Main areas of work related to the Convention:
In the fall of 2024, we started Project "Migration Memories". It is part of the 200th anniversary of
the organized emigration from Norway to the Americas. Our idea was that migration in general -
immigration and emigration - are important factors in Norwegian history, and that a big oral history collection would be source material of great value for academic as well as private/family researchers in present and in future generations.
In the polyphony of subjective stories, we find a wealth of material to understand the impact of migration, such as reciprocal influence between majority and minorities in language, work and business, art and music, food cultures, ethics and religion. We find interesting tensions and development trends in and between generations in both minorities and majority, as well as in and between diasporas in Norway and the culture of the original homelands. Another interesting topic is similarity and differences between Norwegian diasporas in the Americas, and different diasporas in Norway.
We train museum workers and volunteers in doing and documenting qualitative interviews, we organize story sharing cafes and series of one-to-one interviews and public events with oral history panels. All material is documented and made searchable, and delivered to public archives to ensure eternal safeguarding. We share the oral history material on our website whenever the interviewees consent to do so.
Modern oral history methodology was not very widespread in Norway when we started our organization in 2015. We had to use quite a lot of time and energy to explain the value of "history from below" and oral expressions and traditions among ordinary people. It was also a challenge to explain the differences between oral history and oral storytelling .
Five years ago - in the early fall of 2020 - we first time argued that oral history is intangible heritage. That was in a response to a local public hearing in Bergen, Norway. The next year, this argument was repeated in a local hearing in Oslo, and then - in 2023 we were invited to a meeting with the other Norwegian accredited NGOs in Lillehammer, to discuss oral heritage. We experienced strong support to our standpoint, and we were encouraged to apply for accreditation.
In July 2023 we brought up this question at the bi-annual conference of the International Oral Historv Association in Rio de Janeiro. We pointed at the fact that no national or multinational oral history organization were among the NGOs accredited to the ICH Committee. Again we experienced a lot of support, and again we were encouraged to be among the first national oral history organisations to apply.
In the fall of 2023, our board decided that we should send our application within the next deadline, which is April 30th 2025.
In the hearings mentioned above, we made the proposal that Norway needs another Center for ICH, to complement the structure that already exists. This new center should focus oral traditions and expressions, including language as a vehicle of the intangible cultural heritage. It is too early to know if this political process will succeed, but whether or not, it has enhanced our competence in the field.
We hope that the story above demonstrates our capacity to provide advisory services to the Committee, in particular in the domain of oral heritage.
Objectives
Memoar is a volunteer NGO, part of the Norwegian Association for Local History. Our basic idea is that life stories are important intangible heritage, and should be documented, archived and shared on large scales. We believe that recordings of oral interviews and conversations are the best way for safeguarding constantly changing oral expressions, traditions and languages.
In our work, we strive to involve volunteers of all ages from all parts of society. At the same time, we strive to build a core corps of professional oral historians, able to safeguard the quality of collected material, teach and train volunteers and publish/disseminate findings in the oral history collections.
One basic principle for us, is the principle of shared authority, which means that we respect the interviewee to be the owner of each interview. Only she or he can decide if the interview may be delivered to public archives, and if it may be shared publicly. We establish a written contract about this in every new interview.
Our motto is "All have a story to share".
- By "all" we mean all: The memories of every living human being is a unique source of heritage.
- By "story" we mean expressions about experience, observations and reflections about living as an individual in communities with others.
- By "share" we mean both archiving for future generations, and sharing with contemporaries through family gatherings, community events or interactive media.
We think upon history as streams of lived lives, side by side and interwoven. We think upon heritage as everything mankind created, tangible and intangible.
Cooperation
Our main project at present, "Migration Memories", is representative for our methods.
First, we collaborate with local history societies all over Norway. Some of them want us to help them learn how to collect, document, preserve and share oral history. For those we organize training courses, followed up by support to local interviewers. Others want to concentrate on finding and organizing interviewees, while they want to leave the interviewing to us. Both ways
are fruitful as long as emigration history is concerned. The deputy chair of the Norwegian Association of Local History is in our steering committee, ass is the general secretary of the Norwegian genealogy association "Slekt og data".
First generation migrants are our first priority, but descendant interviews are also very interesting, as they show how long identity can survive and even grow long time after the actual migration.
The majority of our interviewees are second to fourth generation descendants from emigrants and first to third generation immigrants.
Many immigrant groups have formed cultural organisations that are contacts and often partners in our subprojects. The founder of the Tamil Diaspora Archive in Norway is a member of our steering committee.
Museums are also important collaboration partners, in particular museums that focus migration and build networks around migration history.
In other, smaller groups without organisations, we experience that the most successful way is to find individuals with a positive attitude towards documenting their life history. First interview is done, others more reluctant persons tends to follow, little by little.
