ABSTRACT
As material artefacts in a living and developing city space the meaning and function of the timber buildings in central Reykjavík are susceptible to change. Whether intact and in situ, renovated, relocated or reproduced, the differently disposed agents and interested parties that live in, act on or discuss the houses are continuously negotiating the role of the buildings in the everyday culture and self-understanding of the community: are the buildings unsuitable for the needs of a modern city centre and are they of minor historical and cultural significance − or are they indeed the heart and soul of the city, an essential part of local identity and an attraction for tourism and business? Addressing evolving meaning making processes, this chapter employs insights from critical heritage studies (Smith 2006; Harrison 2013; McDowell 2008; Macdonald 2013; Guttormsen and Fageraas 2011) to interrogate how intervention such as relocation interacts with the local population’s perception of the past, given the function of the built environment as the locus of memory and the cityscape as a place of remembering. While it is maintained that place and historical context are important for the function of the houses as local heritage it is also suggested that meaning making by way of cultural heritage is a complex and incomplete cultural process that is repeatedly being negotiated and renegotiated. Thus the chapter argues that relocation of houses or even construction of replicas of vanished buildings may indeed include episodes of creative meaning making and the emergence of alternative versions of the past into the present.
