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DOI: 10.1177/1469605312456342
2013 13: 31 Journal of Social Archaeology
ra Ptursdttir
Concrete matters: Ruins of modernity and the things called heritage

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DOI: 10.1177/1469605312456342
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Article
Concrete matters: Ruins
of modernity and the
things called heritage
o ra Pe tursdo ttir
Department of Archaeology and Social Anthropology,
University of Troms, Norway
Abstract
Intangibility has become a trendy term within heritage studies and is now even
considered to refer to heritage in general. This article discusses this development,
along with its integrity and consequences for the fate of things in the heritage discourse.
With reference to the concrete ruins of Icelands recent past it addresses the traditional
and contemporary processes of discrimination and othering within heritage definitions,
and the often fragile dialectic between heritage and waste. With a foothold in these very
concrete and tangible remains the article questions the emerging claim that all heritage
is intangible and suggests that a broader heritage conception, and a true concern for
the very tangible qualities of things, may bring us closer to a comprehension of the
(heritage) value of these modern ruins.
Keywords
Gelassenheit, heritage, heritage value, intangible heritage, modern ruins, ruination,
thingness
Ruin memory
They have destroyed the factory! It is not the same it has lost its charm now. These
were the words of a frustrated photographer I met in Strandir, in Icelands Westfjords,
while working on my project on herring factories in the area last summer. I instantly
knew what he was referring to. One of the two decaying and roughly half a century old
Corresponding author:
o ra Petursdo ttir, University of Troms, Department of Archaeology and Social Anthropology, Breiviklia,
9037 Troms, Norway.
Email: thora.petursdottir@uit.no
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herring rendering factories I was working on had been painted white earlier in
the summer. Abandoned in the 1950s the factory had been left to ruination until
bought, along with most of its adjacent buildings, by its present day owners in the
1980s. Soon after they had restored and opened a small hotel in one of the old
buildings where they have since served a constantly growing number of tourists
making their way to this beautiful but remote region every summer. The restoration
of the factory itself, however, a colossal degrading concrete structure, was for long,
and still is really, beyond their capacity. Nevertheless, step by step, replacing broken
windows, roof tiles and gutters, stopping leakage and inlling frost cracks the build-
ings constant aging and decay has, to some extent, been tamed. This has made it
possible for the hotel managers to exploit the lure the old factory has on visitors,
inviting guests on guided tours along the processing line, creating a small herring
history exhibition in the engine hall, and throwing art exhibitions and concerts in
the many wonderfully lit and acoustic spaces it provides (Figure 1). The latest amend-
ment in this process was the painting of the factory, turning its outer appearance from
concrete grey to glistering white. It is not for this that I have travelled all this way!,
the photographer announced, and although I sympathized with the owners intentions
and eort, genuinely caring for this abandoned building, I understood his frustration.
I too knew the factory before its face-lift and realized the enormous transformation
caused by this white makeup.
Introduction
The latest theoretical twirl in the humanities and social sciences has been articu-
lated as a new concern with matter, materiality or a turn towards things.
1
As
stated by historian Frank Trentmann, Things are back. After the turn to discourse
and signs in the late 20th century, there is a new fascination with the material stu
of life (2009: 283). Interestingly, the contemporary development within heritage
studies, to some extent at least, has been characterized by an opposite turn. Here
intangibility seems to have become an equally attractive catchword. While rst
entering the heritage toolkit in order to accommodate other, often non-western,
aspects of heritage than monuments and objects, the concept of intangible heritage
is now even seen as representing . . . a radical paradigm shift from the objective
nature of material culture to the subjective experience of the human being
(Ruggles and Silverman, 2009: 11). Thus, intangibility is, by some scholars,
argued to describe the essence of heritage in general. [A]ll heritage is intangible,
it is stated (Smith, 2006: 3; see also Waterton and Smith, 2009b: 16), and, further-
more, there is, really, no such thing as heritage (Smith, 2006: 11, my emphasis; see
also e.g. Waterton and Smith, 2009b: 10). Though it may truly be debated to what
extent the current turn towards things in the humanities and social sciences
involves a sincere concern with the things themselves (see Ingold, 2007; Olsen,
2010), the call for a reverse or opposite turn within heritage studies is worthy of
a closer look.
32 Journal of Social Archaeology 13(1)
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The critique uttered by advocates of intangible heritage is that monuments,
physical objects or material culture have dominated heritage denitions and in
eect excluded other possible perspectives or ways to understand heritage. That
in itself may be a legitimate and understandable critique. But where does it lead us
to claim that all heritage is intangible, that there are no such things as heritage?
And, can it really be claimed to account for a paradigm shift in heritage studies or
management? Moreover, where does it leave things, in heritage, to deny them their
tangibility or thingness? And where does it leave heritage to ignore things role, or
to assign them innocence, in the discourse and construction of heritage concep-
tions? In this article I discuss these questions as well as possible consequences of
this development.
My discussion will seek concreteness in a case study: on-going research focusing
on ruins of modernity in Icelands northwest, specically the concrete ruins of
herring factories that were constructed and abandoned during the rst half of
the twentieth century. The factories emerged due to the advent of industrialized
herring shing, known as the herring adventure (s ldarvinty ri) in Icelandic
public and historical discourses. It is an adventure, furthermore, generally referred
to as one of the most signicant elements in the nations modernization process,
independence and economic viability during the rst half of the twentieth century.
