The Bodil Biørn collection and its community of records: A responsibility with the victims

Abstract

In early 2000’s, senior archivist Vilhelm Lange came across a collection of records at the National Archive of Norway (from here on Riksarkivet), that help document the Armenian Genocide and thus have immense cultural and historical value particularly for the descendants of the victims, the Armenian community. This collection, composed of photographs, slides, photo-albums, letters, pamphlets and the missionary newspaper of the time, is part of the larger institutional archive of the now defunct Norwegian Women Missionary Workers, Kvinnelige Misjonsarbeidere (KMA).2Bodil Biørn, a young Norwegian nurse and KMA member, travelled in 1905 from Norway to the Ottoman Empire with her personal camera. There, she lived on and off until 1925.3 Biørn and her KMA colleagues took photographs and wrote accounts of their daily life and the events around them. These records would later take on a life of their own and a meaning beyond Biørn, the KMA and Norway. The story of this collection begins with the story of Bodil Biørn’s missionary work in Armenia, yet as I will describe here, goes beyond the narrative of the Nordic missionaries showing us how records travel through contexts and time to be activated for different purposes, and the fundamental role that archives play in their activation. This is particularly the case in this digital age. The paper shows the importance of a community of records in cases of atrocity, for contextualisation, a deeper understanding of historical events and respect for the victims. A community of records is described as ‘both to how records are (re-)created or reused within a community as well as its contextualization of records (through memory and narrative construction)’.4 This community of records, a community that has a stake and an interest in the records, has helped activate the records in the Bodil Biørn collection and prolong their life in the service to which they were intended by Biørn, helping the Armenian community. This paper shows the participative nature of archivists and archives making them more than spectators but active participants in the politics of remembering. It is a case of third-country sharing5 and the collaborative efforts of a national archive to promote remembrance and acknowledgement of genocide, in opposition to the political stand taken by the Norwegian government. Digitalisation has extended the lives of these records, as is central to the sharing process with partners such as the Armenian Genocide Museum, Wikimedia, documentary film-makers, authors and with other projects. Yet, an online life raises concerns of erratic use that decontextualises and disconnects records from their community and memory institutions, which can at least be made accountable for their narratives.