with the foundation of the Department of Museology (1988). The themes of the symposiums were “What is museology” and “Local and global – two aspects of museum communication”. Here, again, leading international museologists (and a few leading practitioners) took part: Tomislav Sôla, Vinoš Sofka, André Des- vallées, Hugues de Varine, Peter van Mensch, Gaynor Kavanagh, Per-Uno Ågren, Kenneth Hudson and Donald Horne, among others (Råberg & Ågren 1992). The report from these two workshops, with short articles by all the participants, became very important for the development of museological teaching at Umeå and elsewhere Scandinavia.6 Those two symposia were also a result of intense work and collaboration during the late 1970s and late 80s to develop Swedish museums towards more socially inclusive institutions. This movement was led by energetic museologists such as Sofka and Ågren, together with museum profes- sionals such as Erik Hofrén, Bo Lagerkrantz, Eva Persson, Margareta Ekarv, Ulla Arnell, Harald Hvarfner and Sten Rentzhog, among others. The two symposia were also a result of collaboration between museology and the History of Ideas at Umeå University, with professors Ronny Ambjörnsson and Sverker Sörlin as the leading figures (Bäckström 2014). Together they had created a very fruitful and inspiring intellectual milieu where heritage, museums, society, territories, nature and ecology all came together. Already then, one had incorporated the protection and preservation of nature into the concept of culture. Ambjörnsson and Sörlin, as well as many ethnologists and others representing the humani- ties, wrote their part of the workshop report. In museological courses, human ecology, and to some extent, human geography, were introduced.
In 1993, Scandinavian museology took a big step forward – coincidentally (or not) at the same time as Friedrich Waidacher’s extensive Handbuch der Allge- meinen Museologie appeared. First, the Danish National Museum in Copenhagen arranged (curated by Annesofie Becker) a major and very influential exhibition named Museum Europa, which museologically, and with a very philosophical eye, scrutinised the history of museums and collecting. That same year, three theoretically oriented museum practitioners, Ågren, John Aage Gjestrum and Ole Strandgaard, from Sweden, Norway and Denmark respectively, arranged a series of lectures at the Danish Museumshojskolen (Museum Academy) on the initiative of Strandgaard, the leader of this Academy. The topic of the se- ries was “The museum in its time – on the trail of Danish museology” (Ågren 1993). I do not know whether any museologists from Iceland attended to give a lecture, but from Finland, the future professor of museology (from 1997 on), Janne Vilkuna, took part. Thus, four Nordic countries set the scene for muse- ological development. The outcome of these lectures was the foundation of the well-known journal Nordisk Museologi – in both Scandinavian languages and English, the first issue of which appeared in Umeå a few months later, in 1993, with Ågren as the editor. The ambition of the journal was to constitute a link between the universities and the practical museum field, and to promote critical
6. Papers in Museology 1. WHAT IS MUSEOLOGY? (1988) and LOCAL AND GLOBAL – Two aspects of museum communication (1989). Report from two symposia at the Department of museology, Umeå University. Acta Universitatis Umensis. Umeå Studies in the Humanities 108/1992.
analysis of the phenomenon called museum. Another ambition was to convey museologically interesting texts from other countries and languages, particularly from Germany and France (also in translation), and the other way around, to make the Nordic museological discussion known in other countries, by means of English summaries of Scandinavian texts.
At this point, it was already clear that museology should not deal with the mu- seum only, but also with ideas and values concerning the broader field. In the following years, there was intense co-operation between these above-mentioned close friends and other museological actors in Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Norway, with the Museum Academy in Denmark and Umeå University as centres of activity. Very important were the International Museum Days, arranged for some time nearly every year by Ågren, Strandgaard and Gjestrum, mostly in Umeå, but also in Copenhagen and elsewhere. Many international museologists and museum directors participated and presented papers and ideas on museum development. Those Museum Days were highly appreciated among professionals and practitioners as a deep source of inspiration.
Apart from the international influences and collaborations, the broader definition of museology in Sweden has national roots.7 In Sweden, there is an established tradition of seeing museums, their collections, etc., as closely interwoven with material and cultural heritage in general, forming a total heritage. The material remains of history, whether ancient relics, buildings or objects, are perceived as intertwined, from a preservation perspective; heritage is coherent and undivided, as Ågren would say (Ågren 1992, p. 111). The term environmental heritage (also used by Vilkuna in Finland) embraces it all, and museology will cover it all. The concept is social- and value-based, says Ågren, and he continues:
Museology studies the apprehension of nature and the view of culture and history projected by that legacy: the relationship of man to his sur- roundings as life environment and history. What in material culture has been imbued with so much meaning that it has been selected as an en- vironmental heritage, protected by society … ? What have the criteria been … ? What role has nature, cultural heritage and history played in different eras? (Ågren 1992, p.111)
My own conception comes close to Ågren’s. This is my short definition as head of museological research at Umeå:
Museology is a theoretical platform for our exploration of industrial man’s (traumatic) relationship to time and the material world, and how this is expressed in musealisation and the preservation of objects, environ- ments, the material and the immaterial, and calling it heritage. The task of museology is to explore what kind of phenomena the museum and
7. Here it is important to note that not all universities in Sweden that offer museological courses necessarily share these definitions.