Despite their historical signicance, however, the herring factories themselves have
been more or less ignored as heritage. Because of their young age, or immaturity,
and their corroding and rotting state, they nd themselves caught up somewhere
between disposal and history. They linger on as more or less worthless matter out
of place in the Icelandic ideological heritage landscape of myth and Sagas and
thus create an ideal context for reection on the fate of things in the heritage
discourse. As I argue, the durability and weight of their concrete carcasses exceeds
a mere intangible reection. Through their very presence, and the presence-eects
Figure 1. From waste to heritage? Herring history exhibition in the engine hall of Djupav k
herring factory (Photo: o ra Petursdo ttir).
Petursdottir 33
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(Gumbrecht, 2004) they provoke, they can be said to utter their own critique of
conventional heritage conceptions and urge us to critically consider the signicance
of the concrete and tangible in relation to heritage value, and of ruination as not
only a negative but also a generative process (cf. DeSilvey, 2006; Shanks, 1998).
Intangible heritage heritage contra things?
The historical scope of heritage and heritage practices is frequently traced back to
the ocial acts of monument and heritage protection in the nineteenth century, or
slightly earlier, and the associated programs of nationalism, romanticism and
historicism thought to have triggered these early initiatives. Others see no need
to go further back than to the global approaches to heritage appearing in the latter
half of the twentieth century. As argued by David C. Harvey, however, these recent
dates of origin may be seen as representing particular strands in the history of
heritage, or heritageisation, which should be understood . . . as a process or a
human condition rather than a single movement or a personal project (2001:
320) with a datable genesis.
Denitions of the heritage concept have been many and varied, while the con-
ceptions of inheritance and bequest have been central to many of them. UNESCOs
denition of heritage claims that heritage is our legacy from the past, what we live
with today, and what we pass on to future generations (UNESCO, n.d.). This
emphasis on inheritance and possession (Rowlands, 2002a, 2002b), and the conse-
quential conception of heritage as a physical thing or property crystallized also in
the concept of cultural resource management has been increasingly criticized by
heritage scholars, of which Harveys (2001) suggestion of heritageisation and
heritage as a process is an example. This criticism is maybe most explicitly
voiced in the work of Laurajane Smith, especially in her research on the heritage
canon and the dominant or authorized heritage discourse (AHD) manifested in it
(2006; see also Smith and Waterton, 2009a, 2009b; Waterton and Smith, 2009b).
According to Smith, this dominant discourse has acted to normalize or naturalize
our conception of heritage, how it is dened, and who is authorized to do so.
Heritage is here reduced to an authentic physical artefact or site, aesthetically
pleasing and monumental, conned to a distant past rather than present processes,
and reecting and promoting certain western-elite cultural conceptions and values.
Moreover, Smith argues, heritage sites or objects have, through this dominant and
materially focused discourse, been attributed an inherent value or signicance. The
material object or site has . . . come to stand in for the social and cultural values it
symbolizes and hence the authorized conception is that . . . heritage is the monu-
ment, archaeological site or other material thing or place, rather than cultural
values or meanings (Waterton and Smith, 2009b: 14, original emphasis). As a
consequence, heritage has commonly been understood from the perspective of
shortage or loss: a scarce and non-renewable resource (for criticism of this see
e.g. Brattli, 2006, 2009), the authenticity and sustainability of which has to be
secured through management, legal protection and conservation.
34 Journal of Social Archaeology 13(1)
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Arguing against this tradition, Smith . . . starts from the premise that all heri-
tage is intangible (2006: 3). She underlines that this is not to dismiss the tangible
aspect of heritage but rather to refute its natural presumption; while tangible
objects or sites may be identied as heritage, they . . . are not inherently valuable,
nor do they carry a freight of innate meaning. Stonehenge, for instance, is basically
a collection of rocks in a eld (Smith, 2006: 3, original emphasis; see Solli, 2011,
for criticism). Heritage should rather be understood as a mentality, an experience,
or an act of remembering that engages with the present, and where . . . the sites
themselves are cultural tools that can facilitate, but are not necessarily vital for, this
process (Smith, 2006: 44, my emphasis). In other words, heritage is a process where
things or sites may be engaged in the representation or manifestation of amorphous
social values, but are themselves by no means imperative to that process.
Therefore, as Smith (2006) proclaims, all heritage can be claimed to be intangible.
UNESCOs adoption of the Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible
Cultural Heritage in 2003 was a response to criticism of this nature.
2
UNESCOs
universal denition of heritage and heritage value was accused of privileging west-
ern, and predominantly material, conceptions of heritage while excluding other,
non-western and often intangible, conceptions. In the 2003 convention, intangible
cultural heritage is thus dened as . . . the practices, representations, expressions,
knowledge, skills as well as the instruments, objects, artefacts and cultural spaces
associated therewith that communities, groups and, in some cases, individuals
recognize as part of their cultural heritage (UNESCO, 2003). This intangible heri-
tage is, furthermore, described as manifested in, for example, language or other
oral tradition, craftsmanship, rituals and other social practices that provide groups
of people with a sense of identity and belonging (UNESCO, 2003).
The convention does not, therefore, counterpose intangible to tangible heritage,
but underlines the interdependence of the two (see e.g. Bouchenaki, 2003) that
valuing or safeguarding one will come with and urge the appreciation of the other.
Nevertheless, as described above, the intangible heritage discourse tends to imply a
hierarchy in the sense that meaning is inevitably seen as subjective and humanly
derived. It thus involves an underlying conception of anthropocentrism, which
reects limited, if any, concern for the qualities, signicance or aordances of
things themselves in their construction as heritage.
