Grete Swensen

In discussions on how to handle local heritage values, local values or insider-ness are often seen as synonymous with intangible aspects of heritage. At the same time, expert knowledge is usually associated with material objects, whereby experts have had the power to define what to preserve. In this study of three Norwegian towns, complementary and interdisciplinary methods have been used

Prime aim is to examine the way the culture sector reuses industrial buildings to instigate cultural activities in the municipalities. The discussion of various actors’ motivation for engagement is based on results from a case study, supplemented with findings from a coarse-meshed telephone survey. At national level overarching political guidelines can be traced back to white papers concerning cultural policy, urban transformation and cultural heritage, and the municipalities’ cultural policies mirror these guidelines. What tends to decide if such initiatives are considered successful are local abilities to cross sectorial divisions and instigate cooperation between municipal planners, private entrepreneurs and NGOs.

ABSTRACT Contemporary urban development takes place mainly in already built areas. The article’s objective is to examine how towns on the outskirts of large cities can use and revitalise green areas and the urban heritage of garden cities to contribute to filling the societal demand for building sustainable cities. Lillestrøm, a former garden city on the outskirts of Oslo, Norway’s capital, is used as the starting point to discuss how learning from the past can provide a foundation for developing new solutions. The case study was carried out as a DIVE analysis by using qualitative methods to describe the town’s cultural environments, their characteristics, and heritage assets. The analysis is supplemented with practical advice. Local planners need convincing arguments to promote urban heritage and green infrastructure as resources in sustainable urban development in a time of accelerating densification and climate change.

ABSTRACT The ‘compact city’ is generally considered to represent a sustainable urban form. However, transformation of urban sites as consequence of compact city planning potentially conflicts with heritage interests. A reading of a selection of scientific articles in land-use and heritage journals, supplemented with thematic plans, indicates that there is a need to bridge the gap between urban heritage policy and planning for the compact city. When challenged by strong pro-development partners to present convincing alternative perspectives, specialised heritage competence would benefit from skills within land-use planning and vice versa. Disciplinary and sectorial barriers need to be crossed.

Museums have several means of communicating with their audiences. The problems discussed here concern how local museums interact with their audience when the past they want to portray is multiple, complex and sometimes disputed. It is based on an analysis of three exhibitions in local museums situated in a region where archaeological findings indicate that the South Sámi have been present since the Late Neolithic and the Bronze Age. It highlights the various ways in which the pluralistic past in the region is being portrayed by asking whether its history appears as neutralized, i.e. transmitted in passive impartial terms, or is exoticized, repressed or mediated through other images. The one common identity marker the three exhibitions share, although portrayed in different ways and with different effects, is the gåetie, a turf hut in common use in the South Sámi region. A tendency to neutralize the multiple and complex past in the South Sámi region takes place, either by operating i...

Abstract Inspired of Lefebvre’s and De Certau’s perspectives on social production of space, this study aims to explore cemeteries’ functions in urban life nowadays. Our starting point is that green urban cemeteries have two main functions: their primary purpose is as a burial ground, while their secondary function is as public spaces for reflections, recreation, and cultural encounters. We ask for whom the cemeteries are designed and managed, and in what ways they are actually used. To explore these questions, qualitative data from two cemeteries in Oslo is analyzed. Both visitors and people passing through the sites were interviewed during the summer of 2014 about their intention to be at the cemetery and their views about the place. We point to a series of positive measures rather than forbidden signs that should be instigated to help promoting the great potential green urban cemeteries have for citizens and a future sustainable city.

Abstract Population increase has drawn attention to the need in cities for easily accessible and attractive public spaces that will promote interaction regardless of gender, age, ethnicity and religious belief. This paper focuses on the role urban cemeteries play in a culturally and religiously diverse society. Norway is described as an increasingly secularised society. Immigration and transmigration, on the other hand, have brought a revived interest in religion and interreligious interaction. We explore two questions that relate to the cemetery as a public shared urban space: The first concerns the need for communities of all faiths and none to access burial space that meets their need. The second relates to the appropriateness of using cemetery as amenity space in a multicultural context. Diverse qualitative methods have been used; a focus group interview with participants from different religious and life-philosophy communities, interviews with key informants representing various religious communities and with visitors in two cemeteries in Oslo in 2014. The findings imply that there is a commonality that bridges differences: sharing human compassion. These sites have a potential in stimulating intercultural and interreligious encounters. Their special character as open shared urban sites can increase understanding and acceptance of each other’s difference and hereby render strangeness and differences harmless.

