Nordic – Baltic Seminar Opens New Ways for Cooperation Around the Baltic Sea.

The hand-over of Baltic soldiers to the Russians in 1946 – one of the most frequently discussed news events in post WW2, that are preserved in the SVT-archives. There was a great interest in old pictures and film sequences of news events around the Baltic Sea during The Baltic Audiovisual Archives Seminar in Riga. Photo: SVT-BILD

At a geography lesson during my school years, the teacher made a sweeping gesture across a map of the Baltic Sea States, pointing along the eastern coast of the Baltic sea, from Tallinn in Estonia to Rostock in East Germany.

‘This belongs to the Soviet Union, and you don’t need to learn more about it because it is a closed world, and you will probably never be able to go there’, he said.

Fortunately, he was wrong about that. When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, and Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania became independent in 1991, a new era began in European history that neither my teacher nor anybody else would have been able to predict. When the Cold War was over and the Soviet Union collapsed, cooperation and networking between the countries around the Baltic Sea suddenly became as natural as it had been between the Nordic countries.

The streets of Riga, close to the market. The building was originally a hangar for zeppelin airships, today a lively market hall. Many of the inhabitants of the town are Russians that moved to Riga during the years of Soviet occupation, and many of them are stateless after the collapse of the Soviet union. Photo: L-G Bengtsson - SVT

I have recently returned home after participating in an extremely interesting seminar in Riga, that may be the beginning of an exciting cooperation between cultural institutions and public service companies around the Baltic Sea and in North America. The participants at the seminar represented many of the major nationwide public service media and governmental archives, film archives and libraries in all the states around the Baltic Sea and in Canada.

On the one hand, there was the Nordic television and radio companies SVT, SR, NRK and YLE, and on the other hand, the Baltic radio and television companies LTV, LRT and ETV. In addition to this, there was also the national governmental film, sound and video archives, national libraries, universities and other cultural institutions from all the participating countries, working together, exchanging knowledge, experience and ideas about preservation and digitalisation of the enormous media archives within the companies and institutions. Hot topics at the seminar were:

  • Government politics for the preservation of the AV cultural heritage
  • Legal issues, copyright regulations for AV archives
  • Preservation, transfer, and management of and access to AV archives
  • Digitisation of AV archives
  • Metadata, standards
  • Latest trends and tools
  • Study and display of AV documents
  • International partnerships

The forum is named Baltic Audiovisual Archive Council, BAAC, and its main objective is to have a free exchange of experiences and to build new networks between the countries and the people in the participating organizations. Major issues are the preservation and digitalization of the enormous archives administrated by these organizations. The main purpose is to make the history and the memories of our own time accessible to future generations. The digitalization of the treasures in our archives makes it possible to access the material through the Internet, regardless of geographical, lingual and political barriers.

The Chairman of BAAC is Piret Noorhani, Head of the Estonian Cultural History Archives in Tartu, Estonia. Secretary of BAAC and host for the seminar in Riga was Nora Vojevodska, newsroom coordinator at Latvian TV. Rasa Miskinyte, Head of the Film Department at Lithuania´s Radio and TV in Vilnius, represents Lithuania as Vice President of the Board of BAAC. The other Vice President is Inga Vilcane, Head of Diena Library in Riga.

Lasse Nilsson from the Swedish Television Archives Department in Stockholm is the Swedish representative of the Board of BAAC. The other Scandinavian representative, Tedd Urnes, is from the Norwegian Radio- and Television Company, NRK. They both have a long experience from the international film and video archives organization FIAT/IFTA, and both formerly served as Secretary General for FIAT/IFTA during different periods. Another leading force on the Board is Andris Kesteris, with family ties in Balticum and working as Senior Project Manager for Film/Broadcasting, Cultural Heritage Division, Canadian Archives and Special Collections Branch. He is also the founder of the Baltic Film Festival in Canada.

The Swedish representative of the Board of BAAC, Lasse Nilsson, on the platform during the seminar. Sitting to the left is Tedd Urnes from NRK.

Photo: L-G Bengtsson - SVT

Another delegate at the meeting was Gunnel Jönsson, Head of the Swedish Radio Archives, SRF, in Stockholm and participating as representative for the Nordic branch of the international archives organization, IASA . Dan Nyquist from the Swedish Radio Phonographic Archives and Jukka Lindfors from the Finnish Broadcast Corporation Archives were also present at the seminar.

This year’s seminar was entitled: ‘Pan Baltic Images: Reaching Out to The World’. An intense desire to reach out to the world is characteristic for the Baltic States right now, as the three countries have come quite a long way on the road toward becoming modern independent European states. They are finally free from the long years of Soviet occupation and they finally have their own administration, their own infrastructure and their own national identity. Everybody is well aware of how important the international support was during the dramatic struggle for freedom. And now, cooperation and an international networking is even more important for the further development of the three Baltic states. The membership of the European Union and the new era of digital communication, especially the boundless possibilities of the Internet, are other strong forces which have a great influence on the desire to reach out to the world with the collections in the enormous archives and national libraries. Now the treasures of the archives can be accessible to everyone, regardless of time and space.

