Adam Lindquist Wadstein

The Silenced Sea: Unearthing the Forgotten Narratives of Cypriot Marine Interaction

The Bronze Age period marks a distinct shift in the prehistory of Cyprus, characterised by the transformation from a relatively isolated island during the Stone Age to a pivotal trading hub in the Eastern Mediterranean by the end of the Bronze Age. The sea, facilitating this connectivity, played a central role in this development. However, despite the natural bond between ancient Cyprus and the sea, scholarly interest has predominantly fixated on aspects of trade, frequently favouring narratives of trade and foreign actors. Consequently, broader local perspectives on marine interaction have been marginalized, forgotten, or ignored.

This presentation aims to assess the archaeological process as a contested site of memory by scrutinizing the factors that elevate some narratives at the expense of others. To illustrate this, I will use the material remains of Cypriot marine interaction as a case study, examining both the material culture itself as well as its archaeological history. The omission of certain narratives in archaeology, as I hope to illustrate, rarely stems from a singular cause. Instead, it arises from the cumulative impact of numerous factors, including past actions, the natural characteristics of material culture, the development of archaeological methodologies, scholarly expertise, and notably, the enduring influence of a colonial perspective in archaeology during the 19th and 20th centuries.

By critically examining the study of material remains and its exposure to subjective, objective, and taphonomic processes, here exemplified by marine fauna on Cyprus, this presentation seeks to draw attention to the intricate interplay of past and present in the formation of memory. It underscores how the combined effects of historical events, natural processes, and contemporary perspectives collectively contribute to the overshadowing of certain narratives in archaeology.

Ebba Vikdahl

“Tracing ‘Elf Mills:’ Nordiska museet and the Construction of a Magic Past

Around the turn of the 20th century, the Swedish cultural historical museum Nordiska Museet was engaged in an intensive collecting of folk culture. Driven by ideas of ‘the folk’ as a resource for authentic national identity and sensibility, the museum set out to gather objects and stories from the assumed bearers of this heritage – the peasant population. The whole enterprise was not seldomly framed as an act of rescue; due to approaching modernity, the old traditional ways of living was about to disappear, and with it an important part of Swedish history (Medelius, Nyström, Stavenow-Hidemark 1998). Amongst other things, the museum collected “magic objects”, that is, objects which by the collectors were identified as connected to magical practices and beliefs amongst the peasantry. Collected, ordered, displayed and made into objects of scientific knowledge, these objects were to tell the history and secure the memory of a soon to be lost magical past. Drawing from the, within the field of memory studies and heritage studies, much used approach of “reading against the grain” (Ma 2009, Manoff 2014), this article attempts to uncover other possible stories within the museum’s creation of a magical past. This is done by focusing the circumstances in which a particular type of object, the so-called “Elf Stones” or “Elf Mills”, where acquired by the museum during the turn of the 20th century.  The re-reading of acquisition notes suggests a tension between the local populations attempts to forget a still living magical practice and the museums ambition to remember, what they assumed to be, a soon lost magical tradition. This tension, the article discusses, could further be understood to point to the fact that magic was a sensitive subject, but also to the fact that the museum filled the function of disarming possibly dangerous goods.

Erik Isberg

Archiving an Ocean: Deep Sea Core Drilling and Planetary Memory

Deep sea cores are sediment profiles of the ocean floor, which can be used to map the geological, climatological and biological history of the oceans. They emerged as scientific objects in the 1940s as a way to extend geological stratigraphy to the ocean depths, but have since the 1970s become a crucial technology for assessing anthropogenic impact on a planetary scale. In my paper, I zoom in on the International Decade of Ocean Exploration (IDOE), an UN initiative to mobilize resources towards ocean science, which ran throughout the 1970s. During the IDOE, deep sea core drilling emerged as a scientific practice which could speak to a wide range of temporalities: making geologic history, prospecting for future resources in the seabed and underpinning emergent climate models. The cores themselves were recovered by, mainly, US scientists and were taken to large storage facilities, so called deep sea core “archives” or “libraries”. Today, these facilities are repositories of planetary knowledge. They are, in this sense, also contested sites of memory, institutions that draws together the history of planetary dynamics with modern science and the climate crisis. What kind of histories, and what kind of futures, do they make visible?

In this paper, I zoom in on a formative phase in the history of deep sea core drilling. In doing so, I trace how the temporalities of the deep sea cores could be enrolled to different scientific and political projects, ranging from geology and climate science to agriculture and economic forecasting. The case of deep sea core drilling in the 1970s can, I argue, be seen as an indicative example of how the fluctuating boundaries between geological, environmental and political temporalities challenge notions of natural and cultural archives. 

