Culture in for and as Sustainable Development

STORY 3
SURVIVING POST-INDUSTRIALISATION
Resilience and transformation:
Post-industrial landscapes, place and
living futures in Norway
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The protection and uses of industrial heritage
raise many problems. Some (whose heritage,
what to protect and how, who is in control?) are
common to all heritage, although often exacerbated
by scale and recentness. Some on the
other hand are more distinctive to industrial heritage.
So-called ‘industrial’ heritage is normally
actually post-industrial: it is the material remains
that have been left behind that we grapple with,
and often in the context of communities affected
by the withdrawal of employment and prosperity,
who have the need to not only preserve the remains
but to ensure they take on new economic,
cultural and social life. The uses of these remains
are therefore an aspect of heritage that is particularly
relevant to discussions of culturally-informed
sustainability.
The towns of Rjukan and Notodden in Telemark
became in the early 20th century the birthplace
of Norway as a modern, industrial nation, thanks
initially to the use of hydro-electricity drawn
from local waterfalls in large-scale industrialisation,
notably the production of chemical saltpetre.
From 1900 to 1920 their populations grew
from almost nothing to several thousands. After
a short period of rapid growth, the area has experienced
a prolonged period of de-industrialisation,
and since 1945 in particular technological
development and the changing global economy
created social and economic challenges as factories
closed and large scale industrial employment
fell away. The two towns have met the need for
economic restructuring in different way. In 2014
the Norwegian government submitted a proposal
to nominate the industrial heritage at Rjukan and
Notodden for UNESCO’s world heritage list. The
nomination consists of four components associated
with technical-industrial heritage: the tangible
and man-made remains for power production,
the factories and industrial buildings, the transport
systems and urban communities of the company
town type.
The nomination emphasises the human creation
of society as an expression of modernisation
through industrialisation. But what should be
sustained and protected and why? Is it the buildings
with machines, and the trains and ships? Is
it the town and the workers’ housing areas? Or is
it the whole landscape? Industrial development
at Rjukan and Notodden was highly dependent
on the physical landscape. Why not sustain the
whole production system, the physical and the
man-made landscape? Or is it the intangible heritage,
the “ways of living” of population with all
their customs, skills and backgrounds, that also
should be sustained? The human features will
change and vanish if they are not protected. This
is also a question of how to protect. It concerns
the way in which factory buildings are turned into
nice, sanitised and safe surrounding for families,
children and visitors of any kind. Are factories fun
places to play? Are hard working conditions, long
hours, dangers, etc. from the beginning of twentieth
century being forgotten in the process? Sustaining
industrial heritage is also a question of
the image of the landscape, not only the physical
landscape.
The protection of cultural heritage has to be
evaluated in the context of current discourses
in media, policy, education and the arts, in
order to understand the varied meanings of