Thinking Heritage Histories with Ignorance: The Case of the Mitau Spoils in the Swedish National Archives

This pod explores how the concept of ignorance might be useful to heritage studies. With the help of knowledge, ignorance and epistemic hierarchies, Emma Hagström Molin explains how she approach the Mitau files; a collection of documents that were abducted from Mitau castle in Livonia in 1621 by the Swedish army. When following these files over centuries, a history of power and knowledge appears, however, the documents’ fate simultaneously includes absence, ignorance, and even fiction.