Excavating War and Idleness: The Case of Sværholt

Thorny Past

“…In archaeological WWII contexts, they are almost ubiquitous. They remain in many different ways, from short cut-offs found in middens, like in the garbage heaps by the POW-camp at Svaerholt (Grabowski et al 2014;Olsen and Witmore 2014), still bundled up in rolls as they were shipped from the factory, to still standing fences around fortifications and storage camps (Farstadvoll, Figenschau and Olsen 2020). Most of the barbed wire I have encountered during my surveys and fieldwork on WWII sites in Norway is, in several ways, uncollectable.…”

“…Most places in southern Norway and sites close to population centres have been sanitized, but there are many examples that this is not finished. For instance, in the Luftwaffe storage camp at Gjøkåsen in the Paččjokk/Pasvik river valley, an archaeological survey documented distinct traces of this in-completeness (see Farstadvoll, Figenschau and Olsen 2020). Most of the camps' fencing has been removed, except for some short sections along the eastern edge.…”