Keywords

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Suomenlinna Fortress near Helsinki, Wikimedia, released under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic licence

Introduction: Interconnected Cultural Frontiers

Cultural heritage and its management in coastal landscapes can vary greatly from one area to the next, but throughout Europe several key issues and challenges recur. In this chapter, I argue that coastal regions in Europe could manage their heritage resources more efficiently by exchanging expertise and experience, taking each site’s regional, spatial, and historical characteristics into account, while not losing sight of their many contemporary economic, social, cultural, and ecological challenges. I address four of these issues: interconnected cultural frontiers; the common challenges of coast-specific heritage; the threats and opportunities of coastal tourism; and the effects of ecological changes on cultural heritage. Each of them is illustrated by an example from one of the European coastal regions. Finally, I consider the roles that coastal heritage plays in the historiography of regions and nations, and how that affects the ways in which the coastal past is remembered, preserved, and redeveloped.

Coastal regions have one important trait in common that has shaped their cultural heritage: they are accessible by boat. Throughout history, travel by boat was less difficult or hazardous than travel across land. Boats often connected places along coastlines and across seas with intensive trade, an exchange of goods that was also an exchange of people, skills, cultural values, ideas, fashions, and, less happily, diseases.

Today, popular culture and the humanities usually depict and imagine the sea from the land, and many coastal communities have changed from a seafaring economy to economies based on tourism or agriculture. When working on heritage management in coastal landscapes, it is important to be aware of this mainly terrestrial view of the coast, which can create a bias in understanding coastal landscapes (Gillis 2012). They consist of both land and sea, and for a long time, the sea has provided easier opportunities for travel, exchange, and cultural interconnectedness. In many cases, these historical connections can tie regions together, though they shift and change continuously.

As travel by land and air has become more convenient than travel by boat, it is easy to forget that port cities were closer to each other by water than places that could only be reached by land. Bergen in Norway was closer to Ipswich than York, which today is only a 340-kilometre trip by road (Pye 2014, p. 48). Jutland would have been quicker to reach from Ipswich than London. And most often the journey by sea was safer than by land. When we look at the land from the sea, our perception of periphery and centre changes. We see seas not as peripheries, but as nodes of culture, innovation, and exchange (Braudel 1949; Broodbank 2013; Horden and Purcell 2000).

A good example of how the sea has historically connected coastal communities is the town of Lekeitio in Basque country (Fig. 1). Although most inhabitants live as farmers, turning their backs to the sea, some have specialized in whale hunting since the early Middle Ages, when they were known to trade whale meat throughout Europe. They probably learned their shipbuilding techniques from Vikings, and hunted for whales as far as Greenland, Canada, and the Faroes (Borja and Collins 2004; Scribano-Ruiz and Azkarate 2015). Basque whale hunters are said to be the first to undertake whaling as a large, commercial activity, dominating the market until the late sixteenth century. In 1507, the town included the whale in its coat of arms, underlining its economic and political importance (Aguilar 1981). Basque sailors taught the Dutch, Danish, and English how to hunt whales (Du Pasquier 2000, pp. 83–91).

Fig. 1
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Photograph by author; released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Licence

Coat of arms of the historic whalers’ town of Ondarroa, Basque Country.

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Although the Basques were frontrunners in economically exploiting whaling, this heritage is shared by many other areas on the Atlantic coast, such as Norway, the Netherlands, and France. Moreover, the Dutch, Danish, and English turned around and pushed the Basques out of the market over the course of the seventeenth century (Du Pasquier 2000, pp. 83–91). Whaling heritage can also be found on the Dutch island of Ameland, where giant whale jawbones marked the boundary between domestic and agricultural premises.

Such cultural interconnections can be found between port cities, ‘faraway mirrors’ of each other, sharing traits rather than exact forms or patterns (Hein 2012, p. 24). Port cities, particularly their waterfronts, have been shaped by port activities that changed dramatically over centuries with technological advances in shipbuilding and harbour construction. The shift from sailing to steam and the move to containerization demanded that cities enlarge ports and deepen waterways. Rotterdam, Antwerp, and Hull, among others, moved port activities out of the city altogether, closer to the sea. Meanwhile, trading companies that operated worldwide developed urban harbour areas for post-industrial functions like tourism and company headquarters, a new phase of similarity and connection between port cities across the globe (Hein 2012, p. 24).

