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ARCHAEOLOGY TODAY
Þóra Pétursdóttir (University of Tromsø): "Concrete matters: Modern ruins in Saga-land and the things called heritage"
Thursday March 08, 2012 | 04:30 -07:00 PM | Stanford Archaeology Center

Concrete matters: Modern ruins in Saga-land and the things called heritage

In Icelandic historical discourse, herring has been depicted as the key to modernity. The so-called “herring adventure,” Iceland’s economic success in the herring industry that helped pave the way to political independence in the mid 20th century, is commonly remembered as a period of unquestioned historical significance. The ruins of this glorified past, however, are forgotten by most – too young, messy or aesthetically displeasing to be regarded as heritage. Iceland or “Saga-island” is of course best known as the home of the Sagas – the legends of the Norse Vikings, and the grey and crumbling concrete ruins of 20th century herring factories are a far cry from legendary ruins of Viking halls – chronologically, physically and ideologically. By thinking of these concrete ruins in a heritage context, however, this paper addresses the processes of discrimination and othering within heritage definitions and archaeological endeavour, and the often fragile dialectic between heritage and waste. Moreover, with a foothold in these very concrete and tangible remains it questions the emerging claim “that all heritage is intangible” and suggests that a concern for the very tangible qualities of things may be one way of acknowledging the (heritage) value of these modern ruins.

Þóra Pétursdóttir is an Icelandic archaeologist, and currently a PhD student at the Department of Archaeology and Social Anthropology at the University of Tromsø, Norway. She has a BA degree in History and Geography from the University of Iceland, and an MA degree in Archaeology from the University of Tromsø. She has worked in archaeology since 2001 and participated in various projects focusing mainly on Medieval Iceland, but also Greenland and Northern-Norway. She became member of the Ruin Memories project ( www.ruinmemories.org ) in 2009 and her work has since been focused on the archaeology of the very recent past, again mainly in Iceland but also in Northern-Norway and on the Russian Kola peninsula.