History in my backyard: a day at the Hunebed Center in Borger

It was a beautiful sunny Tuesday in the beginning of Summer, when I decided that it was time for me to go somewhere I should have gone a long time ago. A place that connects the past to the present and tells a story of the people that lived in the North of the Netherlands around 4000 years ago. I am talking about the Hunebed Centre in Borger, Drenthe.

As an inhabitant of the North, born and raised just a ten minute drive away from the nearest Hunebeds, I have always been aware of the archaeological structures that are part of the history of this land and its people. Their story is told in Borger, at the Hunebed Centre which one of the ‘expedition gates’ in the UNESCO Hondsrug Geopark area: the expedition gate of the Ice Age and Prehistory. (There are 7 more expedition gates, these will be mentioned at the bottom of this page.)

When driving to Borger, I couldn´t help but wonder why I have never been to the Hunebed Centre when I was younger. Not with my parents, but also not as a school trip. It felt weird to have been walking past Hunebeds so many times, without having known their full story. My husband has not even seen a Hunebed before in his life. I was excited to go on a refreshing expedition in my own familiar environment.

When we arrived at the Hunebed Centre, I felt like I was back in time instantly. The story started at the Boulder Garden where we became familiar with all the different types of boulders that have been shifted by ice from Scandinavia all the way up here around 150.000 years ago. Seeing things this old, even though they are just rocks, made me feel some type of way. It shows how small our human life is in terms of time. How quick we are to disappear from this earth, yet these rocks have existed almost forever. 

When we walked into the museum, we finally learned how experts think the Hunebeds were created through an exposition. They were constructed by a folk named the Funnel Beaker People. They lived in the North of the Netherlands, the North of Germany, Southern Sweden and in parts of Denmark. We saw a reconstruction video of how 30 strong men used to roll the huge rocks over a few tree trunks and then put them on top of each other using ropes and a lot of force, eventually forming underground chambers used for the burial of up to forty dead people. The aim of this part of the Hunebed Center which is also the Expedition Gate, is to really give shape to the heritagescape of the Prehistoric and Ice Age expedition by giving visual information about the how’s and why’s.

When continuing our little expedition, we walked from the indoor museum right into the Prehistoric Park. We learned that this quick transition has just been made availablev a few months ago, before people had to walk a long way to get there. This transition suits the experience from story to reality much better. The Prehistoric park really contributes to the amazingly lively heritagescape: it brings life to the silence of geological heritage. It brings life to the story told inside the museum. It was not just a beautiful park in the midst of nature. I was walking through time. I was nowhere near the Drenthe as I have known it in my 23 years of existence. I sat next to a small Prehistoric farm as I watched the Prehistoric people demonstrate how life used to be. Simple. Hard. Nothing like I will ever know. I watched them make fire and saw a Prehistoric man help my husband to use a bow and arrow. There are Prehistoric houses which look more like small tents as we know them nowadays. Even the funnel-shaped pottery of which the Funnel Beaker People lend their names can be seen inside the houses.

The Iron Age Farm in the Prehistoric Park

Hunebed D27, Borger

When de day ended and my 2-year old became tired of all the new impressions this day back in time brought, we decided to finish our little expedition at D27: the biggest Hunebed in Drenthe. It is 27 meters long and 4 meters wide and it does not look like it has been here for thousands of years. It is an impressive first actual Hunebed for my husband to see. He told me how amazing it is to live so close to these huge traces of history. Other Hunebeds can be found throughout the Hondsrug Geopark, which spreads from the city of Groningen to the 

city of Coevorden. There are 54 Hunebeds in the province of Drenthe, and 1 in Groningen: they can be found here.

When you want to continue the expedition from the Hunebed Centre into the landscape of Drenthe, the choice can be made to be guided by a simple booklet or by downloading the app ‘Annodrenthe.’ Since I am that kind of person that can’t let go of photo’s on my phone, meaning that I never have any space left on my phone for new apps, we chose to take the expedition booklet home for when we find the time to continue our expedition. When driving back home, I realized how much I have missed out. I realized that there is so much to discover in my own backyard. I now know so much more about the beautiful landscape of the Hondsrug UNESCO Geopark, yet there is still so much more to discover. And we will.

