Underlying every claim for the Repatriation of Cultural Heritage is a long , complicated and significant history.
Today I have been reading about the return of the Icelandic Manuscripts by Denmark to Iceland.
The significance of these treasures to the people of Iceland is impossible to exaggerate.
Witten on vellum and later on paper, they not only symbolize Iceland’s great heritage of medieval prose and poetry, but are also perceived to be ‘symbols’ of Iceland’s ‘nationhood’ and ‘cultural identity’.
‘To understand the great importance of the manuscripts to Iceland one must
appreciate the history of enormous literary activity of that comparatively
small country and the ultimate rarity of its medieval works … [As] the great
Danish historian, Saxo Grammaticus, writing about 12OO in … Inopiam ingenio pensant [observed] … [the people of Iceland] “make up for their poverty by their wits”. … Later scholars and historians elaborated on this
observation, taking the view that traditional Viking vigour and aspirations,
pent up in the isolated island, found an outlet in memories, imagination and
story-telling. Indeed the “bookishness” of the Icelanders, both in
earlier and later centuries, came to be regarded as a national characteristic.
… [The Saga Manuscripts] have been the roots and stock of Icelandic culture,
the life-blood of the nation, the oldest living literature in Europe,
enshrining the origins of Icelandic society. The sagas not only preserved the
old language as a living tongue and a written language which is closer to
modern Icelandic than Shakespeare is to modern English; they also helped keep alive the Icelanders through the worst centuries of natural disasters and
colonial oppression.’ (Greenfield, Jeanette (2013) The Return of Cultural Treasures 3rd edition, Cambridge University Press).
So, the starting point for all participants involved in the Mediation of a Cultural Heritage Dispute, is to have an awareness and understanding of the ‘Philosophy of Cultural Identity’, and of how the ‘National Identity’ dynamic operates in these disputes.
However, it is not quite as simple as that, because there is a twist! – see my comment below.
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At
the ‘epicentre’ of the ‘restitution dialogue’, is a struggle between two
competing theories under ‘International Cultural Heritage Law’:
(i) ‘Cultural
Nationalism’ – Proponents of this view believe that cultural objects
belong within the boundaries of the ‘source’ nation of origin.
v.
(ii) ‘Cultural
Internationalism’ – Proponents of this view regard cultural property as
being in the words of the 1954 Hague Convention – ‘the cultural heritage
of all mankind.
One of the ancient
manuscript treasures returned to Iceland in 1971 by the Royal Library in
Copenhagen, is the ‘Flateyjarbok Codex,’ which is a compilation of sagas made
in the north of Iceland in the 1390’s.
A page from the Codex
shows the start of the ‘Graenlendinga Saga’, which tells the story of the
expedition of ‘Leif the Lucky’ to Vinland (North America), and of the ‘Norse’
discovery of the New World five hundred years before Columbus.
So – who owns history?
Does ‘Cultural
Nationalism’ trump ‘Cultural Internationalism?’
I will explore this
conflict in my Monograph – ‘Mediation of International Cultural Heritage
Disputes’, see the ‘Mediation of Cultural Heritage Disputes’ page at www.carlislam.co.uk.