Sted og identitet : minne, markeringer og historiebruk i lokalsamfunn på Agder

Abstract

2023 marked 300 years since Arendal and Risør were officially granted city status, an occasion duly celebrated in both of them. Mandal and Grimstad have also recently marked anniversaries related to their city status, and several texts have been written about the urban and local history of places in the Agder region in recent years. Anniversaries and historical works are ways of looking back and asking who we are and where we come from. Hence the title for the 2023 Agder Seminar: ‘Place and Identity – Belonging and the Use of History in Agder in the Shadow of Two City Anniversaries’. For what are we actually doing when we celebrate anniversaries? What is remembered and what is forgotten? And who has the authority to define the past and thereby our individual and collective identity?

Through eight contributions, this book thematizes such questions. Place is important in people's lives, but places and their significance are not immutable. Increased urbanization and migration over the past fifty years, for example, have challenged the “hometown” as a marker of identity for many people. The same processes create new tensions between center and periphery – one of the most potent dichotomies in modern Norwegian political geography. When old, stable frameworks are challenged, local communities can gain new relevance as a marker of identity. We see this, among other things, in the conflicts that have arisen in the wake of municipal and regional reforms in recent years.

This book therefore addresses questions about history, migration and belonging, about the use of history, and about who should have the power to define the past. The starting point is an Agder region caught between tradition and change, between city and country, and between past and future.