S.B.

Expedition gates of the UNESCO Hondsrug Geopark:

Ice Age & Prehistory - Hunebed Center, Borger

Peat - Veenpark, Barger Compascuum Nature - Visitors' Center Homanshof of the Drentsche Aa area, Anloo Traces of Battle - Arsenal, Coevorden Forests - Boomkroonpad, Drouwen Art - Van Gogh House, Nieuw Amsterdam Water- De Bloemert, Midlaren Farmers - Nabershof, Emmen.

Sources:

Geopark de Hondsrug. (2018, July 3). Hotspots en expeditiepoorten. Opgehaald van Geopark de Hondsrug: http://www.geoparkdehondsrug.eu/ambassadeurscursus/hotspots-en-expeditiepoorten/

The integrity of Stonehenge A discussion on human interference at the heritage site

Should there be human intervention in the management of a natural heritage site, or should we let nature run its course? This is a question that can be raised when looking at any heritage site that has either been set up by or changed by human hands. This blogpost will look at the question of integrity of one of the most famous UNESCO World Heritage Sites, the prehistoric Stonehenge monument in Amesbury, England.

Human intervention has impacted nature in positive and negative ways. Lowenthal (2005), an American historian and geographer renowned for his work on heritage, says that development came at a price to the ecology of the earth. However, at the same time nature also affects the creations of human kind such as old buildings and artifacts. This means that nature is affected by human influence and vice versa.

Most of the one million visitors who visit Stonehenge each year believe they are looking at untouched 4,000-year-old remains. For decades the official Stonehenge guidebooks have been full of facts and theories surrounding the world's greatest prehistoric monument. However, what the brochures do not explicitly mention, is the restoring - or rebuilding - of the 4,000 year old stone circle throughout the 20th century. Even recently, from 1881-1964, changes were made to the Stonehenge to reverse the effects of nature and to preserve the monument and the landscape.

The very first documented intervention at Stonehenge happened in 1881 and is described  here by Simon Banton. There was a lot of outrage in both local and national press about the intervention. The picture above shows workers on the site in 1901, and more restoration work  was carried out in 1919, 1920, 1958, 1959 and 1964. Most of the restorations were focused mainly on straightening stones that were in danger of falling.

In the above pictures, we see the impact of the restorations throughout the 20th century. 

The first picture shows the Stonehenge monument in 1877, the second picture was made from a similar angle in 2008. Here you can find many more pictures of restorations as well as information about what kind of adjustments were made to the monument. These human interferences could bring up questions of integrity, as Lowenthal (2005) also mentions. Lowenthal notes the importance of thinking about the combination of nature and human effort as cultural landscapes that are in need to be preserved, requiring the combined expertise of both humanists and earth scientists; however, people tend to understand human interference in cultural heritage, but the same doesn’t go for a natural one. 

If we want to examine the ‘heritagescape’ of Stonehenge a little further, we can use the approach of Garden (2006). Garden describes the heritage site by means of a combination of the principles of boundary, cohesion and visibility. The Stonehenge site consists of 2,600 hectares of grass fields that are bounded by the river Avon, two car roads and an invisible field boundary. The roads have been a problem within the heritagescape as it is thought to interfere with the peace and tranquillity of this sensitive heritagescape. The site consists of the Stonehenge monuments aswell as other, less popular smaller monuments, standing in different places at the large site. Combined with a road tunnel that goes right through the middle of the site, we could say that there is a lack of cohesion in shaping the heritagescape. This lack of sense of cohesion can also be found back in the same discussions about the placement of the roads and tunnels in the area and human interference.2 Altogether, the visibility of the Stonehenge is obvious. It is called one of the wonders of the world and has a prominent place on the UNESCO World Heritage list.

These points make Stonehenge an interesting case as it is a popular prehistoric monument of natural elements which could lose all of its cultural integrity when changed by humans of the present. At the same time, the lack of interference of the present people could mean deterioration of its state through natural influences.3

In many cases, the line between what can be considered essential restoration work, and significant rebuilding, is blurry. Where should the line be drawn to reassure the integrity of a heritage without leaving it to be damaged by the elements of nature? We think every World Heritage is unique. Therefore each of them have different factors that have to be taken into consideration when making decisions about the extent of human intervention necessary to maintain the heritage and its cultural and global value.

