Haunted by the memory of WWII: folklore, hauntology and the spectre of war in the Northern Norwegian landscape

ABSTRACT

On the following pages the folklore of the landscape with a narrative connection to the Second World War in Northern Norway will be reviewed, focusing the scope on hauntings and ghost stories. I will take a hauntological approach to analyse these narratives in addition to engaging with selected theories regarding social memory and post-war national identity. Furthermore, an overview of stories of hauntings in connection to WWII will be examined. These will be analysed and placed within one of three appropriate categories. An overview of the statistics and numbers will also be provided. Subsequently, the scope then will be narrowed to the examination of selected stories regarding the landscape and the hauntological theories will be applied to the analysis. This paper finds that the narratives gain authenticity through their historical engagement, and the local history knowledge of the people experiencing these hauntings. In addition to this, the article argues for the everchanging nature of social memory, and how this is visible in the local folklore of Northern Norway. Finally, the article will conclude by examining the discovery of the mutability of Norwegian WWII history perspective and its reactive effect regarding the spectral haunting of the landscape.

KEYWORDS:

• Folklore
• ghosts
• hauntology
• landscape
• Northern Norway
• World War II

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Hege M. Strømseng for the help with the collection of published sources and her support through this research. In addition, I would like to show my gratitude to Aimee Cole-Fallon, Claire Slack and Jaymie Tapsell for critique and for their proofreading, and the great online sources at Riksarkivet, KulturminneSøk and University of Hertfordshire online library. Lastly, I want to thank Prof Owen Davies for his support and help which was imperative to accomplishing this research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author or other.

Additional information

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes on contributors

Hildegunn M.S. Traa

Hildegunn M.S. Traa is originally from Northern Norway but migrated to the UK in 2014 to undertake a BA(Hons) in Model Design: Character and Creative effects at  University of Hertfordshire. Since graduating from her undergraduate course in 2016 she has worked as a Creature and Prosthetics Technician/Artist in the film and TV industry before taking an MA in Folklore Studies in 2019/2020 at University of Hertfordshire. The author finalised her MA studies in September 2020 with a dissertation topic on representations of folkloric motif of disease in art and narratives and is currently working freelance as an independent researcher and artist.