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Projects
Selection
Photo: Knut Markhus
Hydropower tourism
The project " Power tourism". Experiences in the West Norwegian power landscape » has as its overarching goal to coordinate and facilitate the development of broad value creation based on a link between older power installations that are today open for visitors, and tourism companies in the region that together can create an attractive tourism product.
My consulting assignment is to increase knowledge about the processes that take place in the main project, and thereby contribute to the transfer of knowledge to other value creation projects based on the active use of cultural heritage.
The contracting authority is Vestland County Council, which implements the project together with Rogaland County Council.
Development of Froland's Works
Feasibility study that looks at how Froland's Works in Agder can be developed into a full-scale museum within five years. The work is a great cultural environment that contains exciting stories. Locally and regionally, the partly protected plant has enough to offer as a storyteller about the social life at an ironworks, in authentic surroundings. But it only becomes nationally interesting when we add some other highly special elements that Frolands Verk can offer. Yes, then the facility may actually have international interest.
The report was presented to the Froland municipal council in February 2024, and can be read here .
Yearbook Hardanger
The work on the Hardanger yearbook goes on and on throughout the year, as it has done for generations. The 115th edition came out before Christmas 2023.
In the foreword I write: "The program is steady and good. A bunch of authors write, without remuneration, about various topics and events and people - all connected to Hardanger. Sometimes the yearbook has pure source material, but most of the content is new texts. Count one up, and if you think about it, it is easy to state that the Hardanger History Association has made a major contribution to the writing of history in our part of the country. It may be about 20,000 pages, and this resource is used diligently by other historians, both volunteers and professionals."
I am an editor, and in this context can be contacted at redaksjon@hardanger-historielag.no
Gallows humour, book project
Throughout human history, gallows humor has been good to use, as a strong ally in times of crisis. Gallows humor is a cultural and psychological phenomenon that is referred to as black, but which stands in the light.
I can't find Norwegian non-fiction books that concentrate on gallows humor as a cultural phenomenon, or on the psychological mechanisms that are at work. Nor books that take us thoroughly through the history of gallows humor. That is why I have started to prepare a book about this, and received support from NFFO and Fritt Ord. The book will be published by Skald publishing house in autumn 2025.
Jon Fosse's childhood home in Strandebarm. Photo: Knut Markhus
Preliminary project: Jon Fosse Centre
The awarding of the Nobel Prize in Literature has seen momentum in the Fosse Foundation's work to establish a national center for Jon Fosse in Strandebarm, where he comes from. On the initiative of Vestland County Council, a preliminary project has been established, which I have been given the task of carrying out.
The preliminary project must clarify how one can secure good and realistic plans for the development and operation of a centre, clarify what is a realistic scope of any investments, and outline how this can be resolved.
The project owners are the Fosse Foundation, Kvam Herad and Vestland County Council.
Photo: Anders Beer Wilse, The National Museum
The fork rig - trade book
The book " Gaffelriggen - sailing and handling " was published by the Hardanger og Voss museum in 2023, and gives detailed advice and tips on how to expand the comfort zone by using sails at sea. The authors are three sailors from the Hardanger Vessel Protection Centre, and the book is the first in a series of publications about the gaff rig that this specialist community will publish.
My role in the project has this mention in the book: "Author and historian Knut Markhus has patiently done his best to clean up the script, make sure that we have hopefully written comprehensibly, put the commas in the right place and come up with good input. He has was important in pulling this together in the end."
From vlfk.no
Regional cultural plan Westland
The first regional cultural plan for Vestland county was adopted with applause in March 2023, and the follow-up action program was approved in the autumn. This shall be the long-term plan for the development of the cultural field in Vestland, and shall apply until 2035.
I was central to this major project all the way. In an early phase of the planning work, I led the working group for value creation, and stepped in as an external specialist editor for the entire plan when it was to be written, and also for the action programme.
See the plan here
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