Deep Roots

Reflections on family history, identity and geography

Reflections on the preservation of memory

The colonization of North America is so relatively recent that our notions of what’s “old” and “worth preserving” are a little different from those of our European counterparts. Similarly, a fascination with family history, while not unique to Americans, takes on an oddly obsessive quality among some in the U.S. (ahem…. guilty as charged).

Any time we attempt to reconstruct the past, there is a tendency to gloss over certain details and emphasize others — often through the lens of present-day values and systems of power. There’s also an urge to present “facts” when what we really have are hunches. Does our relatively short collective memory in (non-Indigenous) America make us more vulnerable to these distortions? I wonder. (If you have thoughts on the subject, please post a comment below!)

I started my day yesterday in Bergen, where I visited the Hanseatic Museum’s “Schøtstuene” (assembly rooms used by the German Hanseatic merchants who had established themselves in Bergen by the 1240s). One thing that I loved about the exhibit was how the curators presented ambiguities in the historical record. The exhibit took great pains to distinguish originals from copies from reconstructions (and all flavors in between). But they often admitted that they didn’t know. And the curators posed as many questions as they provided answers.

Bredsgårdens schøtstue: one of the “original” meeting rooms of the Hanseatic merchants, although it has been rebuilt, taken apart, stored, moved, and reassembled in its 313 year history.
Some brilliant self-reflection right here
Now they’re just messing with me

This playing with the admixture of originals and reconstructions is taken to a whole other level at the Gamle Bergen Museum — a collection of old homes and businesses from all over Bergen that have been reassembled into an open-air museum. Actors in 19th century dress sit patiently in opulent sitting rooms, waiting for you to arrive so that they can recount the day’s events. As a former resident of Williamsburg, Virginia, where I was sometimes chatted up by 17th century “re-enactors”, you’d think I’d be prepared for this sort of thing, but I never am.

The Merchant’s House at the Gamle Bergen Museum. (If you think historical interpretation is tough, imagine having to live it multiple times a day!)
This smooth-talking salesman tried to sell me some 100 year-old canned fish balls. I opted for the overpriced chocolate bar.
Gamle Bergen — a reconstruction of a town that never was, which gives a real sense of how it might have been.
Thanks for permitting a little historical navel-gazing… now back to our regularly scheduled programming

Jesse Rude

4 responses to “Reflections on the preservation of memory”

  1. A visit to Ulvik kyrkje – Deep Roots Avatar
    A visit to Ulvik kyrkje – Deep Roots

    […] breathing example of how past and present can’t be fully separated — despite our best attempts (see this post on that subject). The “new” church is an 1859 reconstruction of the “old” church, which was built in 1711. […]

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  2. Teddie H. Avatar
    Teddie H.

    These thoughts are so true. It is why I have named my family trees “Working Trees” because, as much as I try to carefully document every “fact” I add, there are times when the information is a “maybe” where I am adding it to see if it triggers some algorithm to help me connect the dots. It may be weeks, months, or years before I get back to researching that branch of the family tree. Sometimes the information is what has been orally handed down or a written memoir, but can someone’s memory be counted on? I’m not sure, in my old age, that my own memory is reliable. It has to be very difficult for these historical sites that have been around for hundreds of years to authenticate various artifacts.

    We visited the log house that my husband’s father was raised in that had been moved from Possum Holler, Vineyard, Arkansas to the Prairie Grove State Park in Fayetteville, Arkansas, because it had been the first post office in the area so was historically significant. The tour guide told how the lovely cherry wood four-poster bed upstairs was original to the house and belonged to the Latta family, who lived there before my husband’s family. My husband’s father spoke up to inform the tour guide that, actually, his father had cut the wood and had built that bed with his own hands. It did not belong to the Latta family. The tour guide was not the least bit interested in correcting the history of this artifact and is, undoubtedly, sharing the same misinformation to this day.

    Even if the historical significance of a place or an artifact cannot be positively identified, we still get a sense of the history from them that allows us to use our imagination to picture what life was like during that time. I appreciate those curators and archivists who very carefully preserve and document what can be positively identified and even those that cannot. My travels in Europe showed the contrast between those who respect and work to preserve the past and the USA where, too often, “old” is to be torn down and discarded. Even having a building listed on the National Register of Historic Places does not prevent its demise if some developer makes a case for using the land for something else.

    In my lifetime, we have purchased two homes that were in danger of being bulldozed and saved them from a wrecking ball. One was an 1853 Queen Anne Victorian house in Indiana and the one we now live in, a 1956 Sears Catalogue home. Others thought we were crazy for taking on these projects but brought their friends and family by to see how lovely the home became because we cared and wanted to save these houses to continue telling the stories of those who lived within their walls.

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    1. Jesse Rude Avatar
      Jesse Rude

      Thank you for your reflections and insights, Teddie! Your story about the four-poster bed reminds me of the conversation I had with the verger at Ulvik church yesterday. I told her what I had heard from my relatives about the painting of the Uro family — that it had suffered some damage during WWII from Nazi gunfire. That was news to her. But she told me the story about how the hanging model ship had fallen down during a skirmish with the Germans. Which story is true? Both? Neither?
      I wish I had been more careful from the beginning when building my tree on Ancestry.com. Sometimes I brought in unverified info that I’ve later corrected. But now and again I’ll come across another person’s tree who has the same incorrect info (maybe they got it from me?). I’ll tell them about the correction but whether they do anything about it is out of my hands. History is a giant game of “telephone”, isn’t it!?

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  3. Missed connections – Deep Roots Avatar
    Missed connections – Deep Roots

    […] that’s where Norway comes in. One of the most important Hanseatic outposts was in Bergen (see my post from a couple of weeks ago). The Hanseatic merchants’ kontor in Bergen was where Europe got its stockfish. And stockfish was […]

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