The destruction and future of museum, community and national monuments
The biggest mudslide ever to fall in an inhabited area in Iceland came down, among other things, on the Technical Museum of East Iceland on the 18th of December 2020 and the cause can by all probability be traced to climate change. The houses of the museum were completely destroyed, much archaeological heritage was submerged and many pieces were utterly demolished. Some of the archaeological heritage, and thereby memories of the community and the nation has been salvaged from complete ruin. This natural disaster came as a big shock and left a huge gap in the landscape, the community as in human relations.
The project is sponsored by the innovation fund of scholars and is a co-operative venture of the Faculty of museology of the University of Iceland, Technical Museum of Iceland and the National Museum of Iceland. This study spans three months and researchers were asked to acquaint themselves with the conditions of the Technical Museum after the landslides in various ways. They were asked to do so through interviews, studies, and participation observations. Therewith, researchers were asked to gain understanding of the conditions of the Technical Museum and of how interviewees experienced the
landslides, the purpose of the data collection through the interviews was to preserve the stories connected to the landslides for further research.
Researchers spent the first month of the project in Seyðisfjörður assisting with weeding out the museum holdings and interviewing the director of the museum and people of the town. After which more interviews with inhabitants of the area, organizers of the museum and specialists within the museum world followed. The researchers reviewed journalistic materials connected to the mudslides as well as the museum, along with writing scholarly compilations which shone light on museums with the context of health and well-being, climate change and natural disaster.
As the website shows, the research process was convoluted. The website contains a timeline where studies, journalistic materials and interviews are intertwined and portray stories from the community as well as from the museum activities postdating the landslides. The researchers hope that the gathered materials will give people an insight into the complicated set of conditions of how the experience was for the people, the community as well as for the museum activities. It shall be noted that the information that are posted on the website are neither detailed nor do they give an overall view of the conditions. It shall also be noted that the opinions of the interviewees do not reflect the opinions of the researchers.
All interviews taken for this research will proceed to be in the custody of the instructor and guarantor of the project, Sigurjón Baldur Hafsteinsson, Professor of Museology. Researchers were Bára Bjarnadóttir master’s student in project management, Bryndís Súsanna Þórhallsdóttir master’s student in folkloristics, and Vigdís Hlíf Sigurðardóttir master’s student in museology.
Researchers want to give dear thanks to those who participated in the research, their contribution was both unique and incalculable.