The introduction of intangible heritage has also been legitimized or rationalized
as a means to negotiate and level supposed asymmetrical power relations on the
heritage arena, reducing the authority of top-down policies and increasing the
inuence of various interest groups and local populations. Moreover, it is, accord-
ing to Smith and Waterton (2009a), not least the privileged position of archaeology
within the AHD and heritage policy development that roots the material bias in
dominant heritage conceptions. Because of their own interests, archaeologists tend
to promote and protect what they see as their own database, which in eect has
sustained a material understanding of heritage. In their edited volume with the
telling title Taking Archaeology out of Heritage, Waterton and Smith (2009a) there-
fore suggest that archaeology is (experimentally) removed from heritage
Petursdottir 35
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conceptions, in order to de-emphasize materiality and give room to other possible
understandings (Smith and Waterton, 2009a: 2).
Archaeology is of course the discipline of things. It is therefore not surprising
that archaeology became the scapegoat for advocates of a fundamentally intangible
heritage denition. This critique, however, appears less reasonable when seen in the
light of the development within archaeology and archaeological theory through the
1980s and 1990s, when focus was on subjective and intangible values, ideological
and symbolic meanings, and where the things themselves were often reduced to
tools in social interaction. Moreover, archaeological data, fragmented, incomplete
and sparse as it often is, is not by denition welcomed as heritage. Heritage has its
own regime of cultural valuing and othering and leaves a large portion of the
archaeological record by the wayside (cf. Watson, 2009: 45). It should therefore
not be entirely baing, nor without reason, that archaeologists endeavor to pro-
mote their largely undesired heritage, if not for other purposes than to challenge
normative heritage conceptions of the grand or aesthetically pleasing. Moreover, as
a discipline located in between the opposed divides of the modern regime a
discipline that embraces human-thing and material-culture relations archaeology
is in a unique position to address the relation/opposition between tangible and
intangible heritage, not only in discourse but also by exposing the common
grounds underneath this very rupture/relation (cf. Webmoor and Witmore, 2008).
The material bias and the source of heritage value
Leang through heritage conventions, policies and legislations, there is truly an
emphasis on the physical or tangible aspect of heritage. UNESCOs Convention
Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage (1972) denes
cultural heritage as monuments, groups of buildings and sites. The current Icelandic
law on national heritage is more or less concurrent with this, stressing the protec-
tion of sites, structures and artefacts of culture-historical signicance (Lo g um
menningarminjar, 2013[2012]). However, if we look at the rationale for the man-
agement and protection of this tangible heritage, globally or nationally, it is clear
that concern does not generally lie with materiality or the things themselves.
Despite claims of the opposite, the source of value in this traditional heritage
discourse, just like in the intangible heritage discourse, is rarely found within
things or sites but is based on human perception, experience and attachment,
and percolated through conceptions of history, identity and sense of belonging.
The same intangible focus is in fact apparent in the general archaeological codes of
ethics, such as those implemented by the Society for American Archaeology, the
World Archaeological Congress and the European Association of Archaeologists,
where emphasis is consistently on cultural heritage as a concern for people, for their
rights to a history and identity (Hamilakis, 2007; Scarre and Scarre, 2006), and
more generally as a scientic, socio-political or economic resource. None of the
codes, and hardly any of the academic texts concerning ethics in archaeology,
articulate this responsibility as an ethical concern in relation to the things
36 Journal of Social Archaeology 13(1)
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themselves they are simply the means or cultural tools (cf. Smith, 2006: 44)
employed to reach a moral end.
Hence, while sympathizing with the critique that initially led to the introduction
of intangible heritage, I question the novelty, and the gain, of the assertion that all
heritage is intangible. It hardly accounts for a paradigm shift in conceptions of
heritage value, but rather makes explicit, and reinforces, what has always been the
underlying, yet rarely specically uttered, rationale of heritage discourses: that,
although there may at times be room for a relational value where value may
spring from the encounter of mind and matter sole things, qua things, have never
really been considered the sources of this value. It might rather be claimed that
heritage denitions generally suer from being under-materialized, reducing things
to epiphenomena of supposedly intangible cultural and social processes.
To recall UNESCOs denition of heritage, it is . . . our legacy from the past,
what we live with today, and what we pass on to future generations (my emphasis).
While a rather acceptable denition, the rarely considered reality is that things or
heritage is passed on to the future whether we like it or not, whether we manage it
or not. Moreover, despite that things life expectancy and maturity with age varies
greatly, their aging is nevertheless characterized by a certain egalitarianism; that is,
due to their material persistency there is survival also of the unwanted, outmoded
or discarded (Olsen, 2010: 166167). The undesired debris of the past, thus, is
continuously accumulating around us (Lowenthal, 1998: xvi), and the majority
of it will, furthermore, remain just that spoils of history.
The category of heritage cannot, it may be argued, proliferate innitely.
However, such commonsense rationale may conceal the eective regimes of valuing
involved and the fact that some things simply do not full the requirements needed
for such a promotion. Despite claims of the opposite, it has really never been
enough for things or sites to simply be in order to become regarded as heritage,
and this is especially true for ruins of the modern. Things have to be in a very
specic way; in fact, bad heritage comes close to a conceptual contradiction. The
heritage ruin is preferably pleasing and attractive, carefully selected to suit our
needs and expectations. Properly old, ready-ruined, sanitary and trouble-free, it
provides visitors with a disciplined and puried space without extraneous mater-
ials, plants, fauna, debris and modern intrusions (Edensor, 2005a, 2005b).
Seemingly frozen in time, further decay is staved o through restoration and pres-
ervation, since the urge to arrest decay, of course, has always been the imperative of
modern museums and heritage management.