However, an argument against human intervention at the Stonehenge monument could be that it has become a product of the 20th century heritage industry, making Stonehenge a reminiscent of what it might have looked like thousands of years ago, but is not anymore the creation of primordial people. What do you think about this particular case? Is the revitalization of Stonehenge justified and does it still have the same cultural value as before it was restored?

Written by,

SB, SL, MB

References

Barber, M. (2018, February 20). 100 years of care: early excavations and restoration at Stonehenge.

Opgehaald van English Heritage: https://blog.english-heritage.org.uk/stonehenge-early-excavations-restoration/

Batchelor, D. (1997, January). Mapping the Stonehenge world heritage site. In PROCEEDINGS-BRITISH ACADEMY (Vol. 92, pp. 61-72). OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS INC.

Emerson, S. (2016, May 26). Stonehenge, Easter Island, Venice: Climate Change Will Destroy Human History. Opgehaald van Motherboard: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/xyga3q/stonehenge-easter-island-venice-climate-change-will-destroy-human-history-unesco

Garden, Mary-Catherine E. “The Heritagescape: Looking at Landscapes of the Past.” International Journal of Heritage Studies 12, no. 5 (2006): 394-411.

How They Rebuilt Stonehenge 50 years ago. (2015, December 29). Opgehaald van Indymedia.org: https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2005/12/330623.html?c=on

Kinsley, A. (2017, January 10). Restorations at Stonehenge. Opgehaald van Silent Earth: https://www.silentearth.org/restorations-at-stonehenge-2/

Lowenthal, D. (2005). Natural and cultural heritage. International Journey of Heritage Studies 11:1, 81-92.

Meskell, L. (2009). Introduction: Cosmopolitan Heritage Ethics. In L. Meskell, Cosmopolitan Archaeologies (pp. 1-24). Duke University Press.

UNESCO. (1886). Stonehenge, Avebury and Associated Sites. Opgehaald van UNESCO: http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/373

Traces of Slavery in Groningen, Where?

On a very sunny Wednesday afternoon, we did a city walk through the city centre of Groningen on traces of slavery for our bachelor course on cultural heritage. Our guide led us to many spots in Groningen which we pass by on a daily basis, but of all these spots, we did not know their history at all. We decided to find out what the heritage sites, or the heritagescapes are like for traces of slavery in Groningen. We would like to find this out, to think of ways how there could be more attention for the slavery traces and to make it more visible.

The tour started at the Groninger Museum, where our guide showed us a picture of the painting of Elsebeth Schaij, by Hermannus Collenius. On the painting, you can see a black servant on the side of Elsebeth, in stylish clothes. “In that time (the 18th century),” our guide Barbara told us, “being painted with a servant on your side, oftentimes smaller pictured and at the edge of the painting, was some kind of figure of speech.  Also, pictured like this, the white skin of the woman on the painting should look better.” This painting is in the Groninger Museum, but we think over there it is only one of the many paintings, so it doesn’t really stand out. So we concluded that this first site is only a little visible. Painting of Elsebeth Schaij (mappingslavery.nl)

We walked onto the St Anthony Guest House, where our guide told us that it was founded in the 16th century as a charity institution to isolate infectious diseases such as the plague. Soon after that, it turned into a madhouse for people with mental or psychological disorders. Barbara also told us that over here, an employee of the WIC (West-Indische Compagnie) has been hospitalized for a while. “After his wife had sued him by the city government, they sent him on a ship to the West Indies. He was shipwrecked, but the man returned unscathed, so they sent him to the St Anthony Guest House”, she continued. We were all shocked and we could barely believe it when Barbara also told us about a way of income of the Guest House. Apparently on Sundays, people could go to the Guest House and pay to watch the people in there, unbelievable. For that matter we are glad that times have changed. At the Guest House, we could not find any traces of slavery, it was only described on a tourism plaque.     

