The Scandinavian far-right and the new politicisation of heritage

The past 30 years have witnessed a radical shift in European politics, as new far-right wing parties have entered national parliaments. Driven by discontent, fear and the notion of cultural struggle, they have gradually come to twist the political conversation around their core issues. For many far-right parties, cultural heritage is one such issue. While this ought to put them on the radar of scholars studying heritage politics, the topic of far-right heritage policy remains largely unexplored. This article seeks to ignite this field of enquiry by taking a closer look at what far-right heritage policies actually look like. Focus is set on three Scandinavian far-right parties with seats in national parliaments: the Danish People’s Party, the Progress Party in Norway and the Sweden Democrats. By examining the notion of heritage put forth in their party manifestos and the heritage priorities expressed in their parliamentary budget proposals, we consider the weight of their rhetoric.

The Scandinavian far-right and the new politicization of heritage Introduction Over the last three decades a new wave of far-right wing parties has gradually changed the political landscape in Europe. Leading a politics of division fuelled by fear and nostalgia, this diverse political family has managed to instil into public discourse, an image of the nation as a battleground where 'natives' fight for survival against forces of globalization and non-western immigration (Wodak, 2015). Their entrance into national parliaments has effectively destabilised classic intraparty alliances and provoked establishment parties to bend the political conversation around their specific issue-areas (Houtum and Lacy, 2017). One such area is cultural heritage.
While media exposes us to these political shifts on daily basis, few heritage scholars have approached the contentious topic of contemporary far-right heritage policy. Exploratory in nature, this article seeks to address a simple yet crucial question: What do far-right heritage policies look like in practice? To find out, we scrutinize the cultural policies of three Scandinavian far-right parties with seats in national parliaments: the Danish People's Party (Dansk Folkeparti), The Progress Party (Fremskrittspartiet) in Norway, and the Sweden Democrats (Sverigedemokraterna). Scandinavia is an interesting case region because it provides the opportunity to compare far-right parties' approaches to heritage within three otherwise similar parliamentary democracies (Arter, 2004), while also considering differences between parties in and out of office (i.e. government).
The empirical corpus consists of political manifestos, position papers, annual state budgets and parliamentary proposals on heritage, put forward by the three parties over the last 10-15 years. Written by party members, manifestos are excellent sources for gaining an understanding of parties' views and intents (e.g. Budge and Bara, 2001), while budgets and parliamentary proposals provide insight into how manifestos are operationalized. Analytically, this means that we have coded party documents to locate their notions of heritage, as well as what priorities and concrete initiatives they propose. As a next step, inspired by recent 'follow the money' approaches to heritage (Niklasson, 2016;Luke and Kersel, 2012;Samuels, 2008), we look for traces of these heritage policies in annual state budget negotiations. This offers clues as to whether the parties stay true to expressed aims, and what becomes of their policies in practice.
The article moves from the general to the particular. After placing the Scandinavian far-right in a wider political landscape, we first examine their concept of heritage, and then -separating parties currently in and out of office -we examine their budget proposals involving heritage. In the discussion and final reflections, we address wider issues raised by the results and outline ways forward. We hope that this initial study, and the questions raised, will further strengthen the interest in contemporary heritage politics. Because, as our and others brief entries into far-right heritage politics show, these parties can easily become uneasy bedfellows (e.g. Gill, 2012;Gustafsson and Karlsson, 2011;Jensen, 2009a;Lindsköld, 2015), pursuing similar goals of increased funding and participation as the heritage sector, 1 but from a far less inclusive standpoint.

Introducing the far-right party family in Scandinavia
As a political phenomenon the far-right populist parties goes under several names, 'the new radical right-wing parties', 'populist right parties' 'extreme far-right parties' to name some (e.g. Jungar and Jupskås, 2014;Lindsköld, 2015;Mudde, 2007;Rydgren, 2005;Wodak, 2013;Wodak, 2015). This conceptual fuzziness, combined with the parties' diverse histories, has led political scientists to debate whether one can really speak of a distinct political party family. However, since differences can be found within conservative and liberal party families as well, most scholars agree that the rise of a new type of far-right parties sharing the key features of populism, 'cultural racism' or 'nativism', and authoritarianism, can be identified from the 1980s onward (e.g Jungar and Jupskås, 2014;Mudde, 2007: 52;Rydgren, 2005;Wodak, 2015: 191-210).
