The Nature of Cultural Heritage Sites

ln the late 1990s holidays close to nature often take people to places that arc demarcated as cultural heritage sites. Here people can sa mple the past i n thei r sea rch f(lr a I i fc i n harmony with n atu rc. The development of these I i v in� m u seum:; where v is i tors can try thei r hands at old crafts, get a taste of what li fe was l i ke i n the past, and witness people's l ives i n a local setting, goes hand i n h and with ecol ogical perspectives, green tou r ism, and n atural p roducLs. The purpose o f t h i :; article is, first, t o present the tendency t o u s c history and culture a s a n escapeway to natu re, and second , to discuss the nature of cultural heritage politics . I n the quest for fixed v alues, clear identities , and adequate ways to relate to nature, there is a ten dency to criticize our own modern society with the aid ofhistory. The crit ical att itude to modern civi li;r,ation found among many of the visitors could be an express i on of alternatives and res istance and an acLivc way to discuss and test contemporary environmental issues. Cultural heritage sites have a potential as altern ative places where lasting values could make them useful for trying out new attitudes to nature and culture in the future.

History is today commodified while simultane ously being brought to life and presented as something natural and authentic but also dif fe rent and adventurous. Unique leisure-time experiences are used as a means of distinction when people's identity fo rmation is increasing ly directed inwards. In this essay I shall ad dress the tendency to use history and culture as an escapeway to nature. Reuse, which has be come the mantra of our times, entails the nat ural use of history in the landscape.
In the late 1990s holidays close to nature often take people to places that are demarcated as cultural heritage sites. Here people can sam ple the past in their search for a life in harmony with nature. Va cations today are supposed not only to involve the active creation of culture but also to take place in restful encounters with nature. Both these experiences can be fo und in the historical landscapes where nature meets culture, leisure becomes labor, the past be comes the present, and heredity meets environ ment. History is used as a reminder of a better life, exciting and evocative.Ancient monuments, castles, ruins, deserted fa rms, abandoned in-dustrial landscapes, and overgrown railroad tracks become a kind of adventureland with a natural seductiveness for the visitor. Here one can use one's imagination to create atmospheric refuges which grant coherence and wholeness in a fr agmentary world.

Authentic Experiences in Nature
Many of the places to which people make their way in the quest for authentic experiences in nature are defined by professional administra tors as part of the cultural heritage. The term "cultural heritage tourism" has been officially used in Sweden for a few years to describe the work with tourism and regional development carried on by the Central Board of National Antiquities (Riksantikvarieambetet). By using the cultural heritage as a tourist attraction, narratives about our past are made clear and concrete. This not infrequently takes place par allel to the portrayal of Sweden as a country with unique natural scenery. At special cultural heritage sites tourists try out the good life in a form that involves challenges to their physical and menial stamina. Weiland paradises are sold purullel io medieval markets; one can enjoy a cup of coffee to the mating display of the ruff, or buy a knight's shield for protection in fights. When ihc culiural heritage is transformed into saleable products, ihe producer alludes io eco logical values and a sustainable fu ture.
The longing io get back io nature has always been associated with something natural and genuine. What is new is rather that nature is staged or presented as an experience market, aesiheiicizing both nature and the past. The development of a tourist landscape based on the cuI tu ral heritage and on living museums where visitors can try thei r hands at old crafts, get a taste of what life was like in the past, and witness people's lives in a local setting, goes hand in hand with ecological perspectives, gr een tourism, and natural products.
In 1995 the government declared that the tourism profile of Sweden should be based not only on our natural scenery and geographical location but also on our cultural heritage. It is thus mainly in the late 1990s that ecotourism and cultural heritage tourism have been devel oped. In both these fo rms of tourism people look for authentic experiences of nature and also for experiences of other people's living conditions and a genuine sense of local life in the past.

