Making a Military Heritage: Gender and Nation in Sweden s Cold War History
Today neo-nationalism, growing populism, and migration draw attention to issues of national belonging, borders and citizenship. Europe also witnesses increased geopolitical tension in what has been termed a new cold war. At stake in these political controversies are notions of national identities – of who we are, what history we share and values we should protect.
In this context, constructions of national heritage and collective memories of war and conflicts become increasingly charged. This project explores recent initiatives to preserve the cultural memory of Sweden’s Cold War history. The overarching aim is to investigate how national belonging, citizenship and gender are negotiated when geopolitical threats and memories of fear and insecurity are articulated as heritage. The research design is based on fieldwork at military heritage sites, including official exhibitions, commercialized tourist establishments and informal uses of military structures.
The project combines two research fields – Critical Heritage Studies and Feminist International Relations. Contributions concern how a “dark” heritage is constructed and commercialized in a national context of prominent peace narratives. Recognizing that women’s agency and experiences tend to be omitted in military memorializations, this project addresses the gender implications of military heritagization. The research also provides new knowledge on how Swedish national self-understanding connects to the military.
Final report
Making a military heritage: Gender and nation in Sweden’s Cold War history
(numbers in parentheses refer to the publication list)
The project’s purpose and development
Setting out from recent years’ initiatives to preserve the memory of the Cold War in Sweden, the project investigated how ideas about friends and enemies, us and them, masculinity and femininity gained significance when a new national heritage was shaped. Key questions concerned how notions of national belonging, citizenship and gender were negotiated when historical experiences of insecurity and geopolitical threats were established as heritage. Theoretically, the project brought together two fields of research, critical heritage studies (CHS) and feminist international relations (IR), and thus was able to analyse how memory-security relations incorporate notions of gender and sexuality.
The project’s interdisciplinary methodology was built on joint fieldwork at military heritage sites around Sweden. Therefore, the research group’s disciplinary competencies in ethnology, gender studies, political science and art/architecture-history were brought together in a collective process that substantially enriched the analysis. This methodology also generated new questions and made evident the benefit of exploring theoretical perspectives dealing with temporality, play and secrecy in Cold War heritagisation. Official, commercial/entrepreneurial and informal heritage sites were investigated. The selection of sites was both expanded and slightly adjusted. This was partly due to limited accessibility owing to the COVID-19 pandemic and partly because of newly added heritagisations, such as a Cold War bunker at Sweden’s Tank Museum Arsenalen in Strängnäs. In addition, a decision was made to include the prolific heritage activities on digital forums and the accompanying mediations of the Cold War. Several heritage sites made use of such digital mediations in their exhibits.
Research implementation
During the project’s first year, fieldwork was carried out at 8 military heritage sites, including Boden and the surrounding area and Gotland. The following year, the research group revisited some of the locations and conducted new fieldwork at Batteri Arholma and in Norrtälje. During the third year, supplementary field visits were made to particularly important places, such as the Air Force Museum in Linköping. A two-day meeting with the project’s international reference group was held in autumn 2019, after which input from the group was obtained digitally (due to COVID-19).
The research group continuously held meetings where the collected empirical data were jointly processed and analysed. This work included theory development. Due to the combination of two research fields, the group contributed to new synthesised understandings. The project’s six international scientific articles (2–7) reflect this theory development in relation to CHS and feminist IR. One article in particular contributed to the larger field of conflict and security studies by theorising the relationship between memory-making and national security (3).
The last project year was devoted mainly to completing the co-authored project monograph. A two-week residence grant to the Bergman Estate on Fårö enabled intensive collective work and the elaboration of working methods to merge the different perspectives and skills of the researchers in the writing process.
Main results and conclusions
The project compiled extensive empirical materials and contributed to mapping and analysing the emergence of a new Swedish military heritage. The specific combination of theoretical perspectives and the wide range of cultural heritage expressions analysed enabled new knowledge of both heritagisation and national security.
In relation to the field of international relations, the project developed understandings of how history-making and security policy are connected, not least through the analysis of how gender norms affect collective memory-making and contribute to legitimising certain security policy choices (1, 3). A key project result is that military heritagisation pushes aside women and feminine-coded expressions while establishing a pronounced “mono-masculinity”. This contribution nuances feminist understandings of protection logics and security, a literature that often assumes a feminised “home front” as a requirement for the legitimisation of military armament and war-making (1). Moreover, the research results indicate that women, although sparsely present in military memory-making, can function as emotional identification points and that the heterosexual couple becomes particularly significant when heritagisation signals restored security (2, 8, 10).
Research results have advanced the field of CHS by relating heritage issues to national security and analysing how heritagisation can function to legitimise certain security policy choices. In addition, the results have complicated the notion, often taken for granted in the literature, that cultural heritage processes “from below” have critical and emancipatory potential (6). When heritage is interpreted from a feminist perspective, such articulations appear as reinforcing conservative gender norms and nationalist thinking. In particular, pronounced connections between masculinity and military violence are affirmed (4, 5, 9).