St Anthony Guest House (mappingslavery.nl)

Our tour continued and we walked in the direction of the Gedempte Zuiderdiep. The Gedempte

Zuiderdiep is a street now, but before 1880 it apparently was the spot in Groningen where the ships, sometimes with slaves on it but also with goods, arrived. On the Zuiderdiep a lot of beer breweries established. The water was not suitable for long journeys, because it would rot easily. Beer was the perfect solution, because it doesn’t rot that easily, so the WIC ships were packed with a lot of beer for the crew to drink on their journeys, the crew members must have enjoyed themselves a lot during these journeys and it is a miracle that so many ships made it without suffering shipwreck. However, there were no traces to be found at the Zuiderdiep either.   

Our tour continued, and we walked from the Zuiderdiep through the Oosterstraat to the Grote Markt. We stopped at Hotel de Doelen, where in 1841 a bold opponent of slavery, John Scoble, stayed. He pleaded for the abolition of slavery in the Dutch colonies. In the first half of the nineteenth century, a growing number of organizations turned against slavery. Together they formed the abolitionist movement. The Netherlands were rather late with the abolition of slavery, it was only in 1863 that slavery was officially forbidden. The people who owned slaves got thirty florin compensation for every ‘lost’ slave they had to give up after the abolition of slavery.  After Hotel de Doelen we walked to the city hall and we ended the tour at a house where a slave owner had lived. What stroke us during the city walk, was that our guide showed us mainly sites and spots where the slave owners had lived or where slave owners had worked. There was not much to see or tell about the slaves themselves, we barely saw any concrete traces. This is also because there is little material of the slaves being preserved, which shows how little people cared about the slaves.

We ended the day in style with a beer on a terrace at the Zuiderdiep and discussed the city walk and the traces of slavery, or especially the lack of traces. Some of the sites provided you with a  little information on a small tourism plaque, but that’s it. We had our tour guide to provide us with information and she told us about the website of mappingslavery.nl, on which more information on slavery traces can be found, but it is not visible at all when you walk through the city. In our opinion, it should be made more visible, and in this way it will also be better known. We missed the visibility of the heritagescape for the slavery traces. There were no boundaries that mark a heritage site, no actual cohesion to tell the stories of the slaves and only very little visibility of the traces, mostly on plaques. Some of the buildings were still more or less the same, but when you did not know about its past, you would not have any clue about it. We concluded that it would be a good solution if the Groninger Museum became responsible of this, and that they should set up some kind city tour in the weekends and holidays through the city centre and an additional audio tour through all the traces of slavery, providing you with more information about the spots. Also the tourism plaques should be more extended or they should provide you with a QR code, linking you to a website on which you can find more information about the specific site. Furthermore, the municipality should set up some kind of path, with visible and recognizable signposts, covering all the traces of slavery in Groningen. Without these tours, plaques and signs, nobody will notice the hidden traces of slavery in the city of Groningen.

Sources:

Garden, Mary-Catherine E. “The Heritagescape: Looking at Landscapes of the Past.” International Journal of Heritage Studies 12, no. 5 (2006): 394-411.

https://www.deverhalenvangroningen.nl/alle-verhalen/het-slavernijverleden-van-groningen 

http://mappingslavery.nl/en/kaarten/nl-reg/groningen/groningen/ 

Written by

MB, SL

Back to the Past: the Train Hijacking of 1977

Disclaimer: Persons and events in this story are entirely fictional. They bear no resemblance to anyone or anything. 


He still dreams about it occasionally. He still can see the hijackers, hear the gunshots, smell the penetrant air of human excrement and feel the fear. He was 21 years old when the train he took to visit his parents in Groningen got hijacked by Moluccans. He hadn’t visit his parents in half a year. Amsterdam was way too exciting and he had made too many new friends to spend his weekends in the boring North of the Netherlands. However, it was his mother’s birthday so he decided to take the train and pay his mother a surprise visit. He was drowsing in when the train stopped slowly. “Are we in Groningen already?” The three weeks that followed were a nightmare, he barely talks about and tries to suppress it. Which he is really good at, only in those damn dreams it still haunts him. But last night it was different, he saw things more clearly than normally, it almost felt like he was in the train again, he could almost feel the trainchairs he slept in for three weeks. After he checks his agenda, he knows why. Today, the 23rd of May, it is exactly 41 years ago that the hijacking begun. “It is already that long ago?” In his job as a psychologist he advises people on a daily basis to go back to the place they experienced a traumatic experience, to confront themselves with the past. Maybe it’s time that he takes this advice personally.

