This thesis concerns the mediation of history in a public arena in society, namely in historical exhibitions in museums. The foci of the thesis are exhibitions on migration history, cultural encounters, “Us” and “the Others”, and in particular how relations based on the principles of class, gender and ethnicity are mediated. The research concerns two exhibitions – "Afrikafararna" (The Travellers to Africa) and "Kongospår" (Traces of Congo). In this thesis museums are viewed as arenas for public education and meaning-making. It explores how the historical contents as well as the forms of mediation in the exhibitions correspond to the task of promoting democracy that has been assigned to Swedish museums. This task is expressed in the intentions of the respective museums, in the general policies on culture and also in the policy documents for schools. Therefore the thesis also explores how pupils and teachers understand the mediation of history and use the museum as a source for learning. Exhibitions are regarded in this thesis as mediation processes of history. Three distinct phases can be seen in this process – the phase of production, the phase of mediation and the phase of reception. People connected to the different phases, such as curators, producers, museum educators, and pupils, have been interviewed. These interviews show how conditions, convictions and scope for action influence how the stories of migration and cultural encounters are told and understood. The contents of the exhibitions are analysed from a perspective of class, gender and ethnicity. Furthermore, the limitations and possibilities for the visitors to intensify their historical consciousness are discussed. The study shows how economic conditions and access to historical source material influence the way history is mediated, but also, and to a very large extent, convictions on pedagogy and concepts of history among museum staff. The latter two are determining factors when it is made clear that the way the historical source material is used results in the fact that history is mediated in a way that does not correspond to the intentions and goals to promote democratic values, such as equality, and active democratic readiness for action. The study shows that the exhibitions in question mediate patterns of subordination and asymmetrical relations between women and men and between Swedes/Scandinavians and Africans in their mediation of history. There are sometimes very distinct lines between “Us” and “the Others”. One of the exhibitions offers more space for individual meaning-making and reflection than the other, however, because of its problematization of the occurrence of African artefacts in Scandinavia and because there are more stories and more voices in the exhibition. The interviews with teachers and pupils show that the visits to the exhibitions are often isolated events that are rarely incorporated into the students’ education in a prolonged theme or perspective. Several students uncritically accepted the mediation in the exhibition, others were provoked and challenged, but the students had little opportunity to discuss these experiences in either the museum or in school. In summing up, several of the results of the analysis show that the mediation of history in the exhibitions cannot be described as corresponding to the demands of a democratic conception of education.

The thesis concerns public debate on the public activities of The Swedish History Museum (Historiska museet) in Stockholm between the years 1992 and 2011. Moreover, the thesis contribute with knowledge on how basic didactic questions regarding a single national museum has been answered in the public debate over time. Standpoints on what should be exhibited, how this should be done, to/with whom the mediation of history should be addressed/communicated and, what mission in society The Swedish History Museum’s is considered to be, is summed up in the concept of “exhibition ideal”. The research concerns four public debates; the debate about the exhibition The Swedish History (Den Svenska Historien), the debate about Kristian Berg, the debate about the free entry reform and, a less extensive debate about the exhibition History of Sweden (Sveriges Historia). A further aim of the dissertation is to put the publicly expressed positions on The Swedish History Museum in a wider historical-cultural context. Also, the study is related to other museums and other history communicating arenas. The debates coincides in time with challenges for the museum sector to deal with new perspectives in museology and cultural heritage research. The emergence of a multi-cultural society and the questioning of grand narratives are mentioned as examples. The emergence and strengthening of a broader history didactic discipline in Sweden, where a basic starting point is that the story is communicated in several different arenas with their own competencies, are also brought into the analysis. Historians and archaeologists tend to become silent in the recent debates about The Swedish History Museum’s public activities as the debates are less focused on content. The debates tends to be more “museum internal”, even in cases where there is opportunity to debate specific historical and archaeological content in the exhibitions. It appears, nevertheless, that the overall conflict around the public museum activities has reached the public spotlight through newspapers, radio and TV. Alongside with visits to the museum public debate are assumed to contribute to citizens’ own view of what museums should exhibit, how this should be done, to/with whom the mediation of history should be addressed/communicated and what the museum’s mission in society is.

