A Christmas Story

“(—) according to the parish register Elias Larsen Kant quite correctly was born Hegre in Øvre Stjørdalen parish, on November 30 1867 on the farm Ingstad by parents LappLars Larson and wife Maria Sofia Jonsdaughter, but he has no right of municipal domicile here, as neither of his parents by the time of his birth had any right of municipal domicile in Hegre. In fact, his parents were wandering, and according to the account of the previous farm-wife on Ingstad , which she, and other people may confirm as the truth, they came one evening to Ingstad and then during the night the Lapp’s wife became ill and gave birth to a son, whom on January 5 was christened in Hegre church and given the name Elias. Thereafter the parents went away bringing the child with them.”

This account of the birth of a child in 1867 is quoted from a letter from the Hegre Poor Commission, and it may serve as an introduction to one of my archival passions: the stories. Archives may be about evidence and accountability, but for me it is the stories that make archives magical. Sometimes while you are working with an archive, human beings will appear from among the documents, bringing with them stories of love, loss, happiness, distress or just daily chores. When this happens, it makes up for lengthy hours leafing through seemingly lifeless paper.

The story of Elias Larsen Kant is one of these, and it did survive only by chance. In June 2000, while doing field work in Ullensvang municipality in Western Norway, I became aware of a small black chest in the municipal repository. It was locked, but being an archivist, I forced it open. Inside I found the archive of the Ullensvang Poor Commission, dating from the 1790s to the 1920s. Some months later, while arranging the documents, I discovered a thick envelope among the account receipts from 1903. Inside this envelope was the Elias Larsen Kant story.

On 12 October 1900, a woman and her two daughters come to the Poor Commission chairman in Ullensvang, asking for relief. She tells him that her husband, Elias Larsen Kant, has gone away and that she does not know where he is. The Poor Commission takes care of the family for three months, spending 110 kroner on their subsistence, until she and her children leave for another destination. Elias Larsen Kant does not have any municipal domicile in Ullensvang, and therefore the Poor Commission can claim 2/3 of their expenses refunded from his home municipality. This sets off a process that is going to last for more than three and a half years, involving a dozen other municipalities and creating more than 80 documents. In these documents we can trace Elias Larsen Kant’s life from his birth until he disappears from our sight while working as at the construction of the Bergen railroad in 1903. We can find accounts of his hardships as a foster child, his work as reindeer shepherd in different parts of the country, his accordion skills or his participation in a cross-country skiing race.

The initial purpose of this case was to provide evidence of Elias Larsen Kant’s municipal domicile. This purpose has made the documents striking examples of archival bias. In their letters, all the Poor Commissions did their best to escape the refund payments, trying to “prove” that Elias Larsen Kant had no right of domicile in their municipalities. To achieve such right, a person had to live in a municipality for two consecutive years. It is no surprise then, that several municipalities admitted that he had been living there for one year and nine, ten or even eleven months, but never for two full years.

Today, these documents are about memory. They tell us stories about a human being living in a society that no longer exists. Not one of the 80 documents in this file was written by Elias Larsen Kant himself; they are all written by public officials, by men with power, telling their versions of stories about his life.   

It impossible to read these texts, the accounts of Elias Larsen Kant’s life as they are told in these documents, separated from their contexts. An archive’s contexts are infinite. There are the contexts of its creation (such as the creator’s missions, functions, values, purposes for making the documents etc), the contexts of its archiving (in this case, the archiving of the Elias Larsen Kant file in the account receipts series and not in the correspondence series tells a significant story). the contexts of its preservation (which, as this example shows, very often may be a question of chance), the contexts of its appraisal (why some documents are considered to be of archival value while other are not), the contexts of its arrangement and description (because of my previous experience I knew that municipal domicile files could be found in Poor Commission’s account receipt series and was actually looking for such files and to list them in the inventory; another person could have left them unnoticed), the contexts of our readings and interpretations (my reading of racial prejudice in some of the Kant documents may be characteristic of the dominant present cultural Norwegian discourse, fifty or more years ago the readings would have been different). Also, as the above examples may suggest, there are no sharp boundaries between texts and contexts. And we archivists are parts of these contexts.