Port cities have long been associated with fears of external influences and diseases from places beyond the seas. Port cities also had (and still have) a not entirely unjustified reputation of extreme and exuberant cultures of hard drinking, prostitution, criminality, and generally loose social morals (Beaven et al. 2016, pp. 1–10). In other words, their reputations as sites of intensive exchange of goods, people, and ideas magnified both the up- and downsides of their connections to other places in the world.

Existing academic research provides a solid basis for grasping the intertwined history of coastal areas, although it focuses on economic and urban aspects. Port cities have received scholarly attention from (urban) historians, who have explored economic interconnectedness—networks, exchange, and flows—mainly between cities in Europe and on the transatlantic coasts. To some extent, they have also attended to the local specificity of many of the places involved (Land 2016). But naval aspects of port cities and cultural relationships to the hinterland have been somewhat overlooked (Beaven et al. 2016, pp. 1–10).

Historically as well as today, naval and mercantile port cities are often nationally prestigious, with military and economic importance, and could thus count on scholarly attention. Yet, the historical interconnectedness via the sea went beyond the cities where the ships docked. In many ways, the hinterlands were also transformed by the opportunities for trade that the ports offered. Inland transport systems developed to bring goods from overseas and export local produce. The demand for supplies for shipping and for raw materials for boat construction influenced the organization of inland trade, agriculture, and industrial production. So even peripheral coastal landscapes often show many traces of interconnectedness with seafaring and areas elsewhere in the world.

This historical interconnectedness of port cities and their surrounding areas—whether the shared characteristics of port cities or the mutual transformations of their hinterlands—means that they have similar and interconnected cultural heritage, and makes it all the more useful for coastal regions to work together to manage that heritage.

Coastal Heritage: Common Heritage, Common Challenges

Due to their comparable functions as places of cultural interaction, trade, fishery, migration, and tourism, coastal regions show many similarities in heritage. What first comes to mind are the lighthouses on many European coasts, but many other heritage structures could be mentioned. Therefore, to a certain extent, the challenges in preservation and development are comparable. Neither trying to be complete, nor disregarding the complexity and differences between coastal regions in Europe, some common characteristics can be highlighted.

Coastal capitals and large port cities like Sydney, Rotterdam, Shanghai, London, Oslo, and Amsterdam have dealt with drastic changes in shipbuilding industries in the past decades, and those changes have registered in the design and locations of their harbours, waterfronts, and wharfs. In many cases, ports have left central districts altogether, leaving historically distinctive sites and their cultural heritage for cities to manage. Commercial docklands did not prove resilient to technological changes in shipbuilding—which are ongoing—and became redundant (Pinder 2003). Similarly, inner-city ports were abandoned when their size and facilities did not keep up with developments in trade, shipping, and shipbuilding. Companies have in most cases relocated shipbuilding and port activities outside the historic centre, as in Rotterdam, Antwerp, and Hull. As a consequence, those cities have lost their direct relationship to their port, and shipping is no longer a visible and tangible aspect of urban life. Meanwhile, companies mechanized loading and other shipment processes, so fewer people worked or lived in harbour areas. (Some harbour cities, such as Kristiansand in Norway, still host harbour activities in their historic locations close to their centres, but struggle with the expansion in capacity that competitive harbours demand.) In response to these changes, many cities turned their large-scale wharfs and historic harbour districts into trendy business and leisure quarters, which profit from the presence of the waterfront and the proximity to a city’s historic centre. Iconic examples are legion, mainly in large (former), harbour cities, which often lie far inland.

A first scenario for wharfs that become disused in smaller towns is that they disappear before they become regarded as heritage. In coastal areas that are now peripheral, smaller wharfs are often more isolated than in metropolitan areas, where wharfs are an integral part of large harbour complexes; valuing, preserving, and finding new uses for this historic landscape is a completely different challenge. Moreover, stakeholders, investors, and other social support are much scarcer and more scattered than those working to manage landmarks in harbour metropolises. The wharfs of the European Commission on the Danube in the Romanian town of Sulina, for example, are regarded as heritage on paper, and policymakers consider them to be an integral part of Sulina’s town structure. Their policy allows new cultural functions to be housed in the wharfs. But it seems that the current owner has no intention of preserving the complex from ruin, and no one has set out rehabilitate the decaying structures. And they are no longer part of the daily life of the town’s citizens. Hopes are set on European collaboration, but it is feared that decay will come sooner than funding.