A further contribution concerns the importance for memory scholarship of paying attention to how apparently neutral and taken-for-granted narratives may have a political dimension. The results show that heritagisations establish specific identities and power relations linked to gender hierarchies, national identity and security policy. In addition, the largely unitary and unambiguous narrative that takes shape in the various Cold War heritage expressions contributes to making military and security policy choices appear self-evident and beyond political discussion (3, 7). The possibilities for democratic dialogue and critical reflection on how threats can be handled and security achieved are thereby restricted (1, 2).
New research questions
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and the drastic reorientation of the Swedish security doctrine give new relevance to questions of memory-making and security. In the research group, we noted that references to Sweden’s military history and heritage have been central to the public debate and in the legitimisation of new security policy orientations. While this observation is in line with the project results, new research questions are also raised. What are the consequences of crisis and a war in Sweden’s geographical vicinity for memory-making and military history narratives? In what new ways is military heritage used in the ongoing renegotiations of national security? How are strong Swedish identity markers such as neutrality and gender equality affected? The research group is preparing a new project proposal that will investigate shifts in collective memory-making and heritagisation following the deteriorating security situation in Europe.
Additional and novel research questions employ a comparative approach. In June 2023, the researchers will participate in a conference in Edinburgh that will result in a joint anthology in which the overarching question is how the Cold War is musealised in different European countries. A comparative approach also characterises one project participant’s involvement in a research application on national and Nordic renegotiations of Cold War remains and “landscapes of protection” around the Baltic Sea and how Russia’s war in Ukraine affects these locations in Sweden, Finland and Denmark.
Dissemination of results and collaboration
The research results have been disseminated to an international as well as a national audience. The general and theoretical contributions have been published in open-access format in international scientific peer-reviewed journals (2, 3, 5, 6, 7). In Swedish, a peer-reviewed and synthesising book with detailed descriptions and analysis of the military heritage sites will be published in open-access format through Kriterium (1). Two textbook chapters (9, 10), two research-based popular science texts (11, 12) and two essays (13, 14) have also been published in Swedish. In addition, a textbook chapter in English will be published by an international publisher (8). The research results have continuously been communicated through the project website (15).
The COVID-19 pandemic affected possibilities to participate in conferences. In 2019, the project was presented at an international IR conference in London (BISA) and at the conference "The Thrill of the Dark" in Birmingham. An important exchange of knowledge took place within the framework of the conference "If the War Comes?" organised by Aalborg University in May 2021. At the gender conference g22 in Karlstad 2022, the project results were presented within the conference theme borders and border creation.
The project participants have also disseminated knowledge about their research results at a series of seminars at, for example, the Swedish Defence University, Örebro University, the Center for Maritime Studies’ seminar series, the Forum for Security Research, and the researchers’ various home institutions and research networks at Stockholm University. The research results have also been incorporated into university teaching by the project participants inserting questions on military memory into courses in international relations, gender studies and heritage studies.
Collaboration activities include publications 11 and 12, which both resulted from collaboration with heritage actors (the Naval Museum and the Swedish Society for Maritime History). In connection with the reference group meeting, an exchange of experiences took place between the Army Museum and the researchers.
(numbers in parentheses refer to the publication list)
The project’s purpose and development
Setting out from recent years’ initiatives to preserve the memory of the Cold War in Sweden, the project investigated how ideas about friends and enemies, us and them, masculinity and femininity gained significance when a new national heritage was shaped. Key questions concerned how notions of national belonging, citizenship and gender were negotiated when historical experiences of insecurity and geopolitical threats were established as heritage. Theoretically, the project brought together two fields of research, critical heritage studies (CHS) and feminist international relations (IR), and thus was able to analyse how memory-security relations incorporate notions of gender and sexuality.
The project’s interdisciplinary methodology was built on joint fieldwork at military heritage sites around Sweden. Therefore, the research group’s disciplinary competencies in ethnology, gender studies, political science and art/architecture-history were brought together in a collective process that substantially enriched the analysis. This methodology also generated new questions and made evident the benefit of exploring theoretical perspectives dealing with temporality, play and secrecy in Cold War heritagisation. Official, commercial/entrepreneurial and informal heritage sites were investigated. The selection of sites was both expanded and slightly adjusted. This was partly due to limited accessibility owing to the COVID-19 pandemic and partly because of newly added heritagisations, such as a Cold War bunker at Sweden’s Tank Museum Arsenalen in Strängnäs. In addition, a decision was made to include the prolific heritage activities on digital forums and the accompanying mediations of the Cold War. Several heritage sites made use of such digital mediations in their exhibits.
Research implementation
During the project’s first year, fieldwork was carried out at 8 military heritage sites, including Boden and the surrounding area and Gotland. The following year, the research group revisited some of the locations and conducted new fieldwork at Batteri Arholma and in Norrtälje. During the third year, supplementary field visits were made to particularly important places, such as the Air Force Museum in Linköping. A two-day meeting with the project’s international reference group was held in autumn 2019, after which input from the group was obtained digitally (due to COVID-19).
