Abstract
Former sites of war, and particularly those which have been elevated to icons of noble defeat, traditionally serve as powerful national signifiers. At the Danish field of Dybbøl, however, a seemingly novel anti‐national or cosmopolitan stance is emerging. This paper investigates contemporary tendencies to silence or not mention the nation at Dybbøl, a site formerly associated with profound pro‐Danish and anti‐German sentiments. So where did the nation go? Basing my analysis on ethnographic field studies of heritage practices and the perspectives of staff and visitors at Dybbøl, I argue that despite its attempted erasure, the nation is still firmly there, inescapably present, lingering in the very materiality of the war site. I draw upon Michael Billig’s notion of banal nationalism to account for the unreflective ways in which the national significance of the site is asserted even in the face of current cosmopolitan changes.
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