Cultural Heritage Brought to Life
One of the aims of Swedish cultural policy is that the cultural heritage should not just be preserved but also used and brought to life. The visitor should be able to take part in some fo rm of activity such as baking, weaving, making baskets, striking coins, or attending a garden ing course. Tourists should be able to experi ence the everyday life of bygone times in a natural way. What were once sold to tourists as sights for seeing have now become sites for doing things, and trying out various activities has become one of the most important ingredi ents in the vacation experience of the cultural heritage tourist. Looking at sights without coming into close contact with the people in them was the ideal of early mass tourism (cf. Stallybrass and White 1986:173 on the significance of the balcony in 6 the nineteenth century). To day we long instead io mix with the people at the places we visit, to come into contact with th em nnd share their everyday lives.
At the medieval castle ofGlimmingehus iiis possible during the second-last year ofthe 1900s to take part in a medieval masons' lodge , an experimeniarium where one can help in make bricks, burn lime, and build scaffolds in ihe medieval way. For those who prefer to indulge in culinary experiences there is a ch ance to bake bread, grind flour, churn butter, pound herbs, and try other aspects of late medieval cookery. A herb garden and orchard arc being developed beside ihe castle. On fr agrant i:lUID mer evenings one can sit in the herb garden and hear tales offolk belief and languishing love. All the senses have to be satisfied, and old tradi tions are dredged for new markets and tourist attractions.
Historical landscapes are used today noijust to understand the present and the fu ture with the aid of the past but perhaps above all as a different fantasy land, or what Allan Pred has called "escapescapes", where one can step over the controlling boundaries of "civilized every day life" and temporarily fo rget one's duties and disappointments, to dream oneself away in oth er than everyday identities.
Throughout the modern era, life in the past has been constructed as the good life, the age when people lived in harmony with nature. This has served as a contrast to a present that is fe lt to be threatening and difficult to grasp.
To day more and more people are trying to bridge the modern separation of nature and culture, in their search for the answer to the question of what a good life is. The voyage of discovery often goes inwards, into the self. When asked why they try their hand at activities at a medieval market, or an antiquity center, or in a natural landscape, many people say that they want new perspectives on life. Changing one's life for a while and choosing a temporary identity gives an opportunity to derive nutrition fr om the landscape of history. When the Viking Age fo rtress ofTrelleborgen and the surrounding landscape is now being reconstructed, it is being done on the site where it once stood, which is now in the very center of the modern town of' Trcllcborg, on a fo rmer industrial site. The re ason for building a lor tress is not juRi to achieve a hi::;torical recon struction and io reuse the site, but also to create an arena where it will be possible, with the ai d of the imagination, io strengthen one's cultural identity.
From Nurture to Nature The cultural settings in Sweden th ai arc de fined as being of national inicrc::;t have long been subject to a law regulating land use in areas considered by experts and community as examples of "culture ," "nature," or worth pre serving for a mobile leisure life. Instead of isolating these cultural heritage sites as separate entities to be understood in a chronological context, however, they have been formulated in the 1 990s as a resource for people in their identity formations.
Museums monumental, and c ritica l . He argues that the cultural heritage is often used as a weapon in power struggles. The ant iquarian approach idol izes the past and seeks to escape the present; the cultural heritage is seen as a counter to a degenerate contemporary culture and an oasis th at make�:� it possible to endure modern life (1993:20). The monumental approach has chiefly been used to hold together political structures such as nations and t:,rroups. Examples of this can be seen in today's Swedish parliament, where the term cultural heritage is used with particular fr equency to mean something shared and something Swedish. The critical approach to history or the cultural heritage is more use fu l. It seizes on the fact that history and the cultural heritage arc something that each age create:; for its own purposes. History in the landscape could therefore be used in an emanci patory way to satisfy people's needs and wi:;hes.

