Beacons of Nordicity: Nordic Conservation Day 1970 and the reimagination of history

ABSTRACT

This article shows how a reimagined history of the Nordic countries informed their claims to a common destiny as they sought to give shape to the ‘ecological turn’ and to Nordic cooperation at a critical juncture. A narrative analysis of the uses of history on Nordic Nature Conservation Day in September 1970 reveals that the political needs of governments and environmental organizations required that the region ignore its violent history of intra-Nordic warfare. The applied narratives all depended on a harmonious past. Paradoxically, Conservation Day’s foremost event was the synchronized lighting of 600 beacons dotting the Nordic landscape, explicitly re-enacting the call to arms used in the wars that had shaped each country’s borders and identities. The organizers claimed they were sounding the alarm on behalf of nature itself, as if mobilizing the past to save the future. Along the way, this past had to be sanitized to fit the required narratives of regional harmony. Yet the contemporary disharmony of the Cold War could not be escaped and came to affect how the story was told, which demonstrated the frailty of Nordic cooperation under the pressure of the great powers and the ensuing limitations on regional unity.

KEYWORDS:

• Cold War
• environment
• Nordic cooperation
• uses of history
• political history

Acknowledgement

Research for this article was partly carried out within the Nordic Branding project sorting under the University of Oslo’s UiO:Norden initiative. The author wishes to thank Eirinn Larsen and Svein Ivar Angell for their dedication to this special section on the uses of history, project collaborators and other Nordic colleagues for their input and support through several stages of the research process, and the librarians of the Norwegian Defence University College for their flexibility and assistance under the demanding circumstances of the pandemic.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Synonyms for the Norwegian word ‘varde’ (Eng. ‘beacon’) include ‘vete’ and ‘baune’. In Danish, the term is ‘bavn’, in Swedish ‘vårdkase’, and the Finnish word used by the organizers was ‘vartiorovio’. ‘Nordens naturverndag 6. september’, Fb-2, PA-641 Norges Naturvernforbund, National Archives, Oslo, Norway [NAO].

2. Warde, Robin and Sörlin, The Environment; on the Nordics, see Anker, The Power of the Periphery; Asdal, Politikkens natur; Buns, “Green Internationalists”; Heidenblad, Den gröna vändningen; and Notaker, “Staging Discord”.

3. As applied to Norwegian political history, see Ryymin, “Innledning,” 10.

4. Ryymin, “Innledning,” 11.

5. Aronsson, Historiebruk, 57–67.

6. Norway, Sweden and Denmark were full Council of Europe members. Finland was not and only joined the three others as part of an ad hoc ECY planning group initiated by the Nordic Council. Iceland did not participate in this group or in the Nordic Conservation Day, and only marginally in the ECY. Finland committed fewer personnel and funds to the ECY and the Conservation Day than the other countries, perhaps because of its non-membership in the Council of Europe. In addition, for linguistic reasons, Finnish planning documents were not shared with the partner countries to the same extent as documents produced by Denmark, Norway and Sweden. For both reasons, Finland’s contribution was less integrated within the Nordic approach than that of the other countries. This also means that Scandinavian sources outweigh those of Finland in this article. Archival sources have been retrieved from the national archives of Denmark, Norway and Sweden. All contain substantial paper records of the organizing committees and national nature conservation societies, along with their mutual correspondence and publications. News coverage has been systematically retrieved through the digital media repositories available in the Scandinavian national libraries, using a broad set of search terms in each language relating to the ECY, the Nordic Nature Conservation Day and beacons, as well as more specific terms relating to persons, places or events. The scope of the search has also been defined by the author’s linguistic competence, which does not include Finnish.

