Memory and nationalism

Our project investigates the nineteenth-century origins of ideas about Nordic distinctiveness by examining how foreign travellers represented the Nordic region. By tracing these appropriations of the Nordic past, we consider how external representations of the Nordic region intersected with wider narratives of historical inheritance, national identity, and imperial legitimacy. We highlight the value of nineteenth-century travel writing as a source for understanding not only how the Nordic region was perceived from abroad, but also how those perceptions were mobilised to construct identities and hierarchies elsewhere. We will introduce a brief case study on how nineteenth-century travel writing articulated a narrative of translatio imperii in which maritime dominion passed from ancient Scandinavian seafarers to the British Empire and, subsequently, to the United States. Situating these sources within an investigation of memory culture, we examine how writers constructed the English-speaking world as the ‘true heir’ to Norse naval supremacy. Several texts posit British global exploration and American oceanic expansion as the fulfilment of what was seen as a racial and ancestral inheritance, whereby the ‘trident of the seas’ transferred westward across generations. The purported Anglo-American genealogical links to ancient Scandinavia thereby legitimised imperial power through selective appropriation of the Viking past.

After 1864 The Danish nation state was constructed as a homogenous, monolingual society, reducing or even forgetting the prehistory of Denmark as part of a multicultural and plurilingual Oldenburg Monarchy including the Kingdom of Norway, the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein as well as the overseas territories and colonies. The Danish-German hybridity and co-existence in state, society and culture due to the duchies was (and still is) told as a nationalistic history of antagonisms, conflicts and wars over territory. The national framework and national categories still to a large degree determine history writing, archives, encyclopedias, and biographies. How can we reconstruct the linguistic, cultural and social entanglements in the composite state prior to 1864 and contribute to a diversified cultural memory?

The history of the Argentine Republic has been marked by dynamics of political conflict that can only be described as extreme. Over time, the all-encompassing tensions arising from such polarizing dynamics have come to engulf every dimension of Argentine society and culture, dragging even the national historiographical debate into their vortex. It is within this context that the so-called “myth of the two Argentinas” emerged and established itself: a meta-historical and meta-political narrative deployed by various actors seeking to legitimize their counter-hegemonic political projects. This presentation pursues two main goals: first, to illustrate the nature of the “myth of the two Argentinas” framework, emphasizing its conceptual flexibility and its character as a meta-historical and meta-political narrative; second, to provide a concise historical overview from the nineteenth century to the present day, demonstrating how this myth has been effectively adopted and reinterpreted by political actors across disparate ideologies in their efforts to rewrite national history and legitimize their political ambitions.

This study approaches Nordic exceptionalism, the notion that the Nordic countries are uniquely peaceful, egalitarian and morally engaged in world affairs, as a form of nationalism that operates through a benevolent rather than aggressive register. Such “good” nationalism is rarely recognised as nationalism, yet it shapes what can be remembered, and by whom.The Nordic states present themselves as qualified for mediation and humanitarian missions, and occasionally as “moral superpowers”. This self-image is sustained through memory politics drawing on differing historical experiences. Sweden emphasises its experience of peace; Norway, its role as host of the Nobel Peace Prize; Denmark, its resistance narrative and reputation as home to the world’s happiest people. All three ground their exceptionalism in the welfare state. They diverge in experiences of violence and security alignments: Norway and Denmark combine peace mediation with NATO membership and resistance narratives, whereas in Sweden NATO membership is seen as conflicting with the peace narrative. The project examines how, and through which historical interpretations, Nordic exceptionalism is articulated in Danish, Norwegian and Swedish parliamentary debates and in the United Nations General Assembly and Security Council in relation to respective country’s identity. Analysing it as nationalism and memory politics, the study sheds light on how nationalism is communicated.