The research group continuously held meetings where the collected empirical data were jointly processed and analysed. This work included theory development. Due to the combination of two research fields, the group contributed to new synthesised understandings. The project’s six international scientific articles (2–7) reflect this theory development in relation to CHS and feminist IR. One article in particular contributed to the larger field of conflict and security studies by theorising the relationship between memory-making and national security (3).
The last project year was devoted mainly to completing the co-authored project monograph. A two-week residence grant to the Bergman Estate on Fårö enabled intensive collective work and the elaboration of working methods to merge the different perspectives and skills of the researchers in the writing process.
Main results and conclusions
The project compiled extensive empirical materials and contributed to mapping and analysing the emergence of a new Swedish military heritage. The specific combination of theoretical perspectives and the wide range of cultural heritage expressions analysed enabled new knowledge of both heritagisation and national security.
In relation to the field of international relations, the project developed understandings of how history-making and security policy are connected, not least through the analysis of how gender norms affect collective memory-making and contribute to legitimising certain security policy choices (1, 3). A key project result is that military heritagisation pushes aside women and feminine-coded expressions while establishing a pronounced “mono-masculinity”. This contribution nuances feminist understandings of protection logics and security, a literature that often assumes a feminised “home front” as a requirement for the legitimisation of military armament and war-making (1). Moreover, the research results indicate that women, although sparsely present in military memory-making, can function as emotional identification points and that the heterosexual couple becomes particularly significant when heritagisation signals restored security (2, 8, 10).
Research results have advanced the field of CHS by relating heritage issues to national security and analysing how heritagisation can function to legitimise certain security policy choices. In addition, the results have complicated the notion, often taken for granted in the literature, that cultural heritage processes “from below” have critical and emancipatory potential (6). When heritage is interpreted from a feminist perspective, such articulations appear as reinforcing conservative gender norms and nationalist thinking. In particular, pronounced connections between masculinity and military violence are affirmed (4, 5, 9).
A further contribution concerns the importance for memory scholarship of paying attention to how apparently neutral and taken-for-granted narratives may have a political dimension. The results show that heritagisations establish specific identities and power relations linked to gender hierarchies, national identity and security policy. In addition, the largely unitary and unambiguous narrative that takes shape in the various Cold War heritage expressions contributes to making military and security policy choices appear self-evident and beyond political discussion (3, 7). The possibilities for democratic dialogue and critical reflection on how threats can be handled and security achieved are thereby restricted (1, 2).
New research questions
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and the drastic reorientation of the Swedish security doctrine give new relevance to questions of memory-making and security. In the research group, we noted that references to Sweden’s military history and heritage have been central to the public debate and in the legitimisation of new security policy orientations. While this observation is in line with the project results, new research questions are also raised. What are the consequences of crisis and a war in Sweden’s geographical vicinity for memory-making and military history narratives? In what new ways is military heritage used in the ongoing renegotiations of national security? How are strong Swedish identity markers such as neutrality and gender equality affected? The research group is preparing a new project proposal that will investigate shifts in collective memory-making and heritagisation following the deteriorating security situation in Europe.
Additional and novel research questions employ a comparative approach. In June 2023, the researchers will participate in a conference in Edinburgh that will result in a joint anthology in which the overarching question is how the Cold War is musealised in different European countries. A comparative approach also characterises one project participant’s involvement in a research application on national and Nordic renegotiations of Cold War remains and “landscapes of protection” around the Baltic Sea and how Russia’s war in Ukraine affects these locations in Sweden, Finland and Denmark.
Dissemination of results and collaboration
The research results have been disseminated to an international as well as a national audience. The general and theoretical contributions have been published in open-access format in international scientific peer-reviewed journals (2, 3, 5, 6, 7). In Swedish, a peer-reviewed and synthesising book with detailed descriptions and analysis of the military heritage sites will be published in open-access format through Kriterium (1). Two textbook chapters (9, 10), two research-based popular science texts (11, 12) and two essays (13, 14) have also been published in Swedish. In addition, a textbook chapter in English will be published by an international publisher (8). The research results have continuously been communicated through the project website (15).
The COVID-19 pandemic affected possibilities to participate in conferences. In 2019, the project was presented at an international IR conference in London (BISA) and at the conference "The Thrill of the Dark" in Birmingham. An important exchange of knowledge took place within the framework of the conference "If the War Comes?" organised by Aalborg University in May 2021. At the gender conference g22 in Karlstad 2022, the project results were presented within the conference theme borders and border creation.
The project participants have also disseminated knowledge about their research results at a series of seminars at, for example, the Swedish Defence University, Örebro University, the Center for Maritime Studies’ seminar series, the Forum for Security Research, and the researchers’ various home institutions and research networks at Stockholm University. The research results have also been incorporated into university teaching by the project participants inserting questions on military memory into courses in international relations, gender studies and heritage studies.
Collaboration activities include publications 11 and 12, which both resulted from collaboration with heritage actors (the Naval Museum and the Swedish Society for Maritime History). In connection with the reference group meeting, an exchange of experiences took place between the Army Museum and the researchers.