Archives are never neutral. Neither are archivists. We are in a position where we can decide what should be known to the public. We can let the stories of people like Elias Larsen Kant remain buried among the account receipts, or we can decide to use our archival power to disclose such stories about the marginalised and make the invisible visible. 

As I see it, this is what makes the stories more important than the evidence.

The unbearable Truth

1. “There is no political power without control of the archive, if not of memory,” Jacques Derrida wrote in Archive Fever. A recent book by Thor E Thorsen may be a good example of the significance of this statement. Thorsen’s book Mappene (The Files) shows how the Norwegian Labour Party in the post-war era used its political power to initiate wide-ranging secret surveillance of a large group of Norwegian citizens. Detailed information about individuals was collected, systematised and archived – made ready for use. Their power was also used to launch an intensive campaign to discredit the left wing opposition in Norway, first and foremost the communists. As a result of this, the memory of the communists’ major contributions to the working class struggle for justice and to the struggle against the Nazi occupation was removed from the official national narratives.       

2. Thorsen’s book is no scholarly treatise; it is rather a personal archive. The author has put together his own memories and reflections, interviews with people who have been subject to surveillance and excerpts of documents from surveillance files. Thorsen’s book gives his personal opinion – and does not pretend to do otherwise.  

3. It is now more than ten years ago that the Lund Commission’s report was made public. This report documented extensive illegal surveillance of people with actual (or suspected) connections with the Norwegian Communist Party, the Socialist Peoples Party, the Workers’ Communist Party, the Socialist Left Party and organisations like no to Nuclear Weapons and solidarity movements with Vietnam and Palestine. The report also revealed close and illegal collaboration between the secret services and leading circles in the Labour Party. As a result of the Lund report and the subsequent public debate, the Storting in 1999 approved a temporary law, giving individuals that had been subject to illegal surveillance access to their own files. When the closing date expired on 31.12.2002, more than 13 000 individuals had applied for such access.  

4. Thorsen’s book is important because gives us direct access to documents and stories that demonstrate the scale and consequences of the political surveillance and persecution, especially between 1948 and the early 60s. It shows us a system that may be characterised as “political apartheid”, where people were systemically watched, harassed and blacklisted because of their political convictions. The persecution of communists was consequent and efficient, and no consideration was made for family or children. Thorsen’s book invites us to meet some of these individuals and listen to their stories.               

5. One night at the end of the 1950s I was standing outside together with some older neighbours, looking for satellites in the sky. We spotted one, and one of the men wondered if it was Soviet Russian or American. “It must be Russian, because it moves so fast,” one of the other men said. After that night he has rumoured to be a communist.   

6. The marginalisation of communists may also be seen as a integrated part of the Norwegian post-war policy for cultural unification of the population: Ethnic groups like the Samí and Romani were subject to determined campaigns of “norwegianisation”, while the War Children and their mothers were bullied by society’s condemnation and scorn. The great narrative of the Welfare State had little room for oppositional voices.  

7. Individuals who have been given access to their surveillance files have discovered that the files are incomplete. Text has been erased and whole documents have been withheld. The right of access does not include information about other persons or details that may expose the surveillance agents. For the period after 25.11.1977 the right of access only applies to documentation of unlawful surveillance.     So if you have been under lawful surveillance later than 1977 you’ll get the same answer as if you haven’t been watched at all: You have no file. So the right of access is selective. It provides no answers to the vital questions about how the surveillance was carried out, who did the job or how the collected material was used. The protection of those who initiated, organised and carried out this work is still being regarded as more important than the rights of those who were victims.     

8. German archivist Hans Booms once wrote that history is important because it is a medium for illuminating human existence, a means of gaining a clearer understanding of human action as an element of our reconciliation with the present and as a necessary criterion for our blueprint for the future. If we ever are going to achieve a sufficient understanding the history of the political surveillance in the post-war era, it is necessary to get access to the complete archives of the secret services, and not only to some incomplete personal files. This is the only way to get to know the processes that took place and the decision that were made. Without this knowledge it will be impossible to reconcile with this part of our recent past.      

