Paper Short Abstract:

During my examination of how the ruins of Bomarsund fortress became understood as a heritage, seeing it as a “lost place (Bauer & Dolgan 2020), helped to unwrite the nature culture divide and made a nature culture hybrid emerge that speaks loudly about the ruins betwixt status.

Paper Abstract:

By understanding the ruin of Bomarsund fortress, on the Åland Islands in Finland, as a “lost place” (Bauer & Dolgan 2020) I will show the complexity of an heritagization process, and how it is comprised of many different human and non-human actors, of which the landscape itself is one.

Unfinished, the Russian Bomarsund fortress was destroyed in august 1854 by British and French troops during the Baltic campaign of the Crimean war. The peace treaty of 1856 stated that Åland would be de-militarised, and it still is today. This meant the fortress was left as a ruin since it could not be rebuilt, and the landscape lost its military significance. By examining the landscape during a long period of time (1854-2022) and applying the ANT inspired "lost place", I can show how the ruin and surrounding landscape was an open place, available for different actors to claim and use for their own purposes. This also means that different natural features of the landscape have been valued differently during different times. By understanding the ruin of the fortress and the landscape around it as a hybrid between nature and culture I can make visible how certain topographical and geographical elements of the landscape has had a great influence on the ruins' status as cultural heritage, and how the status very much has been a thing of negotiation