Lantern Lecture: Goodbye to Heritage: Svalbard’s Past Beyond Conservation

Everything we know will one day disappear. Yet we often expect heritage — from archaeological sites to protected buildings — to last forever. Climate change, limited resources, and the sheer volume of heritage make this increasingly unrealistic, especially in Svalbard.

Researcher Anatolijs Venovcevs explores how we might responsibly say goodbye to heritage and what meaningful conversations this could open. Could Svalbard lead the way in rethinking heritage management in the age of loss?

Anatolijs Venovcevs is the researcher in historical archaeology at the Svalbard Museum (which may not necessarily share all of his ideas). Previously, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oulu in Finland looking at fungal ecologies that grow in World War II ruins and received his PhD in contemporary archaeology at UiT: The Arctic University of Norway where he looked at the ongoing, involuntary legacies of single industrial mining towns in Norway, Canada, and Russia. His interests include mushrooms, fermentation, things that don’t fit neatly into normative understandings of heritage, and long walks through beautiful landscapes devastated by modernity.

Where: Svalbard Museum, Vei 231 - 1, Forskningsparken SJ, Longyearbyen 9170

When: Thursday 11 December, 18:00 - 19:00

Please note: this lecture will be hosted in English

You may also like the following events from Artica Svalbard:

• Happening on, 12th January, 06:00 pm, Lantern Lecture: Creeping risks of the Arctic: How Svalbard Science can help us to see, understand and adapt in Hammerfest