Abstract

Eighteenth-century gentleman scholars collected antiquities. Nineteenth-century nation states built museums to preserve their historical monuments. In the present world, heritage is a global concern as well as an issue of identity politics. What does it mean when runic stones or medieval churches are transformed from antiquities to monuments to heritage sites? This book argues that the transformations concern more than words alone: They reflect fundamental changes in the way we experience the past, and the way historical objects are assigned meaning and value in the present. This book presents a series of cases from Norwegian culture to explore how historical objects and sites have changed in meaning over time. It contributes to the contemporary debates over collective memory and cultural heritage as well to our knowledge about early modern antiquarianism.

Anne Eriksen is a Professor in Cultural History at the University of Oslo, Norway, and an expert on collective memory and forms of historical knowledge. Among her recent publications are Negotiating Pasts in the Nordic Countries (ed. with. J.V. Sigurdsson, 2009) and Museum. En kulturhistorie (2009).

‘"The case studies supply the overall argument with a desirable empirical specificity; they deepen and enrich it, while they at the same time challenge common generalizations, current theories and habitual ways of thinking. This works on two parallel levels: the empirical cases are lifted out of their immediate contexts and used to examine and discuss theoretical arguments, and then carried back to shed new light on their historical settings." · Nordic Museology

“Eriksen is a lucid writer. Her case studies are highly informative and reveal a detailed knowledge of Norway’s past that few scholars could match.“ · Museum Anthropology

“…a very important book on the difference between antiquities and heritage and the different sense of time, history, and chronology involved.” · Lynn A. Hunt, UCLA

“The author succeeds in bridging the gap between the history of antiquarianism and the present field of heritage studies... explain[ing]...the transformation of the relations to time from the 18th century up to the present…There is a good balance between the empirical part of the enquiry and its theoretical dimension.” · François Hartog, EHESS, Paris

“It is a very sophisticated and well written manuscript on an important topic within the humanities.” · Birgitta Svensson, Stockholm University