Hip heritage and contemporary tastes. Packaging the Nordic in the American cultural market

Abstract

This article focuses on two institutions, the American Swedish Institute and the Nordic Heritage Museum that have spent the first part of the twenty-first century thinking and rethinking what the heritage under their auspices can be. In doing this, the text problematizes the manner in which elements of Nordic history and identity are being re-thought and re-framed in the cultural and economic context of the American heritage market. The article asks, how is heritage affected when it is increasingly framed as a marketable commodity? As part of the analysis the article discusses the manner in which these museums are intensively and consciously striving to be cool and chic, but even trend and fashion sensitive as they position themselves in the growing and competitive market of what we call hip heritage.

Hip Viking Heritage

“…In becoming even more 'hip heritage', however, museum presentations of the Viking Age seem to be losing out on the opportunity to challenge preconceptions. They are thus 'messaging conformity rather than diversity' as Gradén and O'Dell (2018) put it, and that seems like a perilous path indeed.…”

“…Moreover, many other aspects of museum practice have come under scrutiny, including an ongoing, gradual change in audience expectations and a growing awareness in museums about the motivations and expectations of different audience segments (e.g. Gradén & O'Dell 2018;Christensen & Haldrup 2019;Valtysson et al 2021).…”

From “aesthetic” to aestheticization: a multi-layered cultural approach

“…Markets often acquire specific "market aesthetics" as in the case of the German Ostalgie market (Bach 2002;Merkel 2006), the electric guitar market (Fernandez and Lastovicka 2011;Östberg and Hartmann 2015) or the Viking heritage market (Gradén and O'Dell 2018). These markets, together with their larger institutional structures, operate largely through aestheticization (Pomiès, Arsel, and Bean 2020).…”

“…Market-level aestheticization through accumulation (here, Nordic market aesthetics) provides sensory and material resources and outlooks for market players (Molander and Östberg 2015) and turns the aesthetic into a market regime that enables commercial actors to stand out from the existing market system, which in turn becomes the "Other" market. For instance, heritage museums try to implement new Nordic construction encompassing imaginations around sustainability and innovation (Gradén and O'Dell 2018), whereby the Nordic is reimagining its past to legitimize its role in present society. The aestheticization of Nordicnessthat is, making something that becomes a part of the Nordic look-serves to legitimize the role of specific actors in present society.…”

Heritagelore and an Introduction to the Thematic Issue on Culture and Heritage under Construction

“…We do not have the space to discuss these in depth here. For further discussions of these processes, see Gradén & O'Dell (2017, 2018, 2020.…”