Lesley Riddoch: Museum's attitude to culture is just antiquated

Published on Sunday 29 March 2009 23:30

OUTSIDE the British Museum, I sat down and wept. Inside, abandoned, alone and out of context, were tiny figures that should have been elsewhere.

Not the Lewis chessmen – whose temporary loan to Scotland this Homecoming Year should self-evidently be followed by a permanent exhibition in Uig, Lewis – but virtually every other artefact, statue, portrait, rug, column and facade on display.

So little of British origin resides in a building that could be renamed The Grand Theft Museum that potent symbols of foreign cultures – like the Elgin Marbles – predominate.

Half of Middle-Eastern antiquity sits inside for the delectation of school groups, academics and Mediterranean tourists who flock to the fabulous, lofty and overwhelming building for access to their own past and culture.

Sadly, I discovered, I'm not sufficiently well-educated to understand the significance of the museum's prize exhibits. Why should I be? They are not part of northern culture. Walking about for an hour, I didn't encounter a single item that spoke directly to me about my life. So I asked directions to the Lewis chessmen – upstairs and through three rooms exhibiting clocks, the 82 chess pieces sit in a space that is dingy and unimaginative. The cabinet's text captures none of the drama of their discovery, speculates little on their creation, and ponders no aspect of their use aboard a Viking longboat.

That, of course, is the British way. Onlookers should know these things and be able to bring the whole absent context of a vast seafaring Norse empire to mind as they stare at these solemn yet agitated little walrus ivory chessmen.

Instead, their sole interest to the kids who came past was their appearance in a Harry Potter film. Soon, memory of that film will fade, the three rooms of clocks, springs, dials, alarms, cogs and wheels will once again captivate and exhaust the attention of allcomers and the chessmen, flanked by fragments of Britain's early heritage, will return to relative obscurity.

Leaving the building, I was exhausted and angry. It's quite right that the so-called British Museum and Burrell Collection and other collections of largely foreign artefacts should have to justify their existence these days. They are stuffed to overflowing with prized ex-possessions of other people's cultures. What does that say to them – and us?

It says that ancient Mediterranean cultures matter more than ours, that artefacts from those distant lands have more value for London-based specialists than for the modern people of those cultures.

Neither position is even vaguely sustainable. Yet I'll grant you there are difficulties – as always – changing the status quo.

Why should the chessmen come to Scotland? Made in Norway, en route to Ireland, their discovery in the sands of Uig Bay was the result of an accident – and that's precisely what has made them so special.

Uig is a west coast settlement isolated even from the rest of mainland Lewis where folklore and ceilidh culture thrived. The people of Uig wove tales around the chessmen and it was this that created much of their pulling power. Not the dry fact of their origin, destination or (heavily disputed) ownership, but the years of story-telling based on centuries of Viking occupation. The Vikings so completely colonised Lewis that the Outer Hebrides in Gaelic still means "Islands of the Strangers" – thus named by fearful mainland Gaels.

The Vikings went further south too. England's King Canute was born Knut (a Dane) and became a powerful military and political figure in medieval Europe.

Perhaps the British Museum might devote a few rooms to the massive impact Viking culture had on British life – and the creation of the modern English language. Steady. The British Museum has far better things to be doing than exploring the fascinating cross-currents of people and outlooks that make us who we are today.

And of course, it is just one museum among many. Doubtless artefacts, context and indigenous British history exist aplenty in other southern vaulted chambers. Why then have the chessmen been plucked from that surround? Too special for context? Too important to be held back by the wispy, thread-like connections of time, people, stories and human value? Too big for the small, tawdry worlds whence they came?

So do the Norwegians want them back? Apparently not. Ivory-carved chessmen are not ten a penny in Norway, but Norwegian museums are already overflowing with exhibits of their own history. They faced no dilemma about which culture to showcase – and since the Vikings built in wood, they had far less to work with than the stone-building Britons. Thus, their award-winning museums are full of ingenious ways to magnify the story of Nordic culture from one or two special objects.

The prize exhibit in Tromso Museum is a tiny piece of birch bark tar, used in the Neolithic era as chewing gum to combat dental infections – and there, beneath a magnifying glass, are the tiny teeth marks of a Stone Age child. From that single two-inch exhibit, the museum builds up a vivid picture of early life – with a TV Stone Age Weather report, and a challenge to try and start fires with Neolithic tools.

The town's Polar Museum is one of the world's worst, according to Lonely Planet, thanks to its vivid celebration of Arctic hunting culture. But controversial and confident, it continues to be the popular visitor attraction in the Far North.

Norway has 800 museums. Britain has 2500. This means Norwegians have a top-class, local museum for every 6000 people. The British have a rickety, unheated, badly converted schoolhouse for every 20,000.

In our greed, we have ignored our own stories.

No wonder the mocking Lewis chessmen are standing biting their shields.