Objects, traditions, and the hermeneutics of Viking heritage

Abstract

This article discusses the work that Vestfold and Telemark County in Norway has performed to consolidate its heritage actors and institutions under the umbrella of “Viking Age heritage” and the role digital tools have played in this effort. The article’s focus revolves around an analysis of an introductory digital installation at the Midgard Viking Centre at Borre in Horten municipality and how that installation communicates ideas about the Vikings and the Viking Age in terms of Viking heritage. The article argues that at the Borre site, Viking Age heritage is explained using interpretive registers assumed by the visitors, which in turn the visitors use to renegotiate the value of Vikings and the Viking Age through a hermeneutical process. This, in turn, frames the Viking and the Viking Age as heritage. The article further argues that this process hinges on registers of both material archaeological artifacts and immaterial “tradition,” two relations to the past that activate different registers of historical knowledge and that are sought to be conflated in the Viking Age effort.