The hijacked train from above (ANP)

The last years it got more difficult to elude the hijacking. The families of the hijackers, who got killed, filed lawsuits against the government. They state that the government killed the hijackers with premeditation, while the Dutch State claims that all the perpetrators died in a hail of bullets. According to the relatives of the hijackers, however, at least two of the hijackers were executed up close while they were wounded and unarmed (Marselis, 2015).

Although he agrees with the families, it riles him that the hijackers are made the subject of suffering. He, and the 54 others, are the ones who have to live with this traumatic experience every day again.

After much deliberation, he decided to go back to De Punt, the place where the hijacking took place, for the first time in 41 years. While driving, he already returned to that spot in his mind. He thought about that one small farm, one of the few things that he could see through the small, light space in the darkened windows of the train. He liked to look at the farm, because it made him think about the farm of his parents, and that thought gave him hope and made him feel more safe and calm. Would the farm still be there? And would it still be the same?

When he arrived at De Punt, he was quite surprised that there was no specific place of remembrance at all. He remembers an article he once read about heritage sites, or the 'heritagescape.' The article was written by Garden (2006) and he learnt from it that a heritage site consists of components that can be recognized by three principles, which are boundaries, cohesion and visibility. These three principles seemed to be non-existant at first glance. He expected something more. Something more confronting perhaps, but also something that let him know that his nightmares are not an outcome of something that has been forgotten.
With a lump is his throat, he got out of the car and he walked through the grass towards the railway while looking around. He looked in the direction of the farm, and saw that it was still there, but it was extended a lot. It felt strange that if you did not know that this was the place where it all happened, it seemed a very peaceful location, although 41 years ago it was the base of the most bloody government intervention since the second world war. He felt disappointed that there was no clue that this was the place where it all happened. No boundaries that mark a heritage site. No cohesion that tells a story of the past. No monuments or signs. On the other side it felt good that this once so horrible place turned into such a calm and peaceful spot. He watched the trains passing by and after a long walk, he decided to go back home.

The farm nowadays (own picture)

When he got home, he had mixed feelings. It was suprising to see that there was no visible heritage site, but moreover, he felt relieved that the - in his mind - terrible place had turned into just another meadow. 41 years ago, he could only have hoped that it all would end this way and that he would be able to return to the spot alive. He was glad to be home again with his wife, and he went to bed early. That night he slept better than ever before and the dreams about the hijacking turned into dreams about the peaceful place the railway in De Punt is nowadays.  

Sources:

Garden, Mary-Catherine E. “The Heritagescape: Looking at Landscapes of the Past.” International Journal of Heritage Studies 12, no. 5 (2006): 394-411.

Marselis, R. “Remembering Dutch-Moluccan radicalism: Memory politics and historical event television.” Sage Journals, Memory Studies volume 9 (2015): 203-217.

SL, SB, MB

Syria in 3D: the ICONEM project

INTRODUCTION

March 15, 2011. Fifteen boys were detained and tortured for writing graffiti on a wall in support of the Arab Spring. An act that would start huge demonstrations all over Syria, with the result of thousands of imprisonments and killings commissioned by the regime of Bashar Al-Assad.
This day marked the beginning of the Syrian civil war which has recently reached its eighth year. Eight years of war leading to almost 6 million Syrians fleeing the country and another 6 millions being displaced within the country, leading to the biggest refugee crisis of our time. Destroyed lives, homes, hospitals, schools. Also historic monuments and landmarks have been destroyed or are threatened, making the once much visited heritage sites of Syria a very sensitive reality.

The Syrian case is one of the worldwide examples of a need for digitalization of cultural heritage due to either, or both destruction and diaspora. In this blog post, we will elaborate on the importance of digitizing heritage, with a focus on the ICONEM creating 3D maps of Syrian heritage sites threatened or already destroyed by the war in Syria.