Johan Kihlert

“’The Magna Charta of the Sámi:’ The Lapp Codicil of 1751 as Memory and Monument in 20th Century Sámi Politics”

The treaty of Strömstad in 1751 solidified the border between Norway and Sweden. The Lapp Codicil of 1751 is an addition to that treaty whit the central concern of solidifying the rights of the Sámi people to freely cross the Norwegian-Swedish border whilst also ensuring Sámi neutrality in times of war. Even though more restrictive treaties and conventions have been established since then, the codicil has since the 1960’s often been called “the Magna Charta of the Sámi” and thus been the subject of considerable memory-work. This paper studies various ways in which the codicil has been used by Sámi and non-Sámi actors from the 1960’s until today to establish a Sámi memory serving as a counter-narrative to the narratives of the Nordic states. The focus is therefore not on the contents of the codicil itself, but on the codicil as a symbolic object of memory, as a surface on which discourses regarding history and nationhood can act. Through a selection of cases, both historic and contemporary, the paper finds that the codicil is part of a twofold process: it is symbolically charged within Sámi communities as an important and mostly positive memory in Sámi history whilst it is simultaneously used as an example of the Nordic states’ recognition of Sámi rights and the Sámi people as such, therefore evoking and establishing the memory of the codicil as a legitimate force in the grand narratives of the Nordic states.

Julia Stina Skoglund

(Re-)Searching the Amateur: Critical Theatre Historiography and Non-Professional Theatre Makers in the Archive

This presentation delves into a critical historiography that challenges the conventional role of the researcher and meticulously examines materials, recognizing their dual nature—both in their presence and absence. The archival context prompts a reflection on power dynamics: who holds the authority to determine what is deemed worthy of preservation and under what conditions?

A significant aspect of this exploration extends to the realm of theatre studies, shedding light on the longstanding neglect of amateur theatre within historical discourse. Employing a critical historiographical lens, I engage in a reflective analysis of the subjective nature inherent in crafting historical narratives from archival sources. This process involves navigating the inherent selectivity within the limited pool of available materials.

Central to this presentation is the aim to unravel the intricate interplay of power dynamics, absence, and subjectivity embedded in archival practices. By urging a reevaluation of conventional historical narratives, the focus is specifically directed towards the often-overlooked domain of amateur theatre. The intention is to challenge established norms and foster a more inclusive understanding of history that acknowledges the diversity and richness encapsulated within amateur theatre, thereby contributing to a more comprehensive and nuanced historical narrative.

Pedro Scofano de Almeida

Collective Memory, Writing and Rewriting History through Official Newsreels in Brazil

Between 1938 and 1945, under the tutelage of the Press and Propaganda Department (DIP), state-sponsored newsreels faced their most prolific period in Brazil. These 5–10-minute short documentary films – the dominant audiovisual informational medium worldwide until the popularization of television – were exhibited before regular screenings in movie theaters twice a week, guaranteed by law. In line with a global trend in dealing with communication in the new era of mass politics, the official film series entitled “Cine Jornal Brasileiro” [Brazilian Newsreel] was conceived by the New State dictatorship (1937-1945) as an important propagandistic tool due to the indexicality of the moving image and the condition of cinema as a mass medium, both particularly important in a large country where a major part of the population was illiterate. Through the positive depiction of the dictator Getúlio Vargas and his modernizing agenda, not only was a simulacrum of information created – the news stories exhibited were carefully selected to legitimize the government and transmit the notion of a democratic normality during a dictatorial environment –, but shaped collective memory, determining how Brazilians should remember their own past. More than seven decades after the end of the dictatorship and the events depicted by the official films, a reassessment of the period is provided by the film "Imagens do Estado Novo 1937-45" (Eduardo Escorel, 2016), which uses footage from the state-sponsored newsreels, articulated with other archival material that ranges from newsreels produced by international companies to passages from Vargas’ diary. The objective of this study is to analyze how the official propaganda is challenged by "Imagens do Estado Novo 1937-45" through the articulation of different sorts of archival material, and the exploration of the tensions between the visible and invisible. Finally, it is argued that, when reflecting on the possibilities and limitations of the moving image, the 2016 film implicates itself into the history-writing process.

Sofia Iaffa

 “Post-Memory and Trauma in Gloria Gervitz’ Long Poem Migraciones”

In my thesis project, I study how trauma affects the expressions of the self in three Latin American women writers. One of the authors is Gloria Gervitz, a Jewish-Mexican poet who has become quite popular in Scandinavia in recent years. For more than forty years, from 1979 until its last publication in 2020, Gervitz worked on a one and only long, “processual” poem – called Migraciones. Each edition of this poem is a re-working and extension of the previous one. Migraciones could thus be called a lifelong poem; it came to a halt only with Gervitz’ death in 2022. In this paper, I will discuss how trauma and memory interconnect in Gervitz’ poem and are shaped by the characteristics of extensive poetry, with the help of concepts such as post-memory, multidirectional memory, and transgenerational trauma.