Some small-scale wharfs have been saved and given new functions and meanings, mainly in cases where initiatives have started from the bottom up by citizens. These often tap into history and count on tourists as their clientele. Re-using the old structures and stories of a wharf to attract paying customers, a town can make both its distinctive heritage and its connection to both land and sea visible. Not far from Ondarroa, in Pasai San Pedro, Spain, the once-shuttered Askorreta shipyard has been re-used for building ships since 2014, under the name Albaola. The yard now builds, exhibits, and demonstrates replicas of the historical boats that once sailed out from this port. Tapping into the famous whale-hunting history of the Basques, Albaola workers are now reconstructing the San Juan, a whaling ship that sank in Red Bay in what is now Canada in 1565. The wharf doubles as a museum and receives some 50.000 visitors per year. Lekuona Architects provided the design for the prizewinning transformation of the disused wharf to a visitor centre and historical boats workshop, which uses regional wood and pallets (Premios Egurtek 2016).

Coastal tourism has changed Europe’s coastal landscapes to various degrees and is itself a complex part of their cultural heritage. In the seventeenth century, it was fashionable for the English aristocracy and upper classes to drink seawater and bathe in the cold sea to cure many different ailments (Lenček and Bosker 1998). With the development of the railways, the seaside became a mass-tourism destination, in which people regarded sunbathing on the beach and swimming in the sea as pleasurable pastimes. One could argue that the history of the beach is in many ways illustrative of shifts in cultural values of leisure, gender, health, race, eroticism, and the body in general. Even as people newly engaged with the sea, however, the discovery of the beach as a place of leisure alienated them from the sea as a ‘common cultural ground’ (Dettingmeijer 1996)—workers and locals having very different experiences than visiting tourists. Typical coastal resort towns developed in a T-shaped morphology: buildings concentrated along an access road running inland from the coast, intersecting with a commercial stretch along the beach, often along a boulevard (Barrett 1958; Pigram 1977), that included facilities such as a grand hotel, an arcade, a railway station, and in some cases also a pier. Coastal landscapes were newly dotted with vacation parks, beach resorts, amusement parks, and all the infrastructure and facilities that modern tourism demanded. As the popularity of destinations in the Mediterranean and further away rose, that of older coastal resorts declined, particularly in England. Scholars study the tourism area life cycle model (Butler 1980) to understand the pattern of growth, peak, and decline. In England, ruined sites of early seaside tourism are now being regarded as heritage. Scholars and practitioners are gathering in knowledge networks to integrate this heritage of leisure into the revitalization of run-down coastal towns.Footnote 1

In contrast, in continental Europe, it seems that the modernist architecture of the coastal resort is only sometimes admired, as in post-Tito Adriatic coast (Beyer et al. 2013). This means that an important part of the recent history of coastal landscapes is no longer recognizable. Many coastal regions in Europe are affected by the ebb and flow of the popularity of coastal tourism. They share challenges of how to deal with the ‘ruins of leisure’, especially when large-scale urban revitalization projects are on the table. Regions can exchange strategies and approaches for validating, preserving, re-using, rehabilitating, and redeveloping this type of heritage that is so characteristic of the coast. Even at the level of policymaking, such exchanges could be invaluable: one town might be able to pass along information on how to improve heritage policies; another might convey how to create a careful decision-making process.

A good example of a ruin and resurrection of a leisure site is the Tinside waterfront lido in Plymouth, England. Designed by architect John Wibberley in 1935, it has a semi-circular bath with a diameter of 55 metres that protrudes into the sea (Fig. 2). Car parking is provided on the coastal road; from there, visitors descend to the boldly designed changing rooms and the pool. During the Second World War, its distinctive and recognizable shape is said to have made it a landmark for pilots of German bomber planes. After years of neglect, the pool was closed to the public in 1992. In the years after, a large public campaign was held to save the complex from further decay, and in 1998 it won protection as a Grade II Listed Building; this paved the way for restoring and re-opening it in 2005.

Fig. 2
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Photograph by Lewis Clarke, Wikimedia Commons ShareAlike 2.0 Generic

Plymouth’s Tinside Lido.