ICONEM

ICONEM, the founder of the 3D mapping of heritage sites, has the ambition to preserve knowledge of threatened heritage and archaeological sites. They want to offer their public and the scientific community an innovative way of exploring famous world heritage, predominantly sites that have been destroyed, and the possibility for transmission of cultural heritage to future generations. Their team partners up with different organizations as UNESCO, Google and Microsoft to make this happen. They first visit a site and make as many photos and videos of the site to make sure they capture every part of the site. On the basis of that they construct their 3D map and publish it on the website http://iconem.com/ .

THE SYRIAN MAP

Since the conflict in Syria began in 2011, many monuments and archaeological sites have been destroyed by various bombings and fights. A new detailed 3D map, a collaboration with the Syrian Directorate General of Antiquities and Museums (DGAM), offers hope for the preservation of these sites. The Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, the Temple of Bel and the Antiquities Museum in Palmyra, among others, have been documented in these 3D maps. This 3D mapping project includes sites which have been destroyed recently and are not able to be seen in their original state anymore. One of the many examples is the Temple of Bel, which has been destroyed, but is in the 3D database to admire. For people in Syria it is of course also important to transmit the cultural heritage of their country to their children and grandchildren and to remember their heritage. Silberman and Purses (2009) write about the use of digital heritage as part of a collective memory and identity, in particular for diasporic communities. They write that "in the absence of the physical landscape, a virtual landscape constructed digitally from both empirical evidence and collected reminiscences can map the community of memory itself." Although in the case of Syrian heritage, reminiscences of the community are not implemented in the process of 3D mapping, the article does highlight the importance of digital preservation of shared heritage for displaced people: "The internet is transformed from a source of practical information that facilitates the move, to a source of cultural capital when an immigrants' identiy begins to erode."

Although the 3D mapping is not as impressive to behold as seeing a mosque or a temple in real life, it is a great initiative to preserve cultural heritage and preserve the knowledge that otherwise wouldn’t been able to access anymore. It is amazing how lifelike images of new generations compute constructions of ancient sites, this is a powerful new element in the presentation of official heritage (Silberman & Purser, 2012). This 3D mapping is a whole new way of visualizing heritage.

TEMPLE OF BEL, PALMYRA

An important project that is currently being done, is the one on the Temple of Bel in Palmyra. The aim of this project is to organize a restoration campaign through 3D reconstitution.
The Temple of Bel is a famous monument in Syria and has been built in 32 AD, when it became the center of religious life in Palmyra. It is a temple of 200 by 200 meters and has a large sanctuary in the center. This impressive monument was a well-preserved monument in Palmyra. However, in August 2015, it was further destroyed by IS, leaving only the gate and the exterior walls intact.

.

The work done in Palmyra started by some thorough field data acquisition. The ICONEM
team and DGAM archaeologists started recording the antique site with drones in April 2016,
just one week after liberation for accurate documentation. Then, the pictures taken are processed by a 3D algorithms which generates a 3D model of the site. This working method led to high definition 3D models of all the damaged monuments in the area.

What ICONEM also did, was collecting earlier data of the site, from the time before the IS-damage, such as photographs and architectural surveys. Here, ICONEM brings together the past and the present in adequately, digitally reconstructing the Temple of Bel.

Reconstruction of the temple of Bel before the explosion (in red), overlapping the current state of the temple.

Finally, ICONEM processed a theoretical simulation of the explosion, which helps archaeologists to find the original place of the blocks that have fallen and identify the degradation of the blocks.

CONCLUSION

We never had heard of something like this 3D mapping and certainly not on this scale. It is a whole new, smart way of approaching and preserving cultural heritage and archaeological knowledge. This project by ICONEM can be very useful in the future, and not only for the Syrian community, but for all world heritage this is a good way of preserving and examining sites, even if you are not able to see it in person. Also for diasporic migrant communities such as the Syrians, digitalization of heritage has become an important share in preservation of identity. As Silberman and Purser (jaartal) write: "Where before the mechanisms that defined shared cultural heritage were territorially bounded or required physical presence, those connections can now be maintained digitally."

This case study and article show us great ways of digitalization of heritage. Could you think of any negative aspects of the use of digital media on cultural heritage?

