By Ulf Eirik Torgersen, museum leader and Elena Badanina, curator The Narvik War and Peace Centre / Narvik War Museum
The establishment of the Open Depository at the Narvik War and Peace Centre has contributed to strengthening the Narvik War Museum’s professional and dissemination foundations on several levels. The project, which was developed in collaboration with the Museum of the Slovak National Uprising, has made the collections more accessible and given new relevance to the principles underlying the museum’s permanent exhibitions.
The ICOM’s Code of Ethics Museums emphasize the museum’s responsibility to safeguard both tangible and intangible cultural heritage. The paragraph 1.4, Accessibility, states that “the governing body should ensure that the museum and its collections are available to all during reasonable hours and for regular periods”. The Open Depository is a concrete response to this commitment: by opening the depository to the public and academic circles, a lower threshold is created between preservation and dissemination, between research and experience.
The project has also had an important effect on the museum’s collection management. Through systematic review, registration and partial digitization of the object material, the museum has gained a better overview of its own collection. This has made it easier to put individual objects in context and to connect them to the stories that are already highlighted in the permanent exhibitions. When you know what you have and can display it in meaningful contexts, a space is opened for both new research, new dissemination and new reflection. Narvik War Museum’s main exhibition conveys war, occupation and peace work – not only as historical events, but as processes with parallels to today’s conflicts. The Open Depository builds on this concept. Here, the public, school classes and researchers can see objects up close, experience materiality and details that no digital presentation can fully replace. At the same time, the Open Depository provides space to discuss how objects can be used to understand war, resistance and human choices in light of the goals of peacebuilding.
Since the establishment of the Open Depository, the museum has experienced increased interest from both schools, researchers and individual visitors. The number of visitors in 2024 was 58,563. The Open Depository functions as a learning arena, but also as a professional laboratory where collection management, conservation and dissemination meet. This has led to a stronger awareness of how the Narvik War and Peace Center, as a peace and human rights center, can use historical objects actively in teaching and reflecting on the present. Our experience is that visitors want to gain knowledge via both exhibition texts and guiding, and to look at objects. There is also a type of visitors who just want to see as many objects as possible, without thinking about formal exhibition concepts and timelines. The Open Depository is thus a paradise for such an audience: in the room, which is seen as less formal than the main exhibition, the number and concentration of objects is large.
The fact that Open Depository is perceived as less formal gives the collection management team greater freedom to decide which objects are shown to the public. In October 2024, we invited 5th graders from Narvik Montessori School to participate in the program “Conservator for a Day”. The pupils treated and described several objects from the museum’s collection and created their own mini exhibition, which all visitors can experience. They also recruited family and friends to visit the museum.
The space of the Open Depository also gave us an opportunity to highlight from the magazine one of the most popular attractions in the museum’s history: a map table, or a relief model of the landscape around Narvik as it appeared during the battles in 1940. The map table was a central part of the old war museum from its opening in 1964 until its move to new premises in 2016. In recent years, the model has been stored in the museum’s depository due to lack of space in the main exhibition and the need for renovation. Students at the Narvik Upper Secondary School, Oscarsborg Department, were involved in the task of renewing the technical installation in the model, which makes it possible to identify different situations and places on the map. On May 28, 2025, in connection with the 85th anniversary of the reconquest of Narvik, the restored map table was moved into the Open Depository and is once again available to the public.
The collaboration with the Museum of the Slovak National Uprising has also broadened the perspective on how museums in different countries can share experiences on preservation, dissemination and peace work. The project has shown that open depositories are not just about physical accessibility, but about professional openness – about using the collection as a living archive that can constantly provide new perspectives on the understanding of the past, present and future.