In the autumn of 2005, the Danish Ministry of Education introduced a new canon for upper-secondary education. Intended as a move towards a more diverse and inclusive canon, it included one Greenlandic author, Hans Lynge (1906–1988), and one Faroese author, William Heinesen (1900–1991), on a so-called “longlist” of 31 entries, from which teachers were required to select 12. The list also included “the oral traditions of the Danish Realm” (Rigsfællesskabet). The new canon intervenes in an ongoing mnemonic standoff (Wertsch 2021) between Denmark and Greenland (Kalaallit Nunaat) over how the history and relationship between the two countries should be represented and narrated. This paper examines whether the new canon can be understood as a form of narrative intervention with the potential to transform the dominant narrative of Danish exceptionalism, or whether the inclusion of Greenlandic and Faroese voices ultimately amounts to a form of tokenistic inclusion. The paper argues that educational practice in Danish schools, particularly with regard to Greenland, is significantly ahead of official and institutional initiatives in terms of the potential decolonisation of the Danish literary canon. It therefore considers the gap between institutional representation and pedagogical practice as a key site for understanding changing narratives of the Danish Realm.

More than 30 years after the end of the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the country remains politically divided, and war memory seems to serve for further memory political polarization between the national groups and political entities of the Bosnian state. While the Bosniak-dominated parts of the state continue to invest in memorialization projects dedicated to the siege of Sarajevo and the genocide in Srebrenica, representatives of the Serbian-dominated entity openly contest the genocide verdicts of the International tribunal in the Hague, while publicly promoting a memory of the war as a legitimate defensive campaign. Drawing on examples from history education, museums and memoryscapes around Sarajevo and Banja Luka, the country’s main cities, this paper charts some of the main developments in nationalist memory politics in the two parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina

This papers examines the use of the memory of Zaporozhian Cossackd as a myth for mobilization of the Ukrainian society during the Russo-Ukrainian War (2014–2025). It argues that Cossackdom provides Ukrainians with a powerful mnemonic narrative about freedom, democracy, and military valor in their existential struggle against Russia. It traces the historical roots of the Cossack myth from its origins in the seventeenth century through its development in Ukrainian nation-building to its current manifestations in wartime. The research, based on propaganda materials, art, videos, and news reports from Ukrainian online platforms, reveals how the myth permeates contemporary Ukrainian military symbolism, public spaces, and popular culture. The study demonstrates how myths embedded in collective memory function in societies under existential threat, providing ontological security, uniting communities, and mobilizing for collective action through powerful symbolic resources.

Currently, Germany’s national identity is contested by the reawakening memory of its colonial crimes, the genocide committed of the Herero and Nama people in the present Namibia and the genocide-like atrocities that took place in Tanzania. In what has been dubbed Historikerstreit 2.0, numerous scholars around the world are debating to what extent the memory of colonialism threatens the memory of the Holocaust or if they can co-exist as equally important in the sense of Miachael Rothberg’s multidirectional memory. Let aside the discussion if the present debate resembles the one that played out in the 1980s which consolidated the idea of the Holocaust as singular event, it has created a harsh dichotomic memory scheme between voices that align antisemitism with racism stating that “Nazi Germany was not more racist than any other colonialist country” and the perception that the “Jews were not only seen as sub-human but as non-human” and that comparison therefore is a relativization of the Holocaust (Sznaider 2022, 193). As Dirk Moses puts it, it is not the primary aim of the present debate to forget the Holocaust, but to abolish its iconic and “sacred status” that has blocked for remembering the “profane” trauma of colonialism. (ZEIT Nr. 27/21). In its well-known sarcastic manner, Maxim Biller (Die Zeit 36/2021) counters that certain “left-wing generations of antisemites” such as Dirk Moses, Jürgen Zimmerer and Michael Rothberg are about to mitigate the Holocaust “80 years after the first doors of the German extermination chambers were locked behind Jewish children, women and men” by “chasing it through the comparison machine.” What makes this debate so painful is not only that it urges Germany to acknowledge yet another shameful atrocity, but that that it shakes the pillars of Germanys national identity which at least since the 1980s has been consolidated on the negative foundation myth of the Holocaust serving as moral benchmark and positioning Germany as a protector of the rights of minorities and pioneer in preventing future genocide. In this paper, I will argue that the present German postcolonial literature can be seen as a contribution to this debate which possibly provides a way out of the deadlock of the polarized positions.