Here you can see the 3D mapping of the Temple of Bel, Palmyra.

Temple of Bel by Iconem on Sketchfab

Here, you can find more information the projects done on the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, Ugarit, the Jableh Theatre, the Krak des Chevaliers, Amrit, Masyaf Castle and the Citadel of Salah Ad-Deen; important damaged Syrian heritage sites that are all registered on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Written by,

SL, SB, MB

REFERENCES

Glassie, H.H. (1995): Passing the Time in Ballymenone: Culture and History of an Ulster Community, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.  

Scott, J.C. (1990): Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts, New Haven, CT:Yale University Press.

Silberman, N. & Purser, M.: Collective Memory as Affirmation: People-Centered Cultural Heritage in a Digital Age. In: Giaccardi, Elisa (ed.),

Heritage and Social Media : Understanding heritage in a participatory culture, pp. 13-29.

Srinivasan, Ramesh et al (2009): Digital Museum and Diverse Cultural Knowledges: Moving Past the Traditional Catalogue. In: The Information Society, pp. 265-278.

Zerubavel, E. (2004): Time Maps: Collective Memory and the Social Shape of the Past, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

http://iconem.com, (retrieved 18th of April, 2018)

Aaierballen and Bouken on the 'Dag van de Grunneger Toal'

On Saturday, the 17th of March, we, as a group of Minorities and Multilingualism bachelor students, were invited to the ninth edition of the ´Dag van de Grunneger Toal’ (day of the Groninger language) to do field research. After we were given the instruction on how to do interviews with the participants (dailnemers), we started our search. In the beginning it felt quite awkward to approacht the participants, while they were busy doing other things and enjoying themselves. Just when we got enough courage and approached someone, he gave us a big ‘no’. That didn’t make us feel more confident. However, the second person we approached was a very sweet lady, who was willing to give us all the information and more. After that we felt more confident and it was not so awkward anymore.

Since 2010, the event traditionally takes place every year in March which has been appointed the name ‘Meertmoand Dialectmoand’ (‘March month Dialect month’).  This means that in March, extra attention is given to the Groninger language. The ‘Dag van de Grunniger Toal’ is a special contribution to this month, a day in which visitors can experience the versatility of the Groninger language in for example, music, literature, media and education. There are workshops and presentations given on various topics, such as the future of the Groninger language, there is a book fair and even Groninger live music.

When we arrived at the event, we got the assignment of conducting 10 to 15 interviews with participants of the Dag, to collect data for a master thesis on the Groninger language. The interviews were conducted in pairs of 2 to 3 students and consisted of a series of questions touching upon different topics such as language attitudes, Groninger identity, proficiency and language use. One question on language attitudes we asked, for example, was “do you feel ashamed when you speak Gronings?”. We also asked the participants to read aloud some words and to name, in Gronings, a few pictures we showed them. The interviews were filmed with permission of the participants who signed a form indicating whether they wanted their interview to be shared on social media or not.   

The interviews were very fun to do, as most people were very friendly and eager to talk about ‘their’ dialect to us. What we found was most striking were the answers on the question ‘What character do you think makes you a ‘real’ Groninger?’. We heard quite the same answers during the day. As the prejudices would expect, most people would describe their character as ‘down-to-earth’, ‘on the background’ and ‘quiet’. There was only one person we talked to who said that was a silly question, as we are all citizens of the world and that you can’t assign character traits to people based on where they come from.

After our visit to the 'Dag van de Grunneger Toal', we think ‘De Dag van de Grunneger Toal’ is a good initiative and certainly worth to organize it. A lot of people we met on this day were really proud of their Gronings and enjoyed the attention for the language they grew up with. For most people it’s a day full of nostalgia, with the books written in Gronings, CD’s in the Groninger language and the Groninger food (e.g. Aaierbal) you could buy there. As the average age of the participants was a bit above 50, we think it is also important to raise awareness amongst the younger generations, since they are the ones who need to carry on the Groninger languages. This is not an easy task, to enthusiasm the younger generation. All we can do is keep on organizing days like these and hope that the younger generation eventually will see the importance of keeping a language alive, even if it is a regional language as the Groninger language is. 