LTV in Riga. The TV-houses in Riga, Tallinn and Vilnius were the focus of the international TV news during some dramatic days in 1991. The TV-house in Riga is an impressive building with a nice view of the skyline of Riga. It is situated on the shores of the mighty river Daugava, opposite the Old Town. The seminar took place in the main studio at the TV-house. The LTV broadcasts two nationwide TV-channels. Photo: L-G Bengtsson - SVT

During the seminar, the delegates agreed on a proposal to begin making an independent inventory of all the public archives and national libraries with collections of the cultural heritage around the Baltic Sea.

The main objective is to develop unified methods for standardized digitalization, standardized platforms and uniform metadata standards for interchange of material.

Internet access to the Baltic cultural heritage, whether the documents are stored in Vilnius, Riga, Tartu, Tallinn, Stockholm, Helsinki or Oslo, is on the agenda for the future.

The language barriers should be taken into consideration when parts of the cultural heritage is published on the Internet. If you cannot afford multilingual web pages, an English translation of the main pages is a minimum for the interchange between the states around the Baltic Sea. The confusion of tongues was no problem during the seminar, although spoken and written English worked well for all interchange of ideas and thoughts.

Interior from the collections of periodicals at the Latvian National Library in Riga. Here are kept copies of all newspapers and weekly magazines that have been published in Latvia. There is also an enormous collection of historical maps kept in the building. Included are major parts of the detailed collections of the surveying work made by the central office of the Swedish National Land Survey during the years of Swedish rule in 1561-1710. This was the first land survey ever to take place in Baltikum. To get these collections digitalized is a dream for historical researchers all around the Baltic Sea. Other parts of the historical maps are stored in Tartu, Vilnius and at the central office of the Swedish National Land Survey, situated in Gävle in Sweden. Other supplementary details are found in “Krigsarkivet” (The Military Archives of Sweden) in Stockholm. Photo: L-G Bengtsson - SVT

The people of the participating organizations of the BAAC are well aware of the strong historic ties that binds the countries and peoples around the Baltic Sea together, despite the language barriers. The Baltic States have gone through periods of Swedish administration, German and Soviet occupation and a short period of prosperity as independent states between the two world wars.

The Old Town in Riga contains many beautiful old houses in the art nouveu style. Most of them are created by Latvia’s most famous architect, Eisenstein. His son, Sergei, made film history when he, in 1925, directed the film ‘Battleship Potemkin’.

The house on the picture is part of the dark ages of Riga. It stands as a monument of the horror during the years of Soviet occupation. The head office for the KGB in Latvia was situated here. Tens of thousands of Balts were sent to Siberia from this house.

Photo: L-G Bengtsson - SVT

The new Internet related techniques can make the digitalized treasures of the archives and libraries accessible through long distances to researchers, students and an extremely history oriented population, now when the Soviet era is over and all aspects of the true history of Baltikum can be made known.

View over the Old Town in Riga and the mighty river Daugava. The river was used by Scandinavian Vikings travelling to the Black sea. In the centre of the picture is the Dome, well worth a visit. In one of the big church windows is a mosaic showing the Swedish King Gustav II Adolf as he was being welcomed by the citizens of Riga. Photo: L-G Bengtsson - SVT

The Baltic Sea Portal and the Exchange of Television Programmes.

Also mentioned at the seminar were the opportunities for the public service companies around the Baltic Sea to create a common public service portal on the Internet, bringing up the last 100 years of history as it was told on news films, audio recordings, pictures and TV-reports. This could also be a platform for further cooperation between the radio and TV companies, such as an exchange of news reports and programmes.

Jews in the town of Memel (Klaipeda). They are escaping from Memel just before the German army troops enter the city in 1939. More than 200,000 Lithuanian Jews were murdered by the Nazis during the WW2. Photo: SVT-BILD

Several examples of news events from the past which were of common interest to the people around the Baltic Sea, were brought up during the seminar. For instance, the many refugees in small fishing boats that arrived at the Swedish coast during World War II, the systematic crimes committed by the Nazis in the Baltic States during the Holocaust, as well as one of the most frequently discussed issues in post WW2, the Swedish Government’s hand-over of Baltic soldiers to the Russians. They were Baltic soldiers disguised in German uniforms that had escaped to Sweden at the end of the war. Both SVT, NRK and YLE have a lot of pictures and film sequences from those news events in their archives, and there is a great interest on the other side of the Baltic Sea to take part in these documents and pictures. There are also several news reports in the TV and radio archives about the Baltic States’ dramatic way to freedom and independence in 1991. The Estonia disaster in the Baltic Sea in 1994 and the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 are other major news events that will be in our memories forever.

