A research-based project that takes an important step towards coming closer to an unwritten part of Nordic cultural heritage – the Nordic colonial history.

The colonial history of the Nordic region is a dark chapter that seems to have slipped the memory of many of the Nordic populations. Although it continues to make itself very much felt in the region’s former colonies, this history is alarmingly absent in the collective memory of the once-colonising Nordic countries.

With Rethinking Nordic Colonialism: A Postcolonial Exhibition Project in Five Acts, organisers aim to shed light on this history. Not only do they hope to explain why this past has been forgotten in some parts of the region. They also want to show how this history continues to structure Nordic societies today, and how their contemporary problems of intolerance, xenophobia and nationalism have their roots in this past.

The project also demonstrates that the postcolonial state that the region finds itself in today is not only a story of oppression and sad destinies. The historical chain of cultural clashes between colonisers and colonised have resulted in other formations of modernity and other value systems different from those of the West.

Rethinking Nordic Colonialism revisits this history during the course of five acts, which combines exhibitions with workshops, conferences and happenings in Iceland, Greenland, the Faroe Islands and the Sámi area of Finland. 56 internationally recognised artists, theorists, politicians and grassroots activists from all over the world participate in the project, which runs from March 24 – November 25, 2006.

The project opens in March in Reykjavik, Iceland (a former colony of Denmark) with an art exhibition and a workshop. In April, the project moves on to Nuuk, Greenland (also a former colony and now a self-governing part of the Kingdom of Denmark), where audiences are invited to attend a new art exhibition and a public hearing. Tórshavn in the Faroe Islands (also a former colony and now a self-governing part of the Kingdom of Denmark) hosted Act 3. Act 4 takes place in June in Rovaniemi in the Finnish part of Sápmi (the homeland area of the indigenous Sámi people) and also features an art exhibition combined with a conference.

In the fifth act, the many activities and conclusions of the project were documented on a DVD and website, which were released on November 25, 2006 during four simultaneous closing events in the Nordic cities of Copenhagen, Helsinki, Oslo and Stockholm. With Act 5, the project’s many postcolonial voices reach the once-colonising countries of the Nordic region and become audible to their present populations – and to the world at large.

Rethinking Nordic Colonialism is remarkable in a number of ways. It represents a first attempt at writing a comprehensive history of Nordic colonialism and involves all the Nordic countries. It supports the incipient postcolonial studies in the Nordic region. And last, but not least, it is based on extraordinary partnerships between important art and culture institutions in the region.