heritage are in modernity; what are we actually doing, and why, when preserving reality?8
Furthermore, Ågren underlines that in order to understand the meaning and significance of heritage, we (museologists) must also study the world and social views that determine social values. Museology is, thus, a kind of philosophy and sociology of museums. Hence, he views museology from three main perspectives:
• A historical perspective, which seeks to describe and understand the en- vironmental heritage of a certain era and a certain place
• A sociological perspective, which studies the institutions and activities which have come into being as the result of a notion of cultural and natural heritage
• A communicative perspective, which applies to the attempts to mediate the environmental heritage in time and space (e.g., exhibitions). (Ågren 1992, p.112)
Here, Ågren reveals his close connections and collaboration with the interna- tional museological community. The introduction of museology as a specific discipline elsewhere (other than at Umeå and Jyväskylä) was a slow process, no matter how early and intensely the aforementioned actors of the 1970s and 80s acted as missionaries. Sweden and Finland were, for a long time, the only Nordic countries where professorships in museology were founded (in 1997) and museological education has been going on since the early 1980s. By contrast, in Norway a professorship was established only in 2011, in Iceland in 2009 and Denmark there still isn’t one.
The University of Iceland offers, as Umeå has done since the 1990s, a course package from undergraduate to the PhD level in museology. Iceland boarded the train of museology quite late; master’s and PhD programmes started in Reykjavik in 2009. Icelandic museology defines its object of study in the nar- rower sense – it is strictly about museums – but, as professor Sigurjón Baldur Hafsteinsson remarks: “It is of course inevitable that heritage comes in the picture, e.g., via other courses that our students take in archaeology or folklore (as part of their choices)”.9
In Denmark, research in museology started in the mid-70s. When it comes to the rate of completed projects and published books with purely museological titles, Denmark stands at the forefront in Scandinavia, and always has. In fact, during the first years of the journal Nordisk Museologi, the bulk of published articles came from Denmark. The same goes for other museological research and publi- cations today (depending, of course, on how museology is conceived, whether it embraces other heritage matters or only museums). There is no professorship of
8. This definition is not published. I have presented it in my papers at conferences and in my teaching for first-year students at Umeå University.
9. Information e-mail to the author 12.07.2016.
museology in Denmark, but teaching is conducted at many universities: Aarhus, Copenhagen, Roskilde and Aalborg, to mention a few. For a long time now, the main centre for studies and research has been the Department of Art History, Aesthetics & Culture & Museology at Aarhus University. There, museology is, at least in principle, defined in the same large sense as in Sweden and Finland:
Museology is a broad, cross-disciplinary field of study comprising research into theoretical and practical questions about cultural heritage, natural heritage and art and their institutions, particularly museums and their significance and role in society. The museological research environment at Aarhus University explores processes of musealisation, which means the way in which a society selects, exhibits, interprets and administers the tangible and intangible products of culture with a view to preserving them for posterity.10
At Århus University, there is a so-called supplementary course and a master’s course in museology – the Supplementary course requires Bachelor studies in some other subject.11 The study of museology is structured around five perspec- tives that come very close to those of Ågren, and are probably influenced by him and the Strandgaard school of museology at the Danish Museum Academy (Museumshojskolen). Museology, they say, has the following:
• A historical-institutional perspective, including research into the history, collections, exhibitions and artefact concepts of Danish museums
• A didactic perspective, focusing on young people and communication at museums, among other things
• A communicative perspective, with a strong profile with regard to strategic communication in the museum world
• A social-economic perspective, including research into museum economy and cultural heritage as policy
• A technological perspective, with years of research into digital museology.12 In Norway, museology had faced a constant uphill struggle until just about a decade ago (despite the efforts by the Norwegian driving spirit of museology, the late John Aage Gjestrum). The implementation of museological education and research has been much slower than in other Scandinavian countries – to my understanding mainly due to a conservative attitude in the museum field itself and among professionals in related disciplines. Still, some museological
10. Available at http://cc.au.dk/en/about-the-school/subjects/museology/ [Last accessed 8 October 2019]
11. See the program for Supplementary course in Museology http://bachelor.au.dk/en/supplemen- tary-subject/museological-studies/?amp%3BorgUrl=http%3A%2F%2Ftilvalg.au.dk%2Fmuseologis- ke-studier%2F [Last accessed 8 October 2019]
12. As for Norway https://www.hf.uio.no/ikos/english/research/center/museum-studies/about/
[Last accessed 8 October 2019]
short courses have been, since the 80s, offered at various universities scattered throughout the country. One of the first was given at the University of Bergen, taught by Anders Johansen and others, as well as some ground-level courses in Oslo and Tromsø. These were shorter museological courses from around 1995 onwards. During the last fifteen years, the situation has improved considerably.
Today, the negative attitude towards museology has faded away, particularly in the museum field itself, where people with a degree in museology are direly needed and employed. Today, the heart of museology is located at the Univer- sity of Oslo in the Department of Cultural Studies & Oriental Languages, where teaching at advanced levels began in 2008 and a Professor of Museology was appointed in 2011, a position still held by Brita Brenna. The ambition of criti- cal museology in Norway is to incorporate and strengthen the critical heritage aspect in teaching as well as research (Brenna 2015). However, what in the critical aspect would be more critical than the general theoretical museological perspective, has not been clarified.