Conservation, innovation and healing of the well-preserved medieval Ystad

Abstract

This article investigates the discursive powers that authorise and legitimise heritage practices in Ystad, which has a reputation as one of the best preserved medieval towns in Scandinavia. To maintain this reputation, the discursive and material heritage of certain groups and periods of history are projected at the expense of others, albeit in a legitimised manner. Methods of discursive analysis, supported by Smith’s ‘authorised heritage discourse’ and Harvey’s ‘heritageisation’, show that a static approach to heritage, assimilative and exclusionary in nature, has protected Ystad’s material heritage. This approach has never been challenged but is perpetually adjusted within frameworks of dominant and subversive ideologies, producing adverse and overlooked social and spatial consequences. Heritage practices need new perspectives on entrenched habits of thought and new trajectories within the political dynamics of planning strategies, both of which are often unrecognised by the means commonly used to measure the legitimation of intervention in heritage.