7. On organizational aspects of the ECY, see Notaker, “Staging Discord”.

8. Rome, The Genius of Earth Day.

9. Heidenblad, “En nordisk blick,” 116.

10. Notaker, “Staging Discord,” 316–21.

11. Heidenblad, “Mapping a New History,” 265.

12. Turchetti, Greening the Alliance, 8; see also Hamblin, “Environmentalism for the Atlantic Alliance”.

13. Turchetti, Greening the Alliance, 8; see also Hamblin, “Environmentalism for the Atlantic Alliance”.

14. Anker, The Power of the Periphery.

15. On connecting environmental history with wider currents, see Maher, Apollo in the Age of Aquarius, 69.

16. Notaker, “Staging Discord”.

17. Anker, The Power of the Periphery, chs 4–5; Jamison, Eyerman and Kramer, The Making of the New Environmental Consciousness; Kaijser and Heidenblad, “Young Activists,” 303; Kielland, Natur og ungdom.

18. Recommendation 26–1964, Nordic Council; memo, 13 December 1966, Da-79, S-1452 Kommunal- og arbeidsdepartementet/Distriktsplanavdelingen, NAO.

19. Buns, “Green Internationalists,” 6, 31.

20. Ibid., 41, 50, 71.

21. Glover, “Unity Exposed,” 221.

22. Fure, Mellomkrigstid, 222; Buns, “Green Internationalists,” 93.

23. Esping to Huse, 30 January 1968, Da-15; Hofsten to Germeten, 18 December 1967, Da-79, S-1452, NAO.

24. Eriksen and Pharo, Kald krig og internasjonalisering, 148.

25. Tamnes, Oljealder, 169.

26. Olesen and Strang, “European Challenge,” 32; Andersson, The Nordic Council, 118–20.

27. Sverdrup, Inn i storpolitikken, 326.

28. Sonne, NORDEK, 46.

29. Tamnes, Oljealder, 168; Sonne, NORDEK, 185–86.

30. Sonne, NORDEK, 185.

31. Tamnes, Oljealder, 168.

32. On the interplay between domestic and European factors in shaping Nordic economic cooperation, see Eriksen and Pharo, Kald krig og internasjonalisering, 287–306.

33. NRK aired the event in Oslo live on television in Norway; see NRK TV, “At vardar vaka”. According to radio listings in Danish newspapers, DR broadcast live on radio from the last beacon in the Danish chain.

34. Gt Søndagstidningen, September 6, 1970.

35. Frederiksborg Amt Avis, September 7, 1970.

36. Holstebro Dagblad, September 7, 1970.

37. Byline given as ‘VB’ (i.e. Venstrepressens Bureau). See, for example, Frederiksborg Amts Avis, August 18, 1970; Vendsyssel Tidende, August 20, 1970; Vejle Amts Folkeblad, August 20, 1970.

38. Næstved Tidende, September 7, 1970.

39. Search made 26 February 2019, on www.nb.no; search term ‘teknologiske tidsalder’. Filters: newspapers only and September 1970; press release: ‘Nordens naturverndag 6. september’, Fb-2, PA-641, NAO.

40. Aronsson, Historiebruk, 79–81; Ryymin, “Innledning,” 27.

41. Seland, “Tøffe valg,” 231.

42. Heidenblad, Den gröna vändningen, 64–65.

43. Anker, The Power of the Periphery, 8.

44. Ibid. 26–29.

45. On Mardøla, see Anker, The Power of the Periphery, 65–70.

46. Proving the durability of the narrative, Eivind Heldaas Seland has identified its presence even in Norwegian government reports on the climate from the 1990s and 2000s. There, as well, the tide turns with industrialization, which had humans ‘inadvertently releasing forces beyond their comprehension and control’. Left to the present, argues Seland, was the choice between finding a way out and on into the trope of progress or non-action and descent into unimaginable decay. Seland, “Tøffe valg,” 231.

47. Anker, The Power of the Periphery, 27, 65, 81–92, 101.

48. “Nordens natur – Nordens fremtid”.

