Striving to Grow: The Challenge of Re-imagining Nordic Heritage in North America

After many years of planning and fundraising, we are in the final stages of construction. This modern 57,000-sq. ft. museum and cultural center is located in Ballard, the historically Nordic neighborhood of Seattle. This facility will expand exhibition and educational spaces, allow us to continue to preserve cultural histories, and maintain our status as the premier pan-Nordic institution in North America.

To help us accomplish this goal, longtime supporters Allan & Inger Osberg have graciously offered to match all cash Capital Campaign gifts (up to $250,000 total). That means that during this holiday season, your dollars will go twice as far! So please, reach down into those pockets and help complete this world-class museum project!

(Nelson, 2017)

These are the words of Eric Nelson, CEO of the Nordic Heritage Museum since 2007, as expressed in an email sent to the museum’s members on December 14, 2017. With the grand opening of the new museum approaching in the Spring of 2018, Nelson strove to parlay the enthusiasm that many of the museum’s members felt at seeing the facility approach completion into cash flow. With only months to go, the project was still underfinanced. The wording of this call to action is interesting because while it promised that the new building would cement the museum’s position as the “the premier pan-Nordic institution in North America” and set the stage for offering an array of expanding possibilities to preserve the cultural histories of the Nordics, it carefully avoided saying anything about the heritage that had been the core interest of so many of the museum’s members and original founders. The wording, as this article shall argue, was not unintentional. Indeed, it is important to reflect over Nelson’s choice of words, as it can help us to more clearly understand new ways in which heritage is being framed and re-thought in today’s cultural economy (du Gay and Pryke 2002; Ray and Sayer 1999; cf. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 2006).

To this end, this article investigates the layers of significance attached to the word “heritage” as staff and leadership at the Nordic Heritage Museum in Seattle proceeded to gear up to move into a new $45 million facility and expand their constituency in order to ensure the long-term economic feasibility of their institution. What role is attributed to the word “heritage” when the museum aims to engage new cosmopolitan communities in a global economy? How do notions of contemporary Nordic culture that are at play in the global ecumene challenge and create new interpretations of Nordic heritage?

Methodology

Before turning to the museum, however, it is necessary to explain the methodology used in this study. The analysis that follows is based upon two ethnographic research projects that have focused on the question of how heritage institutions that feature historic houses are affected by processes of commercialization. The first project from which this article directly derives, was an 8-week-long pilot studying investigating two museums located in the United States featuring Swedish and Nordic heritage: The Nordic Heritage Museum (NHM) in Seattle, and the American Swedish Institute (ASI) in Minneapolis. At the time of the study, both museums were undergoing dramatic developmental changes and processes of professionalization. The American Swedish Institute had recently completed the development of a new state-of-the-art multimillion dollar facility (called the Nelson Cultural Center) to complement the century-old Turnblad Mansion that had been the heart of the museum for the better part of the twentieth century. The Nordic Heritage Museum, as we discuss in this article, was in the process of moving from a rented 1907 school building converted in the 1980s into a museum, to a new purpose-built $45 million ultramodern facility.

In relation to the Nordic Heritage Museum, two weeks of fieldwork were conducted in Ballard, Washington, in 2014 as well as in 2016 with a follow-up week of fieldwork in 2017. As part of this work, the research team participated in museum events...