Te sting a New Life at Viking Heritage Sites
Interest in the life of the Vikings has grow n in many places. centers of' variou:,; kind:,;. Like :,;cvcral other modern-day Viking market:,;, the Viking Assem bly in Trcllcborgcn leads ma ny people to arm themselves t(Jr combat, drcs:,; up in Viking clothes, and se l l Viking Age good s oftheir own manu l�1cturc: "Artisans and mcrch a n ts of'a l l conceivable kind:,; will demonstrate their craft skills. In particu lar, th ey will show their unique selling talents! Food, tools, tents, household utensils, and clothes will be on display all through the mar ket. Vi sitors will gain a sense of what life was like fo r the historical Vikings, and the market as a whole will oiler the visitor a ge nuine taste of Viking life!" The goods on �ale include jewelry, weapons, clothes, baskets, drinking horns, herbs, glass beads, and much besides. Many people devote a large part of their spare time to making these goods; some ofthem do it as th eir living. Yet they would not view themselves as contemporary producers; for them it is instead an attempt to try out new ways of living. One craftswoman who makes Viking jewelry also says that she wants to live like a Viking. It has simply become a lifestyle for her and her fa mily. This is not just because we are fa scinated by the Vikings, she explains; it is also a matter of a natural way of life, one that fe els ecologically correct. These Viking craftsmen set up camp and live on the site for several days. They show off their produce, make mail shirts, demonstrate ship building and sailmaking, metalwork with gold and silver, wood carving, coining, and vegetable dyeing. There are fr equent fights at the market, and one is struck by the many martial ele ments. Archers shoot arrows at the fo rtress, battles are enacted, berserks stage warrior shows, and Viking wrestling is demonstrated.
The everyday life of a distant past is turned into a contemporary market for testing new customs and habits, ways oflife and patterns of production. In an experimental archaeological village in Scania visitors are invited to experi ence everyday Viking life as it was a thousand years ago: "The Viking village in Hog takes you on u voyage away fi·om the traditional accounts of' the history books. Experience the everyday life ofthc Vi kings . Characterized by hard work and fine crafts, in close interaction with the powers of nature and the benevolence of the gods ... " These Viking Age markets arc new phenomena. They arc a part of our late modern society. They did not receive th eir fo rm and scope until the mid-1 990s. At Fotcvikcn on the Falstcrbo pe nins ula, Viking battles and feasts have been staged since 1997. Fotcviken Museum styles itself a Viking reservation. They say in their marketing that all Vikings are welcome to take part, to come and live with them-the perma nent Vikings. The requirement is that one should wear Viking clothes and be prepared to help all the visitors who want to learn more about their cultural heritage.
At these markets the visitor can not only purchase beautiful o�jects fr om the past but also buy everyday Viking goods. The materials The bow is drawn in the archery games at Froja thing 1998. used to ma ke these commod ities are all natural, invoki ng the past. As the program puts it, they arc "f�1r removed from plasti c an d other mod ernday m aterial s ." The visitor is offered a Jiving past in a mul titude of rliflcrcni ways. In old workshops you can try ancient crafts: preparing skins, fo rging iron, m ak i n g glass beads. At the Ekctorp fort on the island of O land you "experience the past" th rough long th eme vi sits where you have a ch ance to do practical work with a craft. The activities receive a top rati ng in the Guide Mi(·helin: "In the prehistoric workshop you can try your hand at making various objects in the oldfashioncd ways. Each week there is a differ ent theme: cooking, textiles, leather, ceramics, wood, metal-working or music."

Distinctive Individuals m History's Adventureland
It is not the intrinsic historic value of ancient monuments that is important for today's tour ists but their value as a leisure arena. In con trast to everyday life, it is supposed to be possi ble to shape distinctive individuals in history's adventureland. The play-acting becomes a way to usc history to rework the present. A wide range of free zones, similar to the medieval Lunch break for the tradesfolk at Froja thing 1998. culture of laughter, are recreated in today's society so that we can have an opportunity to reflect on ourselves fr om a distance.
At many Renaissance chateaux and medie val castles in Sweden one can take part in feasts and banquets, folk festivals and games, frol ics and revelry -activities that turn the world upside down. In the anonymous Sunday land of the historical adventure one can play whatever role one chooses -beggar or king -and fr eely mock the routines of mundane existence (cf. Svensson 1997). Medieval fe stivals and Renais sance markets have been developed into large scale popular fe stivities, and guilds and associ ations have been fo rmed to maintain interest the whole year round by means of gatherings where they discuss history, make costumes, or play music.