If we look at the rationale behind this specic heritage management of things it is
again questionable whether it really is the things or sites themselves, and their mater-
ial integrity or thingness, that is being cared for. Or is it rather so that they are kept
in a manner presentable to us, for us, and our own well being? Here I agree with
Smith that, as it is generally understood, . . . heritage is heritage because it is sub-
jected to the management and preservation/conservation process, not because it
simply is (2006: 3). In other words, promotion to heritage is a constitutive process
where things are made into heritage (Smith, 2006; see also Carman, 2010) rather than
Petursdottir 37
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preserved as such. Unlike Smith and others, however, I cannot see this conservation
ethics as a sign of a general material fervour or a physically founded value concep-
tion. Rather, I see it as a sign of a very specic material intolerance, one quite obvi-
ously based on specic aesthetical values for example, as expressed in the urge to
separate heritage from waste, and proper ruins from mere spoils of history.
Histories of significance and spoils of history a case from
the Icelandic herring saga
The two herring factories in the Strandir region, on the east coast of the Westfjord
peninsula, are only two examples of a common phenomenon in Icelandic land-
scapes modern
3
ruins, including derelict industrial ventures, deserted farms and
half abandoned rural settlements. The twentieth century as the age of extremes
(Hobsbawm, 1994) may serve as a trope when describing the Icelandic context,
where social and economic conditions were radically and rapidly transformed
during the course of the century. This transformation is evident in the patterns
of settlement and the increasingly sharp contrast between the urbanized capital
area and the rural rest. Today 90 per cent of the countrys population of 320,000
live in towns or villages, and 60 per cent live in the Reykjav k (capital) area alone.
In 1910, however, 85 per cent of the population lived in rural districts, on farms
mainly, while only 15 per cent resided in Reykjav k (Snvarr, 1993: 118121;
Statistics Iceland, n.d.). Most people, moreover, lived in traditional turf and
stone houses, constituting 52 per cent of all buildings in the country at the time,
and still amounting to 27 per cent in 1930 (Kjartansson, 2002: 202).
Obviously, many factors made possible this swift development, but an important
trigger was the herring adventure and the rapid development of industrialized
shing in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Jo nsson, 1980, 2004;
Sigursson et al., 2007). Growing exploitation of the abundant maritime resources
now triggered an increase in urbanization and the establishment of several landing
and processing stations along the coast (see Ragnarsson, 2007). Some of these were
satellite settlements located in remote and previously sparsely or unsettled areas
where proximity to the resource was a rst priority. Hence, places previously mar-
ginal and out of reach suddenly became centres in complex economic networks of
production. With time some of these communities grew strong, while others awaited
a more gloomy fate. Due to technological advancement in terms of transport, pro-
cessing and preservation, their strategic, marginal location was no longer essential
and even proved economically unfeasible. Furthermore, although debated, years of
excessive exploitation did most likely also decimate the herring stock (Karlsdo ttir,
2005), causing seasons of catch failure. As the herring dissapeared, so the economic
basis of many small and newly established communities was impaired.
Two such settlements, which came and went with the herring, are the two sites in
Strandir region referred to in the recollection at the beginning of this article:
Dju pav k in Reykjafjo rur and Eyri in Ingo lfsfjo rur (Figure 2). The factory in
Dju pav k, completed in 1935, was at the time the largest concrete building in the
38 Journal of Social Archaeology 13(1)
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country, equipped with the most advanced and up-to-date machinery of the day and,
according to some, the most advanced in all of Europe (Matth asson, 1973). In the
years that followed, Dju pav k became a place lled with life and a focal point in a
prosperous industrial network. Along with the growing industry, the small commu-
nity also expanded houses were built, along with other dwellings, a shop, a bakery,
piers and so on (Jo hannesson, 2001; Matth asson, 1973). A similar development
took place at Eyri, with the construction of a competing large scale and highly
mechanized herring factory in 1944 (Figure 3). As in Dju pav k, this industrial enter-
prise initiated the formation of a small, and partly seasonal, community at the site,
with dwellings, oces, garages, a shop, a bakery and so on (Jo hannesson, 2001;
Matth asson, 1973). During the 1940s and early 1950s the herring stock diminished
considerably along the Westfjord peninsula and the reason for the two industrial
powers in Strandir was gradually eradicated. After a short working life, the engines
at Eyri and Dju pav k were, thus, nally silenced in 1952 and 1954 respectively
(Jo hannesson, 2001; Matth asson, 1973). When abandoned, the factories, engines,
dwellings, shops, bakeries, beds, chairs, food supplies and spare parts were left
behind, in hope of return (Figure 4) a wish, however, never fullled. Once again,
these sites were rendered peripheral and out of reach.
Today, 60 years after their ocial abandonment, the deserted herring stations
seem completely at odds with both ocial and general understandings of cultural
heritage. Unlike the traditional romanticized ruin that so eortlessly acquires our
Figure 2. Location of the two herring factories in Djupav k and Eyri, Strandir region on the
Westfjord peninsula (Map: Oscar Aldred).
Petursdottir 39
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appreciation, these modern concrete installations stand in sharp contrast to the
peripheral landscapes in which they obtrude in as well as to our preferred percep-
tion of those landscapes as pristine, natural landscapes beyond anything but
authentic, traditional human impact (Figure 3). And, despite literally materializ-
ing what is believed to have brought modernism to the shores of this island, the
uncanny remains of the deserted herring stations now contradict our general
Figure 3. Industrial ruins in pristine landscapes: Eyri herring factory, seen from the west with
the towering mountains behind it (Photo: o ra Petursdo ttir).
Figure 4. Abandoned figurines: oil centrifuging machines in the engine hall, Eyri (Photo:
Bjrnar Olsen).