Analysing the post-war breakthrough of the new far-right, Rydgren (2005: 416) argues that the electoral success of Front National in France in the mid-1980s produced a new political 'master frame', 'combining ethnonationalism based on "cultural racism" … and a populist … anti-political establishment rhetoric'. Riding on the wave of political dissatisfaction caused by the fall of industrial Europe and the 1973 oil crisis, newly established far-right parties began to build their rhetoric around the dichotomy between the elite and the people. Politicians, corporate leaders and experts were portrayed as the corrupt enemy of the welfare state, while the 'people' (i.e. the pure) remained purposefully vague (Canovan, 2004). This populist stance was combined with a new way to articulate racism. By drawing on the political left's notion of difference, the far-right made an important conceptual shift away from the early 20 th century biologically-based racism towards one of 'ethno-pluralism', a new non-hieratical cultural racism focusing on the preservation of the 'unique national characters of different peoples' (Rydgren, 2005: 427). From the late 1980s, this grew into a more hostile 'nativism': 'a xenophobic form of nationalism in which a mono-cultural nation-state is the ideal and all non-natives (i.e. aliens) are perceived as a threat to the nation' (Mudde, 2014: 218). Hence the enemy within, the elite, was joined by an enemy at the gates: non-western immigrants (Fangen and Vaage, 2014: 35). Accused of keeping far too liberal immigration policies and preaching multiculturalism, the two became considered in league with each other, and were linked to the perceived hazards of globalization (Mudde, 2007: 184-8). Thus, not only is the concern for 'the people' limited to 'natives', but the far-right authoritarian tendency to see nearly every major issue as a security issue subsumes 'elites' and 'immigrants' into a wider conspiratorial worldview.
[Insert table 1 around here] This potent combination of an 'arrogance of ignorance' and a 'politics of fear', using ethnic/religious/linguistic/political minorities as scapegoats to construct a dangerous opposition to 'our' nation (Wodak, 2013: 2), is manifest in the three Scandinavian far-right parties with seats in national parliaments (table 1). The Danish People's Party (henceforth DPP), the Progress Party in Norway (henceforth PP), and the Sweden Democrats (henceforth SD), construct their core issues around dichotomies that re-activate 'cultural roots' as a condition for national belonging, making culture 'the underlying priority for all political action' (Lindsköld, 2015: 18). In the following we explore the base-line for their heritage policy, starting with their manifestos.
There can only be one: Heritage in the far-right conception of culture [Insert table 2 around here] DPP, SD and PP all make clear references to culture in their manifestos. Culture is put forth as the essence of the national character: a historically anchored and distinct way of living, thinking, speaking and believing (table 2). As the most extreme party, SD links this distinctiveness to both biology and environment, speaking of an 'inherited essence' that unite a certain group of people but not all of mankind (Gill, 2012;SD, 2011: 8). While each party embraces their Nordic neighbours as part of a wider cultural family, and recognize that culture is never static or free from outside influences, a homogeneous society based on continuity is considered the natural and most desirable order (DPP, 2009a: 22;SD, 2011: 21). According to DPP, to strengthen culture is therefore to strengthen 'Danishness' (DPP, 2009a: 113), and for SD, to preserve culture is to preserve 'that which is unique for the Swedish nation' (SD, 2011: 18). PP is more open and acknowledges that Norwegian culture will always exist in interaction with other cultures, but it shares the far-right understanding of integration as a method to achieve cultural assimilation (PP, 2017). 'Culture' and 'people' are therefore referred to in singular -it is the culture of the people and not the cultures or the peoples of the nation. Importantly, the Scandinavian far-right parties operate with a division between past and present culture. Present culture, such as contemporary art, is treated parsimoniously, encouraged to rely increasingly on the open market and on the free labour of enthusiasts. That is, unless it serves a dual purpose of providing culture for 'the people's' consumption whilst simultaneously protecting the national language (e.g. national film and literature) (DPP, 2001(DPP, : 64, 2009aPP, 2009: 72;SD, 2010a). Past culture, heritage, is portrayed as society's 'social glue'. Broadly defined as the national language, Christianity, cultural traditions and tangible remnants from the past (see table 2), heritage is considered a state concern in terms of protection and funding (DPP, 2002(DPP, , 2009aPP, 2009PP, : 73, 2013PP, : 79-80, 2017aSD, 2011: 19). The manifestos specifically call for continued or increased funding for: nationally focused heritage institutions and museums, maintenance of collections and archives, heritage tourism, heritage digitization, and democratizing measures (DPP, 2001(DPP, , 2009aPP, 2009PP, , 2013PP, , 2017SD, 2011. While 'the people' are put forward as the stewards of heritage values, the parties emphasise that politics have some part to play in what is endorsed, and that funding bodies or relatively independent arms-length national heritage agencies should not be left to their own devises (DPP, 2009a: 114;PP, 2009: 73;SD, 2011: 18). Beyond these concerns, DPP places greater emphasis on theatre production, Christian-, and Imperial heritage than SD, which looks more towards folk traditions and local initiatives. Both view heritage as a tool to educate the populace about what it means to be Danish or Swedish, unlike PP which focuses on heritage as a national responsibility, more than an asset for nation building. A clear PP manifesto objective is thus to ensure that the state covers the costs for preservation and excavations of archaeological sites and buildings which are privately owned or located on private land.