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Coastlines have not only been places of friendly contact between travellers and locals, but also of sites of hostilities. Along Europe’s shores, traces of war from various eras still dominate the landscape. In many cases, defence structures and landscapes of trauma cross current-day national and regional borders. Heritage experts see themselves balancing various interpretations of the past—that of heroes and perpetrators, winners and losers, survivors and victims. Moreover, their role is shifting, as the arena in which war memories are shaped and passed on is more multi-vocal and dynamic than ever before. Sharing knowledge with fellow experts can be highly valuable in balancing these conflicting appropriations of the past and in negotiating often fiery discussions on authenticity—better equipping these experts to engage in societal discourse on war heritage. For example, it was fiercely debated whether or not it is ethically appropriate to don Nazi uniforms in live re-enactments of battles from the Second World War. ‘Playing a Nazi’ is the same as waving away the ideology and horrors of the regime, journalist Joshua Green and historian Andria Orzoff argue in The Atlantic (13 October 2010). Others emotionally defend these re-enactment practices for their educational value. Moreover, in managing the heritage of conflict more generally, international cooperation is highly valuable and can lead museums to incorporate multiple perspectives on the past in presentations. Preservation of heritage defence structures that cross-borders would benefit from conversations between local and regional experts, who have worked on their respective parts of its heritage. They can find support from the International Scientific Committee on Fortifications and Military Heritage that assists UNESCO in advising on how the heritage of conflict can be approached and re-used.

A particularly well-known remnant of conflict and current site of narrative controversy is the Atlantic Wall (Fig. 3), an immense fortification system along Europe’s continental North Sea and Atlantic coasts. It was built by German forces to halt a potential attack from the West during the Second World War (Rolf and Eckelkamp 1983). They moved buildings to make room for it: in some places, such as Den Helder, IJmuiden, and Hellevoetsluis in the Netherlands, the German occupiers and their Dutch collaborators demolished parts of historic centres, and in others, such as Petten, they erased entire villages. They also tore down points of orientation such as towers and evacuated citizens on a large scale (Bosma 2006). Today, traces of this extensive structure are still visible along European coastlines (Zaloga and Hook 2009). Each country and region approaches its interpretation, preservation, presentation, and commemoration in its own ways. But historical understanding and inventory of the entire structure are still missing (Beek, N.D.), and the Wall’s overarching programme and strategy remain out of sight. It is very difficult for the interested visitor to experience the unity of this historic structure. This large heritage structure exemplifies the interconnectedness of coastal regions. The visitor understanding of the Atlantic Wall remnants would greatly improve if local experts from all its parts would work together in telling stories that bind the local to its vastness.

Fig. 3
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Photograph by Michel Wal. GNU Free Documentation Licence

Remains of the Atlantik Wall in Audinghen, France.

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The Threats and Opportunities of Coastal Tourism

Cultural and natural heritage form an important factor in the attractiveness of regions to tourists. Whereas the imprints of early tourism on coastal landscapes slowly become regarded as heritage, present-day effects of mass tourism are perceived as a threat to heritage (Bourdeau et al. 2015). In coastal areas where mass tourism has matured and stagnated, such as the Costa Brava in Spain, rejuvenation projects are now challenging heritage landscapes (Sardá et al. 2005). In other places, emerging tourism puts pressure on the cultural and natural environment of the coast, with water pollution, waste, and extensive new coastal resorts (hotels, golf courses, entertainment areas, and air strips). Dependence on the car as a mode of transport creates major sustainability issues, as in Southwest England: along with high emissions of CO2, cars often mean that planners widen roads and site car parks in fragile heritage environments (Howard and Pinder 2003).

On the other hand, it is often assumed that new tourism can also be beneficial, as it can generate employment and new income for local populations, and some coastal regions are pursuing sustainable tourism. Sustainable tourism can mean many things: one aspect is matching demand with offers at tourist destinations, so that destinations can be managed in more sustainable ways. And sustainable tourism and preservation have several values in common. They both aim to maintain the integrity and authenticity of places for future generations, increase intercultural understanding and respect, involve stakeholders, protect the environment, and stimulate holistic management that keep the long term in consideration (Brantom 2015).

Heritage tourism is the fastest-growing niche of the tourism industry (Timothy 2011), in line with a growing demand for authentic, unique, and engaged experiences (Egberts and Bosma 2014). Indeed, the tourism industry in coastal regions is in a process of restructuring (Agarwal 2002). Researchers predict the obsolescence of the typical vacations of sun, sand, and surf with a homogenous offer (Lacher et al. 2013). Coastal tourists appreciate local character and heritage, in particular culinary experiences (Lacher et al. 2013). Deliberately integrating heritage and culinary assets in tourist offers can be an important aspect of sustainable tourism (Lacher et al. 2013).

