The Seedlings. Extracts from an unrealized memorial site project

Installation with plants from willow seedlings and documentation from the unrealized project Bjørnelva Memorial.

Made for the exhibition «Deterrence and Reassurance», The Festival Exhibition 2024, Bergen Kunsthall.

The installation The seedlings. Extracts from an unrealized memorial site project recounts an abandoned project to establish a memorial site for Soviet prisoners of war who were held in German captivity in Norway during World War II. Together with architect Tatjana Gorbachewskaja, I was commissioned in 2020 to design a memorial at Bjørnelva, up on Saltfjellet in Nordland, with a view to completion in the fall of 2022. The installation consists of some of my own documentation from the process, as well as willow plants that were intended to be planted at the planned memorial site. The purpose of the planting was to establish a field of native plants and eventually also edible plants, a symbolic gesture to add nourishment and life. The willow plants were cultivated from cuttings taken on-site in 2021 and were the only physical element of the memorial that had begun to take shape before the project was terminated in the spring of 2022.

The establishment of a memorial at Bjørnelva was initiated by The Narvik War & Peace Centre, The Directorate for Cultural Heritage and Nordland County Council. It was part of a broader memorial policy project aimed at shedding light on the history of Soviet prisoners of war who were interned and exploited as forced laborers by the German occupation forces in Norway during the war years. Between 1941 and 1945, approximately 100,000 Soviet prisoners of war were held in such labor camps across the country, about 13,700 of whom perished.

The memorial site was to be located near the remains of the Bjørnelva prison camp, close to the E6 highway and the Nordland railway line, where between 600 and 700 Soviet prisoners of war were used as slave labor to build the railway. Around one-third of them died in captivity. Before leaving after the war, the surviving prisoners erected a monument to their fallen comrades. The memorial, a concrete stele with an inscription in Cyrillic, was demolished in the autumn of 1950 by the Norwegian war graves service. The remnants of this monument still lie scattered in the terrain near the former prison camp, serving as a testament to the fact that memorial policies are also policies of forgetting.

More than 70 years after the end of the war, the reason for establishing a new memorial site was that the brutal fate of Soviet prisoners of war in Norway had been actively downplayed in the national historiography of World War II. During the Cold War, memorials and burial grounds for the Soviet prisoners were seen as a security risk, leading to removal of monuments and relocation of remains to prevent these sites from being used as destinations for Soviet espionage cover-ups. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, this history was once again brought to light—now as part of a policy aimed at rebuilding trust and cooperation between Norway and Russia. The time had seemingly come to acknowledge and make visible the fate of these prisoners of war.

Nordland County Council’s decision to discontinue the memorial project was partly a consequence of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022: Since the overarching project was part of a state-run Norwegian-Russian environmental cooperation initiative, it fell under the Norwegian government’s decision to cut ties with Russian partners. Additionally, it became evident that establishing a memorial at Bjørnelva would have negative consequences for the Sámi reindeer herding in the area. The environmental disruptions caused by the development of infrastructure in the area, both during and after the war, had already left marks on the landscape and affected Sámi culture and reindeer herding, and the memorial site would have had an additional negative impact.

In the winter of 2022, it thus became clear that the memorial project had to be terminated.

The 2022 invasion of Ukraine also underscored how Russia’s broader and highly active memory policies in Norway promoted a falsified heroic narrative of World War II—a narrative used to justify both the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the invasion in 2022. While the history of Soviet prisoners of war represents a trauma distinct from the patriotic victory narrative that Russian authorities employ rhetorically in their warfare, it was evident that Norway and Russia had different memory policy objectives and historical perspectives.

Given the political developments, the ongoing war, and the negative consequences the memorial site could have had, I left the project behind with the certainty that ending it was the right decision. Yet, I also felt a sense of sorrow, knowing that once again, the time was not right to make visible the memory of these victims of the war’s brutality.

What remained of my involvement in the memorial project were the willow seedlings I had gathered at Bjørnelva in 2021 together with curator Hilde Methi and gardener Stig Lundmo. The seedlings had grown into small plants at Lundmo Plant Nursery, ready for transplantation but with no place to be planted. Instead, they became part of the installation Stiklingene, conveying the story of the memory of victims caught between multiple wars and memorial policy agendas. After the exhibition ended, I planted the willows in my garden.

Production:

The project Bjørnelva Minnested (2020-2022) was initiated by Narviksenteret, Riksantikvaren and Nordland fylkeskommune. Curated by Hilde Methi, and developed in collaboration with Tatjana Gorbachewskaja.

The installation The Seedlings. Extracts from an unrealized memorial site project was made for the exhibition Deterrence and Reassurance, The Festival Exhibition 2024, Bergen Kunsthall. Curated by Axel Wieder and Silja Leifsdottir. Produced with support from Bergen Kunsthall, Billedkunstnernes Vederlagsfond, Kulturrådet and Regional project funds from Kunstsentrene i Norge.

Special thanks to Stig Lundmo, Lundmo Planteskole.