Aside from the division between past and present culture, a key observation that can be drawn from the manifestos is that far-right heritage priorities do not differ substantially from those of larger establishment parties. Furthermore, the central focus on democratizing heritage -bringing it closer to 'the people' -mirrors the rhetoric of national heritage governing bodies (Gill, 2012;Gustafsson and Karlsson, 2011), and resonates with international decrees such as the Convention on the Value of Cultural Heritage for Society (Faro Convention, 2005). Funding-wise the congruence may also seem like an advantageous match. It is mainly on moral grounds that heritage actors can protest the far-right agenda, due to the threat it poses to the last decades efforts to embrace a wider definition of what it means to belong in society (e.g. NWP, 2008NWP, -2009SWP, 1996SWP, -1997SWP, , 2009SWP, -2010SWP, , 2016SWP, -2017. This pragmatic overlap and moral dissonance is what makes the situation volatile. If implemented, farright heritage policies could lead to a situation where state-financed heritage institutions, in exchange for sustained funding, are pressed to reinforce an ever-narrowing notion of heritage. To begin with, however, we need to see if the manifestoes have materialised in any concrete actions. For this we turn to the parties' proposals in parliamentary budget negotiations, divided based on their current positions of power.

Tracing far-right heritage policies in budget negotiations
Before going further, a brief outline of the Scandinavian political system is needed. The parliamentary democracies of Denmark, Norway and Sweden are multi-party systems (Arter, 2004), in which any party can gain control of government offices as long as they pass the bar in the national elections (2-4%), and either have enough votes to rule alone, forming a majority government, or ally themselves with other parties, forming a majorityor minority coalition. Scandinavia has a long tradition of coalition governments and the last national elections have resulted in the formation of minority coalitions in all three countries. This means that the ruling bloc must garner support from other parties in parliament to achieve their political goals, thereby enabling opposition parties to steer politics in their desired directions (Christiansen, 2011;Thesen, 2015). Minority coalitions set the scene for compromise, but how this space of negotiation is used differs depending on the respective parties' position in the national political landscape. While the Scandinavian far-right parties' manifestoes display strong similarities in regard to heritage, the conditions for their policies to take hold therefore vary. These power dynamics and differences often materialise themselves in the annual budget negotiations (e.g. Christansen, 2011), the traces of which we will now consult.
Pushing from the outside DPP provides the clearest example of how parties out of office can use the space of negotiation to their advantage: By striking a deal with the liberal-right minority coalition of Venstre and the Conservative People's Party (VK, 2001(VK, -2011, voting with them in parliament in exchange for support on their core issues, DPP has influenced Danish politics for nearly two decades. This in-between position has been so successful that upon becoming the second largest party in 2015, DPP chose not to enter government, but to continue as a 'supporting party' (cf. Thesen, 2015) for the next period of liberal-right minority rule. Added to these favourable circumstances, the cultural policies pursued by the consecutive right-wing governments have been highly compatible with DPP's own. The most famous is without doubt the establishment of the Danish national canons (in literature, culture, history and values) (Jenkins, 2011;Reestorff, 2007), a citizen-fostering project supported by DPP and which has inspired both PP (while in opposition) and SD. The shifts most felt among heritage professionals, however, have been the repeated consolidation of heritage institutions under the cultural ministry, resulting in tighter control of the Danish heritage sector (Jensen, 2009a(Jensen, , 2011; figure 1).