The BAAC, as well as the leading politicians of the European Union, wish to make these collective memories available to future generations, together with the rest of our cultural heritage. It is a great opportunity for the public service companies around the Baltic Sea to tell the European history from a European point of view, as opposed to the Internet and Satellite-TV dominated American TV companies such as the Discovery Channels and the History Channel and so on, that usually tell us Europeans our own history from an American point of view.

The Baltic Sea Portal can also be a platform for more cooperation between the media around the Baltic Sea, and maybe an initiative for the public service companies to start a nationwide broadcast of Baltic news magazines based on exchange of reports from the other participating countries’ regular news programmes. The exchange of video files can be made by cost efficient File Transfer Protocol over the Internet. After translation, the programmes can be an attractive fresh view of matters concerning the countries in the Baltic region.

A report from Lithuania in the Swedish cultural news programme ‘Kulturnyheterna’, in September, 2005, about the township of Uzupis in Vilnius. A colony of artists had declared the township as an independent artist state, to protect the area from the exploitation plans by the big construction companies and the city council. Photo: Michael Stankowski - SVT

During the seminar, all the participating delegates came to the conclusion that there is a great curiosity about the neighbouring countries, and that the wish to reach out to the world and be an active part of the European Union is extremely strong in the Baltic States, now that the impossible all of a sudden IS POSSIBLE. To build human networks around the Baltic Sea, like the Baltic Audiovisual Archives Council is only the beginning of a long road of cooperation, that will bring new richness to all the participating countries.

I just wish my old geography teacher could take part in this new era.

Lars-Gunnar Bengtsson

Control Room Manager and Archives Coordinator

Newsroom Swedish Television

Malmö

”The GOOD OLD SWEDISH DAYS”

The first trade routes and human networks around the Baltic Sea are extremely old. Through findings in archaeological studies, we know that there existed several well documented trade routes all the way back to the Iron Age, along the coasts on both sides of the Baltic Sea. The Scandinavian Vikings used the mighty Russian rivers that end in the Baltic Sea to travel to the areas around the Black Sea and even farther. The trade and social relations between the neighbours were not always peaceful. One strong argument for making Stockholm the capital of Sweden in the 13th century, instead of Sigtuna, was that Birger Jarl, the King of Sweden at this time, needed a strong defence fortress to protect the Lake Mälaren from his enemies on the other side of the Baltic Sea.

According to historical tales, he had good reason. Birger Jarl had adopted an aggressive line of action towards the East, and tried to seize more land around Finland and Estonia, on both sides of the River Neva, but lost the battle against a Russian army led by prince Alexander of Novgorod.

There is a Swedish colony in Baltikum, on Dagö, Runö and Ösel ( Hiumaa, Ruhnu and Saaremaa in Estonia) that has persisted from the days of Birger Jarl until today. The Swedish colony was reduced when the citizens of Svenskby on Dagö were deported in 1781 by Katarina II, the great Empress of Russia, to Gammelsvenskby (Zmejivka), 1500 kilometres southeast by the river of Dnipr in Ukraine.

This remnant of the Swedish-Estonian ethnic group have kept the old Swedish language and cultural heritage alive until today and some relatives of the members of the Dagö colony were interviewed by Malcolm Dixelius in Swedish, for the Swedish news programme ‘Aktuellt’ in 1983.

Anna Utas and Emma Malmas, the last remnant of the Swedish-Estonian ethnic group, have kept the old Swedish language and their cultural heritage alive until today. They are relatives of the Dagö citizens, who were deported in 1781 by Katarina II, the great Empress of Russia, to Gammelsvenskby (Zmejivka/Zmerynka) in Ukraine , 1500 kilometres southeast of Dagö. Anna and Emma were interviewed in 1983 in Swedish by Malcolm Dixelius. FOTO: ANATOLIJ KUPRIANOV - SVT

Reval (Tallinn), Riga and Visby were Hansa cities of equal standing from the late 13th century to the end of the 15th century, during which time the German Hansa had total control over all trade in the Baltic Sea.

The Swedish imperial era around the Baltic Sea, during the period from 1561 to 1710, is called “The Good Old Swedish Years” in Baltic history, mainly because of the fact that the Baltic countries pleaded to the Swedish King Gustav II Adolf to protect them from the Russian Bear, and also because the Swedish Government pursued a policy that kept military and civil rule apart. The Swedish ambition was to include the Baltic countries in the Swedish administration, with the same legal rights for everybody in Baltikum as for any citizen of Sweden. Among many other things came a law that forbade the German-Baltic aristocracy to punish their serf farmers at their own discretion. Death penalty was banned and everybody, even the serf farmers, were given the right to a fair trial by the courts and a possibility to appeal to a higher court, all the way up to the king.