As you know, I love to travel. In addition to driving over
10,000 miles since May and visiting over fifty National Park Service sites, I
also went to two international conferences. This posting will discuss the trips
to the conferences and the countries.
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| The view of Bogota from Mount Monserrate with a rainbow (Photo by Hunner) |
After the west coast road trip, I flew to Bogota, Colombia
at the beginning of July to attend an
International Federation of Public History conference. The IFPH has an ambitious goal of providing an organization
for public historians around the world to connect and share ideas and issues.
[A quick refresher – public history is the engagement of people with the past
at museums, historic parks, and through social media and digital humanities.]
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A sign in front of the Cafe Bizzaro in Bogota and a theme for public history-- locally produced, globally inspired.
(Photo by Hunner) |
I presented a paper at Bogota on how we teach public history
at New Mexico State University. I met a wide variety of people from Latin
America at the conference and heard some interesting projects on truth and
reconciliation, especially as the civil war in Colombia is ending. More about
this later. I even heard a presentation by Dr. Mario Vilar, a historian from
Chile, who researches historians who blog. I was the first live one that he
has met.
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| Cathedral of Bogota on Plaza de Bolivar (Photo by Hunner) |
I was impressed with the cosmopolitan atmosphere of Bogota.
We had very good cheap meals ($15 US for a steak dinner with wine), went to a
fantastic museum on gold (more about this later), and had good accommodations both
at our hotel as well as at the conference site at the University of the Andes.
Thanks to Catalina Muñoz in Bogota and Serge Noiret and Thomas Cauvin with the
IFPH for organizing such a worthwhile conference.
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| Front Entrance to the University of the Andes in Bogota (Photo by Hunner) |
In September, I flew to Kalmar, Sweden for the annual
meeting of Bridging Ages. Over 200 people from twenty countries, mainly from Europe
and Africa, gathered at the Linnaeus University to discuss Time Traveling, that
is bringing history to life through first person role playing and other
activities. I having blogged about first person interpretation earlier when I visited
Conner Prairie. Since 2002, Bridging Ages has grown
tremendously, especially in South Africa. There, they recreate past times with
students who gain an experience about living under apartheid. Deputy Minister
Rejoice Mabudafhasi of the South African Department of Arts and Culture talked
to the conference as well as Mzalendo Kibunjia, the Director General of the
National Museums of Kenya.
I presented with Padre Kevorg, an Armenian Mechitarist monk,
and Cécile
Franchetti, a heritage preservationist from Venice, about a Time Travel we
conducted in October 2015. At the Time Travel, sixty 14 and 15 year-old students pretended to
be back in 1870 at the first day of school at the Armenian College of Venice. At
the conference, we presented a short history of Armenia and the Mechitarist
religious order, showed how we prepared the students for the Time Travel, and
then offered some images about the event itself. Padre Kevorg ended our session
with a Magnificat, a moving Armenian devotional song to the Virgin Mary.
Padre Kevorg and me with a photo of an Amermian Church from 1200 AD presenting at the Bridging Ages conference. (Photo by C. Franchetti)
Because of the increased presence in Bridging Ages with
people from places where human rights violations occurred, there was much
discussion about truth and reconciliation. This also was a dominant theme in
Bogota. I know that public historians can play a vital role in getting to the
truth about past actions, including atrocities sometimes perpetrated by governments,
sometimes by rebel groups. We are trained to get to the truth about past
events.
I am not so sure that historians can bring about reconciliation,
that we can heal the trauma of those actions or events. A past injury or death
in a family or community cannot be so easily forgotten. Some abuses take centuries to play out. For
example, the United States Civil War is still being fought by some, and the legacy
of slavery continues to impact communities and even the nation.
I would like to see evidence where historians brought about
reconciliation. For example, on my road trip, I talked with a volunteer at the
Flight 93 Memorial who lives about a mile from that Sept. 11th crash site. She
told me she cried for three days after the crash and then someone from the
local historical society knocked on her door and asked her to start collecting
the items that people left on the road in front of her house in remembrance of the
victims. For three years, she collected and curated those items and over time,
she realized that by taking care of these leavings, she also was taking care of
the victims. Reconciliation often only comes after years of processing and hard
work and is very individualized. We can assist by presenting the truth about an
event, but I question whether historians are qualified to work with the
grieving public. Isn’t that better left to the trained professionals like
therapists and social workers?