[ Figure 1 around here] [ Table 3 around here] Tracing DPP's involvement in the annual budget negotiations of the Danish Parliament (Folketinget), shows that in periods of centre-left dominance, the party has frequently requested budget amendments for heritage, and in periods of liberal-right dominance it has highlighted specific heritage actions and negotiated long term agreements (figure 1). Arguing that the state's cultural expenses had failed to benefit the people, DPP's first amendment requests in the late 1990s called for severe cuts in the operational costs of the whole culture sector (Folketinget, 1997(Folketinget, , 1998, a position which aligned with liberal-right calls to reduce bureaucracy. It was only in 2003 that the party began to push for more money for heritage. A snapshot of the relatively stable budget post on museums, prehistoric monuments and protected buildings (table 3) shows that from this time onwards, there has been a steeper rise in funding under liberal-right dominance (with farright support), compared to centre-left governments. Higher amounts do not necessarily indicate a balanced distribution, however, and taking into account the organizational changes that occurred over this period, it is more interesting to see where the money went. Inspecting the lists of sites granted additional funds in budget agreements involving heritage, and checking them against DPP strategy papers, public statements and accepted budgets (table 4), revealed that the party has successfully promoted: maritime heritage, stately heritage and living history museums, 'old Danish heritage', imperial heritage, and Cold War history. These concrete proposals are consistent with the concept of heritage and the priorities outlined in their manifesto, promoting sites linked to a) national origin narratives, such as the Viking Age Royal Jelling (Jensen, 2009b), b) power (war, monarchy and empire) and c) idealized values and ways of live (Christianity, democracy, seafaring and country life). They also align with the juxtaposition between the elite and 'the people', manifested in calls to redistribute funds from the capital to the provinces.
[ Table 4 around here] [figure 2 around here] Nevertheless, many of these sites enjoy cross-party support, as does the budget provisions for heritage preservation and dissemination. The non-site-specific allocations supported (but rarely initiated) by DDP, have often been directed towards upgrading heritage storage facilities, digitization, increasing accessibility and free entrance to museums. The real difference lie more in what DPP is not willing to fund and from where the money is to be redirected. For instance, in reaction to the centre-left's budget proposal for 2013, which featured a new circus school and a women's history museum, DPP charged 'cultural radicals' in the government with having declared war on the common heritage (DPP, 2012b). These present-oriented or norm critical activities were considered a threat to their notion of Danish culture. Consistent with this stance, funding for their recent heritage provisions has been drawn from the State Art Fund, and it has been suggested that more should come from modern art museums in Copenhagen (DPP, 2015(DPP, , 2016bDMF, 2015: 24).
The story of SD's heritage politics in opposition is shorter. Despite pursuing an agenda similar to that of DPP and occupying an intermediate position in parliament, holding the swing vote in close-cut deliberations between party blocks, SD have yet to find a single party willing to collaborate with them, on heritage or otherwise. This has not stopped them from trying. In line with their manifesto, SD's budget propositions have asked for increased funds for national history museums, cultural resource management, and the National Heritage Board. In 2014 they specifically stressed the need to raise 'archeology on the agenda' (SD, 2014: 86). Beyond this, SD has put forth a handful of its own initiatives. Inspired by the Danish canons (Hervik, 2012), SD has pushed for the establishment of a Swedish Cultural Canon (SD, 2010b(SD, , 2011. This is crucial, they argue, in a time when 'the very existence of Swedish culture is questioned' (SD, 2010b). Drawing on a Norwegian initiative, they also want to establish a fund for small scale heritage actions, intended to reinforce the bond between Swedes and their past and inform so called 'parallel societies' in the suburbs about Swedish heritage (SD, 2010a. The same motivation is given for their latest proposals, to set up local 'Sweden centers' and to train 'cultural introducers' (SD, 2016: 13-14). In line with their anti-immigration stance and the division between past and present culture, SD proposes that funding for these initiatives is taken from multicultural actions, international cooperation programs and institutions like the World Culture Museums. So far none of these proposals have been accepted. Rather they have caused an anti-reaction. In 2017 the centre-left coalition pushed through a new heritage proposition stressing the interchangeable nature of heritage, and a law designed to protect the political independence of museums against what the Minister of Culture has called 'dark forces' in society (i.e. the far-right) (Bah Kuhnke, Sveriges Radio, 2015). Unsurprisingly, SD has accused these actions of being 'characterized by an ideological grid of cultural relativism and national self-denial' .
Taken together, DPP and SD have pursued a heritage politics in line with the objectives stated in their manifestoes. DPP's relative success shows that under the right circumstances, a soft power area such as heritage can become the playground of the farright. Importantly, these circumstances include more than just the ability to cooperate with other parties in parliament. As argued by Kriegbaum Jensen (2016: 83), in Denmark citizenship is already seen as the result of a 'prolonged socialisation process towards a historically fixed notion of nationhood', while in Sweden identity politics have come to rely on a notion of voluntary nationhood that emerges through dialogue and reciprocal adaptation (Norway is said to balance undecidedly between these poles). Thus, even though the parties have similar agendas, the cultural politics of DPP has never been considered as provocative in Denmark as SD's has in Sweden (Reestorff, 2007). This is reflected in the responses from heritage professionals. Jensen (2009aJensen ( , 2011 has noted that the lenient attitudes toward DPP's policies extend to archaeologists and heritage officials in Denmark, who has taken advantage of the focus on national origins to secure funding for excavations and heritage sites, rarely questioning DPP's use of selected projects for self-promotion. In Sweden, where archaeologists and civil servants have been known to take a moral stand for inclusion, like in the emancipatory program Agenda Kulturarv (RAÄ, 2004), protests (although not abundant) have been clearly voiced (Gustafsson and Karlsson, 2011). In 2010, the chair of the Swedish Archaeological Society warned about the implications of SD's interest in heritage (Magnusson Staaf, 2010) and in 2016, the head of the Swedish National Heritage Board announced his rebuttal of SD's exclusionary agenda (Amréus, Sveriges Radio, 2016). Of course, different value regimes aside, it may be easier for civil servants to publicly oppose far-right policies when said party is deeply isolated and has limited budget influence. It is harder to bite the hand that feeds you.

Working from the inside
Following the 2013 election, PP entered into government for the very first time, forming part of a minority coalition with the Conservative Party. Since then PP has not held ministerial posts in the main ministries for heritage nor has the government issued new White Papers on heritage. As a result, the state budget becomes a central document to trace policy developments. In order to pass the budget, the coalition ruled through a written agreement with two supporting centrist parties, Venstre and Kristelig folkeparti from 2013-2017. As supporting parties, the two latter hold a similar sway position as DPP (cf. Thesen, 2015). As the four forms the parliamentary majority, once they have reached an agreement, the budget passes in parliament. Examining the traces of PP's manifesto in the heritage budget, our primary focus is the Ministry of Climate and Environment (henceforth the ministry), the ministerial home of the national heritage agency, Riksantikvaren, and the national heritage fund, Kulturminnefondet.
Starting with the ministry's first Solberg budget, we find a new overall category for cultural heritage (Kulturminner og kulturmiljø), but the text describing what heritage is and does is exactly the same as that used in the previous government. It is only a slightly stylistically edited version that has been repeated in the 2015-2018 budgets (MCE, 2014(MCE, -2015(MCE, : 14, 2015(MCE, -2016(MCE, : 14, 2016(MCE, : 14, 2017(MCE, -2018. The official definition of heritage has thus remained stable. Produced by the civil servants at the ministry, this durability can be read as a reflection of the slow-moving structures of bureaucratic documents. In the last budget for 2018, however, the national goals for Norwegian heritage management -first introduced in 2005 (NWP, 2004-2005) -were replaced with new ones. As detailed in table 5, the new goals represent a move away from focusing on the intrinsic value of objects and sites towards highlighting the societal benefits of heritage. While echoing the coalition's manifestos, the ministry is keen to highlight that they are also in line with international goals and conventions (MCE, -2018. Thus, rather than reading it as a clear-cut PP policy shift, this change exemplifies how professional heritage interests-nationally and internationally-can resonate with the overall goals of a far-right party.
[Insert tables 5, 6 around here] Examining the actual numbers of the budget, the pattern of negotiation alluded above becomes clear: The proposed budget posts for Riksantikvaren and Kulturminnefondet increase as they pass through parliament. This is in particular the case of the Kulturminnefondet. Hence while heritage represents a miniscule part of the annual budget, it becomes an item of negation in which the supporting parties have an impact: It is the supporting parties that facilitate the increase (table 6). Indeed, all the Solberg budget proposals represent a decrease from the previous year's budget. Following the shifts between the proposed budget and the budget passed in parliament, it is therefore difficult to argue that cultural heritage has become a more prioritised issue area during PP's time in government. However, while the numbers tell one story, the ministry flagged another one just days before the 2017 election: In a press release it stated that the last four years had represented nothing short of a historic increase for heritage funding . 2 This last-minute cajoling, claiming 'ownership' of the issue area during a tight election to appear more heritage-friendly than the previous government, indicates that the coalition has at least a superficial interest in heritage.
Above all, just as in Denmark, it is indirect policies, more precisely the coalition's belief in making the public sector more efficient, that will be felt most acutely by the public heritage bodies (e.g. Pettersen and Rose, 2004;Fangen and Vaage, 2014: 35). The will to act on this promise was first demonstrated in the 2015 budget, where a reform was launched to cut the operating costs of the ministries and agencies (AER, 2015;SS, 2015). Riksantikvaren's stable budget fits into this wider picture; the slight budget increase is a preparation for a full restructure by 2020. While further strengthened by the reorganisation of the governing structures of Norway (NWP, 2015(NWP, -2016, the bipartisan leitmotif continues: the restructuring was first put forward in the previous government's last White Paper on heritage (NWP, 2012(NWP, -2013.

Discussion: Rhetorical anchors in an era of alternative facts
Returning to the question of what far-right heritage policies look like in practice, the empirical discussion indicates that when out of office, DPP and SD have remained consistent with the motivations in their manifestos, promoting only that which serves to strengthen a predetermined national character and culture. In Denmark, this has meant steering the distribution of additional state funds for culture towards symbolically charged national heritage such as historic ships, villages and estates, and 'old Danish heritage'. In Sweden it has meant trying, but failing, to create a national cultural canon and heritage fund. Compared to the two former, PP's actions have been skewed towards focusing on the responsible state as the carrier of costs: To release private landowners of the burden of looking after the 'common heritage'. Already partially recognised in the Cultural Heritage Act ( §10) and the premise for Kulturminnefondet, this is not particularly controversial. As a result, PP's policy impact on heritage remains more elusive.
Whereas a 'follow the money' approach has allowed us to say something about far-right motivations and actions in Scandinavian parliaments, it has not helped us determine far-right parties' impact on heritage governance. Not finding it does not mean there is none. As pointed out by cultural policy scholars, the most urgent far-right cultural-, or in this case heritage, policy issues, 'may not labelled as such' (Lindsköld, 2015: 19). An obvious example of this is the liberal-conservative overarching policy of reducing bureaucracy. This cross-sectorial agenda, consistent with neoliberal efforts to minimize red tape regulations (Graeber, 2015), has proven to be in line with far-right heritage priorities in Norway and Denmark. As Worth points out (2013: 91), despite maintaining a protectionist stance, many far-right parties end up sanctioning the fabric of neoliberalism within national borders. While heritage scholars have begun to take the impact of neoliberal policies seriously (Coombe and Weiss, 2015), especially their tendency to maintain the inequalities they seek to lessen (González-Ruibal, 2009), the role and hidden effects of the far-right within this mode of governance remains a question for future research.
What we can say, is that the greatest observable impact of the Scandinavian farright so far has little to do with their budget proposals per se, but with their ability to use heritage funding targets as anchors to centre the political conversation around national belonging. By turning 'Danish-ness' into a political concern, DPP has enabled a highly conservative government to carry through a nationalist revival in Danish cultural politics (Duelund, 2008). Similarly, by inciting others to argue against their proposals, SD has made the existence of a historically fixed 'Swedish-ness' a legitimate starting point for debate (Gustafsson and Karlsson, 2011).
When it comes to restricting the meaning of heritage, working from the outsidewhere parties have more room to be confrontational (Thesen, 2015) -may therefore be more tactical for the far-right than being in government. As argued by Houtum and Lacy (2017: 87), far-right parties' 'consistent underdog status has rendered credibility to the conspiratorial nature of their rhetoric', and rather than protesting their radical politics, many centre-right parties in Europe have responded by 'mimicking their rhetoric and by implementing their preferred policies'. An example from the last election in Norway serves to illustrate this point: Actively entering one PP's areas of issue ownership, prominent party members of the Conservative Party and the Centre Party kicked off the 2017 election debates with the contentious topic of 'Norwegian values under threat'. When meeting the vice chair of the Centre Party, during a promotional journey along the pilgrim route to Trondheim, the Conservative Minister for Culture argued '…we need to dare to be Norwegian. Norwegian values are threatened because [we] do not always stand up for them. We should not be so neutral that we forget where we come from, and that it is the Christian cultural heritage this society is built on' (Helland in Johnsen and Wold, 2017). By appropriating PP's rhetorical tactics, to 'heritagize' claims of societal insecurity and connecting them to 'Norwegian-ness', the Minister linked 'her' ministry's portfolio to the cultural struggle of the far-right.
