A “DOMESTIC” HISTORY ABOUT THE DANISH-SOMALIS AT A MUSEUM IN ÅRHUS May 5, 2017 By Marco Zoppi Societies ineluctably transform themselves through the natural course of time, and during this development some of their elements of heritage, whether vested in culture or articulated in other facies of human experience, are modified to meet the requirements of practice and of lived empirical contexts. And precisely there, where the most sophisticated instruments for the narration of the past exist, we may expect that initiatives aiming at representing bygone times in new forms can be a particularly interesting and challenging process. Even more so, when the past is strictly connected to current questions of identity and belonging. Namely, when the past in question contributes in reminding us about who we are. The Danish Museum Den Gamle By (The Old Town) has recently provided a privileged setting to reflect on the relation between the representation of the past and its interpretation in the present. Located in Århus, Denmark’s second largest city, Den Gamle By is an open-air museum within which visitors can walk around and inside dozens of historic houses, which display examples of urban history and culture through decades of Danish history. Along their walk, visitors may meet a number of role players dressed in historical costumes and horse-drawn carriages. Evocative glimpses of the life that was, from pre-1900s to the most recent decades of the 1900s, which attract up to 500,000 visitors per year. On March 2016, the Museum added yet another exhibition to its fascinating set of cultural activities: “Et somalisk hjem” (A Somali home). As the name suggests, the exhibition consists of the recreation of a Somali domestic space in Denmark. For someone doing research on the Somali diaspora in Scandinavian countries, that was a very attractive lieu to drop by. During my first visit, back in December 2015, I had the opportunity to chat with part of the organizing team, just few months before the opening. In April this year, I have interviewed again Danielle Guldman Sekwati, project coordinator with extensive experience in matters of inclusiveness. What follows below are excerpts from our conversation. A Somali Home: the exhibition The story of the exhibition starts few kilometres away from the museum, in Gellerup: a neighbourhood with a high percentage of people with different cultural backgrounds, including Somalis. There, an outreach project held by the Museum initiated the interest of a group of Somali An evocative view of Den Gamle By. Photo: Marco Zoppi