After the conference, I spent a weekend in Copenhagen, my
favorite city in Europe. I walked up the winding spiral of the Round Tower
where in the 1640s, King Christian IV rode his carriage up to check on the
astronomers who used the top to observe the heavens. From up there, I had a
great view of the old quarter of Copenhagen.
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Left, Christian IV's Round Tower. Above, the view of Copenhagen from the top of the Round Tower
(Photo by Hunner) |
I also visited the National Museum of Denmark where I
compared the stone age peoples and cultures of Denmark with what I saw at the
Museum of Gold in Bogota and the mound building sites at Cahokia and Hopewell.
Here’s some observations. Ancient people in both North America and northern
Europe similarly buried some of their dead in mounds, surrounded by graves
goods. The ceremonial large flint axes on exhibit at the Danish National Museum, the
Cahokia State park museum, and the
Hopewell NHP looked very similar.
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| Ceremonial flint axes at the Danish National Museum, similar to ones at Cahokia and Hopewell (Photo by Hunner) |
The exquisite filigree gold artifacts shown at the Bogota
Museum are perhaps more finely done than the gold pieces at the National
Museum, but the craftsmanship of both evoke a mystical essence that drifts down
through the eons. For the ancient peoples of Colombia, they made effigy items
out of gold to connect with the spirit animals of their three realms—the air,
the ground, and under the ground. Thus animals like bats who lived in all three
realms were highly praised. Jaguars also were powerful symbols The iconic
symbol shown here
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| Two dimensional depiction of a jaguar from the Museum of Gold, Bogota (Photo by Hunner) |
is actually a flattened out silhouette of a jaguar. This is
also a symbol for a national beer.
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| Club Colombia beer with jaguar symbol as logo (Photo by Hunner) |
At Denmark’s National Museum, gold also figured prominently.
So here’s a test. Which objects are from Colombia and which from Denmark. The key
is at the end of the blog.
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| Gold artifact #2 |
Copenhagen is also a bicycle city. Many Danes commute by
bike, hold hands while riding bikes, transports goods and other people by bike.
I asked a waitress at breakfast if she rides during the winter and she said
yes, it was actually safer than driving a car in the snow. She said they dress
in layers “and I don’t know how, but we look awesome.” As my niece Tess states:
“Copenhagen is a chic city.” I agree.
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| Bicycle rack at the Norreport Metro Station in Copenhagen (Photo by Hunner) |
Finally, today I went by train to the Viking ship museum in
Roskilde. In the 1960s, the Danish National Museum excavated five Viking ships sunk
1,000 years ago. The museum has partially reconstructed what they could of the
ships in a stunning exhibit of simplicity. I went on a tour with Niclas who
explained the different ships that the Vikings used from small coastal cargo boats
to large warships to even larger cargo freighters. The Viking ship museum also uses
experimental archaeology to understand how these ancients lived and sailed. They
have reconstructed working replicas of all five boats and have even taken the large war ship from Denmark to Ireland and back.
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| Replica of viking warship on a voyage to Ireland 2007-2008 (From exhibit at Viking Ship Museum) |
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Tour guide Niclas in front of a reconstructed Viking ship from 1070 A.D. at the Viking Ship Museum
(Photo by Hunner) |
Denmark offers a lot from historic landmarks to modern
Nordic cuisine. It reaches well into its past while dealing with contemporary issues
like refugees from the Middle East and Africa. Like many countries, Denmark is
changing while connected to its past. An historian can’t ask for much more.
Here's the answers to which piece of gold comes from Colombia and which from Denmark:
#1-- Sun God's Chariot-- Danish National Museum, Copenhagen
#2-- Sun God-- Museum of Gold, Bogota
#3-- Flying Fish-- Museum of Gold, Bogota
#4-- Face of a Man-- Danish National Museum, Copenhagen
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| Replicas of the recovered Viking ships built as experimental archaeology at the Viking Ship Museum (Photo by Hunner) |
