HERITOPIA WIENBERG 9789198469936 PRINT.indd 1 25/01/2021 08:09 WIENBERG 9789198469936 PRINT.indd 2 25/01/2021 08:09 Heritopia World Heritage and modernity JES WIENBERG Translated by Ian MacArthur Lund University Press WIENBERG 9789198469936 PRINT.indd 3 25/01/2021 08:09 Copyright © Jes Wienberg 2021 The right of Jes Wienberg to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. This electronic version has been made freely available under a Creative Commons (CC-BY-NC-ND) licence, thanks to the support of Lund University, which permits non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction provided the author(s) and Lund University Press are fully cited and no modifications or adaptations are made. Details of the licence can be viewed at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by-nc-nd/4.0/ Lund University Press The Joint Faculties of Humanities and Theology P.O. Box 192 SE-221 00 LUND Sweden http://lunduniversitypress.lu.se Lund University Press books are published in collaboration with Manchester University Press. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Lund University Press gratefully acknowledges publication assistance from the Thora Ohlsson Foundation (Thora Ohlssons stiftelse) ISBN 978-91-984699-3-6 hardback First published 2021 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Cover image: Abu Simbel temple (Pepaserbio Wikimedia) Typeset by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire To write, to write, it is a forceful drive and need, to search, and search, without knowing what I am searching for, for if I knew what I was searching for, my search would be over. (The author Albert Dam in an interview with Danmarks Radio (Danish Broadcasting Corporation), 9 February 1964) WIENBERG 9789198469936 PRINT.indd 5 25/01/2021 08:09 WIENBERG 9789198469936 PRINT.indd 6 25/01/2021 08:09 Contents List of figures ix Preface x 1 The past is everywhere 1 Drowned in the Nile 1 The paradoxes of Abu Simbel 7 The past is everywhere 10 Multiple meanings 13 Two cultures 20 Archimedean points 25 Arche, archaeology, and order 29 2 Truth, beauty, and goodness 35 Defence of the past 35 The values of heritage 43 Truth, beauty, and goodness 50 The truths of knowledge 55 The beauties of narrative 60 Ethical demands 65 The ideas of the time 71 3 Chronic nostalgia 79 (Ab)used histories 79 Crisis and the heritage industry 84 Progress and musealisation 92 Chronic nostalgia 96 Secularisation and immortality 104 Materialised memories 109 Community and meaning 115 4 The faces of modernity 123 Time, change, and permanence 123 WIENBERG 9789198469936 PRINT.indd 7 25/01/2021 08:09 viii Contents Progress and decay 129 The faces of modernity 135 All that is solid melts 138 Between modernity and tradition 142 The opponents of modernity 149 Enlightened modernity 154 5 Heritage in the present 161 Heritage is everywhere 161 Canonical heritage 166 Critical heritage 170 Heritage and authenticities 175 Ambivalent vandalism 182 Heritage and modernity 187 Heritage in the present 190 6 Destination World Heritage 197 World Heritage Convention 197 The Convention as innovation 200 Outstanding, universal, and representative 211 Exclusive World Heritage 217 Modern World Heritage 224 Destination World Heritage 232 Enchantment and expectations 234 7 World Heritage and modernity 241 Heritopia 241 Regardless of trends 246 World Heritage and modernity 249 Threats, realities, and rhetoric 252 Conspicuous protection 255 Permanence through change 257 Sisyphus and Abu Simbel’s stone 260 Appendices 1 World Heritage inscriptions, 1978–2019 263 2 Ratification of the World Heritage Convention, 1973–2020 265 3 Cultural Heritage and Natural Heritage in Svenska Dagbladet, 1884–2019 270 Bibliography 275 Index 309 WIENBERG 9789198469936 PRINT.indd 8 25/01/2021 08:09 Figures All rights reserved, and permission to reuse the figures must be obtained from the copyright holders. 1 Abu Simbel. Photo © Ingrid Berg, 2019. xii 2 Stonehenge. Photo © Lars Larsson, 2008. 34 3 The Forbidden City in Beijing. Photo © Jes Wienberg, 1982. 78 4 Easter Island statues. Photo © Lars Larsson, 2012. 122 5 Buddha-statue in Bamiyan before its destruction in 2001. Photo © Jens Vellev, 1969. 160 6 Agricultural landscape of Southern Öland. Photo © Bodil Petersson, 2019. 196 7 Sydney Opera House. Photo © Anders Andrén, 2006. 240 8 Library of Celsus in Ephesus. Photo © Henrik Gerding, 1996. 