40 Journal of Social Archaeology 13(1)
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conception of modernity (Latour, 1993) they have become matter out of place
and order. Left mostly, or partly in the case of Dju pav k, to non-human inter-
actions and preferences, the sites have developed disturbing mixtures and combin-
ations (Figure 5). Walls and concrete have decomposed; nature has intruded,
mingled and reclaimed. The previous clear distinction between the man-made
and the natural surroundings has evaporated as material debris disperses into
the surrounding landscape while nature trespasses the concrete boundaries of the
sites, creating . . . manifestations of threatening otherness in a [yet] familiar
space . . . (Edensor, 2005b: 313).
Icelandic heritage law denes (and automatically protects) archaeological heri-
tage as well as houses and standing structures over 100 years old (Lo g um men-
ningarminjar, 2013[2012])
4
while later remains may be specially protected.
Although this is rather unusual and liberal in European terms, the concern with
relatively recent heritage has been motivated primarily in order to protect and
conserve surviving expressions of traditional culture. As mentioned earlier, the
majority of vernacular architecture in Iceland remained turf and/or stone structures
until as late as 1920 (Kjartansson, 2002: 202) and emphasis has been on protecting
this category of late traditional style housing. Thus, the reason for this somewhat
peculiar age criterion can be seen as a means to discriminate between traditional/
authentic and modern remains, between heritage and waste.
In other words, the many modern ruins littering Icelandic landscapes generally
lack special protection and thus an ocial declaration of cultural or heritage value.
Figure 5. Things entangled: floor deposit in the female workers dormitory, Eyri (Photo: o ra
Petursdo ttir).
Petursdottir 41
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Curiously, though, through the rapid growth of tourism during recent decades,
modern ruins, like the herring factories in Dju pav k and Eyri, seem to have become
somewhat popular destinations among travelers seeking to move beyond the con-
ventional tourist routes and onto the dusty sideways adding a hint of irony to
their neglected state. In the case of Dju pav k, this lure of the ruin has also been
taken advantage of, as described at the beginning of this article. However, since this
has involved interference, although on a very small scale, with the factorys ruinous
state, it has stirred skeptical and sometimes hostile reactions among some of its
admirers reactions that provoke thoughts on the value of these concrete ruins.
Of course, people may have dierent ideas about their value; they may see the
factories as sites of remembrance, as monuments to workers life and struggles, as
testimonies to a century of capitalist-driven politics, or just as symbols of a time
gone by all of which could correspond to a conventional conception of heritage
value. However, before suggesting that modern ruins, like Icelands crumbling
herring factories, are incorporated into a category of heritage and thus enrolled
in conventional heritage management processes, it is maybe worth asking whether
something of their character, something of their lure and value, might be lost in
that process. In other words, maybe we should also consider the possibility that the
ruins themselves, in their dynamic state of being, may be the source of their own
value and signicance.
Letting things be: Heritage beyond anthropocentrism
They have destroyed the factory!, the photographer announced in my recollection
at the beginning of this article. Truly an interesting opinion considering the general
state of the factory, both before and after this very limited amendment to its
genuinely disintegrating appearance. And no less, when considering the intent of
the hotel managers and owners; in their mind, this was of course one step towards
preventing its destruction. Out of concern for the factory itself and its conservation
but mostly because of its historical signicance for present and future visitors
mending and maintaining this concrete carcass, and painting it white, was to them
the way to honour its legacy and preserve its value. These are quite clearly two very
dierent perceptions of the site and its value. On the one hand it is believed to
reside in the past, in the sites history and former glory, and is thus best secured by
preventing decay and maintaining a clear link to its former use value. On the other
hand the site is valued in its present state, in decay, which importantly, however,
does not contest an acknowledgement of its historical value. Whereas the former
stance resembles the conventional conception of what heritage is all about, saving
things from loss, the latter seems to reect the opposite, an attitude where value
also resides in the ruin itself, in its concrete presence and the fact that it is not
arrested but dynamic, confusing and constantly becoming. An attitude where ruin-
ation, or a things natural aging (Van de Wetering, 1996), is not seen as the
incarnation of loss but as a generative process that is part of its messy biography
(Ouzman, 2006).
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But valuing ruination and decay how is that heritage management? And how
can that possibly tone with the current ethics of heritage and conservation? Well,
the answer is simple: it does not. While heritage scholars have repeatedly encour-
aged an understanding of heritage as process, that conception has never included
the tangible aspect of heritage. The traditional idea is that as things or sites become
heritage they should, by means of management and conservation, be rescued from
any material processes natural to them and turned into frozen facts, into stable
points of departure around which processes of intangible value prescription may
evolve. In other words, things are made manageable restrained, controlled and
kept from revealing themselves to us in their true being.
But maybe there is room for a dierent kind of heritage conception, one that is
open to the life of things, materiality as dynamic, and thus also to the tangible
forces involved in any intangible process of heritageisation (Harvey, 2001). A
heritage conception that might, at times, see an ethical stance involved in letting
things be, as Lucas Introna (2009) puts it with reference to Heideggers (1966)
concept of Gelassenheit or releasement. Not a conventional ethical stance, but
one extended to things themselves,
5
where we might consider the possibility of
granting things certain rights, as suggested by Ouzman (2006: 275). Not only
rights to be managed, conserved or curated (2006: 275), which in essence may
have more to do with our well-being than that of things, but a right also to be
released from the drudgery of such human utilitarian relations without that
rendering them value- or meaningless. And, is it not possible that valuing ruins
as ruins, or occasionally presenting museum objects in their decay, might add to
our understanding of things, their temporality and being (Ouzman, 2006: 270)?