Written by,

SB, MB, SL

The Dutch 'Klederdracht'

Painted by Carola van Ham, 1610

Maybe one of the most popular touristic villages in the Netherlands is Volendam. Volendam is known for their musicality, since many dutch-singing artist are from Volendam whom are widely known in the Netherlands, and some even in Germany, so you can say The Netherlands has some real world famous celebrities. But as much as we like the music from Volendam, we wanted to write this blog about the traditional clothing (klederdracht) which was worn in Volendam until approximately mid-twentieth century by most inhabitants.

After the fifties of the nineteenth century Volendam was more and more influenced by the ‘common’ clothing in The Netherlands. People in Volendam started to wear less and less traditional clothing. More women replaced their traditional upper-body clothing for a ‘normal’ blue or black sweater. This was, mockingly, called ‘half fish, half human’ by the older people in Volendam (considering Volendam is a fishing village). However, this marked the run-up to the end of the wearing of traditional clothing of Volendam. The traditional clothing is nowadays a popular tourist attraction in Volendam.

History and heritage transmit different thing to different audiences (Lowenthal, 1998). The traditional clothing seen from historical perspective was transmitted from the elders to their offspring, because it was their culture and a use. The traditional clothing seen from a heritage perspective is the clothing tourists can try on when they visit Volendam and often go on pictures with. The traditional clothing in Volendam was not only worn by the Volendammers, but by most people in the area. The first annotation of traditional clothing in writings is from the eighteenth century, before that they also wore the traditional clothing, but everyone did, so it was not remarkable enough to write about.



The clothing, especially the women’s clothing became popular abroad, because of the many painters which stayed in Volendam around 1900. Their paintings spread around the world and together with advertisement of travel agencies, the traditional clothing became a symbol of The Netherlands. The image of a woman with traditional clothing on in front of a windmill and a tulip field became the standard. (see picture)

“Het zou even zoo dwaas zijn die oude kleedij met geweld te willen verbieden, als ze, daar waar ze uit zich zelf verdwenen is, weer te willen doen herleven. En dit geldt voor alles wat ons het voorgeslacht liet. Slechts datgene waarin de algemeene waarheid leeft, blijf, en krijgt op zijn tijd zijn nieuwe kleed, kan zich, op zijn tijd opnieuwe verjongen en zich dan weer doen onderscheiden.” (Molkenboek, 1917)

“It would be even so foolish to forbid that old clothing by force, if they, where it disappeared itself, wanted to revive it. And this applies to everything our ancestry left us. Only that in which the general truth lives, stays, and gets new clothing when it’s time, can rejuvenate and distinguish itself again when it’s time” (Molkenbroek, 1917)

The quote above is from a dutch writer, T.H. Molenbroek, who wrote a book about the national traditional clothing of The Netherlands. He organized a national celebration for traditional clothing in 1912. In his book is is very certain that the traditional clothing belongs to the monuments our ancestors left us and should stay part of our joint past. He was already engaged in the disappearing of the traditional clothing back in the early 1900’s. However, he realizes it may come back some day and be a part of the lives of people again. You could say the traditional clothing is still part of the lives of people in Volendam. People are making money of it, by cultivating it. Tourists can hire a suit and take traditional pictures with it for money.

The dutch traditional clothing is something that has stayed in our lieux de mémoires (Nora, 1989), even if people don’t wear it in their daily lives anymore. The wearing of traditional clothing may be history, the memory of it is not, and made the traditional clothing part of people’s heritage by cultivating it. This is. of course, one of the many, many examples there are where history meets heritage and the other way around. Can you think of an example where a historic costume became a cultivated heritage?

Written by,
SL, MB & SB

References

Harvey, D. C. (2001). Heritage pasts and heritage presents: temporality, meaning and the scope of heritage studies. International journal of heritage studies, 7(4), 319-338.

Lowenthal, D. (1998). The heritage crusade and the spoils of history. Cambridge University Press.

Nora, P. (1989). Between memory and history: Les lieux de mémoire. Representations, 7-24.

Molkenboer, T. (1917). De Nederlandsche nationale kleederdrachten (Vol. 71). JM Meulenhoff.