Theoretically, then, sustainable tourism and historical preservation can work well together. But the development of small-scale tourism might not be as economically sustainable for coastal regions as it seems. It can lead to over-supply of accommodation outside the main tourist season, and new businesses often employ low-wage workers from other parts of the world rather than locals. Although seasonal and migrant work is inherently part of coastal histories, it presently does not secure local economies for longer periods of time (Howard and Pinder 2003).

It is partially the task and responsibility of regional policy makers to balance the positive and negative effects of tourism on heritage in coastal landscapes. Exchanging knowledge between regions on building strategies in which local industries and the tourism offer reinforce each other can make a crucial difference.

In order to anticipate and manage the dual impact of tourism on coastal heritage—as a threat as well as an opportunity for development—coastal regions are undertaking action to find a balance between the two. Particularly in the field of World Heritage, exemplary initiatives have been taken in the recent past (Westrik 2015), not least because UNESCO demands detailed management plans and monitoring of sites.

For example, the fortress of Suomenlinna in Finland, listed since 1991, is an irregularly shaped bastion fortification that has a rich and conflicted history that recounts Swedish, Russian, and Finnish governance (Fig. 4). With its 8 million annual visitors, Suomenlinna is one of the most popular tourist sites of Finland, particularly in summer. One of the threats posed by tourism, specifically the number of visitors, is erosion, mainly of the ramparts and fortification. The conservation of the fortress conflicts with its accessibility to tourists, whose presence is resented by local citizens. Therefore, an analysis of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats was made, leading to a strategy to address problems and strengthen positive qualities. At the core of the strategy is the idea that Suomenlinna is meant to be a living World Heritage Site. Therefore, tourism revenues are now used to benefit the preservation of the site and accessibility during winter is improved to generate income for local entrepreneurs all year round (A Sustainable Tourism Strategy 2015).

Fig. 4
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Photograph by Michal Pise. Wikimedia Commons ShareAlike 2.0 Generic

Suomenlinna Fortress with Helsinki on the horizon.

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Cultural Heritage and Ecology

Caring for cultural heritage in coastal regions does not always go hand in hand with the preservation of nature. In both academic research and policy, there is a dichotomy between the worlds of natural and cultural heritage preservation: world heritage sites, for example, are divided into natural and cultural categories, managed by IUCN and ICOMOS, respectively. This leads to many unwanted side effects for both, as important values remain out of sight in decision-making processes and protection schemes. Some argue that the making the holistic concept landscape central to heritage management could contribute to overcoming divides, as it can include natural and cultural values, as well as a strong political and social dimension (Krauss 2015; Egberts 2018).

It is evident to all that coastal heritage is particularly vulnerable to climate change. Climate change concerns heritage specialists of both categories, particularly in coastal areas. Relative sea level rising and changing weather conditions challenge all preservation schemes. In some cases, the effects of erosion are so dramatic that no other strategies can be developed apart from managed decay and retreat, as is the case on England’s Jurassic Coast (Howard and Pinder 2003). But sometimes the measures that are taken to prevent flooding can damage historical landscapes (Heimann 2016), and policies that are primarily aimed at preserving biospheres and natural characteristics of coastal landscapes, or stimulating regenerative energy, can also jeopardize heritage values. Experts from various sectors in several countries across Europe perceive the impact of climate change on coastal areas differently; local narratives of identity and heritage influence public perception and thus also political decision-making (Heimann and Mahlkow 2012).

Consider for example the Dutch Wadden Sea Area, part of the trilateral UNESCO World Heritage Site for its geological and natural values. Here the official focus on natural aspects of the site’s heritage obscures the importance of its cultural heritage. This results in awkward spatial planning interventions that have negative impacts on the cultural landscape of this coastal region, even when the motivation of these measures are to increase sustainability. One example is the development of a solar park, the largest in the Netherlands, on the Island of Ameland. As the island’s municipality seeks to be self-supporting in terms of energy, it has installed 23,000 solar panels and constructed an earthen wall several metres high to hide the panels from view. This wall now crosses the middle of the open landscape between the villages of Hollum and Ballum, obscuring the otherwise open horizon from the sea dike in the south to the dunes in the north. Moreover, the installation detracts from the historical land organization around Ballum, which was in 1916 the first Dutch agricultural area formed by re-parcellation, that is by combining many small properties into larger meadows or fields (Schroor 2000). The solar panel installation therefore jeopardizes the spatial quality of the island, its good beaches, beautiful sea views, and small-scale, even intimate agricultural landscape (Egberts 2016).

