ABSTRACT
This chapter examines changing cultural attitudes over the past century to Rjukan, a town and municipal centre in the municipality of Tinn located in the region of Telemark in southern Norway. Rjukan underwent rapid industrialisation in the early twentieth century, and holds a special place in Norwegian history and identity as the cradle of Norway's industrial adventure. The town was built by Norsk Hydro, which can be described as Norway's first modern industrial company. The chapter considers a constructivist approach to challenge the idea of heritage purely as preservation, and discusses the future of Rjukan in terms of a cultural sustainability that is related to the idea of potential space. It argues that any continuing narrative of Norway as a modern, industrial nation depends on seeing Rjukan as a place of the past, without a future. Place-heritage becomes a meta-cultural production, because contemporary processes transform the meaning of cultural elements of the past, and invest new values in them.