The exhilarant feasts and activities have a great deal in common with the culture oflaugh ter that was so typical of the Renaissance, as shown by the Russian literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin through his analyses of the works of the great sixteenth-century writer Rabelais (cf. Svensson 1998). In burlesque popular fe stivals, carnivals, and spectacles, people created fr ee zones of a kind, which temporarily liberated them fr om duties and rules, habits and pat terns. Here they were allowed to make cruel fun of the authorities with impunity, making them look ridiculous, to the great amusement of eve ryone -including the objects of the mockery.
Something similar occurs today in the dramati zations staged by Renaissance companies for staff parties and business get-togethers of var ious kinds. Under the guise of humor one can criticize the prevailing hierarchies and ques tion the position of the boss. At the same time, this jesting fo sters a sense of community, a collective topsy-turvy view of the world that is not otherwise possible today. In fa ct, it was not until the late modern society of the 1990s that these Renaissance phenomena were recreated, and I would interpret this as a sign that we are in the process of changing the world and people, once again opening the horizon to laughter and play. In this role-play it is also possible for adults to change identity for a while and to turn things upside down. There is a striking interest in outsiders, and perhaps new attitudes are tested when one sit:-; in the medieval stocks or stage�:; a be heading as e n te rta inment.
In hiR in t e rpreta t ion of RabelaiR, Mikhail Bakhtin has shown how the burlesque Rabelai sian laughter can al�:;o be �:;ee n as ty pical of the carni val culture of the times. Bakhtin describes this as a folk culture. The laughter could be aimed at anyone, but everyone took part in it. In the seventeenth and ei gh teenth centuries soci ety underwent a change so that th e collective perspectives were gradually c losed off. 'I'hc gap between the people and the elite was widened, and th e new state ensured th at order prevailed, unchallenged by burlesque revels (Bakhtin 1984(Bakhtin , cf. O sterberg 1991. Laughter became more private and les::; dangerous. There was no longer a common laughter shared by everyone. There were now re::;trictions on the boundary transgression that was formerly permitted.
Many of the partici pants in th ese anachro nistic associations speak of a powerful sense of community at the markets and fe stivals. It fe els just like being among people fr om those bygone days, they say, expressing a special fe eling of authenticity, which is just what the Viking tourist above spoke of.
As a sign of the times, tourist and museum brochures now no longer invite people to come to view sights, exhibitions, and museums, but to experience the cultural heritage that is on sale.

Bringing the Cultural Heritage to Life
Since the Central Board ofNationalAntiquities decided to bring the cultural heritage to life, there has been a debate about how it should be made accessible. The aesthetic and entertain ing use of the cultural heritage is on the ad vance, both in the tourist trade and in cultural heritage management. Svante Beckman's de scription ofthis is that the market is now taking over the cultural heritage fr om "the academic custodians of the ancient temple," but I would rather say that they are working together. The problem for both sides is what Beckman calls "making the publicly managed cultural heri tage competitive on the experience market." The aim of cultural heritage tourism in the 1990s has been "to put the experience in the center," and for this purpose the authorities in charge of culture have cooperated wi th the tourist trade. There has been a crucial change in the administration and in the usc of th e cultural heritage . From having fo rmerly been a state concern managed by experts with educa tional aims and instruments, it is now increas ingly in the hands of commercial interests. This means that diilerent experts are required now adays . When the unit for cultural heritage management of the Central Board of National Antiquities was recruiting new staff in the mid-1990s, they stressed how "attractive" the cul tural sites were. The would-be applicants could look fo rward to working with public activities "from product development to marketing." The cultural heritage was held up as one of our most important tourist products.
The cultural heritage tourist also tests new attitudes to nature and tries to find an ecolog ically more correct way to live. History or cul ture is used as a way to understand nature. When history is related and compared to our own times, there is a tendency to criticize our own modern society with the aid of history, in discussions about how everything in the past was genuine, whereas today we lack fixed val ues and everything fe els artificial. There is a longing for authenticity, not just in ways oflife, artifacts, and architectural details, but also in raw materials, resources, and attitudes. Anti quarian and environmental arguments often run parallel today, which is why visitors to historical sites want both to find bygone culture and to have an experience of nature (cf. what Harvey calls "ecological emotions"). The man agers of the cultural heritage have to stage a kind of alternative aesthetic.