9. Derrida wrote in Archive Fever that “effective democratisation can always be measured by this essential criterion: the participation in and the access to the archive, its constitution, and its interpretation”. Measured by this criterion, the Norwegian democracy still has some clearly visible shortcomings.  

(A Norwegian version of this book review was published in the journal Bok og bibliotek no. 6/2006, http://www.abm-utvikling.no/publisert/BOB/2006/0606/bok-sanninga.html).      

Tre setningar om arkivlandskapet

Fredag 8. desember vart St. meld. nr 12 (2006-07) ”Regionale fortrinn – regional framtid” lagt fram. I arkivsektoren har det vore ei viss spenning om kva meldinga ville innehalde om det framtidige regionale arkivlandskapet. Dei som hadde venta seg noko nytt, må ha blitt skuffa.     

Meldinga brukar tre setningar på å behandle arkivsektoren: ”På arkivområdet har de tre forvaltningsnivåene et lovhjemlet ansvar for å ta vare på arkiver de selv har skapt. Flere steder arbeides det imidlertid med samlokalisering. Det blir viktig for staten, regionene og kommunene å utvikle gode organisasjonsmodeller for slike arkivsentra.” 

På bakgrunn av dette kan vi slå fast følgjande: 

1. Regjeringa har ikkje nytta dette høvet til å sjå på samfunnets arkiv som ein integrert heilskap som er skapt i samhandling mellom private og offentlege aktørar. I staden heng den fast i ei forelda førestilling om at arkiv framleis skal vere eit forvaltningsansvar.
2. Med dette utgangpunktet er det kanskje ikkje så merkeleg at privatarkiva ikkje blir behandla. Men det er svært skadeleg at regjeringa forsømmer seg her, ikkje minst med tanke på kva signal dette sender til det regionale forvaltningsnivået.
3. Med andre ord, ikkje noko nytt frå regjeringsfronten.

 Vennar, vi har framleis ein lang veg å gå.

Qued non est in actis…

Onsdag 19. juli øydela israelske troppar to regjeringsbygningar i byen Nablus i Palestina. Dette vart rapportert i norske media, men berre summarisk, kanskje fordi nyheitsbildet denne veka var dominert av Israels invasjon i Libanon. Difor er det ukjent for dei fleste at ein av desse bygningane inneheldt eit av dei viktigaste palestinske arkiva.

Innanriksdepartementet i Nablus heldt til i Muqata’aen, eit stort administrasjonsbygg som var bygd av britane på 1920-talet. Arkivet til Innanriksdepartementet inneheldt persondokumentasjon som fødsels- og dødsregister, ID-attestar, pass og reisedokument, dvs. dokumentasjon som innbyggjarane i Nablus er avhengige av for å kunne reise ut av landet, få tilgang til offentlege tenester eller for å kunne dokumentere at dei høyrer heime i Nablus. Arkivet inneheldt også materiale frå dei siste 100 åras skiftande administrasjonar i Nablus: det ottomanske imperiet, det britiske protektoratet, det jordanske kongedømmet, den israelske okkupasjonsmakta og det palestinske sjølvstyret. I dag er dette materialet fullstendig øydelagt.

Offisielt var dei israelske troppane ute etter ettersøkte Hamas-aktivistar. I følgje Abed Al Illah Ateereh, direktør for Innanriksdepartementet I Nablus, vart soldatane tilbydd nøklane til bygningane slik at dei kunne gjennomsøkje dei. Dette vart avslått. I staden vart bygningane sprengt. Deretter vart restane jamna med jorda med bulldosarar, slik at alle arkivskapa vart knust og dokumenta blanda med dei knuste bygningsrestane.

Israelske troppar øydela tidlegare i 2006 også Innanriksdepartementet i Gaza. Desse hendingane har fått observatørar til å stille spørsmål om det er uttrykk for ein bevisst politikk frå Israel si side å øydeleggje palestinske arkiv.

For den som ikkje finst i arkivet, eksisterer som kjent ikkje…

(Kjelde: http://www.counterpunch.org/toensing07272006.html)