In relation to his discussion of the concept of Gelassenheit, or releasement,
Heidegger distinguishes between calculative and meditative thinking (1966: 46),
where the former is a way of wilful thinking that already expects an outcome,
whereas the latter is released from the chains of prospects, or willing, and instead
awaits that which may come towards it (1966: 47). In other words, it is an aware-
ness, an attitude, that is open to the mystery of its surrounding, and thus open to
the possibility of releasement. Rather than a distinct phenomenon, Gelassenheit
should therefore be understood as a process, an experience or a movement towards
the unexpected, the thing itself in its native mysterious being a releasement
towards things (1966: 54). Importantly, this Gelassenheit, to let be, is not a sug-
gestion of a passive or indierent attitude but rather an active but non-intrusive
acceptance of things in their remote otherness. It is a dierent way of valuing the
world, thus, that does not precondition its management or domestication.
The ethics of heritage, the ethics of conservation, have never really been an
ethics of things or materiality. Of course, modern ethical discourse is traditionally
founded on a clear ontological distinction between nature and culture, between
natural laws and social contracts (Poole, 1991), between people and things. And the
drive of modern ethics is to secure the integrity of the subject, to defend it by all
means possible from the fate of objectication; ethics, thus, is traditionally about
people and not things, and the ethics of heritage are no dierent. To extend ethics
Petursdottir 43
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to things may therefore in a conventional understanding imply the humanist
impossibility of equating people with things. This, however, is not the case. It is
not a claim to do away with the dierence between people and things, but rather a
plea for a middle ground where it is possible to appreciate both in their dierence;
where the valuation of things does not have to take place through their domesti-
cation or the abolition of their thingness by transforming them into humanized
things but is possible also through an appreciation of things in their otherness, for
example in ruination.
As already noted, bad heritage comes close to a conceptual contradiction and
discussing the rights of things not only raises questions of how to value things in
ruins but also the question of bad things, and whether or not we should extend
such ethical concerns to technologies of terror, polluted industrial wastelands or
memorials of drained natural resources indeed, to ruins of modernity. Ethics,
however, are not necessarily about good, bad or evil, because the ethical measure is
not . . . an abstract principle or value, but reality itself, its concreteness, the gravity
of things (Benso, 1996: 134). The moral move is rather to take things seriously. An
ethics extended to things is moreover signicant on two levels: rstly, in terms of
acknowledging things own aordances and their right to be, which also includes
the right to be released from us, our management and conceptualization, without
that rendering them devoid of meaning or value. Things may of course embody or
symbolize, but in the end it is the thing itself that presents; it . . . stands in the
relationship of immediacy, not of mediation (Armstrong, 1971: 26, my emphasis)
and its ultimate frame of reference is its concrete presence the thing itself. This
presence-eect (Gumbrecht, 2004) is thus not restricted to our conception or
interpretation, but is inherent to the thing itself and its (alter)native and dynamic
being its thingness. It is a meaningful presence that is prior to logic and concep-
tualization and is therefore not necessarily salvaged through our interference or
management, but may in fact be drained or lost in that very process.
Secondly, an ethics extended to things is signicant in terms of acknowledging
the moral obligations that come with things rights. As relational entities, in a
society of monsters (Law, 1991), things are never innocent beings, they are
never just there as simple means towards our ends. In our society of hybrids we
constantly enrol things and charge them with our values and meanings to give them
substance, weight and durability. These inscriptions are successful because things
outlive us, and . . . those that encounter and use these inscribed things may become,
wittingly or unwittingly, enrolled into particular programmes, or scripts for action
(Introna, 2009: 400401). Things should, therefore, rather be thought of as polit-
ical locations (Introna, 2009), charged with values, that may be negotiated or even
ignored, but are also, because of their thingly qualities, their weight and durability,
somewhat involuntarily re-membered into ever new presents and ever new contexts.
We need to be aware of this power of things. That is, we should not rule out the
possibility that sometimes . . . we nd what was meant to be found . . . (Gonza lez-
Ruibal, 2011: 63), that Stonehenge isnt simply any collection of rocks, that some
things actually are heritage or at least through their physiognomic dierence and
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concrete individuality oer themselves to be identied as such but at the same
time bear in mind that most things are not.
To push heritage beyond anthropocentrism may be a mission impossible, as
heritage is to some degree inevitably anthropocentric; it is what we value. And as
expressed by Heidegger: Every valuing, even where it values positively, is a sub-
jectivising. It does not let beings: be. Rather, valuing lets beings: be valid solely as
the objects of its doing (1977: 228). But maybe there are possibilities in moving
towards the impossible, towards a broader conception of heritage, where the
notion of process may encompass both its tangible and intangible aspects, and
thus also the dynamic and interactive relations between them? to take an ethical
stance where value may also reside in vibrant matter (Bennett, 2010) and in things
themselves, and where arresting decay may not be the only way to its salvation.
Such a critical and future oriented heritage may allow us, as pointed out by
Ouzman, . . . still to marvel at beautiful objects but. . . in ways that make the appre-
hender aware of the objects place in a continuum of humanistic and material
practice (2006: 293). In other words, to opt for a conception of heritage that is
open to the possibility of letting be and is thus grounded in the mutual signi-
cance of both its intangible and tangible processes.
Concrete matters: Processes of becoming heritage
Many people Ive met during my work on the herring factories have told me they
visit the sites regularly; some have even done so for decades, because, they claim,
they admire their unruly and ever changing appearance. But what is it that has this
eect? Is this simply an intangible subjective fascination with a historical past,
resulting in contemporary cultural processes or experiences that also in turn
infuse these sites with meaning and value? Or is it possible that it is no less the
concrete masses themselves that are the source of this lure and also, thus, of their
own signicance (Bennett, 2010: 108; Benso, 2000: xxvii)? Heritage is of course also
intangible and should be understood as a process. But, to claim that all that mat-
ters in that process is the intangible aspect is limiting and hardly helpful for our
understanding of heritage or heritageisation (Harvey, 2001). And I nd it par-
ticularly troubling when considering these very tangible ruins of the recent past.
