Letter left at the VVM on 21/03/2008
Traumatic events often lead to the creation of spontaneous memorials prompted by outpourings of collective grief. The spot where Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated, for example, became a shrine. The demise of Princess Diana led to something similar in the UK. However, the fact that her death occurred abroad meant that proxy spaces had to be found for the laying of flowers and leaving of messages. These sites tended to be situated outside civic or religious buildings as well as adjacent to existing monuments, including war memorials. However, unlike obelisks in stone or statues in bronze, these spontaneous acts of commemoration were temporary. The flowers for Diana are no longer there. Yet the memory of them remains.
A further such memorial is being carefully dismantled in central Oslo. The area outside the cathedral has become a makeshift shrine to those killed in the terrorist attacks of 22nd July. The flowers and other organic material will be composted and the wax from the candles recycled. But the messages and mementos are to be preserved in the national archive.
A similar process of preservation and documentation has taken place at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington DC. Artefacts left there continue to be gathered up and safeguarded to become part of a living and very public collection.
This will also be the case in Norway. Those traces of collective grief left on a street in central Oslo are destined to become sources of collective memory.
Further reading
Curtis, Paulette G. (2010) "Stewarding a living collection: the national park service and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Collection", Museum Anthropology, Vol. 33, Iss. 1, pp. 49-61
Phelps, Angela (1998) "Memorials without location: creating heritage places", Area, Vol. 30 (2), pp. 166-8
A further such memorial is being carefully dismantled in central Oslo. The area outside the cathedral has become a makeshift shrine to those killed in the terrorist attacks of 22nd July. The flowers and other organic material will be composted and the wax from the candles recycled. But the messages and mementos are to be preserved in the national archive.
A similar process of preservation and documentation has taken place at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington DC. Artefacts left there continue to be gathered up and safeguarded to become part of a living and very public collection.
This will also be the case in Norway. Those traces of collective grief left on a street in central Oslo are destined to become sources of collective memory.
Further reading
Curtis, Paulette G. (2010) "Stewarding a living collection: the national park service and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Collection", Museum Anthropology, Vol. 33, Iss. 1, pp. 49-61
Phelps, Angela (1998) "Memorials without location: creating heritage places", Area, Vol. 30 (2), pp. 166-8
The red rose became a rallying symbol in the wake of the terrorist attacks of 22nd July. It features here in an advertisement for the Norwegian Red Cross (photograph taken in Tromsø, 11/08/2011).
