Legacies of Conflict: Second World War Conflict Archaeology and Heritage research in Finnish Lapland (Kilpisjärvi, Enontekiö)
With a seedcorn grant from the University of Helsinki Future Fund, this new project builds upon the work of Lapland’s Dark Heritage project and takes it in new directions. The Legacies of Conflict project sees members of the original Lapland’s Dark Heritage collective team up with specialists from the Universities of Ghent and Utrecht. We focus on three main areas: conducting analysis of archival aerial photographs and lidar data to create a meaningful survey of Second World War remains; analysing this data against the official heritage site records for the region to trace the selective heritagization of this conflict, and mapping personal stories and memories connected to Second World War sites. In this way we hope to understand how local and personal memories compare and differ from ‘official’ and scientifically reconstructed landscapes – ‘counterscapes’ in a sense. Our case study area for this small project is Kilpisjärvi.
The University of Helsinki Future Fund is a seedcorn grant intended to help researchers develop their ideas to see if a larger project is possible later on. So, we hope that we will be able to open out the Legacies of Conflict project in the future.
Team
- Vesa-Pekka Herva, Wesa Perttola, Oula Seitsonen, Suzie Thomas (University of Helsinki)
- Birger Stichelbaut, Wouter Gheyle, Guy De Mulder (Ghent University)
- Gertjan Plets (Utrecht University)
- Meet the team and follow the updates on the project blog
In collaboration with:
