Norwegian Labour Movement Archives and Library

Last updated April 28, 2019

The Norwegian Labour Movement Archives and Library (Norwegian : Arbeiderbevegelsens arkiv og bibliotek, Arbark) is an archival and historical institution in Oslo, Norway, opened in 1909. It was established and is still owned by the Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions and the Labour Party.

Norwegian is a North Germanic language spoken mainly in Norway, where it is the official language. Along with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a dialect continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional varieties, and some Norwegian and Swedish dialects, in particular, are very close. These Scandinavian languages, together with Faroese and Icelandic as well as some extinct languages, constitute the North Germanic languages. Faroese and Icelandic are hardly mutually intelligible with Norwegian in their spoken form because continental Scandinavian has diverged from them. While the two Germanic languages with the greatest numbers of speakers, English and German, have close similarities with Norwegian, neither is mutually intelligible with it. Norwegian is a descendant of Old Norse, the common language of the Germanic peoples living in Scandinavia during the Viking Era.

The Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions is a national trade union center, decidedly the largest and probably the most influential umbrella organization of labour unions in Norway. The 21 national unions affiliated to the LO have almost 900,000 members of a Norwegian population of 5 million. The majority of affiliated unions organizes traditional blue collar workers, but the largest affiliate is the Norwegian Union of Municipal and General Employees which makes up more than a third of all members. LO is affiliated to the ITUC and the ETUC. Gerd Kristiansen was elected leader on 6 May 2013 for a four-year period.

The Labour Party, formerly the Norwegian Labour Party, is a social-democratic political party in Norway. It was the senior partner of the governing Red-Green Coalition from 2005 to 2013, and its leader, Jens Stoltenberg, was Prime Minister of Norway during that time. The party is currently led by Jonas Gahr Støre.

History

The initiative to establish Arbark was taken in 1905 following a Swedish model. It was established and is still owned by the Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions and the Labour Party. In 1908, Arbark started to work in the People's House in Oslo, Norway. Since 1972 it has received government funding.^[1]

Arbark is the Norwegian Labour movement's eldest cultural organization and the largest, privately owned record repository in Norway. It is Norway's largest library dedicated to the labour movement and other social movements. Its collections consist of, among other things, about 7,000 shelf meters of records, 1.5 million photographs, 135,000 books, about 465 banners, 70 films and numerous audio records. Important parts of Arbark's collections are continuously being digitized and are available on its homepage.

During World War II, many of the documents were taken by Nazi Germany and subsequently lost.^[1]

World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. The vast majority of the world's countries—including all the great powers—eventually formed two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. A state of total war emerged, directly involving more than 100 million people from over 30 countries. The major participants threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. World War II was the deadliest conflict in human history, marked by 50 to 85 million fatalities, most of whom were civilians in the Soviet Union and China. It included massacres, the genocide of the Holocaust, strategic bombing, premeditated death from starvation and disease, and the only use of nuclear weapons in war.

Nazi Germany is the common English name for Germany between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party (NSDAP) controlled the country through a dictatorship. Under Hitler's rule, Germany was transformed into a totalitarian state that controlled nearly all aspects of life via the Gleichschaltung legal process. The official name of the state was Deutsches Reich until 1943 and Großdeutsches Reich from 1943 to 1945. Nazi Germany is also known as the Third Reich, meaning "Third Realm" or "Third Empire", the first two being the Holy Roman Empire (800–1806) and the German Empire (1871–1918). The Nazi regime ended after the Allies defeated Germany in May 1945, ending World War II in Europe.

Arbark's purpose is to preserve and communicate the Norwegian labour movement's as well as other social movements' cultural heritage. The main purpose is to document the history of all movements connected to the Norwegian political left in a broad sense, such as the feminist, peace, and solidarity movements, in addition to the social-democratic trade unions and labour parties. This feature distinguishes Arbark from similar institutions in other countries, which more often are connected to only one or a few of the political branches of the labour movement. The current director of Arbark is the historian Frank Meyer, who succeeded Knut Einar Eriksen in 2011.

Knut Einar Eriksen is a Norwegian historian.

Networks

Arbark is a member of national and international networks of individuals and institutions working with the history of the labour movement's cultural heritage. Internationally, Arbark collaborates with other member institutions of the International Association of Labour History Institutions (IALHI). Arbark publishes the peer-reviewed journal Arbeiderhistorie ("Labor History") annually.

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References

1 2 Halvorsen, Solveig (1995). "The Norwegian Labour Movement Archives And Library". Saothar. 20: 105–107. JSTOR 23197247.

External links

Official site

Coordinates: 59°54′56″N10°44′59″E / 59.9155°N 10.7498°E / 59.9155; 10.7498

Geographic coordinate system Coordinate system

A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are often chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position and two or three of the numbers represent a horizontal position; alternatively, a geographic position may be expressed in a combined three-dimensional Cartesian vector. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation. To specify a location on a plane requires a map projection.

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[jstor-1] 1 2 Halvorsen, Solveig (1995). "The Norwegian Labour Movement Archives And Library". Saothar. 20: 105–107. JSTOR 23197247.