Rethinking Nordic Colonialism - Website Sheds Light Over Forgotten Past

56 artists, theorists, politicians, and grassroots activists from all over the world participated in the project that took place in Iceland, The Faroe Islands, Sapmi, Norway, Sweden and Finland. They exchanged colonial and postcolonial experiences and strategies, examined why this past has been forgotten and how it continues to reproduce itself as waves of intolerance, xenophobia, and nationalism.

A week ago the (impressive!) website of this project (which has also been published on DVD) has been launched in Oslo. You can spend hours and days, reading the papers, watching videos and movies, looking at exhibitions, listening to presentations.

In the introduction Frederikke Hansen and Tone Olaf Nielsen explain:

The colonial history of the Nordic region is a dark chapter that seems to have slipped the memory of many of the Nordic populations. Although it continues to make itself very much felt in the region’s former colonies, this history is alarmingly absent in the collective memory of the once-colonizing Nordic countries.

With Rethinking Nordic Colonialism: A Postcolonial Exhibition Project in Five Acts, we aim to shed light over this history. Not only do we hope to explain why this past has been forgotten in some parts of the region. We also want to show how this history continues to structure the Nordic societies today, and how our contemporary problems of intolerance, xenophobia, and nationalism have their roots in this past.

I'll come back with more blog posts about this website

>> visit Rethinking Nordic Colonialism

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