Conclusion: Marginalized Pasts in Heritage Preservation?

Can any underlying patterns be discerned in which historic remains of coastal cultures are regarded as heritage? If so, by whom? These issues might not directly address the daily management of heritage, but are essential for understanding the place of coastal heritage in an inter-regional and international perspective.

Heritage refers to those aspects of the past that people give a place in the present. They do so selectively, often in line with what Laurajane Smith calls Authorised Heritage Discourses (2006). These discourses legitimize which parts of the past are remembered and which are forgotten. This often happens in a context of national identity politics, and heritage is therefore dominated by national interpretations of the past. Political scientist and historian Benedict Anderson (1982) argued that nation states form their identity by selectively using elements of their community’s character. Particularly since the nineteenth century, cultural and historical elements were chosen to reinforce the sense of community of a country’s inhabitants: places, stories, and symbols mark common aspects within the group and make claims about how a nation differs from others. Regional identity narratives are often shaped in similar ways, although levels of institutionalization vary from one region to another (Paasi 1986). The process of selection from the past often follows a distinct pattern, in which it is decided what parts of the past are useful for regional and national identity construction and which should be left out (Egberts 2017).

As some of the above examples suggest, coastal heritage is not necessarily part of these nationally authorized heritage discourses (Hundstad 2014). Western European countries like France, Great Britain, Norway, Denmark, Belgium, Sweden, and the Netherlands saw the foundation of museums of national histories in the eighteenth and mostly nineteenth centuries, and of more specialized national maritime and naval museums from the 1910s onwards.Footnote 2 Historically, coastal towns and villages often had more cosmopolitan characters than inland areas, making them less suitable as starting points for inventing traditions (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983) in a national context. Anthropologist Eriksen (2004) describes the fashion sense in a coastal town near Oslo as significantly European and urban during his youth in the 1970s. Hundstad (2014) argues that Norwegian historians and museum professionals noticed a ‘coastal culture’ in the 1970s, and that their new interest in the histories of sailors, fishermen, and beachcombers was part of a larger movement in research towards democratization and anti-elitism. Similarly, other European countries expressed a new interest in the vernacular past that Sharon MacDonald calls ‘the memory phenomenon’ (2013). The popularization of coastal livelihood is, for example, illustrated by the famous Dutch TV-series Sil de strandjutter (‘Sil, the Beachcomber’) from 1976, that narrates how a beachcomber finds a shipwrecked girl from Sweden on the shore of the island Terschelling.

Another explanation for the emerging interest in coastal heritage is that things become regarded as heritage once a sense of loss is felt (Hewison 1987). The industrialization and mechanization of fisheries, shipping, navigation, and port activities have ended longstanding patterns of work, housing, and spatial use, directly contributing to a general sense of wanting to hold on to coastal cultures about to be lost for good. This was one of the incentives for the foundation of museums, including the local museum ‘t Fiskerhuuske in Moddergat, the Netherlands in 1965; the Fisheries and Maritime Museum in Esbjerg, Denmark in 1962; the Scottish Fishery Museum in Ansruther, Scotland in 1976; and the Naval Museum in San Sebastian, Spain in 1991.

These tendencies are interconnected with emerging coastal tourism at the same time, which can be understood as the recreationalization of the coast: the change from use of coast for production (fish, trade) to a conception of the coast for its symbolic values such as heritage, leisure, and nature (Byskov 2007). Coastal regions put the everyday life of fishermen, sailors, lighthouse keepers, and pilots on display. By founding a museum and collecting and displaying objects of an everyday life that is about to be lost, professionals and local communities disconnect them from their former use and meanings, sacralising them and using them to stabilize social relationships (Macdonald 2013, p. 148). New museums mark a sense of belonging to the coast (Ballinger 2006). As museums in general express a sense of status and community, it becomes understandable that the musealization of everyday life has more intensively manifested itself in areas like the coasts that once played a central role but then were regarded as marginal in the late capitalist era (Macdonald 2013, p. 160).

Further academic research is needed to bring to light the patterns behind this appropriation of the work of the coastal past in various parts in Europe. The concrete and strategic insights of such an investigation could in turn be highly informative for heritage managers and policymakers in coastal regions.