Abstract Some researchers have claimed that cultural heritage can best be understood as ‘the contemporary use of the past’ (Graham et al., 2000). While parts of heritage may be material remains of a long forgotten past, the way these fragments are viewed, interpreted and appreciated as social and cultural assets is a product of today. The basis of this paper is a study of the role that old cemeteries play as green public spaces in contemporary cities. The layout of the cemeteries and their locations within cities influences their everyday use. By comparing three urban cemeteries, one in Oslo (Norway), one in Sheffield (United Kingdom) and one in Kaliningrad (Russia), this article will reflect on how these city’s histories have influenced the form and layout of the cemeteries, as well as their potential roles as future green areas in a modern urban context. At present, one of the cemeteries is in active use, one is a secluded public garden, and the third is on the verge of obliteration. Their common denominator is the character they share as memory sites. They can be read as a complex conflation of religious and moral belief, societal power and hierarchy, landscape and architectural ideals, health legislation and management practices. Their prospects as historic assets valued in future urban development are dependent both on planning contexts and strong cooperation with those who care about their future.

ABSTRACT The market for selling experiences and products influenced by various connotations of the past is continuously increasing. Guidebooks play a role in introducing cultural history to a growing tourist market. A study of four European cultural historic guidebooks draws attention to some of the differences that appear in the way national heritage assets are presented. The analysis reveals that guidebooks are more restricted in representation form and writing genre than initially presumed. By choosing a representation form dominated by a cartographic style of writing, where factual information play a dominant role, the text in the guidebooks leaves the reader in the role of a distanced observer. It is primarily via the illustrations that the heritage assets act as a scene for contemplation, involvement or for adventure. The material is interpreted within a framework that draws attention to the interaction that takes place between the representations of the past and contemporary society.

ABSTRACT Cultural heritage is today considered to be an asset well-suited to opening up new possibilities in marginal rural areas in need of additional business sectors, of which tourism is one of the most flourishing. This article discusses some of the precautions that have to be taken if a relationship is to develop that is beneficial to all parties involved and in which both heritage management and tourism are going to be winners. Cultural heritage assets are often considered vulnerable resources, but at the same time they stimulate emotions and may represent experiences highly sought after by a particular niche of tourists. From a comparative study of two upper mountain areas in Norway where mountain summer farming still exists, the article discusses the particular type of adaptations found in these regions as part of the heritage tourism debate. Keywords: heritage tourism, cultural historic environments, cultural heritage protection, vernacular architecture. 1 Introduction Heritage tourism has been interpreted as an answer to the fact that vast areas of the western world had their livelihood dramatically changed as a result of economic restructuring processes taking place in the 1980s. Heritage tourism can be apprehended as a strategy to create new jobs as well as preserve cultural identities in many areas that in earlier times were based on primary industries (Franklin [1]). In the new situation there has been a need to exploit local natural resources including vernacular built heritage to attract new markets (Franklin [1], AlSayyad [2]). In this paper we look more closely at the relationship we find between the tourism sector and cultural heritage management. Do the expectations the

ABSTRACT During the 1990s many European cities, including the Norwegian cities, stressed image building as cultural cities. Growth in the so-called \“cultural economy” is strongly linked to a need in the post-industrial towns for new businesses. Culture has been viewed as an instrument for economical development and is used as a strategy to rejuvenate city centres. This includes a wide spectrum of creative activities, and a new interest for active use of cultural heritage assets in the image building of towns and cities has developed. Heritage has been ascribed a new role in the process of revitalising city centres. Based on empirical studies in two Norwegian towns the paper discusses whether this renewed interest has set marked stamps on the urban environments or whether it has a more superficial character in an attempt to keep up with international trends. Keywords: cultural heritage management, urban studies, area planning. 1 Introduction In the new \“image-building” or \“spectacularisation” (Vaz and Jacues [2]) that takes place in contemporary cities, both new and old cultural monuments are being created. What is remembered, as tradition or heritage, is selected from a vast range of built, natural and cultural environments. Based on the results from an empirical case-study of a selection of towns, where interviews, document studies and field observations play an important role as primary sources, this paper will focus on the role cultural heritage plays in Norwegian urban development today and will be looking more closely at what strategies are chosen to integrate cultural heritage in urban planning processes. Does the new interest for use of cultural heritage present a new dimension in planning, which has changed the direction for community development? How does the new interest for preservation of cultural heritage affect the established methods used by the cultural heritage management and does it promote development of new

ABSTRACT The market for selling experiences and products influenced by various connotations of the past is continuously increasing. Guidebooks play a role in introducing cultural history to a growing tourist market. A study of four European cultural historic guidebooks draws attention to some of the differences that appear in the way national heritage assets are presented. The analysis reveals that guidebooks are more restricted in representation form and writing genre than initially presumed. By choosing a representation form dominated by a cartographic style of writing, where factual information play a dominant role, the text in the guidebooks leaves the reader in the role of a distanced observer. It is primarily via the illustrations that the heritage assets act as a scene for contemplation, involvement or for adventure. The material is interpreted within a framework that draws attention to the interaction that takes place between the representations of the past and contemporary society.