Notwithstanding the sites historical signicance, the ruins left in these northern
fjords also become potential agents of disruption and actualization, triggering a
particular kind of involuntary memory (Benjamin, 1999). Their presence, an
anomaly within the contemporary geopolitical order, bears witness to alternative
geographies, other cultural and economic landscapes, to past presences in strange
places. A material mnemonic, thus, of a less retrospective and more contemporary
social signicance; one that calls attention to the fragile dialectics between nature
and culture, between modernity and tradition, centres and peripheries, and,
importantly, between heritage and waste. Stubbornly persisting in this remote
and sparsely populated landscape, these untimely ruins silently, but eectively,
divert our attention to the perhaps unreconciled tension between the authentic
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Viking and Saga dominated past that roots the nations identity and strongly
aects its heritage conceptions (e.g. Fririksson, 1994; Lucas and Snsdo ttir,
2006), and the later period of industrialization and early capitalism that provided
prosperity and modernity.
It is unquestionable that Dju pav k and Eyri are sites of considerable historical
signicance, and they give us a perspective on history, on the herring adventure,
that no written historical account could replace. But in their ghostlike and ruined
state, they are not just backdrops of historical events but comprise actual material
entries into present pasts or even past the general conception of present (as
something separate or detached from the past). And, as I have argued, it is my
impression that people confront these factories not only as historical testimonies, as
something of the past, but also as something quite literally of their present as
concrete presences. Therefore I would suggest that because of their concrete qua-
lities, durability or relative immortality, these ruins become prehistoric (Lucas,
2004) in an ontological sense of the term. They are, and are experienced as, non-
textual, non-discursive concrete matters of fact, and while it is important to make
their innate ineable meanings discursive, it may be as important to also acknow-
ledge and value the fact that they are not. And this is where a traditional, and solely
intangible, heritage conception runs short.
What is reassuring of well-managed heritage and properly curated museums is
that they provide visitors with an epistemological security by constraining the
possibilities of interpreting or encountering things (Edensor, 2005b: 313). Things
are presented to us, on our premises, in a way that does not require nor initiate
meditative thought, as suggested by Heidegger; it actually inhibits a movement
towards things themselves. In ruination that safety net is lost, and things are
released from these chains of human utilitarian relations. The undisciplined ruin
confronts our customized habit of dealing with things as tamed domesticated pos-
sessions as conventional heritage. The ruin presents itself partly as a mystery;
things are allowed to be themselves, making their presence more manifest, disquiet-
ing more mysterious. They appear to us in ways never noticed, exposing some of
their unruly thingness. The forms of things are foregrounded: their texture, their
smell and their utter silence (Andreassen et al., 2010: 142; Edensor, 2005a: 117). Is
it wrong in some way to be aected by this direct materiality or concreteness?
Should it simply be ruled out as nave, irrational and lacking meaningful or his-
torical contextualization? Or is it possible that these very tangible aspects of things
are involved in their own signication, and thus their construction as heritage? As
archaeologists, I believe, we have all experienced that direct presence-eect
(Gumbrecht, 2004) when we encounter a thing unrecognized and unseen before,
a moment of pre-discursive or prehistoric wonder (Pe tursdo ttir, 2012) when we see
the thing itself and become aected, solely, by its concrete presence. Unfortunately,
however, we do not contain that momentum, but soon nd ourselves, as argued by
Laurent Olivier, torn between a fascination of that unknown thing we hold in our
hand and an irresistible desire to make it . . . a part of what is already known
(2011: 32).
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Interpretation in archaeology has almost without exception been driven by the
inclination to dig deeper, as the immediate, what meets the eye, is not enough; it is a
mere material expression of the more important and genuine social and symbolic
meanings that reside behind it. This also relates, and not without a certain irony, to
Laurajane Smiths claim that all heritage is intangible, that Stonhenge is meaning-
less and devoid of value unless contextualized through contemporary social pro-
cesses. Conversely though, it is not her statement that Stonehenge . . . is basically a
collection of rocks in a eld (2006: 3) that is problematic; that is in fact exactly
what Stonehenge is. The problem, however, is to see that as meaningless. What
characterizes the intangible heritage discourse (or even heritage discourses in gen-
eral), as well as much of interpretive archaeology, is not only that meaning, value
and signicance are seen as inevitably subjective, but also that meaning is confused
with or restricted, rather, to symbolical or other modes of derivative meanings
(Olsen, 2012: 223) that meaning beyond intellectualization is always meaningless.
But is it so that Stonehenge itself, in its simple stoniness (Solli, 2011), brings
nothing of value to the encounters with the subjective experiences that for centuries
have circulated around it?
Of course things may be contextualized and made meaningful in all kinds of
ways. Importantly, however, the ruins themselves should not be seen as simple
cultural tools or symbols in that process but also as sources of value and signi-
cance. They are actively part of the process through their aecting presence, in the
form of an immediacy that cannot be reduced to mediation or transmission
(Armstrong, 1971: 26). Therefore we should also be aware of the possibility that
a heritage domestication or normalization may quite literally drain things of their
meaning subjecting them to sameness, to frozen and manicured heritage, easily
brings their own critical antiphonal voices to silence. Caring for and respecting the
integrity of things may occasionally, as in the case of the whitewashed factory, also
be to let things be in dierence, in their otherness, without that being regarded as
an attitude of indierence. It is possible that our recent persistent eorts to make
our silent objects speak in order to make them meaningful have made us forget
the simple fact that they actually dont. And without at all denying the signicance
of materially conveyed meanings, an ethics extended to things may in its simplest
form be described as an eort to occasionally respect and acknowledge their silence
(Figure 6). That is, to bestow things with one simple right, the most basic of all: the
right to remain silent.