At medieval castles, Renaissance markets, and Viking assemblies, the goods for sale are not only those alluding to history but also herbs and spices, nature cures, and health products. The tourists' interest in nature has also led the cultural heritage managers to lay out a garden at the popular museum in Stockholm whose main attraction is a seventeenth-century ship.1

Nature as a Contested Sphere
The Swedish cultural heritage has always been closely associated with nature, and even things Our attitude to nature today is more ambiv alent, however. We constantly meet it in mod ern society's contradictions and paradoxes in 12 nature. There is not just one nature bui many diflcreni natures, and nature takes ihe form that social life gi ves it.2 The fr eedom that people want to experience in nature is often circumscribed because ihe environmental values of the demarcated at tractions are lost as they are marketed . Signs and symbols in touri st gu idebooks direci peo ple's movements in the landscape so thai every one goes to the same places ( cf. Macn agh ten and Urry 1. 998:191).
Of course, a dual attitude to nature has dominated our use of it throughout the modern development. At least since the seventeenth century, the way to a modern society has led io a division of nature into two parts. On one hand it is used for scientific purposes, "it is spied on and its fu ndamental laws are investigated," to use an expression borrowed fr om the German sociologist Klaus Eder (1997: 145). On the other hand we use it as a "free nature" for the purpos es of tourism and recreation. Nature and cul ture have often been set up as irreconcilable opposites, and hence also nature tourism and culture tourism. Yet when civilization mei the wilderness, the result was a blend of the iwo. Historical monuments were visited at the same time as nature. Yet culture's control and trans form ation of nature has led to ecological crises, and the pleasure of being in nature is now enjoyed hand in hand with a new kind of natu ral experience, namely, despair about the con sequences of civilization.
New social movements are taking shape which see it as their duty to recreate a more harmonious attitude to nature. The road to this goes via the past. It is in earlier ways oflife and attitudes that the answer is sought, while na ture is simultaneously granted an almost es sentialist primacy ofinterpretation. Statements about nature suggest that we have no influence over it -it's just the way things are (cf. Cronon 1996:30). This often goes together with the perception of nature as a kind of moral impera tive, that is, a view of what nature should be like and a fa ith in nature as an authority elevated above all doubt. The American environmental historian William Cronon (1996:36) compares this way of regarding nature with the way people in Western traditions form erly used God as the authority filr their be lief'::; .
We think that nature il:l the opposite of civi lization , just li ke the wilderness. But what we see w h e n we gaze into the m irror of wildern ess, according to Cronon , is just a reflection of our own longings and desires (Cronan 1 996:69f) .
There is a tendency to usc h i story and culture as an escape route t.o nature. Trying out Bronze Age life or reaping oats with a sickle have the same m eanin g as vi siti ng an "ecological farm ." The past is experienced as m ore self�sustaining and n at ural than the present. Many people today devote their leisure to things that were considered as work in preindustrial society.
Choppi n g firewood, te nding sheep, making hay, or preparing linen, building fe nces, and weav ing baskets are more significant clements for leisure fa rmers using the landscape than filr those who arc permanently settled in the coun trysi de . Just as there has long been a nostalgic yearn ing for wild places (cf. Cronon 1996:77), people now, when modern development has domesti cated, urbanized, and industrialized our sur roundings, yearn to get back to a time in which we imagine that nature's resources were used in moderation and people lived in harmony with their environment .

