(Re)constructed Cultural Heritage

Abstract

Cultural history museums have been key elements in aestheticising cultural heritage with consequences for our understanding of similarity and dissimilarity. As cultural heritage institutions, they express particular perceptions of what should be narrated to posterity – what is worth remembering. By telling a story of the past, they represent, negotiate and help define social relations and identities. The topic for this article is The Museum of Reconstruction for Finnmark and Northern Troms Counties as an agent of identity policies. The Museum of Reconstruction is a regional museum that is expected to tell the story of a limited period of history, which it does, but it also adopts explicit stances in relation to contemporary political issues. My argument is that this museum gives priority to diversity in its narratives. It is a narrative that deals with diversity within the framework of cooperation – a multicultural cooperation. The boundaries are not drawn internally; the sense of community is rather constituted through its counterpart in the south of Norway. This article posits that The Museum of Reconstruction presents these motifs as identity policy imperatives. By way of a close-reading of the permanent exhibition Out of Ashes and Ruin, the purpose is to discuss how North-Norwegian cultural heritage is (re)constructed within this context.