{"id":1804,"date":"2014-08-12T13:26:52","date_gmt":"2014-08-12T13:26:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dolly.jorgensenweb.net\/nordicnature\/?p=1804"},"modified":"2014-08-12T13:26:52","modified_gmt":"2014-08-12T13:26:52","slug":"speaking-in-silence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dolly.jorgensenweb.net\/nordicnature\/?p=1804","title":{"rendered":"Speaking in silence"},"content":{"rendered":"

In this project on reintroduction histories, I am particularly interested in how ideas of ‘belonging’ play into reintroduction or introduction of animals\u00a0and then how animals are attributed ‘belonging’ after they have returned or come to a place.<\/p>\n

Museums are one place where that belonging happens. That’s why I’ve written a fair amount about museum displays on this blog. I’ve shown the great variety of ways muskox displays<\/a> and beaver exhibits<\/a>\u00a0work–what they say and what they don’t.\u00a0I’ve criticised some museums for not taking advantage of history-telling opportunities<\/a>.\u00a0I’ve talked about the opportunities and limitations of\u00a0asking museum-visitors to consider reintroduction issues through\u00a0questions<\/a>.\u00a0I’ve pondered about the telling of individual versus species stories<\/a>.\u00a0I’ve discussed the ways animals might be given voices in museums<\/a>.<\/p>\n

One thing is certain: what is not<\/em> said can be as powerful as what is said.<\/p>\n

This was obvious to me when I visited the Zoological Museum at the University of Oulu<\/a> (Finland) last week. In addition to cases of individual stuffed animals, there is a long habitat diorama\u00a0of Finnish nature. The diorama displays the\u00a0animals and birds in active poses–running, looking, howling, eating–with a painted background giving depth to the scene. One of the sections\u00a0contained beavers.<\/p>\n

\"Beaver<\/a>
Beaver group in the habitat diorama at the Zoological Museum of the University of Oulu, Finland. Photo by D. J\u00f8rgensen.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

As I discussed previously<\/a>, beavers in Finland are interesting because unlike in most of Europe, both the European beaver (from Norwegian stock via\u00a0beaver-whisperer\u00a0P. M. Jensen-Tveit<\/a>) and the North American beaver were released in the 1930s. North American species now\u00a0outnumbers European beavers at somewhere around 10,000 to 2,000. So if you go out in the Finnish countryside, you might encounter either one.<\/p>\n

The display reflects this reality. On see-through stickers on the glass panel, the names of the different animals in each section of the diorama are listed. The label gives us\u00a0the animal’s scientific name and popular names in Finnish, English, Swedish, German & French.\u00a0In this section, the list includes both European beaver (Castor fiber<\/em>) and North American beaver (Castor canadensis<\/em>). It is entirely unclear from the label which beaver in the display is which. And the three beavers appear to make up one ‘family’ unit of sorts since they are near each other, which does not happen across beaver species lines in the wild. In blending and mixing the species, I read\u00a0the display as presenting\u00a0the Finnish beaver. It might be C. fiber<\/em>. It might be C. canadensis<\/em>. It really doesn’t matter.\u00a0This is Finnish beaver and it\u00a0belongs<\/em> in Finland.<\/p>\n

\"Raccoon<\/a>
Raccoon dogs in their environmental setting in the Zoological Museum of the University of Oulu, Finland. Photo by D. J\u00f8rgensen<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

The diorama also includes several raccoon dogs, including a cute pair hiding as a forest reindeer calf and mother (who is only painted on the backdrop) run by. I was interviewed for an article about raccoon dogs as invasive species in Sweden recently and talked about its belonging, or lack thereof<\/a>. Although the raccoon dog is also an immigrant to Finland–it was first spotted in the 1930s or 40s as populations spread from\u00a0Russia where it had been introduced\u00a0as a fur-bearing animal for commercial harvesting–it is not put in a separate case of ‘recent arrivals’ like it is in the Naturhistoriska Museum in Stockholm. In this museum, the raccoon dog is just as natural, it belongs just as much, as the woodpecker or reindeer or fox or hawk. With almost 200,000 raccoon dogs killed each year by hunters in Finland, it is not a rare encounter. This is the Finnish raccoon dog and it belongs<\/em> in Finland.<\/p>\n

