Heritage as Bordering: Heritage Making, Ontological Struggles and the Politics of Memory in the Croatian and Finnish Borderlands

Many borderlands have violent histories and therefore are focal sites for studying national war heritage and selective memory politics. The starting point of this paper is that when heritage becomes the institutionalized memory of a nation it simultaneously produces bordering and re-bordering effects in time and place. In heritage making some events and lives are understood to be worth commemorating simultaneously silencing the experiences of others. Yet heritage also offers possibilities to reconcile the different versions of traumatic historical events. In this paper, the analysis of heritage as bordering focuses on the town of Vukovar (Croatia) and on Raate Road (Finland) that both have gained symbolic meaning in the production of nationhood. It shows that multiple versions of bordering are materializing in the landscape of heritage in both borderlands. Although the hegemonic national narrative is strongly present in heritage making and commercialization, there are attempts to connect the national heritage to a more transnational, humanitarian and Europeanized version of heritage. The previously silenced voices of traumatized soldiers and families have also gained more recognition alongside the national heroic narrative. The competing versions of bordering often arouse ontological insecurity, however, transnational heritage making may offer possibilities for reconciliation.