Intersecting heritage, milieu and environment. The concept of Nordic museology in the early 1990s

In this study, I investigate the concept of Nordic museology in the early 1990s. Per-Uno Ågren’s programmatic article about museology and cultural heritage, published in 1993 in the first ever issue of the journal Nordic Museology, is the point of departure for my historiographic investigation. Ågren’s article is firstly contextualized within the international museological discourse of the 1980s and early 1990s, secondly within a late twentieth-century idea milieu in Umeå where curators and researchers received, revised, shaped and used a variety of concepts and practices. The key concepts include traditional museology, new museology, museum studies and heritology as well as idea milieu and life milieu, total heritage, environmental heritage, idea heritage, cultural heritage and natural heritage. What were the specifics of Ågren’s concepts of museology and cultural heritage in relation to the adjacent concepts in the international museological discourse and the idea milieu in Umeå? How did Ågren and his colleagues formulate the concept of Nordic museology?