Samene – et folk uten forhistorie? En analyse av samiske museers utstillinger med vekt på hvordan samisk forhistorie presenteres i utstillingene

This Ph.D. project is connected to the Patterns of Cultural Valuation research project, which seeks to investigate how different ethnic groups and minorities have been presented and represented in Norwegian museums of cultural history during the last 150 years. I wish to analyze exhibitions at Sami museums in Norway, Sweden and Finland, with a special emphasis on how Sami prehistory is presented in these exhibitions. The starting point of my project is the research done on Sami archaeology within the last 25 years. I wish to investigate how, and to which extent, this research is being presented in the exhibitions. Exhibitions at Sami museums have been criticized for representing Sami culture as static and timeless, and in this way reproducing old-fashioned ethnographic stereotypes and doing a kind of “self orientalization”. Is it possible to avoid this within the confines of traditional ethnographic and historical-chronological representation? Sami museums are an arena where several potential problematic aspects with the museum institution in general are highlighted. Questions like Whose past? Whose land? Who has the right to represent and to be represented? are being asked. Historically, the Sami people have been presented as the exotic “other” in the national museums in Norway, Sweden and Finland. What happens when the Sami make their own exhibitions and represent themselves? And how have the national museums adapted to this new museum reality? To be able to study this, I have also included national museums with exhibitions of Sami culture and history in the analysis

Art · Ethnic group · Ethnography · Exhibition · National museum · Norwegian · Sociology · Visual arts · Anthropology · Cultural Heritage Management and Preservation · Diverse Musicological Studies · History · Museology · Museums and Cultural Heritage