Kulturarvsplatser kan betraktas på olika sätt av olika människor. Samtidigt finns kol-lektiva föreställningar om hur en kulturarvsplats bör förstås. Mellan dessa utgångs-punkter sker förhandlingar om kulturarvsplatsens betydelse och värde. Syftet med studien är att förstå hur en plats, institutionellt utpekad som kulturarv, används och iscensätts genom mångsidiga och korsande praktiker, både via media och på plats. Två fall undersöks som har olika inriktningar men båda inom svensk kulturmiljö-vård: kulturreservatet komministerbostället Råshult i sydvästra Kronoberg i Småland som är botanikern Carl von Linnés födelseplats och den publika uppdragsarkeologiska verksamheten i Slättbygdsprojektet i västra Östergötland. Frågorna berör vilka arenor medieringen sker, dess tematik/innehåll, iscensättningen av kulturarvet samt hur besö-karna uppfattar sitt besök av platsen och de strategiska aktörernas visioner för platsen. Metodiskt följs en tänkt besökares väg till kulturarvsplatsen och faktiska besökare vid platsen. Både i slättbygdens undersökningsrum och vid Linnés Råshult synliggörs den kollektiva föreställningarna som huvudsakligen en vetenskaplig studieplats och en skattkammare för särskilt värdefulla ting. Besökarna lyfter dock fram de sociala aspekterna av besöket. Besökarens tolkning existerar och konkurrerar med andra bilder av platserna. Det saknas dock arenor som synliggör och sätter dessa i förbindelse med de strategiska aktörerna, trots mycket offentligt tal om demokratisering av kulturarvs-processerna under senare år. Olika materials bilder har på så sätt lagts jämte varandra för att synliggöra dynamik, förhandling, konkurrens och bristande dialog kring en plats. / Cultural heritage sites can be looked at differently by different people. These sites also carry collective understandings of how they should be understood. Between these two outsets there are negotiations of the sites’ meaning and value. The aim of this thesis is to understand how a place, institutionally pointed out as cultural heritage, is used and staged through diverse and intersecting practices, both through media and on the heri-tage site. Two differently oriented cases are researched within Swedish cultural heritage preservation: one the birthplace of Carolus Linnaeus, the botanist, which is a cultural reservation located at Råshult in the south of Sweden, and the other a commissioned archaeological project called Slättbygdsprojektet in Östergötland in mid Sweden. The questions concern on what arenas the mediation happens, its theme/content, the staging of the cultural heritage, as well as the visitors’ experiences and the strategic actors’ visions of the site. Methodically I follow both a fictive visitor’s way to the heritage site and actual visitors on site. Both in Slättbygdsprojektet and at Linnés Råshult the collective understandings of the sites are mainly viewed as a place for scientific study and a treasure chamber for especially valuable objects. The visitors especially highlight the social aspects of their visit. The visitors’ interpretation exists and competes with other images. However, there are no arenas that can make them visible, to put them in relation with the strategic actors, despite much public speech in recent years about democratizing cultural heri-tage processes. Images of different researched materials of the site have been juxta-posed to make visible the dynamic, negotiations, competition and lack of dialogue about cultural heritage sites.

Kulturarvsplatser kan betraktas på olika sätt av olika människor. Samtidigt finns kol-lektiva föreställningar om hur en kulturarvsplats bör förstås. Mellan dessa utgångs-punkter sker förhandlingar om kulturarvsplatsens betydelse och värde. Syftet med studien är att förstå hur en plats, institutionellt utpekad som kulturarv, används och iscensätts genom mångsidiga och korsande praktiker, både via media och på plats. Två fall undersöks som har olika inriktningar men båda inom svensk kulturmiljö-vård: kulturreservatet komministerbostället Råshult i sydvästra Kronoberg i Småland som är botanikern Carl von Linnés födelseplats och den publika uppdragsarkeologiska verksamheten i Slättbygdsprojektet i västra Östergötland. Frågorna berör vilka arenor medieringen sker, dess tematik/innehåll, iscensättningen av kulturarvet samt hur besö-karna uppfattar sitt besök av platsen och de strategiska aktörernas visioner för platsen. Metodiskt följs en tänkt besökares väg till kulturarvsplatsen och faktiska besökare vid platsen. Både i slättbygdens undersökningsrum och vid Linnés Råshult synliggörs den kollektiva föreställningarna som huvudsakligen en vetenskaplig studieplats och en skattkammare för särskilt värdefulla ting. Besökarna lyfter dock fram de sociala aspekterna av besöket. Besökarens tolkning existerar och konkurrerar med andra bilder av platserna. Det saknas dock arenor som synliggör och sätter dessa i förbindelse med de strategiska aktörerna, trots mycket offentligt tal om demokratisering av kulturarvs-processerna under senare år. Olika materials bilder har på så sätt lagts jämte varandra för att synliggöra dynamik, förhandling, konkurrens och bristande dialog kring en plats. / Cultural heritage sites can be looked at differently by different people. These sites also carry collective understandings of how they should be understood. Between these two outsets there are negotiations of the sites’ meaning and value. The aim of this thesis is to understand how a place, institutionally pointed out as cultural heritage, is used and staged through diverse and intersecting practices, both through media and on the heri-tage site. Two differently oriented cases are researched within Swedish cultural heritage preservation: one the birthplace of Carolus Linnaeus, the botanist, which is a cultural reservation located at Råshult in the south of Sweden, and the other a commissioned archaeological project called Slättbygdsprojektet in Östergötland in mid Sweden. The questions concern on what arenas the mediation happens, its theme/content, the staging of the cultural heritage, as well as the visitors’ experiences and the strategic actors’ visions of the site. Methodically I follow both a fictive visitor’s way to the heritage site and actual visitors on site. Both in Slättbygdsprojektet and at Linnés Råshult the collective understandings of the sites are mainly viewed as a place for scientific study and a treasure chamber for especially valuable objects. The visitors especially highlight the social aspects of their visit. The visitors’ interpretation exists and competes with other images. However, there are no arenas that can make them visible, to put them in relation with the strategic actors, despite much public speech in recent years about democratizing cultural heri-tage processes. Images of different researched materials of the site have been juxta-posed to make visible the dynamic, negotiations, competition and lack of dialogue about cultural heritage sites.