On the front-line: controlling the illicit cultural heritage trade in Norway

ABSTRACT

This article draws on interviews with customs officers to identify and discuss the intricacies of controlling the illicit trade in cultural heritage objects from a front-line perspective. The complexity of distinguishing illicit from licit trade in cultural objects presents customs officers with unique challenges. The findings reveal a perpetual relationship between several factors: poor knowledge of what is illicit trade among customs officers, few detections and recorded seizures, limited familiarity with the legal framework, logistical challenges in collaborations with cultural institutions and insufficient allocation of resources for capacity building leading to continued marginalisation of the field. Besides awareness building for officers, recommendations to break the cycle and encourage prioritisation include establishing a national, single point of contact to bridge the gap between organisations and a system that recognises impounding of suspected illicit material as well as formal seizures.

KEYWORDS:

• Illicit trade in cultural objects
• customs
• inter-organisational collaboration; border control and antiquities trafficking

Acknowledments

I wish to express my sincere gratitude to all the participants who generously gave up their time for me to interview them as part of this research. Thank you to Norwegian Customs for their open and positive support for this study, Justin Gosling for his advice, and the anonymous reviewers for providing valuable feedback.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1. Key conventions include UNESCO’s Convention of the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property 1970, the UNIDROIT Convention on Stolen or Illegally Exported Cultural Objects 1995, and the two Protocols (1954 and 1999) to the Hague Convention of the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict 1954.

2. According to the definition of Korsell et al. (2006), the term ‘cultural heritage crime’ has a wider meaning, as in addition to the illegal movement/export of protected cultural objects, it includes the theft of cultural objects from preservers, such as museums and churches, and from dealers, such as antique shops and auction houses. It also includes the looting of ancient monuments and protected shipwrecks.

3. The statistic was obtained through a contact in Norwegian Customs. One seizure can contain several objects. Five seizures involved illegally exported coins from Slovakia, Spain, Bulgaria and Italy. In the years 2012, 2013, 2015 and 2020, no cultural heritage objects were seized.

4. See Runhovde (2021), Runhovde (2020b), Runhovde (2020a) for other publications from the study.

5. See e.g. Transparency International at https://www.transparency.org/en/

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Norwegian Research Council under Grant [238170]

Notes on contributors

Siv Rebekka Runhovde

Siv Rebekka Runhovde holds a research position at the Norwegian Police University College. She has a PhD in Criminology from the University of Oslo. Her main area of research is the investigation and prevention of transnational organised crime. Crime areas include theft and trafficking in cultural heritage and illegal trade in endangered species.