The modern regime has the tendency to tidily organize our messy being
into sealed and binary ontological compartments, and heritage denitions are of
course examples of such purifying means, enabling us safely to separate the wanted
(heritage) from the unwanted (waste) (see e.g. Burstro m, 2009). In this neatly
organized scheme of dualities the prime divide is between the world of intentional
and thinking subjects on one side and a naturally given object-world of mute things
and non-humans on the other (Latour, 1993). The latter world has no meaningful
existence in itself, but awaits passively its symbolic or metaphoric incarnation
(Ingold, 2000). In this anthropocentric regime of subjective interpretation the
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silence of things, their pre-discursive materiality, is at the same time meaningless
and disturbing; it is an empty otherness that must be infused with meaning and
value through contextualization and embodiment (cf. Benjamin, 1999). A similar
imperative characterizes dominant modes of historical narration, molding the past
as linear, progressive and continuous an order our fragmented material reality,
past or present, has never amounted to. The ruins of the past, the archaeological
record our material heritage is incomplete, fragmented, discontinuous and
silent. But rather than seeing that merely as a problem to be solved by lling in
the gaps and healing the material past as history, we might occasionally also try out
the option to let things be fragmented and incomplete, to allow them to remain
partly mysterious, and instead allow this otherness to aect the stories we tell (see
Pe tursdo ttir, 2012). After all, . . . silence is perhaps one of the most important
constituents of any story the length, frequency, and quality of pauses can build
suspense, deliver a de nouement, or show a necessary fallibility in the teller, the
inevitable fragmentation of a narrative thread over time (Ouzman, 2006: 291).
There may therefore even be a historical signicance, an evolving historical
lesson, involved in valuing things by letting them be in their material otherness.
It is about time, as suggested by heritage critiques, that we democratize heritage.
It is a fallacy, however, to think that this is best achieved by excluding things or
materiality from such ambitions, which, eectively, is the outcome of a general
intangible heritage conception. Such a conception undermines the role things play
in heritage processes, and thus supports and strengthens further their traditionally
ambiguous state within heritage denitions and management. The ruins of
Dju pav k and Eyri are good examples of this ambiguity, while at the same time
they can be said to utter their own critique of conventional heritage conceptions.
Through their very presence, and the presence-eects (Gumbrecht, 2004) they
provoke, they urge us to critically consider the signicance of the concrete and
Figure 6. Utter silence: the concrete pillars inside the herring oil tank in Djupav k reflecting
in the still water that covers the floor (Photo: o ra Petursdo ttir).
48 Journal of Social Archaeology 13(1)
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tangible in relation to heritage value, to reect on the discrimination involved in
our management of things and on the possibility of a dierent kind of heritage a
heritage where ruination, decay and the material being of things are not always
regarded as negative but may be thought of as a generative process of becoming. A
process, even, of becoming heritage.
Heritage is a process: dynamic and negotiated, tangible and intangible. It is
about time, in that process, we also acknowledge and value the things called heri-
tage as the things that they are.
Acknowledgements
Many have commented on this article, or parts of it, at earlier stages. I especially thank my
supervisor, Bjrnar Olsen, for his most helpful comments and fruitful discussions. I also
thank my co-supervisor, Gavin Lucas, and other members of the Ruin Memories group, for
valuable input. A version of this article was presented at Stanford University in March 2012.
I would like to express my gratitude to Lynn Meskell for allowing me that opportunity, and
I thank her, Michael Shanks and others at the Stanford Archaeology Centre for welcoming
me to their facilities during the 2012 spring semester, where this paper grew into its nal
form.
Notes
1. See e.g. Appadurai, 1986; Bennett, 2010; Brown, 2001, 2003; Gell, 1998; Graves-Brown,
2000; Hodder, 2011; Hoskins, 1998; Ingold, 2000; Latour, 1993, 2005; Meskell, 2004,
2005; Miller, 1987, 2005; Olsen, 2003, 2010; Preda, 1999; Tilley, 1994, 2004.
2. For the development from tangible to intangible heritage see e.g. Bortolotto, 2007;
Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, 2004; Munjeri, 2004; Ruggles and Silverman, 2009; Smith,
2006; Smith and Akagawa, 2009; and for its limitations see Ahmad, 2006.
3. Modern in this context refers to the twentieth century. Although an ambiguous concept,
and in the Icelandic context no less so, I here relate it to the industrialized Iceland, which
is a reality no earlier than the late nineteenth and early twentieth century (Jo nsson, 2004).
4. This new law replaced the older law from 2001 (Lo g um hu safriun, 2001; jo minjalo g,
2001) on 1 January 2013.
5. See Benso, 1996, 2000; Introna, 2009; Olsen, 2012.
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Author Biography
o ra Pe tursdo ttir completed an MA in Archaeology from the University of
Troms, Department of Archaeology and Social Anthropology, in 2007, and is
currently a PhD student at the same university. Her current research is focused on
archaeologies of the recent past and present, predominantly in Iceland. Her PhD
project is part of the research project Ruin Memories: Materiality, Aesthetics and
the Archaeology of the Recent Past (http://www.ruinmemories.org).
Petursdottir 53
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