Legacies of Conflict: Mapping memories of the Second World War in Finnish Lapland

With a seedcorn grant from the University of Helsinki Future Fund, this new project builds upon the work of Lapland’s Dark Heritage and takes it in new directions. “Legacies of Conflict” combines three core elements.

Firstly, we will conduct analysis of archival aerial photographs and lidar data to create a meaningful survey of the Second World War remains in the case study area of Kilpisjärvi, with numerous German wartime sites.

Secondly, we will analyse this newly uncovered data against the official heritage site records for the region to trace the selective heritagization of this conflict.

Thirdly, we will develop crowdsourcing online and through interviews and participatory value mapping ) during a fieldwork period (in which we also carry out supplementary archaeological survey), which enables us to map personal stories and memories connected to Second World War sites.

In this way we hope to understand how local and personal memories compare and differ from ‘official’ and scientifically reconstructed landscapes – ‘counterscapes’ in a sense.