ABSTRACT
One's perspective on natural versus cultural heritage as a contested patrimony is, to some extent, governed by one's geographical position. By this I do not just mean a position on the globe, but a discursive position within ongoing discourses concerning the heritage of one's place on the globe. In discourses influenced by the natural sciences, culture is a heritage of nature, whereas in those deriving from the humanities and social sciences, nature is defined socio-culturally. ‘Scandinavia’ is thus home to most of the authors writing here, including me, and, depending upon one's perspective, it might also be the subject of the essays. But if one looks at the definition of Scandinavia in a standard dictionary, it becomes clear that Scandinavia is a function of whether we choose to define it on the basis of natural or cultural criteria. In definition (1) Scandinavia is a: ‘peninsula N Europe occupied by Norway and Sweden’. This definition leaves me out because I reside in Denmark. Definition (2), however, counts me in, because here Scandinavia is: ‘Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and sometimes also Iceland, the Faeroe Islands, & Finland’. 1 Denmark is included because culture, not nature, now provides the apparent common denominator for the countries defined as belonging to Scandinavia. The very name ‘Scandinavia’ is of cultural origin, since it derives from the Scanians or Scandians (the Latinised spelling of Skàninger), a people who long ago lent their name to all of Scandinavia, perhaps because they lived centrally, at the southern tip of the peninsula. In physical terms, they lived within the boundaries of the peninsula, but in cultural terms their heritage is very much bound to Denmark because they lived under the suzerainty of the Danish monarch from time immemorial until 1658. The physical landscape of Denmark differs considerably from most of the Scandinavian peninsula, but in terms of language, legal traditions and an intertwined history, Denmark is very much a part of Scandinavia, as is Iceland, the Faeroe Islands and Finland. By the same logic one could also extend the dictionary definition and include the area of the Wadden Sea, on the western coast of the Jutland peninsula, the subject of one of the essays in this issue, because much of it was under the Danish monarch until 1864, and because parts of it are still part of Denmark, or populated by Danes. Likewise, Estonia, the subject of another essay, was formerly home to a minority Swedish population, and it has long-standing cultural and political ties to Scandinavia—the capital, Tallinn, means ‘Danish castle’. It was here, according to legend, that the Danish flag, ‘Dannebrog’, descended from the heavens. The natural or cultural heritage of the places treated here is, as the above suggests, very much a function of the discursive frameworks that define it. Since the compass of these articles is pointed towards regions of the north we have chosen to present these essays under the reasonably neutral heading of ‘northern perspectives’, rather than ‘Scandinavian Perspectives’—leaving each author free to construct, and deconstruct, their own narrative of place identity.