Memories and the Sense of Past
The human geographer David Lowenthal has described the past as a fo reign country, a coun try that is becoming increasingly fo reign while Under this pastoral greenery the remains of the Viking town Birka can be fo und. In a two meter deep culture deposit the traces fr om life in alleys and houses can be fo und. Since the mould is black fr om the charcoal ofBirka's fireplaces the place is called The black ground. Birka is enlisted on Unesco's World Heritage List since 1993one of eight Swedish world heritage sites -as one of the most well-preserved examples of a Viking age trade centre. In the mid-8th century the king of Swedes fo unded Birka. This was the first town in Sweden, and in its heyday the town had over 700 inhabitants. Merchants made their way here with precious goods fr om near and far. Craftsmen like blacksmiths, horncarvers and pearlmakers worked in the town. Birka was also an important harbour and place for reloading international trade. Here English buckets met with Arab coins and Chinese silk with Frankish glasswork. In the end of the lOth century the Viking town on Bj orko was abandoned. Today it is again visited by a lot of people making their image of the past.
simultaneously bei ng fi lled with more and more of our own ti m e�:;. He �:;ay�:; thai memorie�:; and su rvivals from the past tell about vanished times, but th e past thai is described is not necessarily whaiact.ua lly happened but in many cases our own co nstruction, a creation of our times. Jn this way the cultu ra l heritage acquires imme nse strength since it ca n be used in every age according to its needs and preferences. Th e way in which a certain period of the past is enacted or h i sto ry is written says just as much about the ti me�:; when this happens as about the age that is being described. In addi tion, one must always ask fr om whose perspec tive the hi story i�:; be ing told. The cultural her itage tourist rearranges the past and constructs a cultural heritage to suit his own ideals and patterns. The past th at is described is not ne cessarily related to what happened. What is produced is a certain kind of historical knowl edge, while other kinds are sorted out. The cultural heritage that is brought to life tends today to consist mainly of entertainment value. The visitor is supposed to gain a sense of the past (Rodaway 1995:256) rather than edu cational knowledge. Going to that nostalgic fantasy land means that the revival of"the past takes place solely in the form of the plea�:;ing and entertaining parts of history. Th e visitor who has paid money for his or her experience should be able to leave the cultural heritage site feeling happy about the past. Nature and cul ture thus become a commodity which gives the su�ject an identity. This is a construction of" the visiting subject as a consumer, as Paul Roda way observes (1995:257). Perhaps it is the ina bility oftraditional cultural institutions to deal with social and environmental problems that leads to a quest for alternative ways of lifc and new attitudes, and that sometimes takes on fo rms like this (cf. Harvey 1996:100).'1 Memories are of crucial importance for all identity fo rmation. The fe eling of a past con firms who we are in the present. The place or the landscape to which the memory is related reinforces the importance of the past. To under stand ourselves and the past, there must be some traces left to relate to . Cultural heritage managers thus have a responsibility for our cultural well-being. Experts on the cultural heritage fail to discharge this responsibility if they do not help to create emancipatory cultur-A day in springtime in Birka at around the year of900. Model in the museum to fire the imagination ofthe past. al he ritage ::;ites, where visitors can also under stand the dil'ficult and dark sides of history. All people need to have their experiences confirmed.
The nature ofcu ltural heritage politics, how ever, is such that certain values are included while others arc excl uded. There are clear knowl edge structures within which experiences should be gained . There is a Rtrict division between male-cu lture-strength-evil and fem ale-nature submission-goodness. A development is in progress which confirms what Gillian Rose has shown about how nature has been feminized, so that nature and woman have been opposed to culture and man (1993). This nature associa tion, however, is not just about gender. Indige nous people and "colonized others" are also associated with nature, as David Sibley (1995) has shown so clearly. As David Harvey has pointed out, all ecological arguments are really arguments concerning the whole of society. You can see this in the growing cultural heritage tourism and ecotourism where there is a kind of fa ith in them as having the answer, with a lifestyle that is in better harmony with the environment. In the same way, people's lives in the past in our part of the world are fe lt to have been ecologically sounder. Cultural heritage sites in one's own country, and the people who lived there, are equated with Others. To urist brochures describe life in the past in the same terms as those used today about, say, the Ama zon rainforest. This has established a contra dictory but powerful primacy of interpretation. In addition, the interpretation, the language, and the gaze with which the tourist regards nature, culture, or the landscape4 have also been adopted by those who are regarded (cf. Pratt 1992 on autoethnographic expressions).