This shift in the political conversation has been aided by the very concept of kulturarv (cultural heritage). Stimulated by international heritage conventions, it entered the scene in Scandinavia at the turn of the millennium, replacing archaeology and history as the conceptual core representing the roots of the nation (e.g. Eriksen, 2009;Jensen, 2009a). In contrast to the latter, cultural heritage was fresh, and not linked to an educated 'elite'. Neither did it carry the burden of 1930s and 1940s misuse of the two disciplines. In Sweden the concept was swiftly adopted as part of the centre-lefts' strategies to cope with the challenges of globalization and migration, by including more voices -from aging citizens to newly arrived immigrants -in discussions on representations of the past. However, as argued by Gill (2012: 114), this mostly resulted in new (ethnic) categories being placed next to 'our', a.k.a. the Swedish cultural heritage. In reality, Gill suggests, SD has just taken advantage of an opening created by these shifts in approaches to heritage governance.
Similarly, Jensen has shown how archaeologists in Denmark began to use 'cultural heritage' for political reasons in the late 1990s in order to trigger emotional engagement: Struggling to cope with the lack of state-funding for rescue excavations following a massive development surge, they cried out that part of the Danes' cultural heritage would be lost unless crucial excavations were undertaken (Jensen, 2009a(Jensen, : 102, 2011. Coinciding with DPP becoming a central voice in public discourse, cultural heritage was promptly taken up in the political conversation. DPP's strategic coupling of cultural heritage and 'Danish-ness' soon contributed to grasping media's attention: Journalists saw that cultural heritage could be used to capture the attention of the readers by engaging them in saving the past. In this way, cultural heritage became a useful means for both archaeologists, heritage officials and politicians to secure funding for heritage sites and archaeology (Jensen, 2009a: 102, 238, 254), turning the DPP and the heritage sector into (un)easy bedfellows.
The conceptual overlap, shared funding interest, and ease at which the far-right and heritage professionals have fed each other in Denmark, shows that cross-cutting calls to 'democratize' heritage may have unintended consequences at a time when a) postfactual rhetoric is on the rise and distrust for research is manifesting itself (e.g. Klette and Elnan, 2017); and b) the media landscape is changing to the extent that bureaucratic values of impartiality, neutrality, and loyalty are challenged (e.g. Figenschou and Thorbjørnsrud, 2015). Research on cultural governance and participatory approaches to heritage have shown that democratization can be a curse in disguise. Superimposed via international conventions, national regulations and White Papers, actions meant to improve access, use and management of heritage can work to hide social and bureaucratic dissonance under a goodwill-blanket while pre-existent value regimes persist (Bendix et al., 2013;Cortés-Vázquez et al., 2017). This means that frameworks for public inclusion can, as in Denmark, be limited from within by the far-right. As Kelty warns (2017: S88), if we continue to produce participation for the sake of participation, without understanding the 'grammar' of it, we will end up with 'too much democracy in all the wrong places'.
The constant competition for media's short attention span -causing internal tension between politicians, civil servants and communication staff (e.g. Aspøy, 2016;Figenschou and Torbjørnsrud, 2015;Mathisen, 2016;Thesen, 2015) -is also affecting the ability for far-right policy to take a hold. In Norway the medial shift has gained increased public attention following harsh critique of PP ministers' breaking with the customary practice of neutrality. The breach involved politicized press releases explicitly bashing the former government, 'bragging' promotional videos, and treating the civil service as their own party secretariat, dismissing staff not 'helping' PP, and lately also interfering with the running of an arms-length agency (e.g. Aspøy, 2016;Mathisen, 2016;Stat og Styring, 2016: 6;Wernersen and Skei, 2017). While moderate in comparison, the press release concerning the 'historic increase' in heritage funding is characteristic of this new move. Thus, even if this type of politicization has not struck the Norwegian heritage sector hard so far, it opens the door to such behaviour, just as observed in regard to the shifts in conversation.
The last example indicates how the political impact on the civil service is often indirect and not possible to read out of explicit governing technologies such as budgets, laws and White Papers. This leads us to some final concluding remarks on the practical nature of researching heritage governance and impacting heritage policies.

Some final reflections
The aim of this article has been to reinvigorate research interest in contemporary heritage politics by exploring heritage as an issue area within the contentious political sphere of the far-right. As a first step, we have sought to establish what Scandinavian far-right heritage policies look like, both in manifesto form and, taking it one step further, what traces they leave behind in the annual state budgets. While providing some interesting answers, these sources, and the observations made, have also offered food for further thought; about how to best approach heritage governance methodologically, and about the need to revisit heritage studies' notion of democracy. The 'democratic turn' in heritage studies has resulted in a strong focus on giving excluded groups a stronger voice in heritage management (e.g. Smith, 2006;Waterton and Smith, 2009;Watson and Waterton, 2010). These have been important and timely responses to the interpretative privilege and structural authority long exercised by experts in the heritage field. However, as notions of accessibility and democratization are increasingly integrated into exclusionary political agendas, with the far-right trying to take issue ownership of heritage, we believe that heritage researchers and archaeologists need to extend their range of vision and study up. This will enable us to better grasp the shifts caused by the far-right and their effect on heritage governance: to make the politics of heritage tangible.