This diorama is silent about the history of beavers and raccoon dogs in Finland. But in that silence, the display speaks. It claims European beavers, Canadian beavers, and raccoon dogs as belonging<\/em> in the Finnish countryside.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In this project on reintroduction histories, I am particularly interested in how ideas of ‘belonging’ play into reintroduction or introduction of animals\u00a0and then how animals are attributed ‘belonging’ after they have returned or come to a place. Museums are one place where that belonging happens. That’s why I’ve written a fair amount about museum displays on this blog. I’ve shown the great variety of ways muskox displays and beaver exhibits\u00a0work–what they say and what they don’t.\u00a0I’ve criticised some museums for not taking advantage of history-telling opportunities.\u00a0I’ve talked about the opportunities and limitations of\u00a0asking museum-visitors to consider reintroduction issues through\u00a0questions.\u00a0I’ve pondered about the telling of individual versus species stories.\u00a0I’ve discussed the ways animals might be given voices in museums. One thing is certain: what is not said can be as powerful as what is said. This was obvious to me when I visited the Zoological Museum at the University of Oulu (Finland) last week. In addition to cases of individual stuffed animals, there is a long habitat diorama\u00a0of Finnish nature. The diorama displays the\u00a0animals and birds in active poses–running, looking, howling, eating–with a painted background giving depth to the scene. One of the sections\u00a0contained beavers.   As I discussed previously, beavers in Finland are interesting because unlike in most of Europe, both the European beaver (from Norwegian stock via\u00a0beaver-whisperer\u00a0P. M. Jensen-Tveit) and the North American beaver were released in the 1930s. North American species now\u00a0outnumbers European beavers at somewhere around 10,000 to 2,000. So if you go out in the Finnish countryside, you might encounter either one. The display reflects this reality. On see-through stickers on the glass panel, the names of the different animals in each section of the diorama are listed. The label gives us\u00a0the animal’s scientific name and popular names in Finnish, English, Swedish, German & French.\u00a0In this section, the list includes both European beaver (Castor fiber) and North American beaver (Castor canadensis). It is entirely unclear from the label which beaver in the display is which. And the three beavers appear to make up one ‘family’ unit of sorts since they are near each other, which does not happen across beaver species lines in the wild. In blending and mixing the species, I read\u00a0the display as presenting\u00a0the Finnish beaver. It might be C. fiber. It might be C. canadensis. It really doesn’t matter.\u00a0This is Finnish beaver and it\u00a0belongs in Finland.   The diorama also includes several raccoon dogs, including a cute pair hiding as a forest reindeer calf and mother (who is only painted on the backdrop) run by. I was interviewed for an article about raccoon dogs as invasive species in Sweden recently and talked about its belonging, or lack thereof. Although the raccoon dog is also an immigrant to Finland–it was first spotted in the 1930s or 40s as populations spread from\u00a0Russia where it had been introduced\u00a0as a fur-bearing animal for commercial harvesting–it is not put in a separate case of ‘recent arrivals’ like it is in the Naturhistoriska Museum in Stockholm. In this museum, the raccoon dog is just as natural, it belongs just as much, as the woodpecker or reindeer or fox or hawk. With almost 200,000 raccoon dogs killed each year by hunters in Finland, it is not a rare encounter. This is the Finnish raccoon dog and it belongs in Finland. This diorama is silent about the history of beavers and raccoon dogs in Finland. But in that silence, the display speaks. It claims European beavers, Canadian beavers, and raccoon dogs as belonging in the Finnish countryside.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1805,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-beaver","category-museum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dolly.jorgensenweb.net\/nordicnature\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dolly.jorgensenweb.net\/nordicnature\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dolly.jorgensenweb.net\/nordicnature\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dolly.jorgensenweb.net\/nordicnature\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dolly.jorgensenweb.net\/nordicnature\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1804"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/dolly.jorgensenweb.net\/nordicnature\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1804\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1809,"href":"https:\/\/dolly.jorgensenweb.net\/nordicnature\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1804\/revisions\/1809"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dolly.jorgensenweb.net\/nordicnature\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dolly.jorgensenweb.net\/nordicnature\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dolly.jorgensenweb.net\/nordicnature\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dolly.jorgensenweb.net\/nordicnature\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}