A couple weeks ago I met with Darrell Henning, the former director of the Vesterheim Norwegian-American Museum in Decorah, IA. He graciously gave me many resources on Norwegian-American architecture and Norwegian building customs in Norway to help me conduct further research. Many of the resources are in Norwegian or have Norwegian titles, which today, I am translating into English. This took me down a rabbit hole and I stumbled upon this economic report on the willingness to pay to live in a house with cultural heritage characteristics. This topic is of special interest to me as I hope to work in a rural area in the future and focus on preserving and designing culturally relevant architecture. So, I thought I’d share this to spread the word on the impact of cultural heritage in the built environment around us.
The old warehouses in Sandviken in Bergen now house the Coastal Culture Centre and the Norwegian Museum of Fisheries. Photo: Lene Buskoven, Directorate for Cultural Heritage https://www.riksantikvaren.no/en/Topics/International-activities/International-Project-News/The-value-of-cultural-heritage
This study entitled, “THE VALUE OF CULTURAL HERITAGE AN ECONOMIC ANALYSIS OF CULTURAL HERITAGE AND CULTURAL ENVIRONMENTS” is on the website of the Directorate of Cultural Heritage of Norway or “Riksantikvaren.”
From the article, “Cost-benefit analysis are becoming increasingly important in policy making, but the value of the benefit of cultural heritage is often described qualitatively and hence not that easy to put forward along with the other arguments. It is therefore beneficial with a thorough analysis [to] identify the willingness to pay for cultural heritage and the economic impact of cultural heritage and cultural environments have on local economies in Norway.“
Follow the url to read more about their findings: https://www.riksantikvaren.no/en/Topics/International-activities/International-Project-News/The-value-of-cultural-heritage
Sharing this information is important to the furthering of cultural heritage project funding in the United States and I hope by doing so that eventually this will make its way into rural policy-making that impacts local and rural communities, especially in Minnesota.