Nordic Heritage Museum

There are a lot of Scandinavian Americans in Washington State, or Nordic Americans if one wants to be sure to be inclusive of Icelanders and Finns also. This is of course why I have my job at the Scandinavian Cultural Center at Pacific Lutheran University.

Another Washington based Scandinavian museum is the Nordic Heritage Museum in Seattle, which is  looking to expand into a whole big new designer facility in a downtown tourist district. They've been working on it since 2005 at least, and now things are finally getting critical, with the lease on their current building about to expire in 2018. I've been doing some light consulting with them since 2006, and just a few days ago gave them names of some scholars I thought they should contact to flesh out the medieval history and Nordic identity sections of the exhibition. I hope my suggestion proves helpful.

Life is full of interesting challenges, and I always seem to be happiest when I've got some project I'm working on, and can see that I am making some headway, having some impact, making some difference. I certainly hope that my small suggestions for the Nordic Heritage Museum are of some benefit and that others lend a hand to make it happen. But we'll see, they still have a lot of fundraising to do, and a short period of time in which to do it.

There is nothing worse than letting hard work and good opportunities wither and die, especially since all it sometimes takes to change the world is just a few well-timed conversations.

I think it would be a good thing for the entire Nordic-American population in Washington, and in the U.S., to have a well-thought out, professional museum in a major metropolitan city able to represent their history, heritage, and culture in a way that makes sense to the rest of the world.

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