbarossa,
the attack on the Soviet Union. While effectively allying itself with Germany, Finland was eager to maintain the impression of two separate wars against the Soviet Union, and tried to avoid conflict with the other Allies, especially the United States. Great Britain, however, declared war on Finland in 1941.

At the peak of the German military buildup there were more than 200,000 German soldiers in Northern Finland. Germans officially took some 9,000 Soviet Prisoners-of-War (PoW) on the northern front, and brought ca. 20,000 prisoners more to Finland as a workforce. Germans established over a hundred temporary PoW camps, punishment camps, and work camps in the northern half of Finland; the Finns also established some twenty camps in the area.

Spatial distribution of the German-run and Finnish-run PoW and forced labour camps in 1941-1944 is shown in the map below, based on Lars Westerlund‘s historical studies (Westerlund, L. 2008: Saksan vankileirit Suomessa ja raja-alueilla 1941–1944. Tammi), field trips by the Lapland Military Historical Society and our own pilot field research in 2007-2014 (click the map to make it bigger):

The close Finno-German relations ended with the Lapland War in 1944-45 after Finland had made a cease-fire treaty with the Soviet Union and was demanded to drive out the German troops. The German troops resorted to scorched earth tactics during their retreat to Norway, which resulted in the so-called ‘burning of Lapland‘.

For more information see for example:

Kulju, M. 2013: Lapin sota 1944-1945. Gummerus.

Mann, C. & Jörgensen, C. 2002: Hitler’s Arctic War: The German Campaigns in Norway, Finland, and The USSR 1940–1945. Ian Allan Publishing.

Seitsonen, O. & Herva, V.-P. 2011: Forgotten in the Wilderness: WWII German PoW Camps in Finnish Lapland. In A. Myers, G. Moshenska (eds.), Archaeologies of Internment, One World Archaeology 171. DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-9666-4_10

Westerlund, L. 2008: Saksan vankileirit Suomessa ra raja-alueilla 1941–1944. Tammi.

Lapin alueella oli toisen maailman sodan aikana noin 210 000 saksalaista henkilöä. Yksistään Rovaniemen alueella heitä oli arviolta 6 000 henkilöä eli lähes yhtä paljon kuin paikallista väestöä. Saksalaiset ja suomalaiset kohtasivat toisiaan arkisessa elämässä ja myös vapaa-ajalla. Lapin maakuntamuseossa avautuu tänä keväänä näyttely ”WIR WAREN FREUNDE – OLIMME YSTÄVIÄ” Saksalaisten ja suomalaisten kohtaamisia Lapissa 1940–1944. Näyttelyn avajaiset ovat Arktikumissa Lapin sodan päättymisen 70-vuotismuistopäivänä 27.4.2015 klo 18.

Tutkimusprojektimme kerää näyttelyssä kävijäkyselyn. Kiitämme jo etukäteen Lapin maakuntamuseota yhteistyöstä ja jäämme odottamaan näyttelyn avautumista.

Exhibit about Lapland war at Provincial Museum of Lapland Arktikum, Rovaniemi

During the WWII there were over 200 000 Germans in Finnish Lapland. Rovaniemi alone hosted about 6000 Germans – as many as the Finnish population of the town. Germans and Finns encountered each other in carrying out the daily routines as well as passing free time. The Provincial Museum of Lapland will open this spring an exhibit ”WIR WAREN FREUNDE – OLIMME YSTÄVIÄ” Saksalaisten ja suomalaisten kohtaamisia Lapissa 1940–1944a (We were friends – the Relations between German and Finns in Lapland 1940-1944) which introduces ordinary experiences of the engagements between Germans and Finns. The opening of the exhibit takes place at Arktikum on the day when Lapland War ended 70 year ago on April, 27^th of 2015 at 18:00.

Our research project will gather a survey at the exhibit among the museum visitors. We are grateful for the cooperation and look forward to seeing the exhibit.

The photo ”Eine Kleine Finnin.” From photo album of Vuoristojääkäri Kurt Pawlatan. Courtesy of Provincial museum of Lapland.

Kuva: ”Eine Kleine Finnin.” Vuoristojääkäri Kurt Pawlatan valokuva-albumi. Lapin maakuntamuseo.

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.

Oula Seitsonen started working full time in the project in March. He has been involved in the archaeological research of World War II and other recent past sites since 2007, and directed our pilot surveys and excavations in Inari in 2009. Oula starts working on a PhD project on the material heritage of Hitler’s Arctic war both during and after the World War II. He is an archaeological odd-job man and will be in charge of the archaeological and geographical information systems studies in the project.

Oula’s first week is pretty much summed up by this photo series:

Monday: a desk

Tuesday: took a tablet along

Wednesday-Thursday: a heap of cardboard boxes had appeared, and out of them appeared heaps of wires and electronic things for time-consuming installation

Friday: Back in business

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.

Suzie-Thomas-Tahiti6-Slides

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.