Expanding research interest in heritage governance is crucial if heritage professionals and researchers are to maintain and/or take greater ownership over their policy area. To our minds, for this to happen, there is a need to use our different roles more strategically: Often bound by various forms of staff regulations and/or national legislation, there are limits to what civil servants can address publicly. Researchers, at least in Scandinavia, are relatively privileged when it comes to academic freedom and are expected to act as the critical voice of society. This gives them both more leeway and greater responsibility to articulate what others cannot. In order do so in a succinct and informed manner we believe there are three gaps that needs to be addressed. First, archaeologists and heritage researchers have much to learn from the emerging field concerned with multilateral heritage bureaucracies (e.g. Bendix et al., 2013;Bertacchini et al., 2016;Hølleland, 2013;Meskell, 2016;Niklasson, 2016;Samuels and Lilley, 2015;Shore, 2000;Turtinen, 2006). Specifically, the multi-methodological toolkits used in these studies, combing ethnographic fieldwork and in-depth interviews with politicians and government officials, can help unpack the negotiations and conflicts that go into the creation and implementation of governing documents and policies. Only then can we fully understand and appreciate the interactions between politics and the technocratic sides of national heritage governance, a key step in coming to terms with the impact of the far-right. Secondly, since heritage policy is never developed or implemented in a vacuum, we first need to revisit and extend our elementary knowledge of the governing structures of the countries of interest, and actively follow current political affairs. Finally, we believe that taking heritage politics seriously as a field of research means taking the time to actively use our knowledge and voice in public discourse, nourishing the role of public intellectuals in society.

Acknowledgements
Many thanks to the reviewers for their constructive input. We also thank the contributors to our EAA session Archaeology and the European far-right: attitudes and responses from heritage bureaucracies (2017), and participants of the conference Heritage Studies: Critical Approaches and New Directions (2017) for insightful comments on previous versions of this article.

Author Statement
Both authors have contributed equally to the data collection, analysis and writing of this article.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding
The article has been partly funded by The Norwegian Research Council [grant number 160010/F40].

Notes
1 By the heritage sector we refer to professionals and institutions involved in heritage governance, i.e. those who officially deal with cultural environments, objects and traditions in their capacity as 'heritage'. 2 More specifically the press release noted an increase of almost 35%, from 570 million to 753 million between 2013 and 2017. However, there are several issues with this calculation: Firstly, the numbers are not index regulated and secondly the money spent in 2017 is based on the budget passed in parliament rather than the government's proposal. When index regulated, the differences drops to 17,7% for the budgets passed in parliament and to 9,2% when compared to the government's own budget proposals.  (DMF 2002(DMF , 2003(DMF , 2015, and budget amendments requests (AEndringsforslag) (DPP 2012a, Folketinget 1997Folketinget , 1998Folketinget , 2013Folketinget , 2014.  Entered parliament in 2010, and has since worked from the opposition through two minority governments.

Far-right profile
DPP's anti-immigrant (specifically anti-Muslim), EU-sceptic and nationalist agenda seats it firmly in the far-right family. Its focus on Danish culture rests on a dual antagonism towards foreign influences and the progressive movement called 'cultural radicalism'.
PP is the least explicitly nationalist of the three parties. It began leaning towards the far-right in the late 1980s, when adopting a strong anti-immigration agenda. It has since embraced an anti-elitist stance, focusing on polices for 'folk flest' (ordinary people) and 'Norwegian values'.
SD is a nationalist, EUhostile, anti-immigration party. It holds a protectionist stance toward Swedish culture, which it claims is under threat of extinction due to Muslim influence and cultural relativism.    (DMF 2002(DMF , 2003

Successfully negotiated budget provisions
Historic ships, shipbuilding and education in traditional seafaring.
To strengthen the image of Denmark as a seafaring nation, and to secure its continuity through didactic efforts and hands-on training.

Cold War Heritage
Showcasing and educating people about, Denmark's role in the Cold War