Management of the Cultural Heritage in Greenland
The Greenland Home Rule Government was established in 1979, and one of the first areas of responsibility transferred to the new Greenlandic administration was culture, including museums, buildings and ancient monuments. The Act on Ancient Monuments and Historic Buildings was passed in 1980, and it is the law under which we still work ¿ that is, the administrative responsibility lies with the Greenland National Museum & Archives. The Greenlandic society of today is something quite different from what it was in 1980, and this can be felt when one has as a working tool a law that no longer quite reflects the society in which it functions. The Act was created in close cooperation with the National Museum of Denmark, which was responsible until 1980 for the administration of the Greenlandic antiquities. Of course, it is coloured by the attitudes that prevailed then, the common factor in which was a preservation-oriented scholarly view where the antiquities were primarily seen as research potential. It was also made very clear what could be defined as an ancient monument; that is, in-situ features and structures from before the year 1900. However, it is no longer certain that such definitions in terms of era and type are appropriate.
The antiquities in the form of ruins of features, graves, houses and the like are found all over the ice-free part of Greenland, and testify to an Eskimo presence as far back as about 2500 BC. One also sees many ruins in South Greenland from the Norse period, that is from 982 until the last part of the fifteenth century. This Norse period is the reason for Greenland¿s links with Denmark since the Middle Ages, when Norway and its tributary countries were part of a union with Denmark.
The intention of the law was to preserve all recognizable manmade structures from before the year 1900 irrespective of type and condition, with the safety valve that, in special cases, occupational interests could lead to the setting-aside of preservation stipulations. In addition, there is the law on raw materials, which in certain cases takes precedence over all other legislation in the open countryside. The latter has not least had a negative effect in connection with efforts to get a particular cultural landscape nominated on the World Heritage List.
However, one must say that the ambitions of the Act were high and in fact optimal, since nothing was too small or too big; it was meant to be all-embracing. The effect was inherent in the key words: preservation, research, protection and dissemination. But these ambitions must of course be set against the size of the country, its polar situation, topography, climate, the demographic conditions and the available resources. On the face of it, these may look like obstacles, and in fact they were, for the development of society, but for the antiquities this meant being left in peace to their own slow decay until the fast motorboats became everyman¿s property, farming expanded and industries like mining and tourism were developed. Tourism in Greenland is a fast-developing sector, and this has led to an incipient reassessment of the antiquities from primarily being objects of research to a commercial resource in the places where the focus of today¿s tourism lies. They have, as they say, become part of the reception apparatus. And that does not have to be a purely negative development ¿ it can also mean that we can get more resources for the care of the antiquities, although we have not seen much of those yet.
In the course of the twentieth century, a farming culture was established in South Greenland, based on sheep-breeding. And naturally enough this happened in the very places where the Norse farmers had settled in the Middle Ages. Especially among the older sheep-farmers, this common localization created a sense of kinship with the first farmers, whose ruins were and are a significant part of the agrarian landscape. However, in today¿s farming context, the ruins have become more like obstacles, since they often lie in the path of rational utilization of the agricultural machinery and the limited cultivable area. And so arises the eternal conflict between preservation interests and industry, between two different value systems. Yet they need not necessarily become antagonists, since a symbiosis is in fact possible in most cases ¿ if the will is there.
I will here briefly review some examples of the way the antiquarian view can come up against measures that have a tourism angle and political support.
As in other countries, in Greenland there are places with which documented historical events are associated. In South Greenland, this is true of a few of the Norse sites. In the Middle Ages the present-day sheep-farming settlement Qassiarsuk was the Norse Brattahlid, associated with the sagas of Erik the Red, who at the end of the 900s expanded the Norse sphere to include South Greenland. It was also from here that his son Leif the Lucky sailed off and discovered North America. This is a paramount argument in the marketing of South Greenland as a tourist destination. In the year 2000, quite in this spirit, for example, a reconstruction of a house from the eleventh century was built; its model was a newly-excavated house-site in the old Western Settlement, which lay 600 km farther north. In the tourist context this building has now become a `true copy of Erik the Red¿s farm¿, despite protests and demands for authenticity from the museums. The tourist industry refuses to bother with such petty objections, though, and is looking further in the direction of the ¿living monument¿, where the reconstruction is to be staffed by people dressed up as Vikings. What happens is that the focus is thus turned from the authentic, in this case the ruins, which thus no longer function as the primary bearer of the history. This role is taken over by a reconstruction which, with its inevitable misinterpretations, becomes the established truth: that¿s how it was. I can also mention a hypothetical reconstruction of a small church from the same century, probably built by Erik the Red¿s wife Tjodhilde. In this case the plans talk about having the reconstruction consecrated so that it can become the setting for church services.