49. Midttun to Kretsforeningene, 23 January 1970; Skedsmo to Rogaland naturvern, 22 June 1970, FB-3, PA-641, NAO.

50. In each country, an NGO called the Norden Association, prefixed by a national denominator (e.g. ‘Norwegian’), advocated for increased Nordic cooperation; Jansen, Hvem gjør hva, 223.

51. Aftenposten, January 18, 1967.

52. Rafoss, “Kampen om demokratiet”.

53. Mouritzen, “The Nordic Model as a Foreign Policy Instrument,” 11.

54. Arbeiderbladet, January 7, 1970.

55. Aronsson, Historiebruk, 62.

56. Rüsen, History, 13.

57. Ryymin, “Innledning,” 26–29; for a discussion of Rüsen in a Norwegian context, see also Heiret, Ryymin, and Skålevåg, “Innledning,” 28.

58. This historical process and the question of Nordic peace as such is itself the focus of a rich body of research. See, for example, Archer and Joenniemi, The Nordic Peace; Browning and Joenniemi, “From Fratricide to Security Community”.

59. Standertskjöld to Wahlberg, 5 June 1969, Fb-3, PA-641, NAO.

60. Rafoss, “Kampen om demokratiet”.

61. ‘Rammen omkring Nordens naturverndag,’ n.d., Fb-2, PA-641, NAO.

62. Riksantikvaren, “Veter varsler”.

63. NRK TV, “At vardar vaka,” at 19:38.

64. Memo, “Forslag til arrangement,” July 14, 1970, Fb-2, PA-641, NAO.

65. Glover, “Unity Exposed,” 230.

66. Brundtland, “The Nordic Balance”.

67. The Nordic efforts at keeping security issues apart from environmental politics were, in a sense, simultaneously counteracted as the United States actively sought the opposite outcome. Jacob D. Hamblin has argued that US President Richard Nixon’s initiative for a NATO environmental programme should be understood as a deliberate effort to inject the field directly into the East–West dialogue; see Hamblin, “Environmentalism for the Atlantic Alliance,” 71. Simone Turchetti points out that the Nixon initiatives were also intended to draw attention within NATO ‘to evade key issues marring the cohesiveness of the alliance’; seeTurchetti, Greening the Alliance, 98.

68. ‘Notat fra G.borgmøte 13–15/9ʹ, undated, Fb-3, PA-641, NAO.

69. Kalliola to Esping, 2 October 1969, F1:2, ‘Svenska nationalkommittén för det europeiska naturvårdsåret 1970ʹ, SE/RA/420432, Riksarkivet, Stockholm (NAS).

70. Esping to Kalliola, 10 October 1969, F1:2, SE/RA/420432, NAS.

71. Rafoss, “Kampen om demokratiet”.

72. NRK TV, “At vardar vaka”.

73. Browning, “Branding Nordicity,” 32.

74. See note 67 above.

75. Strang, “The Nordic Model,” 18.

76. Aronsson, Historiebruk, 62.

77. Ibid., 79–80.

78. Heiret, Ryymin, and Skålevåg, “Innledning,” 28.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the University of Oslo

Notes on contributors

Hallvard Notaker

Hallvard Notaker (b. 1976) is a Senior Research Fellow at the Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies, where he belongs to the research programme Norwegian security policy in strategic perspective. He has a Ph.D. in History from the University of Oslo (2008). From 2004 to 2019 he held various positions and fellowships with the Department of Archaeology, Conservation and History at the University of Oslo. Most recently Notaker was associate professor of Norwegian contemporary political history (20%) 2015–2019. In 2005 he was Visiting Fellow at the Contemporary History Institute, Ohio University. Notaker’s research has centred on Norwegian, Nordic and US political history since 1970, on domestic as well as international topics. Among his publications are monographs on the history of the Norwegian Conservative Party (Høyres historie 1975–2005: Opprør og moderasjon (2012)) and on the 22 July 2011 terror attacks (Arbeiderpartiet og 22. juli (2021)).