The past thirty years have witnessed a radical shift in European politics, as new far-right wing parties have entered national parliaments. Driven by discontent, fear and the notion of cultural struggle, they have gradually come to twist the political conversation around their core issues. For many far-right parties, cultural heritage is one such issue. While this ought to put them on the radar of scholars studying heritage politics, the topic of far-right heritage policy remains largely unexplored. This article seeks to ignite this field of enquiry by taking a closer look at what far-right heritage policies actually look like. Focus is set on three Scandinavian far-right parties with seats in national parliaments: The Danish People's Party, the Progress Party in Norway, and the Sweden Democrats. By examining the notion of heritage put forth in their party manifestos and the heritage priorities expressed in their parliamentary budget proposals, we consider the weight of their rhetoric.

Heritage sites and their stewards have been part of the project of European integration since the 1970s. Countless actions involving conservation, research and public outreach has been granted EU funding based on the ‘European significance’ of monuments and sites or the ‘European added value’ of project activities. This article argues that out of the long relationship between EU cultural politics and the domain of tangible heritage, there has grown a parallel approach to European belonging. By tracing acts of Europe-making in political statements used to justify financial support, and discussing their effect on co-funded archaeological projects, a Janus-face is identified. One side places authority in the past, articulating a European commonality through site characteristics or time periods. The other places authority in the present, promoting a more flexible understanding of heritage. Since the EU has increasingly (and unwillingly) come to share the rhetorical figure of ‘European heritage’ with anti-immigration groups calling for solidarity among ‘native Europeans’, the question of which side takes precedence is of great consequence.

Archaeological fieldwork is no longer what it used to be. Over the last decades archaeologists have begun to "study up". Approaching regional, national and international heritage regimes, they have empirically scrutinized how institutions and people in positions of influence shape what will count as "our common past" tomorrow. This has paved the way for a deeper and more nuanced understanding of contemporary heritage governance. It has also meant stepping onto a minefield of ethical and methodological challenges that archaeologists are often unprepared for. In this article we address some of the points and pitfalls of investigating international heritage regimes, starting from our own experiences studying UNESCO and the EU and putting them in conversation with the experiences of other scholars studying up. By reflecting on the reasons for studying up, and discussing the hands-on challenges of access, anonymity, and research reception, we aim to promote a stronger and more transparent tradition of studying up in archaeology.

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The kind of liberal and open-minded society on which most academics rely to freely conduct their research is increasingly under threat, even within democratic societies of long standing. The past is by no means neutral in this, whether this be the then American president threatening to attack the antiquities of Iran in early 2020 (a war crime if carried out), or a right-ofcentre UK politician using a prehistoric henge monument to argue that Britain's future should lie outside the European Union (Brophy, 2019). These kinds of developments are generally described as 'populist', a term that refers to the simplification of complex problems and appeals to broad sectors of the population. Here, we follow Müller (2016: 3-4) in arguing that 'populism' also implies exclusionary and polarizing identity politics in which difference and dissent are treated as moral failings rather than questions for compromise.