Nature as a Cultural Va lue
Cultural heritage sites have their own history, yet today they are recreated as a natural zone where the cultural heritage visitor looks for well-being. By visiting a cultural heritage site and living the everyday life that bygone people are assumed to have lived, we become one with the people who lived there and can simultane ously say that we have had a genuine experi ence of nature. When visiting cultural heritage sites people moves between past and present , while they simultaneously are at the interface of nature and culture, of city and country, of wild and civilized. Nature has been interpreted as a sp ace of experience, charged with a multi tude of notions as to how people should acqui re this experience. In this space there are codes, clues leading us back into history. It is thc rc f() re also possible to step into a landscape and find oneself again. There are narratives in the land scape, identities that one can assume. Nature is place-bound, and the place is created by the time and by the social values inscribed on it (cf. Harvey 1996:303). Perhaps visiting cultural heritage places is a short cut to authenticity and self-understanding. By interpreting histo ry as natural it disregards the fact that nature is a contested sphere into which we always project our values and desires. There are of course no fixed and indisputable fa cts, and movements and cultural processes are crucial in the understanding of social life, but David Harvey has demonstrated the danger of just emphasizing the changeability of everything: "If everything that is solid is always instanta neously melting into air, then it is very hard to accomplish anything or even set one's mind to do anything" (Harvey 1996:7). He recommends the use of values instead of fa cts. Va lues must be able to be fixed, he says, and it is the perma nencies that we achieve that give meaning to our lives. By analysing how different evalua tion processes work, we understand better how permanence is achieved at specific places and in specific historical situations. Certain values are more dominant than others and make peo ple adjust to them (Harvey 1996:11, 78f).
With Harvey's outlook it could be said that nature is produced as a value and a way of handling the world. Cultural heritage sites give permanence to these values. In the quest for fixed values, clear identities, and adequate ways to relate to nature, the critical attitude to histo ry fo und among many ofthe visitors could be an expression of alternatives and resistance and an active way to discuss and test contemporary environmental issues. Cultural heritage sites have a potential as alternative places where lasting values could make them useful for try ing out new attitudes to nature and culture in the fu ture. To day they inl:!tead have the ef'f e ci of conveying conf(H·mil:!tl:itandarcli:i (cf. Sandell and Siirlin 1994:41 ) which sustain the prevai ling power structu res .
Are cultural heritage sites taking the place ofirad itional cultural institutions? They are at any rate powerful and symbolically charged spacel:! of' experience, with an ability to channel important values such as identity, authenticity, and authority. Are these active places where on e can handle major environmental and social issues while simultaneously fu lfilling oneself, or is it simply a new fo rm of social control? The cultural heritage sites could be a kind of crea tive alternative sites displayi ng new norms and ways of life (cf. Harvey 1996:321fD, but today they arc probably not primarily expressions of environmental criticism but arc rather used as a way to distinguish oneselF• Notes 1. Posters fr om Va samusect tell the visitor to attend their genuine seventeenth-century garden. 2. In the book Contested Na tures (1998), Phil Mac naghten and John Urry discuss the fact that there were multiple kinds of nature. They describe peo ple's experiences and perceptions of nature as contradictory and claim that there is no simple attitude to nature, since it is so closely associated with the cultural constructions and social practic es that create nature. 3. David Harvey urges us instead, in Raymond Wil liams' spirit, to use the boundaries, the border land, to create a critical space where the hegemon ic discourses can be challenged and questioned. In the borderland one has an opportunity to trans gress boundaries. It can be used both as a refuge and as a point of departure for resistance. 4. It is mainly the countryside that is cherished as a leisure landscape. We "go to the country" for our vacations, and it is mostly in the countryside that the cultural heritage is staged. The Swedish words for nature and landscape arc used as synonyms for the countryside. 5. Cf. David Harvey (1996:433), who talks about a geography of differences. People's possibilities must be realized, even if this takes place within a geography of differences. He objects to the . red�c tionism that sees all people as equal, an aspiration that in his opinion has to do with a general capital istic commodification. Instead we should investi gate the relations between what is generally shared and what is separate and individual.