274 WIENBERG 9789198469936 PRINT.indd 9 25/01/2021 08:09 Preface The path to Heritopia: World Heritage and modernity has been a long and steep one. Not for the first time, I have written about something both because I have been thinking about it and because I want to be free to think about something else. And once again, I have tried to understand and explain so as to be able to forget and move on. But thinking and writing take time. My interest in the meanings of the past goes back to my teens, when I read an essay called Hvad skal vi med Historien? (“Why do we need history?”), by the author and historian Palle Lauring (1969), whose answer was that we can learn from history. An enquiry of my own has been considered, planned, started, suspended, and resumed on numer- ous occasions when there was time to spare between other duties at the Department of Archaeology and Ancient History at Lund University, at home in Lund, and away in Nybro. Heritopia has thus been something of a Sisyphean task, in the course of which I have tried to survey and maintain order in a constantly growing number of books, articles, and press cuttings, as well as in my own ideas and those of other people. The first draft of a chapter came into being in 2006, but the work could only be completed during a more focused effort in 2015–2018. And now I can see that this investigation has been given a form that must have been shaped by my dual position as both Danish and Swedish, the distinctively Danish dimension often being defined by history and the Swedish one by modernity. Heritopia is an attempt to stroll along the paths of curiosity without being bound by what characterises the research of today, namely strategies, deadlines, applications, budgets, running reports, and preferably answers that can be presented in advance – that is to say, without being bound by the expectations and demands of others. Instead, I have claimed for myself the mixed and time-consuming WIENBERG 9789198469936 PRINT.indd 10 25/01/2021 08:09 Preface xi pleasure of actually reading all the literature and seeing all the films referred to, or very nearly. But I have by no means been able to visit all the World Heritage sites in the world. Heritopia is, in short, an attempt to conceptualise and write a book on my own terms, a book that I would like to read. Heritopia has not been written in a state of isolation. First of all, I wish to thank my wife Bodil Petersson (Linnaeus University, Kalmar), who has followed and encouraged this work and read several versions. Next, my thanks go to Björn Magnusson Staaf (Lund University) and Asger Wienberg (Lund), who have also read the whole manuscript. All three of them have contributed both con- structive and critical comments. Thanks also to two anonymous referees for Lund University Press for their helpful comments. I am grateful to the following for permission to reproduce photographs: Anders Andrén (Stockholm University) and Ingrid Berg (Uppsala University), Henrik Gerding and Lars Larsson (Lund University), Bodil Petersson (Linnaeus University, Kalmar), and Jens Vellev (Aarhus University). Thanks to Alun Richards of Manchester University Press for his help during the production stage. And finally, thanks to Marianne Thormählen of Lund University Press for providing great support through the entire process from a man- uscript to a printed book. This book is dedicated to my two children, Asger and Ingrid Wienberg. Jes Wienberg Lund, September 2020 WIENBERG 9789198469936 PRINT.indd 11 25/01/2021 08:09 Abu Simbel. Photo © Ingrid Berg, 2019. Figure 1 WIENBERG 9789198469936 PRINT.indd 12 25/01/2021 08:09 1 The past is everywhere Drowned in the Nile The pharaoh had been able to look at his reflection in the Nile for thousands of years. But now his face was sawn off, raised, and removed. One by one, stone blocks from the colossal statues were removed from the site. Was this because of a desire to obliterate the memory of a powerful absolute ruler? Was it an example of iconoclasm, in which the face of the god was mutilated? Were the sculptures going to be moved to a museum in the West, like so many other monuments and finds from Ancient Egypt? Or was it quite simply a case of vandalism? The cliff temples of Abu Simbel were erected at the initiative of Pharaoh Ramses II, whose mummy is now exhibited in Cairo. The temples were carved directly out of the cliffs in the years around 1260 bce. The great temple fronted by the four gigantic statues of Ramses II was a homage to the pharaoh himself as divine, a homage to the gods Amun-Ra, Ra-Horakhty, and Ptah, a memorial of the Battle of Kadesh, and a marker of Egyptian mastery of the Nubian border region. Twice a year, the rays of the rising sun would pen- etrate to the statues in the furthest depths of the temple.