Tourism, Im/mobility and the University Collections in Norway, 1870–1914

Abstract

This article explores the cultural collections at Det Kongelige Frederiks Universitet in Christiania (now Oslo) from the perspective of German-language tourists between the 1870s and 1914. It takes for its starting point the early history of tourism and museum collections as a story of the entanglement of the mobile and the immobile, of movement and stoppage. It argues that examining this entanglement provides insight into the complex processes of nation-building, which are formed in an interplay between tourist ascriptions and national self-images. Moreover, the museum objects’ spatial relations – the location and context in which they were exhibited – had a decisive impact on their perception and interpretation. Using guidebooks and travelogues as primary sources, the article discusses four of the most popular collections: the Viking ships, stave church portals, Sámi artefacts and objects brought back from the Gjøa expedition, in particular artefacts made by the Netsilingmiut/Nattilik.