A further assault on the authenticity of the context that surrounds the ruins is the setting-up of more or less discreet `monuments¿ that often say more about those who put them up than the thing the monument is supposed to commemorate. A Wagnerian operatic warrior stands high above the settlement and is supposed to promote the proper frame of mind for the contemplation of Leif the Lucky¿s voyage of discovery and Nordic enterprise.
Another measure was the sudden wish to build a reconstruction of a Greenlandic turf-built hut which arose in the settlement when the Norse reconstructions had become a fact. Despite the recommendations of the antiquarian authorities, a turf-house was then built right next to the authentic Norse ruins.
Not the least interesting thing about the situation in Qassiarssuk is the levels of political decision-making. The promotion of the Norse culture had its origin at the national policy level, while the turf-house was a local manifestation of ¿Greenlandishness¿ at the settlement policy level.
The presentation of the antiquities is an extremely important part of the work of the museums. They can be regarded as the part of the collections that cannot be moved into the museums, but must be experienced at their original site, `rooted¿ to the cultural landscape. An increase in tourism inevitably makes increasing demands on the management of the monuments in terms of the necessary care, the creation of paths, and informative material in several languages. And of course this means a growing need for resources, both financial and human. All this must of course be under the auspices of the Greenlandic museum authorities in order to ensure serious treatment of the cultural heritage ¿ it cannot be left to others. History appears from the cultural landscape as a valuable dimension, but it takes knowledge to reveal it, and that knowledge is to be found in the Greenlandic museums.
According to the present Protection Act all antiquities are in principle equally valuable, regardless of how they are manifested, or how many there are of them. The Register of Antiquities at the National Museum lists 4,528 sites spread all over Greenland with ruins; but one number can represent anything from one to sixty features. It is then inevitable that many will belong to the same category, and the logistical and economic conditions in Greenland are in fact prompting reflections on the classification of cultural heritage. A classification might for example be based on an evaluation from a research point of view or it might be made from the sightseeing angle. These need not be opposites, but the fundamental difference lies in commercialization. It can also happen that economic constraints create a hidden classification, since one might choose to make an effort in places where people come, and leave the rest to natural decay.
All those who work with the management of the cultural heritage have sometimes had to face the question of why it is so obvious that features and structures from the past should be preserved. Many different answers have been given to that question, and each of them is presumably true, since they have all given reasons. The situation is no different in Greenland. But where the ways part is the question of what is to be preserved and how it is to be preserved.
The Protection Act defines when something is an antiquity, and what constitutes an antiquity. However, one can ask whether both the time limit and the constituent elements should be redefined, and the protection philosophy given renewed consideration. The convenient thing about the time limit is that up to the cut-off point the protected status is automatically guaranteed, while this is not the case with the traces of more recent history. One can further ask in what cases these are elevated to protected status, and thus which point of view is applied; for example the aesthetic, the research-related, the national, the political or the historical. It is also important to ask why something should be preserved and something else not preserved, and for whom it should be preserved.
In Greenland there are a number of remains from the American presence during and after the Second World War ¿ for example abandoned equipment around the Greenland coasts where there were alternative airfields and fuel depots. There can also be remains of Faroese fisheries or production plant from whaling. It is easy to see prehistoric ruins and structures as objects of cultural history with both landscape qualities and research potential, while the rusty metal, concrete foundations and slowly degrading refuse is an eyesore in the landscape and the research potential is perhaps not so obvious. However, these remains say just as much about history as (for instance) medieval ruins, which have simply become part of the landscape, while the other traces mentioned are conspicuous `foreign bodies¿. They offend aesthetically, irritate like a speck of dust in the eye, and don¿t belong to the traditional idea of landscape, where the accepted kind of decay should preferably be decorative. Nor are they so old. All these are arguments in favour of cosmetic intervention, if we are to judge according to norms for what is nice or ugly. Students I taught at the University in Nuuk expressed the view that it would be un-Greenlandic to tolerate such remains as cultural monuments.
Yet one cannot disregard the fact that these remains were an important material element at a major turning-point in Greenland¿s history, which led to the opening-up of the country and its development into a modern society in Arctic and Subarctic conditions.
The present Protection Act protects everything from before the year 1900. That is of course not possible, and for that matter not desirable, for the modern remains. However, it is worth asking whether we should allow some of these types of cultural traces to remain to be seen and decay in their own good time. An example of this view can be seen on Svalbard, where things like refuse, construction remains etc. in Virgohamn, which was the starting-point for the first attempts to reach the North Pole by air, are allowed to lie in an undisturbed process of decay.
So, when is something an antiquity and what defines an antiquity? I think it is better to avoid time limits and talk about cultural heritage and that cultural heritage can be every manmade structure, dolmen as well as a house finished yesterday. Every time choose what is considered worth preserving for posterity, and looking back we see, that this undergo a constant change. We will have to come to terms with that nothing is forever - especially not attitudes towards the cultural heritage. What yesterday through puritan spectacles was considered manipulation may very well to-morrow be considered a time bound cultural expression worth preserving.